July Ramble   Friday, July 31, 2009


"Desert Sunset"
Photo by Taylor Houston
IV.7.5.




I have a very short post this week. I'm traveling all week, trying to inject some fresh air into a brain stuck on "pause" and working on this in hotel rooms at night.

Got good stuff anyway. Here's who the are.


And Wan-li
Written on Cold Evening
Boating Through the Gorge
Taking the Ferry to Ta-Ko
Going to Hsieh's Lake by Boat
Evening View From a Boat
Staying Overnight at Hsia-sha-Stream
Passing the Lake of the Fighting Parrots
On the Way to T'ung-lu

Me
to the mountains - seeking a cure for what ails me

Sigfried Sassoon
Golgotha
A Subaltern

Lee Minh Sloca
Just the Two of Us by Grover Washington Jr. with Bill Withers, Will Smith, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, and Eminem

Luis J. Rodriguez
Dancing on a Grave
The Village

Me
to the mountains - day 2

David Rivard
Baby Vallejo

Walter Durk
Half-Life

William Childress
Desert Springs Night
Juvenile Hall at Night

Me
to the mountains - day 3

Naomi Shihab Ney
For the 500th Dead, Palestinian., Ibtisam Bozieh
Yeast

Dan Flore
To Sam

Me
to the mountains - and back

Me
to the mountains - last leg home








I start this week with poems from China's Sung Dynasty by poet Yang Wan-li. The poems are from the book Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow, published by White Pine Press of Buffalo, New York, in 2004. In addition to the poetry, the book includes some beautiful pen and ink illustrations.

Yang's lifetime (1127-1206) coincided with a period of Chinese history during which were created some of the greatest masterpieces of chinese art and literature. He is considered one of the "four masters" of the Sung Dynasty. He had not been widely known in the West until publication of this collection.

The poems in the book were translated by Jonathan Chaves.



Written on a Cold Evening

The poet must work with brush and paper,
but this is not what makes the poem.
A man doesn't go in search of a poem -
the poem comes in search of him.


Boating Through a Gorge

Here turtles and fish turn back,
and even the crabs are worried.
But for some reason poets risk their lives
to run these rapids and swirl past these rocks.


Taking the Ferry at Ta-Ko

Fog veils the river and the mountains,
but sounds of dogs and chickens
      show that a village lies ahead.
The wooden planks of the ferry deck are covered with frost:
my boot makes the first footprint.


Going to Hsieh's Lake by Boat

      1.

The wind blows toward the north,
      then it shifts to the south.
I blink - and we've traveled from the Yellow Fields
      to Hsieh's Lake.
The shadow of a mountain floats past my cabin;
I lift the curtain and see purple cliffs.

      2.

I pour two cups of clear wine,
then open my cabin door.
Here are ten thousand wrinkled mountains
      that no one ever sees,
The highlights picked out for me by the morning sun.


Evening View From a Boat

We sail past a pine-tree forest on the riverbank.
A man is walking where the trees end.
A mountain moves in front of the man, blocking our view.
The blue flag of a wine shop flutters in the wind.


Staying Overnight at Hsia-sha-Stream

Trees, laced in mountain mist,
      patch broken clouds;
the wind scatters a rainstorm of fragrant petals.
the green willows, it is said, are without feeling -
why then do they try to hard to touch the traveler
      with their catkins?


Passing the Lake of the Fighting Parrots

Painted barges like mountains floating on the water;
small boats like ducks avoiding the shore;
red banners, green canopies, the clang of gongs -
people everywhere, saying hello or saying goodbye.


On the Way to T'ung-lu

I sit napping in my palanquin
      as my cup of tea wears off.
There are no words on the milestones
      along these long mountain roads.
The crows and magpies jabber in a language I can't understand.
We pass a loquat tree; every leaf is yellow.








This is the first of the poems i wrote during my little drive this week. The title is self-explanatory.


to the mountains - seeking a cure for what ails me

suffering
through weeks
of constipation of the
poetical nerve,
the poet decides
to break free of the
summer routine that has
begun to stifle the brilliance
of his insight and the lyrical flow
of his words and images, settling
on a little trip to the mountains
as the cure for what ails him, hoping for,
if not total renewal, at least a little
brain fart to move things along

so
it's off to the mountains, but
before the mountains there's
a half a day driving, San Antonio to Fort
Stockton, of dry limestone hills and
the brown grasses of the Southwest Texas Plains

- obedience to the ideal that poetry
is truth and truth is poetry, the poet
should at this moment note that
the limestone hills are not dry
and the plains grass is not
brown, the drought affecting the rest of the state
apparently dumping all the water here, normally
the driest part of the state, but dry hills
and brown grasses are what the poet had in mind
when he started this and given the fact that he's here
and you're not, he is not prepared to adjust the facts
of his poem to the trivial facts of reality, so dry hills
and brown grasses it is -

and it's on to the mountains tomorrow and they will be
tall and majestic, with snow-packed peaks reaching
to a clear blue sky above grand, sweeping slopes of
green

and since
the poet not driving this far
for dinky mountains with no snow
and dinky little dried up trees
that's the way it will be
and
since
once again
he'll be there and you won't
you'll just have to take his word for it








While the techniques of war have changed, the people fighting them haven't. Siegfried Sassoon, who was one of those fighting in the World War I, tells us about them through his poems in The War Poems, an anthology first published by Faber and Faber in 1983.

Here are two of those poems, complete with the poet's note after each poem.



Golgotha

Through Darkness curves a spume of falling flares
That flood the field with shallow, blanching light.
    The huddled sentry stares
   On gloom at war with white,
   And white receding slow, submerged in gloom.
   guns into mimic thunder burst and boom,
   And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night.
The sentry keeps his watch where no one stirs
But the brown rats, the nimble scavengers.

March 1916

Written in trenches. The weather beastly wet and the place was like the end of the world.


A Subaltern

He turned to me with his kind, sleepy gaze
And fresh face slowly brightening to the grin
That sets my memory back to summer days,
With twenty runs to make, and last man in.
He told me he'd been having a bloody time
In trenches, crouching for the crumps to burst,
While squeaking rats scampered across the slime
And the grey palsied weather did its worst.
But as he stamped and shivered in the rain,
My stale philosophies had served him well:
Dreaming about his girl had sent his brain
Blanker than ever - she'd no place in Hell...
"Good god!" he laughed, and slowly filled his pipe,
Wondering "why he always talks such tripe."

March 1916

D. C. Thomas, killed on March 18. I wrote this about ten days before, when he'd been telling me how my sage advice had helped him along.








I have a new friend of "Here and Now" this week, the poet Lee Minh Sloca. Lee was born in Saigon, Vietnam, where he escaped two weeks prior to its collapse. He majored in Psychology at University of California at Santa Cruz. After college, he worked for 14 years in the mental health and the psychoeducational field with special needs
children. Feeling unfulfilled, he shifted his life path to being a poet and a webdesigner. Lee lives in Los Angeles, CA. After campaigning for Obama in the '08 election, he is currently seeking work that will align with the President's philosophy of serving the
community.



Just the Two of Us by Grover Washington Jr. with Bill Withers, Will Smith, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, and Eminem

1. No 1 Listens

I talk 2 Melissa
              who cracks, "You sure like being masochistic."
              2 dad
              who shoos, "Just be cool."
              2 Racquel
              who ages, "She is too young."
              2 David
              who echoes, "I, too, am in love with someone else's woman."
              2 Julia,
               who weights, "She is being unfair to you."
              2 playboy playmate of the year,
              who models, "WoW, love can be very lonely..."
               2 my writing sister,
              who glues, "Be gentle - she is very fragile so are you."
then I talk 2 the butterflies
              who are 2 flighty.
              And 2 the wind
              who lingers at a distance.
And as I talk I walk past a mirror
              whose deep eyes sight,
              Our heart overflows where it must.
              It washes us places & faces
              we don't expect; we don't see coming
              with debris, without direction, neither east nor west nor above nor below.
              We tell ourselves we will never let our heart be drunk again.
              but because we are liquid;
              we are reborn - again & again -
              in2 courage,
              in2 faith,
              the truer the loves
              the redder the madness.

2. A Second Opinion

After looking over my x-ray
My doctor consigns,
"You have a big heart
for someone your age.
What are you holding back?
Because your blood pressure is about to burst."
After a round renal scan + 24 hours urine analysis + EKG +
I confide from one bachelor to another,
"Maybe it's broken, doc"
He laughed,
"2 funny - you are 1 funny poet."

3. 3 Last Requests

Hello,
this is a message from the public library with information for Sloca, Lee M.
The items you reserved have arrived:
1. CD Film/TV. Cast Away: The Films of Robert Zemekis & The Music of Alan Silvestri [SOUNDTRACK]
2. DVD 92 O12Ye. Yes we can! the Barack Obama story
3. 497 C672-1. Breaking The Maya Code / Michael D. Coe
They will be held for 10 days.
A $1 fee per item will be charged if they are not pickedup.
Thank you.








Luis J. Rodriguez was born in El Paso in 1954 and grew up in Watts and the East Los Angeles area. Many of his poems spring out of his experience working as a steelworker, carpenter, blast furnace operator, truck driver and chemical refinery mechanic. Previously director of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Association, he was living in Chicago 1991 where he wrote for an all-news radio station in that city.

The next two poems are from his book The Concrete River, published by Curbstone Press in 1991.



Dancing on a Grave

Old Man Lopez -
with 14 children
from four wives -
wanted to be buried
with Sinaloenses
dancing on his grave
to the tune of
"La Ultima Paranda"
and Mexican beer
poured over the casket
in the sign of the cross.


The Village

Aliso Village. East LA.
Welfare/unemployment/teenposts.
Brown/black villagers
wade in a sea of stucco green

imitating cool, as 14-year-old
girls, with babies by their feet,
sing oldies from the darkened porches,
here, across the LA River,

concrete border
of scrawled walls,
railroad tracks, and sweatshops,
here, where we remade revolution

in our images. Here,
where at 18 years old and dying,
I asked her to marry me.

I carry the village in tattoos
across my arms.








Here's the second of my mountain-drive poems.



to the mountains - day 2

another
300 miles today,
to Ruidoso, music
carrying me along, Mamas
and the Papas, Grupo Fantasma from
Austin, Niko Case, Susan
Tedeschi, Shostakovich,
Jenny Scheinman, Bob Marley,
Monk and Coltrane, Van Morrison,
and just as we pass the exit
for Rocksprings and Mountain Home,
Peter, Paul and Mary, and for a few minutes
i was 20 again, believing things
will be better someday

8 hours of music all together,
flying behind me, leaving
a sonic wake in my rear view mirror

~~~~

Pecos, Texas
poor little Pecos, sinking
beneath the weight of the
21 century
that has no place
for dirty little towns stuck, alone,
on the dry West Texas plains

but,
dried up as it is,
it is still the largest thing around
and it has its federal courthouse,
so hope is undeterred, and across the street,
Sally's North Side Cafe & Bail Bonds, where
Sally
feeds them
coming and going

~~~~

an hour north
of Pecos,
a congregation of buzzards,
gathered in the middle of the highway
in their Sunday-best black, our scavenger
cousins, dependent, like us,
on meat killed by others

~~~~

Orla,
15 to 20 structures
along the highway, all
abandoned and in ruin

no sign of life in Orla,
but a single tarantula making
its creepy crawly way
across the highway, a cheering
sight, this fuzzy, black
nightmare,
extinct now where i grew up,
along with the horned toad and the
red-winged blackbird, a survivor
here
where little else finds a home

~~~~

across the line
into New Mexico and the road
turns
to shit
and the speed limit drops
by 10 miles an hour
and the hour i picked up
when entering mountain time zone
is lost,
just like that - the way
it is
between the mountains in southern
New Mexico, lousy roads and
insular people
who do their best to get rid of you
by eliminating highway signs,
figuring
that by never telling you
where you are or where you're headed
you will either drive around
in circles until
you eventually go away or
you die in the desert,
whichever,
fine by them

~~~~

the mountains, finally,
in the midday haze
between Roswell and Ruidoso
i think...
i hope...
i'm going west,
the only thing i know for sure,
but i'll recognize Arizona
if i miss Ruidoso
and find myself there in the end
so i'm not too worried

~~~~

83 degrees at 6,000 feet
at mid-afternoon

i call D
to tell her how great it is
knowing
it's probably 102 degrees
in San Antonio

she's not impressed
nor particularly amused
by my attempt at gotcha humor

the air conditioner in her office
quit
and she was just leaving to go outside
to cool off
when i called

i'm thinking
the call might not have been
a good
idea








The next poem is by David Rivard from his book Wise Poison published by Graywolf Press in 1996. The book was winner of the 1996 James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets.



Baby Vallejo

Take the night Myron Stout shut his sure blind eyes,
his pale head tilted back awhile, smiling
and swaying to an Eric Dolphy solo, or that morning
a sea otter, having fed, preened in the cove
below Tomales Bay, wolf gray & magpie black -
both times
it was easy to feel how
each left his mark on me.
Out of my happiness they carved an intensity.
Though the same might be said of my hatred.
Take the moment my grip loosened
so I couldn't stop my cousin
punching out his wife. His mark shaped
like a stony, contemptible hand,
but even its lines
flawlessly chiseled, cunning all coaxing me,
even not, to go inside to look it over.
No matter who made them
I love each of these marks, whoever it was
whispering or shouting near me.
Nostalgia has nothing to do with it,
and neither loneliness nor grief.
Again & again I go
into myself to study them, bypassing only
that mark fashioned in June of 1976,
set there by a worried face, all phlegmy voice
asking why a bus should swerve into a crowded plaza,
a school bus, blue, gutted of seats,
soldier at the wheel. Why the washed-out
white star stenciled
on its hood? Inside, men hang by their wrists,
naked, beside two calves,
two flayed & stiffened carcasses
swinging on meat hooks
as the bus pulls over.

                              It was simply a dream,
and the man recounting it, a tile mason, Pakistani, wanted
only the least implausible interpretation.
But I never answered,
out of ignorance or indifference, some job-site superstition.
I stood with him, silent, at that development
where I slapped up drywall.
Hands grizzled by dried grouting pastes,
he spoke the concise, elaborated English
a former lecturer in linguistics might -
since, in fact, that is what he had once been,
that & a cipher for the wrong politics - his words filtered
through a crushed windpipe, a nose smashed
during several precisely engineered & official beatings.
Suffice it to say
the mark carved inside me by that voice
is probably exquisite, intricate,
a grave & sinuous as the graying hairs
of the beard that covered his scars.
But I don't go in to look it over.
Because he knows why
in my poems a querulous gray rain sometimes sweeps down,
and, knowing refuses
to believe, as I do, that the roofs of our houses,
of the huts & pavilions & civic centers,
will withstand the rain's buffeting.
why, in other words,
sadly, happily, luxuriously, it is often
Rivard against Rivard.








Now, here's a poem by our friend Walter Durk



Half-Life

I cannot go to the sea anymore
it will have to come to me
half of me supports me
the other half undecided
even as I walk I know I am a half man
I cannot cruise a great river anymore
it will have to come to me
half of my life has tightened like
a knot in a sisal rope

half my life is you
you have a half life
and like me you are
a half man

soon the sea will come
as it always does
and the river to navigate
at a point where two halves
equal one








William Childress> was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, February 5, 1933. He is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, author, poet, and photojournalist and has received numerous awards, prizes, and accolades for his writing and poetry, and is regarded as one of the foremost poets of the Korean War.

Born the oldest son of a poor family of migrant sharecroppers, Childress joined the Army at age 18, serving in the Korean War as a demolitions specialist in 1952. After the war he reenlisted as a paratrooper, making 33 jumps, and twice narrowly escaping death from parachute malfunctions.

After leaving military service Childress attended Fresno State College in California, studying English and Journalism, and set a record as the only undergraduate to publish poetry, fiction and photojournalism in national magazines.This helped him get two fellowships to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and a Master of Fine Arts degree. His thesis later became his first book of poems, Lobo.

During his 45-year photojournalism career, Childress has published some 4,000 articles in various magazines and other publications, as well as approximately 6,000 magazine and newspaper photos.

For 14 years (from 1983 to 1997), Childress wrote a regular column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called "Out of the Ozarks." His column became so popular that in 1988 He wrote a book, also titled Out of the Ozarks, which was published by Southern Illinois University Press, and became a regional bestseller. It was during this period that he was nominated (twice) for the Pulitzer Prize, in the Commentary category.

I have two of his poems this week, from his book Burning the Years and Lobo, Poems 1962-1975, a compilation of his earlier writing published by Essai Seay Publications of East St. Louis in 1986. In the book, he includes notes on each poem about what he was doing and thinking when he wrote the poem.

This first poem first appeared in Arizona Quarterly. in 1969. Childress includes this note with the poem.



While at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, the grandaddy of them all, I decided I wanted to get into being an American Indian poet - so I took the pretentious name Young Hawk. "Young Hawk" - quite a jump since I'm of Danish extraction - produced half a dozen poems at most before going to the Happy Hunting Ground. All were published.

Desert Springs Night

The desert in the rains
is like that shining , unstrung water,
and if you have an Apache's patience,
you can sit at night afterward,
alone in the wetness and be the blue
hesitant opening of Angel's Breath.
Be also the scarlet flowers of Cholla,
the bright, brief flame of saguaro,
and the crimson fur of ocatillo.
And here in all this lie, be the little
deaths of little things; the grinding
dry of a rabbit taloned by a hawk,
the chalk-squeak of kangaroo rats.
Such is my desert, austere in the sun.
It's only beauty burns in darkness
and the weak creatures dormant in its day
only sleep more deeply in its night.


Instead of using Childress' note for this poem, i'll write my own, dedicating this poem to my wife, Dora (the oft-mentioned "D" in my poems), who has worked in the juvenile justice system for 30 years without losing faith.

Juvenile Hall at Night

My flashlight probes
the dark rooms where childhood, denied by day,
returns in sleep. Their
faces are more open
when their eyes are closed,
but each expression
holds dreams
that are darker
than bruises.
For the little I can do
at this late hour,
their lives are placed in my keeping.
I am their temporary father,
they are my momentary sons,
yet I am their prisoner
far more than they
are mine.








This is my poem for the third day of travel.

I'm heading back tomorrow the same way I came, so there'll be no poem for the fourth day. It'll be boring enough, without having to write a boring poem about it.



to the mountains - day 3

a single black cloud
rolling over the mountain crest,
lightning and thunder
breaking the dawn
with raindrops the size
of jawbreakers, that candy
eaten more because the name
seems a dare than
due to any enticing taste
of hard, colored sugar

5 minutes
and it's over

~~~~

crossing Apache Pass,
7,700 feet, another day
of climbing almost unnoticed
but for the temperature change,
one degree
down
for every 500 feet
up

a soft stealthiness
to the climb
to those familiar
with the more rugged horizons
further north

~~~~

passing Mescalero -

across the road
from the Tribal Center
2 Apache boys
play
King of the Hill,
rolling
over and over each other
in the rose-colored dust

stylized art
on concrete abutments
along the highway tell
the tribe's
story

which of the stories
do the boys
reenact?

~~~~

the down slope
from Mescalero to Tularosa
opens up between wooded mountain sides
to the desert below,
desert grasses so dry
they are white
in the morning sun,
like sand,
like a wide ribbon of white sand
between the mountains

~~~~

i had thought to do a mountain drive,
but a third of the morning
is spent crossing the white grass desert
from Tularosa to Carrizozo,
a desert so unremarkable
i have to stop three times before
Reba finds something interesting
enough
to pee on

Reba
my quiet travel companion
is bored,
sleeping in the back, head
between her paws

~~~~

a spike of interest
as i pass the Oscuro Bombing Range

but nothing blows up

oscuro,
the Spanish word for dark or dim

maybe something did blow up
and i just didn't
notice

~~~~

entering
Carrizozo
i skirt the Valley of Fire,
a wide crater-valley created
by a so, so ancient volcano leaving
a jumble of black lava
boulders
the size of large automobiles
strewn
across the valley

a vision of hell
after the fire goes out

~~~~

driving through Capitan
i think again of the last time
i passed along
it's tree-shaded main street,
sseing
an old man
riding his horse to collect his mail

i wonder if he still rides

and i think of man i knew
45 years ago,
a sailor from Ruidoso,
17 years older than me
but moved like me by
the assassination of the president,
moved to leave his sailor life
for greater service,
a comrade for three months,
training like me,
for chance at greater service

his life went one way after that;
mine went in another

in his 80's now
if still alive

~~~~

hwy. 48
back to Ruidoso,
climbing again, this time
through the Lincoln National Forest,
but still no feel of mountain
to the drive

i stop at a little park
in the city
for Reba to sniff and pee
along the Rio Ruidoso,
still muddy
with run off from this mornings
brief rain

~~~~

travel
done for the day,
time this afternoon to investigate
the artsy-craftsy shops in that part of Ruidoso
they call "mid-city"

take a nap

write a poem








The next poems are by Naomi Shihab Nye, poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born in 1952 to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she says she regards herself as a "wandering poet," she refers to San Antonio as her home.

The poem is from her book Red Suitcase, published in 1994 by BOA editions, Ltd.



For the 500th Dead, Palestinian, Ibtisam Bozieh

Little sister Ibtisam,
our sleep founders, our sleep tugs
the cord of your name.
Dead at 13, for staring through
the window into a gun barrel
which did not know you wanted to be
a doctor.

I would smooth your life in my hands,
pull you back. Had I stayed in your land,
I might have been dead too,
for something simple like staring
or shouting what was true
and getting kicked out of school.
I wandered stony afternoons
owning all their vastness.

Now I would give them to you,
guiltily, you, not me.
Throwing this ragged grief into the street,
scissoring news stories free from the page
but they live on my desk with letters, not cries.

How do we carry the endless surprise
of all our deaths? Becoming doctors
for one another. Arab, Jew,
instead of guarding tumors of pain
as they hold us upright.


I had planned one poem by Nye, but I always end up doing one more than I planned with her. I do like her work.


Yeast

Each morning from the dim secrecy
of the school kitchen, that single scent
sweetens the day - rectangle already baking,
legions of bread on long silver trays.
Like history, it won't stop happening.
Bread spreading its succulent flesh
whatever we learn or unlearn
in the room with faded snapping maps.

Once the map flipped so hard
Greenland caught me on the jaw
and I had to go to the health room.

Lying on the small cot,
closing my eyes under the ice bag,
I could smell the bread better from there.

Sometimes it seemed so obvious.
I should have been a slab of butter,
the knife that cuts, the door
to the oven.








Now a piece from our friend Dan Flore.



To Sam

I made plans for us
away from the dusty road
I wanted to watch morning
fall across your sleeping face
and when you did rise
you would scrape off from me
my meanderings of the night before
with a yawning "just don't do it again"
I would have told you about my grandmother's tan
before it faded from my memory
and we would have went to the same beach
where I took horse shoe crabs back to the bay
I would have liked to have had you close,
your own golden pallor
and love of righteousness
when it was finally time for me to go home too








I know I said earlier there wasn't going to be a Day 4 travel poem, but I hate to leave anything unfinished. So here's Day 4, plus Day 5, two poems in the series I didn't plan to write.



to the mountains - and back

day four,
day two in reverse, going back
the way i came,
seeing the other side of the cows
and barns and cactus trees
i saw Monday

55 degrees
when i left the forest and mountains
this morning

105 degrees
here on the West Texas Plains
as i check into my hotel
for the night.

i'm going the wrong way
i think

~~~~

meanwhile, a
single deer,
a doe,
grazes on a green hillside

she's home,
as i will be tomorrow -
no mountains,
no forest,
but dry and hot as it is,
it's still home,
the place where my butt fits
its custom made indention
in the easy chair
in the den -
where
D says good morning
and i don't have
to tip -
where the fellas
at the coffee shop
have been saying dumbass
things in the morning
without me there
to make fun of them -
where Kitty Pride waits
to sleep again on my stomach -
where
i know what's going on,
most of the time

home
for a while
to
morrow


to the mountains - last leg home

up at 5 a.m.

breakfast at I-Hop

on the road
by 6:15

the sky
clear overhead,
but all around
dark clouds
lightning flashing
within the clouds,
blossoming pools of
soft white light through dark
gauze

strong winds from the north
and a morning chill
in the air

in the east, a small
break in the clouds,
like a knothole in a fence,
and through it the peach-orange
glow
of the rising sun

still too dark
to see anything
but the sky

no le hace

i don't need to see,
homebound
i have eyes for nothing
but the road ahead

~~~~

306
miles

depending on Dairy Queen
stops,
less
than 4 hours








Before we close up shop for the week, I want to respond to a comment, a question, really, posted to the blog last week. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to this but the question is one I always try to respond to because I want to be clear to all about what I'm doing and why. Those of you who are more interested in reading poetry than long explanations of purpose, can just skip this and come back next week when we'll have more poetry.

Understanding that I may be talking to no one but myself now, I'll be brief.

The questioner noted that much of what I use each week may not be in the public domain and asks if I get permission to post it from the copyright owners.

The answer is, no, I do not get permission. Here's my rationale for that.

I do not consider "Here and Now" to be a commercial enterprise. If it was a commercial enterprise, I would consider my use of copyrighted material to be stealing something of commercial value to other poets. So I can see why some people might consider what I do questionable.

But "Here and Now" is purposefully noncommercial. I have, for example, enough traffic on the blog to sell advertising. But I don't and never will. "Here and Now" produces no income, I carry the full cost of maintaining the blog myself. (A hundred something a year web costs, plus the cost of all the books I buy to pull material from.)

All the copyright material I use in "Here and Now" comes from books I've purchased and the poetry library I've accumulated since starting the blog. Though some might (and do) disagree, having purchased the books gives me some sense of, at least, moral ownership of the poems I use. The fact that I pull poems from these books to use in "Here and Now" is, to me, the moral equivalent of taking my books to a city park, climbing on a park bench and reading them aloud. Since, as I've noted elsewhere, I'm a much better typist than public reader, it is probably to everyone's benefit that I'm typing the poems and not reading them aloud.

I like what I do on "Here and Now," mixing new and old poets, masters and beginners and don't know of anyone else who does it. I think it brings more people into the poetry circle. And more people in the circle, more people reading and writing poetry, seems to me to be a good thing for everyone. And, along the way, introducing readers to poets they may never have heard of otherwise seems to me to be a good thing as well, even, sometimes, selling a book or two. I know of at least two books that we sold because a reader of the blog found a poet they loved and went out looking for their books.

If any poet disagrees with my use of one of their poems, I will immediately remove it from the blog. So far, the only feedback I've had has been from two poets who thanked me for using their work. However, if a poet is really, really displeased, I'll remove their poem, give them my copy of their book and turn over to them all "Here and Now" profits for the past four years. (A check for zero dollars and zero cents seems like it might be a fun thing to write.}

It is true, I do have a book on the market myself and and a couple more coming. Unfortunately, as attested to by my closet full of unsold books, "Here and Now" hasn't led to a rush, or even trickle of sales. Any plans I may have had in that direction when i started, sure didn't work out.

So, that explanation complete, I hope you'll be back with me next week for poetry and sometimes good art. When you do, remember all of the material used in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of
me...allen itz.

And, just for the record, if you want it, you're welcome to any portion of the above I created myself, as long as you say where you got it.
1 Comments:
at 8:30 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK, so despite your elaborate rationalization and your no doubt good intentions, you are violating copyright law.

Post a Comment



On a Rock in a Hard Place   Thursday, July 23, 2009


"Chris"
Photo by Andre Lamar
IV.7.4.




We run a little longer than usual this week, making room for some fresh, new stuff for you. Here's your preview.

William Carlos Williams
Advent
Pastoral
The Great Figure
Death the Barber
The Red Wheelbarrow

Me
what we do until we can think about sex again

John Ashbery
The Story of Next Week

Thomas Snelgrove
Boy's Brigade

Carl Sandburg
To Whom My Hand Goes Out
The Dead Sea Apple
A Homely Winter Idyl

Me
the threat of polite people to advancement of art

Arlene Ang
Six illustrated poems
There's a Postwoman in Your Bath
The French Maid Outfit Turned Up For Its Close-Up Today
Further On, With Richard
Please Meet My Table
Why Do I Show My Body
And She Ripped the Turtle Soup Recipe

Philip K. Jason
Wisdom Poem

Maggie Rosen
Enunciation

Jennifer M. Pierson
The Important Things

Cornelia DeDona
Rowing

Lynn Crosbie
Carrie Leigh's Hugh Hefner Haikus

Me
an idiot's guide to happy living

Charles Simic
Pretty Picture
The Scarecrow
Love Talk
Love Worker

Sue Clennell
Scarborough

Jan Napier
Corsair

Wistawa Szymborska
I'm Working on the World

Me
the rug

Ani DiFanco
Your Next Bold Move

Me
taking a moment to watch the kittens play









I'm starting this week with poems by William Carlos Williams from his early period, when he was still in the process of becoming the poet of the red wheelbarrow and plums in the refrigerator, before he, with Walt Whitman, became godfathers of the beat movement.



The first poem is from his collection The Wanderer, published in 1913.


Advent

Even in the time when as yet
I had no certain knowledge of her
She sprang from the nest, a young crow,
Who first flight circled the forest.
I know now how then she showed me
Her mind, reaching out to the horizon,
She close above the tree tops.
I saw her eyes straining at the new distance
And as the woods fell from her flying
Likewise they fell from me as I followed
So that I strongly guessed all that I must put from me
To come through ready for the high courses.

But, one day, crossing the ferry
With the great towers of Manhattan before me,
Out at the prow with the sea wind blowing,
I had been wearying many questions
Which she had put out to try me:
How shall I be a mirror to this modernity?
When lo! in a rush, dragging
A blunt boat on the yielding river -
Suddenly I saw her! And she waved me
From the white wet in midst of her playing!
She cried me, "Haia! Here I am, son!
See how strong my little finger is!
Can I not swim well?
I can fly too!" And with that great sea-gull
Went to the left, vanishing with a wild cry -
But in my mind all the persons of godhead
Followed after.


For the next poem, we move forward several years to Al Que Quiere! (To Him Who Wants it), published in 1917.


Pastoral

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong:
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel-staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best
of all colors

        No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.


And this, from Sour Grapes published in 1921.


The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong changes
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.


And, finally, these two poems from Spring and All published in 1923.


Death the Barber

Of death
the barber
the barber
talked to me

cutting my
life with
sleep to trim
my hair -

It's just
a moment
he said, we die
every night -

An of
the newest
ways to grow
hair on

bald, death -
I told him
of the quartz
lamp

and of old men
with third
sets of teeth
to the cue

of an old man
who said
at the door -
Sunshine today!

for which
death shaves
him twice
a week


And the one everyone knows, almost 90 years old and still as fresh and bracing as the day it was written.


The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.








Here's another of my adventures in trying to be a poet. At this rate, I may never make it.



what we do until we can think about sex again

i was working
away
at my poem
of the day
when
she walked
in, about five-
four, long dark
hair, long, long
hair hanging
almost to the
beginning curve
of her butt -
and a very nice
butt it is i notice
as she passes -
tight white dress,
short, about mid-
thigh, and did i
mention
tight
so tight
i can see
indentations
of the freckles
on her rear,
yes, that same
rear end, the
very same
slightly above
which
hangs her dark
straight hair

i know
it is a moment
in her life
when every man
she passes
has to stop
and breathe
deep, lost
temporarily in the
momentary
fantasies that
male nature
produces
at even the
slightest
provocation,
the natural
horniness
of the human
male firing
on all eight
cylinders, the
secret of our
rise from the
brutishness
from which
we came, the
lingering imp
of that brut
that hides behind
all our best
intentions
and will not
leave us
until the day
we die

i don't think
women
get this about
us, rational
beings that
they are, they
view life
as an entirety,
sex a part
of that whole
thing called
life and living -
men see life
as what
you do to
kill time
until you can
think about sex
again

like me
this morning -
i could have
written a poem
deep in meaning
and purpose,
in fact i really
meant to do
just that -
but
one young woman
in a tight dress
with a well-shaped
rear twitching
when she walked
and long hair
and legs
up to, well,
you know where
walks past me
and i end up with
this








Here's a poem by John Ashbery from his book, And the Stars Were Shining, published by The Noonday Press in 1994.



The Story of Next Week

Yes, but right reason dictates...Yes, but the wolf is at the door,
nor shall our finding be indexed.
Yes, but life is a circus, a passing show
where in each may drop his reflection
and so contradict the purpose of a maelstrom:
the urge, the thrust.
And if what others do
finally seems good to you? Why,
the very civility that gilded it
is flaking. Passivity itself's a hurdle

So, lost with the unclaimed lottery junk,
uninventoried, you are an heir to anything.
Brightness of purpose counts: Centesimal
victorious flunkeys seemed to grab its tail
yet it defied them with invention.
Stand up, and the rain
will be cold at first in your pockets.
Later, by chance, you'll discover supper
in the sparkling, empty tavern.
A nice, white bed awaits you;
your passport's in there too.








Next I haveThomas Snelgrove an almost new friend of "Here and Now," appearing here as he did once a couple of years ago. I'm glad to have him back.

Tom is 21 years of age. He was born and raised in England and lives in a small town called Felixstowe. He says he loves listening to and writing music, almost as much as poetry. He says that although he's been in shipping his whole working life, he'd rather be reviewing music.



Boy's Brigade

barely a man,
with a toy in his hand,
with all the joy and excitement
of the latest addition
to the playstation,
Xbox and Nintendo Wii,
silently trudging through the
rock hard terrain,
Afghanistan,
they'll be an element
of public debate
to this one,
I can guarantee that,
people already getting their
backs up over here,
"the next Vietnam" my boss says,
obviously with different and
morally correct political motives,
for once
and of course an appearance
from us Brits,
still all that bang, boom,
ambush,
break, crash, smash,
"CEASE FIRE!,"
bullshit,
but this is a war
and a war worth fighting,
I'm afraid,
...but this is a war
worth fighting that we're not winning
and I can't see that changing
anytime soon.








Next, I have three short poems by Carl Sandburg from Selected Poems. The poems were taken from Sandburg's book In Reckless Ecstasy , his first volume of poetry, printed in 1904 by his professor and mentor Phillip Green Wright.



To Whom My Hand Goes Out

The unapplauded ones who bear
  No badges on their breasts,
Who pass us on the street, with calm,
  Unfearing, patient eyes,
Like dumb-cart-horse in the sleet!

The unperturbed who feel the oldness -
   All the sadness of the world -
Yet somehow feel the sacredness
   Of grime upon the hands,
And even know the rush of pity
   For those who know not
That some Power builds a callus out of blisters.

   The eyes! the eyes that pierce
The dust and smoke of unrewarded toil
   And count it gain and joy
To have lived and sweat and wrought
   And been a man!


The Dead-Sea Apple

Had it been beauty past my reach,
   Or far beyond my humble kin,
There would have been a tint of joy
   In all the pain of longing then.

But that the red, sweet hues should fade
   Into a dust, and nameless ash,
And promises to gray-sick rot -
   O God, that sight and sense thus clash!


A Homely Winter Idyl

Great, long, lean clouds in sullen host
   Along the skyline passed today;
While overhead I've only seen
   A leaden sky the whole long day.

My heart would gloomily have mused
   Had I not seen those queer, old crows
Stop short in their mad frolicking
   And pose for me in long black rows.








This is serious business. I'm telling you!



the threat of polite people to advancement of art

polite people
are a real threat to artists,
even to bush-league poets like
me

what am i to make of it
when a polite person compliments
something i've done - is it good manners
or is it true appreciation, true recognition
of the superiority of my work

were they truly moved by my art
or are they just trying to move on
to some subject less controversial

if i know i'm up against a polite person,
calibrations are required, how many exclamation
marks mark true approval, is "WOW" good enough
or must i hold our for "WOW!!!!!!!" before
i accept the polite person's response as showing
real enjoyment and not just,
well, the mark of a well-mannered person
who does not feel it polite to be less than
appreciative of something
another person has put their
heart and expressive skills into, like,
"Wow, grandma, i've been so hoping you
would give me another of your tasty
homemade fruitcakes - no, none now
please, i just ate - but can't wait
to get home to have a great big piece"

a real problem is when you are
dealing with someone not familiar
to you so you can't tell
if you're dealing with a true
appreciator of your work or just
another polite person.

this, a case of the paradox
of the truth-aversive critique -
a person who knows you well
will not want to make you feel
bad due to exposure to the
full blast of critical review because
by golly you're a friend and friends
need to stick together and be
aware of friends' feelings, while
the person who doesn't know you
at all will be hesitant to begin
the relationship by telling you your
epic poem is crap good only for
his backyard compost pile, not worth
the computer widgets that cause it
to glow on the screen, that glow
the result of electronics and not
the effervescence of your product

best for the artist, i think, is the
horse's ass whose critiques
are nothing more than exercises
in destruction for the sake
of destruction

it is from these harsh critiques
that the artist learns to
appreciate the strength
and value of his work

either that,
or they give up and go into
macrame





Sim by Arlene Ang




I have something new and special this week, featuring our friend and four-time Puhcart nominee Arlene Ang.

Arlene has been with us before, with poems from her book, The Desecration of Doves, published in 2005. At the time, she lived in Italy and I believe she still does.

This week, we feature Arlene with six illustrated poems. We haven't done that before.

I should tell you that I know nothing about Sims, Arlene's method of illustration for these poems. She can tell you much more, including, for example, important information such as, as she says, "Arlene Ang means lobster thermidor in Simlish. It is one of the dishes included in the staff cafeteria menu of The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. If interested in trying out varieties of Arlene Ang at an area near you, please consult your local directory at www.leafscape.org." I suggest you make the trip.

Anyway, here's some fun with Arlene's Sims and their poems.




Sims by Arlene Ang



There"s a Postwoman in Your Bath

As you can see you're not exactly
arranged for fire rescue. You left the toilet seat up again.

Which is to say there's a reason the licking
of stamps has been abolished. What does a postwoman

know of indoor plumbing, everyone says.
Then she appears one day, like superstition

or Jesus Christ Superstar, knee-deep in the water
you're sitting in. There are dead skin cells

behind your knees, but she is wearing a blue uniform
with a name tag called Maurice. Somehow

this makes you feel worse. Had the showerhead
been a bullhorn, you could be listening

to a real hangover. She's nowhere near asking you
to sign here please, but this is only because

she is distracted by the alcohol percentage
in the shampoo you use in place of a real mother.

There aren't many places to hide.
If only for this reason, you continue washing.



Sims by Arlene Ang



The French Maid Outfit Turned Up For Its Close-Up Today

Of course, I'm pissed.
It was scheduled for a photo shoot
six weeks ago. I should've combed my hair
while I still had doctors in the wall mirror.
No, I haven't been drinking
again. Sobriety itself is the animal. My ex-husband
painted honest-to-goodness sofas into cows
for a living. Personally, I can do
weirdos. I like Chinese take-aways
myself. Still some days the French maid outfit
smells of all the food that went wrong
in my house. It has a plunging neckline
instead of a lover. Cat's pajamas,
Dr Vick calls the state of perpetually arranging
a special night for someone
as if it was really worth it.
I owe him an apology for the way I treat
his pictures in the shower.
He wears a rabbit's paw chain
around his waist to hold the camera.
I don't remember asking him in.
He makes me shake my fists at him
like an experimental drug.
It's all right, he says.
He's slipping on the gorilla costume.
He has everything under birth control.

*** revision of "The Gorilla Suit Turned Up For Its Close-Up Today," published in the Zygote in my Coffee (4th Print Edition, August 2007).



Sim by Arlene Ang



Further On, With Richard

  I'm in love. In love with extra-long acrylic noses. I'm wearing one of them. There. I'm hanging out my clothes. I'm hung up on Richard. Richard's bunny slippers. The ones that ended up in my pockets as rabbit head keychains. Pocketses, they would correct me, as if I could be wrong. A wrong turn can drive you national tv crazy, they say. The voices are shiny, itemized as homeland security even though they sound foreign. They come unabridged from the dictionary, pages 568-642. After all this time, I still have my ambitions, my fridge with its 1964 turkey leftover. I keep staring at my feet. They are furry around the toes. Mannish, like Richard. Potentially, I've got what it takes to make a rabbit head keychain. I can hold several keys. I have faith that one of them unlocks a car. Not the car I learned to drive before undergoing gingivitis. It's a Buick - all dents and Swiss cheese holes on the hood. My ex-spouses have had a rough ride. They're not ashamed to undress in the middle of a busy street. Richard, I hear him soiling himself in the hallway, in a night made of rabbit hair and something odd. Marble.



Sim by Arlene Ang



Please Meet My Table

  It's Formica. We're in, what you would call, a relationship. One day I woke up under it. I know. It looks better on film. You look as if you haven't lain under one for sometime. At least, that's what my hairdresser says. She uses saran wrap to cover her furniture. It was a bad idea inviting my neighbors to the New Year's Eve party. You're bound to learn these lessons once you're seeing someone you should stay away from. A therapist, for one. Or a spouse with sweaty hands. I can still fit my first marriage into a coffee mug. Thirst can drive animals out of the cave art. I've recently moved from Cincinnati myself. Scabs never lie. I'm not sure I should've stuck my head out the window. I like to observe what I vomit, watch the fizzle. That night the fireworks burst at ten-second intervals into flower-shapes. Love me, love me not. I find that if I lie softly under the table, I can identify the feet of those going in and out the room. You shouldn't talk politics before you've put on your teeth. That's my grandmother's advice. A bed of egg sandwiches is still a bed.


***previously published in Zygote in my Coffee (issue #93, 08/06/07.)



Sims by Arlene Ang



Why Do I Show My Body?

The anonymous letter leaps to the screen.
Sunday morning coffee swirls steam beside
the mouse. I am grateful everyone is at Mum's.
Like reflected lights on a disco ball,
the rotator switched on, men dance to mind.

Could it be the Uluru National Park guide
whose eyes whistled up my mini-skirt when I
bent to collect his coin? That was twenty-six
years ago. He moaned deliriously about wombats
while I burrowed deeply into his faded jeans.

The most likely remains the Alemain archivist.
He had big dreams, long monologues that begged
subvention for his telluric sounding rocket,
a poor tongue when it came to French.
We separated in anger; he must be 92 by now.

Sweetly, I revive the hotel manager in Mumbai.
He was a gentleman, taciturn and rational
when it came to laying his fingers on a woman's
skin. Eighteen hours nonstop, we generated
heat in bed under unclean sheets and slept.

Nothing compares to the Taranaki bellhop
in Sri Lanka, the only one without a camera.
His station wagon, its rust like unwashed
excrement, was economical. We broke springs
in the backseat that day and called it love.

At 56, married with three children, I am suddenly
implicated in indecent exposure, perhaps
adultery. I do not panic. I calmly open
the attachment. Later, my husband finds
the worm, raises hell for all the wrong reasons.

*** previously published in flashquake (Volume 6, Issue 2).



Sim by Arlene Ang



And She Ripped the Turtle Soup Recipe

It was her husband's secret.
She could smell his after-sex cigarette
from it folds. Alice: how else
could she have called this paper cut?

A kitchen draws out many
sharp knives. Like valentines folded
into soup recipes. She knew
there was more where it came from.

He said he could cook easily
for 500 guests. What is a stolen tart
made of? She emptied what
recipes she could into the saucepan.

His. Hers. Their children.
Singed pepper choked the curtains
brown. She tossed in
the cayenne. She shook the curry.

She pestled his golf balls,
his blue pills. And still all she could
smell was the other woman's
ejaculate on her bleeding finger.

*** previously published in Wicked Alice (November 2006)








Hungry As We Are is an anthology of Washington area poets published by The Washington Writers' Publishing House in 1995.


I have two poems from the anthology, beginning with a poem by Philip K. Jason.

At the time the book was published, Jason was a teacher of literature and creative writing at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. He had published ten books in 1995, including two collections of poetry.


Wisdom Poem

Chew slowly
not only for the taste,
but for the rich noise
of that great mill of your maw
and for the brazen flexing
of those muscled hinges.
Eating is all of this,
and more.

It is waiting
a long time
between swallows.

Fell those twinned harrows
arc apart, meet, rub,
release, and meet again -
one glad curve partly
enclosing the other.

And your tongue,
that old dodger,
let it have its head,
sliding and swirling about
like Peggy Fleming,
our cleaning rhe blades,
shoveling,
sore with delight.

Eating is all of this
and more.


The next poem from the book is by Maggie Rosen.

In 1995, when the book was published, Rosen taught English as a Second Language and had worked as an editor and writer specializing in education.


Ennunciation

He is my student of the five senses:
a seventeen-year-old-boy, two years into American,
out of Sierra Leone. His language is not here,
and his tongue meets words they have to know
but do not meet the sense of: Olfactory, larynx, neuron.

Avoiding my eyes, he words the book,
asking it to speak, spare him as middle man.
My inward net casts far into a clear pool,
pulls up stars of words, a gurgle of laughter.

He knows what walking means to legs. He knows without a
heart,
we would be like tiny ants. Without a brain
we would be like our books, telling without saying
a page of eyes with no sight.

He could draw me his meanings,
he could tap them with his feet like any young boy.
We depend on waves, he wanting, the letting go,
a nod that means no while it says yes,
a blank.

We are waiting at the foot
for the mountains to send wind.


And, finally, from the anthology, I have this poem by Washington D.C. poet Jennifer M. Pierson


The Important Things

she wanted to name a child Cosmo or Delilah or Ustis
something grand and memorable
she wanted a son taller than she a football-playing son
a blond son
she wanted to be a star in the evening sky
the one that everyone sees
she wanted to get married just for the memory
to have a bouquet of long white roses to throw
and a thousand-dollar gown
she wanted to lust after someone dark and greasy
someone wrong for her definitely wrong
she waned to kiss a stranger a man
or a woman kiss them hard
then walk away into a crowded street a parade
and become someone's dream
she waned long curly red hair and big boobs
and perfect nails
she wanted women to envy her no to hate her
she wanted to drive a blue Porsche
down to the very edge of the Grand Canyon alone
she wanted to be Jacques Cousteau and
she wanted to roam the Alps
she wanted to live in a cave in India for forty years and
talk until the sun rose with the Dalai Lama or
someone dead magical and dead
she wanted a guru and she wanted God
she wanted God to visit her in her cave
to give her messages special secret messages
she wanted to die to be buried at sea
to have fish peck at here until she was bone
bone white and covered with weeds
most of all she wanted to remember
the very moment she was born








As you'll see later in this issue, we've developed a little klatsch of "Here and Now" friends in Australia. The same is true, also, in Hawaii where we have four friends, beginning with Alice Folkart who have joined us. Three have appeared in the last couple of issues.

And now, here's the fourth, Cornelia DeDona, who says she lives in Hawaii on an estate nestled beneath the Koolau Mountains.

Connie has published two books, Meadow Pause and Boogey Fever. You can learn more about the books by going to

http://www.corneliadedona.blogspot.com


Connie has joined her friends at the Blueline's "House of 30," which is where I first read and enjoyed this poem.



Rowing

Get into
my canoe.
Let's paddle out
into Kaneohe Bay
to the Sandbar.
Let us make a plan
to stick together
through
rough
winds
pelting
rain and
strong
currents.
Our oars
marking time
in sequence.
Focused and
fixed
on our goal
as one
and get there.








Here's a strange, bitter, funny poem by Lynn Crosbie from her book Miss Pamela's Mercy, published by Coach House Press of Toronto in 1992.

Crospie is a Canadian poet and novelist, born in 1963 in Quebec and presently living in Toronto.



Carrie Leigh's Hugh Hefner Haikus

Hef brings me flowers
tiger lilies, ochre veined
downcast, sleek black cups

small shadows, are the
puckers in his pajamas
where his skin caves in

tired profligate, I
sigh and pour the oil along
your circular sheets

thinking of all the
times, or women on this bed
glossy old bunnies

I imagine their
breasts, plate of fried eggs, a row
of tonsured monk's heads

his tongue slithers, gaunt
voluptuary, ugly
old man, my eyes close

when I roll his name
Ner. along my tongue, like the
line of cold test tubes

thin bottled semen,
he wants to plant it, deeply
in my flat belly

Hugh junior, and, or
Carietta, a child is
packed in dry blue ice

in silky pajamas
they have an emperor's crest
it is dark in there

but it's cold as
the green jacuzzi, bubbles
are clouds on its face

I will crush the glass
with the fingers in his back
and pile on my rings

and all the fur coats
and move down the circular
stairs, bloated with gold

the flowers are a
venus-flytrap, with red curls
flames and noxious breath

his betrayal gives
me granite fists, girls scatter
movie stars crumple

as I run away
from the gaudy prison cell,
of tinsel and skin

I'll sue him and write
and build a home, in the
desert, on the sun

a sequined empress,
a mirage - in loungewear and
harlequin glasses








Everybody has to have a guiding principle to live by. Here's mine.



an idiot's guide to happy living

how are you?
they say, by way of polite greeting

great, i say,
considering
where i started

this
is part of my philosophy
for getting through the day

being of good cheer
whatever the temptation to be otherwise,
that's my life strategy

assume the worst is past,
for even if it isn't
why ruin a perfect, sunny day
with thoughts of dark and stormy skies

it's an idiot's guide to happy living,
this good cheer philosophy,
denying the truths of close attention -
but a happy idiot
i think i'd rather be
than any of those others
always
so miserably aware








I stopped by the used book store earlier today and picked up several books, including this fun (but overpriced) book with poems by Charles Simic and drawings by Howie Michels. The book is Aunt Lettuce, I Want To Peek Under Your Skirt, published by Bloomsbury in 2005. I can't share the drawings, which remind me of Shel Silverstein in his earlier Playboy days, but I can share several of the shorter poems.



Pretty Picture
    For Kurt Brown

She thought being stark naked
Made her more interesting to cows,
So she strolled over with a glass of red wine
To pay them a visit,
Greeting each in turn
While they stared at her with bloodshot eyes.

One occasionally saw a fox
Step out of the woods.
Where, where? she cried out,
And set at a trot across the field.
We saw her climb over the wire fence
And start picking daisies.

In the end, we didn't dare call her back,
Worrying it might draw attention
Of the mailman due to drive up any minute.
In the meantime, only the crows
Flying back and forth over our heads
Appeared to be frankly scandalized.


The Scarecrow

God's refuted but the devil's not.

This year's tomatoes are something to see.
Bite into them, Martha,
As you would into a ripe apple.
After each bite add a little salt.

If the juices run down your chin
Onto your bare breasts,
Bend over the kitchen sink.

From there you can see your husband
Come to a dead stop in the empty field
Before on of his bleakest thoughts
Spreading its arms like a scarecrow.


Love Talk

The truth is, we are nearer to heaven
Every time we lie down.
If you doubt me, look at the cat
Rolled over with its feet in the air.

A sunny morning after a storm
Is one more invitation to paradise.
So we leapt out of bed together
Having every intention to dress quickly.

Only to dally naked
Giving each other little pecks
As we buzzed with love talk
Edging our way back to bed.


Love Worker

Diligent solely in what concerns love;
In all else, dilatory, sleep-walking, sullen.
Some days you could not budge me
Even if you were to use a construction crane.
I work only at loving and being loved.
Tell me, people, ain't it right
To lie in bed past noon
Eating fried chicken and guzzling beer?

Consider the many evils thus avoided
While finding new places to kiss
  with greasy lips.
Easier for Schwarzkopf to take Kuwait
Then for us to draw curtains.
The sky is blue. It must be summer already.
The blind street preacher is shouting down below.
Your breasts ad hair are flying -
Like the clouds, the white clouds.








Laurel Lamperd, good friend of "Here and Now," recommended us to her friend, fellow Australian Sue Clennell, who, in turn, recommended us to her friend, also a fellow Australian, Jan Napier.

Friends that they are, I thought it'd be cool to present them together in the same issue.


So here they are, Sue first. Her poem Scarborough was previously published in Mayk Magazine.


Scarborough

The bus is littered with sand scaled youths.
Pirate palms pirouette on the horizon,
canvas roofs yawn
covering the cleanskins.
Today is a combo of choc milk and grit
saris and snickers              with
Mona Lisas against a toweling backdrop.
At the markets            a grain boled horse
frim fram      Indian glitter      chipped mirrors.
Do seaside porches lattice us into
cream bowl contentment?
Are we licking our limbs
with Oz self-satisfaction?
There must be a reason
poets turn their gaze insland.


Before we get to Jan's poem, here's something unusual for us. We don't usually use photos of our contributors. But then, never before have we had two contributors who are friends and who have a picture of the two of them together.

So here it is, a picture of our two poet-friends Sue and Jan.



Left to right Jan Napier & Sue Clennell



Next, here's Jan who traveled the length and breadth of Western Australia for 20 years, working in Side Show Alley (the Oz term for Midway). Her experiences are summed up in her book All The Fun Of The Fair.

Now Jan has turned her attention and her talents to poetry. Here's her poem.


Corsair

Plundered from the wreck
of your dangerous nights,
I am a prize, your yo ho ho,
and pieces of eight, me hearty,
to be taken as salvage
and spent as you please.

Rum drunk and a swagger
you heave and skirmish ahoy,
amid scalloped flounces,
wild, frolicsome sheets,
and as dark's doubloons
revert to brass,
set course to roister
under different stars.

I shout a beach of words,
coarse,      sibilant    sounds.
Gulled, I skim the surface
of your fishy deeps,
squall, and storm,
see you wonder.








The next poem is by Wistawa Szymborska, from Wistawa Szymborska, Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997 published in 1998 by Harcourt. The poems in the book were translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

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



I'm Working on the World

I'm working on the world,
revised, improved edition,
featuring fun for fools,
blues for brooders,
combs for bald pates,
tricks for old dogs.

Here's one chapter: The Speech
of Animals and Plants.
Each species comes, of course,
with its own dictionary.
Even a simple "Hi there"
when traded with a fish,
makes both the fish and you
feel quite extraordinary.

The long-suspected meanings
of rustlings, chirps, and growls!
Soliloquies of forests!
The epic hoots of owls!
Those crafty hedgehogs drafting
aphorisms after dark,
while we blindly believe
they're sleeping in the park!

Time (Chapter Two) retains
its sacred right to meddle
in each earthly affair.
Still, time's unbounded power
that makes a mountain crumble,
moves seas, rotates a star,
won't be enough to tear
lovers apart: they are
too naked, too embraced,
too much like timid sparrows.

Old age is in my book
the price that felons pay,
so don't whine that it's steep:
you'll stay young if you're good.
Suffering (Chapter Three)
doesn't insult the body.
Death? It comes in your sleep,
exactly as it should.

When it comes, you'll be dreaming
that you don't need to breathe;
the breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it's part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.

Only a death like that. A rose
could prick you harder, I suppose;
you'd feel more terror at the sound
of petals falling to the ground.

Only a world like that. To die
just that much. and to live just so.
And the rest is Bach's fugue, played
for the time being
on a saw.








Here's another coffee shop horror story.



the rug


i am looking
at a man
with the worst toupee
i have ever
seen

i am reminded
of high-gloss
aluminum siding
or the white plastic
sheeting
they put around
new cars now when
they ship them, except
his toup is coal-in-the-hole
black, not white like
the plastic
sheets

it's hard
not to stare

the vanity
of middle aged men
is not something that can be
denied
nor their capacity for denial

but this rug...

has the guy
ever looked in the mirror
after he puts it on
in the morning?

i don't see how he could,
and still walk
out the door with it on his head

maybe he's blind
as well as bald,
which seems to me
it ought to be the solution
and not the problem

i mean
how much can you care
about how you look
when you can't see yourself

me,
not much,
i'm an optimist
by nature
and barring proof
from my own eyes otherwise
i'd just imagine my bald head,
if i had one,
as the chrome on a 1957 DeSoto,
the shining, blinding apex of me,
and assume i look
great








Next, I have a poem by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco from her book Verses published in 2007 by Seven Stories Press in association with Righteous Babe Records.

The book includes terrific illustrations not credited to anyone other than a note that credits "design" by Ani DiFranco,Brian Grunet and Kyle Morrissey which may or may not refer to the illustrations.

The title of this poem seems familiar to me, though the text is not. So, it's possible I have used the poem before.



Your Next Bold Move

coming of age during the plague
of reagan and bush
watching capitalism gun down democracy it had this funny effect on me
i guess
i am cancer
i am HIV
and i'm down at the blue jesus blue cross hospital
just lookin' up from my pillow
feeling blessed

and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it's as easy as breathing
for us all to participate
they're buying and selling off shares of air
and you know it's all around you
but it's hard to point and say there
so you just sit on your hands and quietly contemplate

your next bold move
the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable
and sell them to seagulls flying in circles around one big right wing
and left wing was broken long ago
by the slingshot of cointelpro
and now it's so hard to have faith
in anything

especially your next bold move
or the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself

you want to track each trickle back to its source
and then scream up the faucet 'til you face is hoarse
cuz you're surrounded by a world's worth of things
you just can't excuse
but you've got the hard cough of a chain smoker
and you're at the arctic circle playing strip poker
and it's getting colder and colder
every time you lose

so go ahead
make your next bold move
tell us
what's the next thing you're gonna need to prove
to yourself?








Allergy prone as I've become since moving to San Antonio sixteen years ago I usually have a stopped up nose, so stopping to smell the roses doesn't do much for me. But that doesn't mean other things aren't worth stopping for.



taking a moment to watch the kittens play

coming home from morning coffee
i had one of those NPR driveway
moments, caught
by a piece of movie music
as interpreted by a French pianist

my appreciation of the music
first interrupted,
then enhanced by watching
the two kittens
playing,
the brave one,
the one with the little black
goatee-looking spot under his chin,
is working to bring down a small tree
by the door,
jumping at it, clawing at it,
wrapping himself
around the base of the tree
and clawing, clawing, clawing,
tractoring himself all the way around
the tree,
one claw-hold at a time

i think he thought he was winning
his battle with the tree
when he was beset by a sneak attack
by the other kitty, the shy one,
always last to the food bowl,
leaping from the swing by the door
to land squarely on little goatee's back,
the two of them rolling with kitten ferocity
across the the flower bed, kicking up
a kitty-sized storm of wood chips

shy kitty, the aggressor, disentangled her
self from little goatee and jumped
in a single bound back onto the swing

little goatee, freed from the distraction
of his sister, went back to his primary
opponent, the tree by the door, until
shy kitty, her retreat only a tactical feint
jumped again from the swing,
landing again on her brother's back, more
fierce kitty fighting ensued until shy kitty
once again took her tactical retreat, back
to the swing for sister-cat, back to the tree
for brother-cat - this pattern of attack
and retreat repeated four times before mama cat,
napping in the sun and having had enough
of this sibling-battling, put an end to it,
chasing the two kittens away
with the low pitched errrrrrrrrrrr you hear
when a cat reaches
the end
of its limited cat-patience

the French pianist and the kitten sideshow
over,
i turned off the car and headed inside
for a blueberry pancake breakfast,
with fat little sausages and a glass
of very cold milk,
Caesar,
returning to his table
as the coliseum empties
and the games end for the day








That's it for this week. For next week, I'm working on poems by Siegfried Sassoon, Yang Wan-li, Luis Rodriguez, David Rivard, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Childress, and a surprise or two, at least to me.

Until we get there, remember, all of the material presented in this blog remains the property of its creator; the blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
2 Comments:
at 9:07 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just wondering, have the copyright holders given permission for you to use their work? I know most if not all of the things you've reproduced here are not in the public domain.

at 11:59 PM Anonymous Arunansu said...

Allen, loving your compilation. Your blog gives me so much. I wish I could spend some more time with it.
Regards.

Post a Comment



Serendipity   Thursday, July 16, 2009


Photo by Marc San Marco
IV.7.3.




Nothing special this week but our poets.

And here they are.

Tony Hoagland
Lawrence

Me
dark poetry

Albert Goldbarth
Waking Alone in a Rented Room and Despairing Till the Phone Rings

Kelly Cherry
Going Down On America

Harold Witt
Johnny Walsh, Checkered Cab Co.

'Ilima Kauka Stern
An Absence of Light
Summer

Paul Durcan
Notes Towards a Supreme Reality

Me
why i never miss a Clint Eastwood movie

Yorifumi Yaguchi
Praying Mantis
Grandpa
A
A Woman

Alice Folkart
I Thought I Saw...

Cid Corman
Chinese Painting
No Never
6 untitled poems

Charles Bukowski
Old Man, Dead in a Room
The Priest and the Matador

Me
michaeljackson

Jane Hirshfield
See How the Roads Are Strewn
I Have No Use For Virgins
Tonight the Incalculable Stars

Joanna Weston
Hidden Sweeps
From Now to Then
Student

Tina Koyama
Quisan After the Stroke: Three Notes to Himself
Next

Cyn. Zarko
lolo died yesterday

Jessica Hagedorn
Ming the Merciless

Me
asserting my independence

William Meredith
An Account of a Visit to Hawaii

Me
usual suspects


The photos this week, except for the first and last, I took during a little drive-around I did about a month ago in the hills north of San Antonio.








I start this week with a poem by Tony Hoagland from his book Donkey Gospel, recipient of the 1997 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, published by Graywolf Press in 1997.

I like Hoagland's work, no grand pretensions, just wry humanity.



Lawrence

On two occasions in the past twelve months
I have failed, when someone at a party
spoke of him with a dismissive scorn,
to stand up for D.H. Lawrence,

a man who burned like an acetylene torch
from one end to the other of his life.
These individuals, whose relationship to literature
is approximately that of a tree shredder

to stands of old-growth forest,
these people leaned back in their chairs,
bellies full of dry white wind and the ova of some foreign fish,
and casually dropped his name

the way that pygmies with their little poison spears
strut around the carcass of a fallen elephant.
"O Elephant," they say,
"you are not so big and brave today!"

It's a bad day when people speak of their superiors
with a contempt they haven't earned,
and it's a sorry thing when certain other people

don't defend the great dead ones
who have opened up the world before them.
And though, in the catalogue of my betrayals,
this is a fairly minor entry,
I resolve, if the occasion should recur,
to uncheck my tongue and say, "I love the spectacle
of maggots condescending to a corpse,"
or, "You should be so lucky in your brainy, bloodless life

as to deserve to lift
just one of D.H. Lawrence's urine samples
to your arid psychobiographic
theory-tainted lips."

Or maybe I'll just take the shortcut
between the spirit and the flesh,
and punch someone in the face,
because human beings haven't come that far

in their effort to subdue the body,
and we still walk around like zombies
in our dying, burning world,
able to do little more

than fight, and fuck, and crow:
something Lawrence wrote about
in such a manner
as to make us seem magnificent.








Seems most of what i'm writing today is about not being able to write.



dark poetry

well,
it appears
that Sarah,
our national
icy treat confection
from Alaska has decided
she had a better chance of
becoming president if she
doesn't have a record to run on
and, meanwhile, it's been more than
a week since a republican politician
has admitted to running around
on his/her spouse making this altogether
an exceptionally boring week in the weeds
of politics, but then they've all been on
vacations and we can't expect them
to be doing screwy stuff all the time,
even dingbats need time off...

but enough not about me...

the clock is ticking and the big hand
and the little hand have begun the big
squeeze of time's a'passing right on by
and i don't have a poem or a hint of a poem
or even sense of a poem hanging out there
in the big coming soon to a brain near mine,
like in the movie theaters where they show you
what's coming next week and what's coming sometime
in the future, a time ill-defined
beyond the single word
"soon"
and i don't even have a poem like that, soon, for me,
being more like a great black hole in the ocean
filled with slippery dark eel-like writhing things, opening
lines to poems stuck in the black with nothing to follow -
soon, much more like that than any promise of a time
and events forthcoming...

and...
oh jeez,
another poem about not having a poem -
could it be that i am the avant garde,
creator of new school of poetry,
dark poetry
like dark matter,
that which makes up most of our poetry universe
even though, to the best of what we can see,
it is not there








Next, I have several poems from Three Rivers - Ten Years, an anthology of poems from Three Rivers Poetry Journal, published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press in 1983.


The first poem from the anthology is by Albert Goldbarth.

Born in 1948 in Chicago, Illinois, Goldbarth received his B.A. from the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle campus, in 1969 and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1971. He lives in Wichita, Kansas and is Adele Davis Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Wichita State University, where he has taught since 1987.



Waking Alone in a Rented Room and Despairing Till the Phone Rings

the ceiling collects
in a single bulb. It burns
like a monk that hasn't heard
peace declared. Everything it touches
is martyred.

Often it's quiet, but never
silent. The wind
at the window, a hum in the walls...
this must be what it's like
to be a heart.

A clock is so round
it's misleading. Time
is long; you shoes would wear out.

The brain is gray like a cloud,
and shaped like a cloud, and some days
as heavy.

And there the resemblance ends.


The next poet from the anthology is by Kelly Cherry.

Cherry has published eleven poetry collections, eight books of fiction, five of nonfiction, and two dramatic translations.



Going Down On America

Turned on to the transcendent, he holds her
in his arms, strokes her sunny hair.
Such sweet skin is coming into view
as the clothes of Straight are shed
over New Jersey & kicked aside
into the wide Missouri River -

He pledges allegiance to lightfilled breasts,
to the drops of shine spilled
on Shenandoah's applerich harvest.

In this union of smoke & suck he enters a state just west
of grace where Wyoming is what cowboys do
on Saturday night when the boss has paid them up
& the smells of Montana carried downstream,
clean but unmistakable.

O Mount Rushmore,
move him to your eye of stone!
In wheat fields he may dream
of stalks of sun,

discover blue shadows
in the shingles of the fallen pinecone!

The seventh day dawns somewhere above the fabulous Sierras,
so high he can scarcely see it,
& in a whirlwind of contradiction funnels itself south
into the dusk of his throat,
enlightens his heart,
& sets the flesh to dancing upon bare bones
across known borders
into a land lost
to reality.


And my last poem from the anthology is by Harold Witt.

Witt has been published in a wide variety of periodicals, anthologies, texts, and books of his own. He is the winner of the Hopwood Award for Poetry, the James D. Phelan Award for narrative poetry, a San Francisco Poetry Center Award for poetic drama, and The Poetry Society of America's Emily Dickinson Award.

This poem especially amuses me because I drove a cab in a town not a lot bigger than this one when I was young. I know from whence the poet comes.


Johnny Walsh, Checkered Cab Co.

Not too much going on
in this two-taxi town -
I never delivered a baby
and nobody like in the movies
ever yelled "follow that cab!"

But it isn't all nice old ladies
either, I'll tell you that -
one time Zelda Keith
gave me a twenty to take her
up to Citrus Heights.

Before I could open the door
there she was on the seat
putting her hand on my thigh
and saying she thought I was cute
and what a husband she had.

Jesus, what could I do
with two kids needing to eat -
and how do you say no,
for half what you make all week,
to anything easy as this.







My next two poems are by 'Ilima Kauka Stern, a new friend from The House of 30 and an even newer friend here at "Here and Now." 'Ilma, a retired educator, has taught creative writing at a women's prison on O'ahu for five years. Through a prison writing project, she has helped inmates publish five editions of their work in Hulihia, a literary publication of women inmates funded by the Women's Fund of Hawaii. Her own work has appeared in Rain Bird. She divides the rest of her time between writing, teaching hula, and the study and practice of Hawaiian spiritual traditions.

'Ilima lives in Kailua with her family.

The first of the two poems is a Kyrielle, a poetic form that originated in troubadour poetry and which appears in many Christian liturgies



An Absence of Light

Outside the day was sunny, bright
No clouds, light winds, a day for kites
Would seem ideal to gazers, but
From within an absence of light.

Transgressions healed, errors made right
Yet still a heart, sealed, locked up tight
The world without - boundless, blue, but
From within an absence of light.

To view the world from space and height
Might solve this poet's inner plight
Lend hope where gloom and murk reign, and
From within an absence of light.


Summer

Always a sunburn

Always

That summer with the house
By the mouth of a stream
Me and my sand-sliding board
Standing with the board in my hands
Waiting
Waiting for that perfect moment
When the ocean waves
Would meet the water
At the mouth of the stream
There it is!
Throw the board and step on
Ride the splash of water above the sand
Perfect!

At night after showering
My burning back
Crying
Gran, applying Noxema to cool the burn
Saying, "Silly girl,
What were you thinking?
You should have come in earlier.
You see."

The next day
Out by the mouth of the stream
Waiting
This time with a shirt on
Over my swimsuit
Waiting

Always a sunburn

Always








Irish poet Paul Durcan published his first book in 1967. Since then he has published 15 others. The next poem is from his book Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil, published the Harvill Press of London in 1999.



Notes Towards a Supreme Reality

I

Because the supreme reality in life is fiction
It is vital not to meet the writer in person.
There is no necessary linkage between the egotist who is
     overweight and vain
And the magic connections, dreams, constructions, of his brain.

II

Life's supreme reality is reading fiction
In poetry or prose, most likely prose,
(Fiction is scarce as water in poetry):
Afterwards telephoning Niall MacMonaagle in Rathmines,
Conversing nonstop for three hours,
Putting on aerial displays for our sleeping daughters,
Flying low, fast, looping the loop;
Or taking a Super Low Floor
Green Engine Kneeling Suspension
Dublin Bus into the city center
To Cormac Kinsella in the Dublin Waterstone's,
Stealingn half-hour with Cormac behind the bookshelves.

Thanks to Cormac Kinsella
I have spent the last five years
Reading Richard Ford and Don DeLillo.
Oh yes! Behind the bookshelves!
Like two haymakers siesta-ing
Behind a haycock in Provence
Cormac and I -
We repose vertically in a Ford sun
Cooled by a DeLillo breeze
Analyzing the Universals of light,
The particulars of power.

III

The evening is as long as life is short.
Reading Independence Day or Underworld
I am a tern detecting Dublin Bay
At a cruising altitude of thirteen feet;
Or a flock of swallows on a warm June evening
Trawling to and fro the mown lawn
Netting succulent midges, snaring thousands of 'em.
The evening is as long as life is short.








Lots of notables died a couple of weeks ago, in a very short span of time. This poem is about one of them, representative to many of us of many other deaths.



why i never miss a Clint Eastwood movie

Karl Malden died,
not so much noticed
in comparison to the
Michael Jackson
necromania,
and he was 97 so maybe
he was ready
to take a last curtain call
but not me, for there is security
in knowing the icons you grew up
with are still around

when you're young
the old guys die and you wonder,
what's the fuss, just as younger readers
of this might be saying, Karl Who?
but as you get older,
the dead guys get younger, relative,
at least to yourself, and then one morning
you wake up old and realize
they're all gone, all your flicker-dream heroes
have faded to dark and you look at the new guys
and try to find another Karl Malden or Jimmy Stewart
or David Niven or Gregory Peck or Henry Fonda
and they all, all the new guys, seem so....incomplete,
though i'm sure the kids don't think so,
think they're just fine, thank you, and who the hell
are the rest of those guys you're talking about
and i can't argue because, truth is,
the old and the young live
on separate planes of existence that rarely cross,
and when they do
it's like studying a foreign language and learning
some things can't be said because there are no words
to say it, like an old guy trying to get the latest punk yowlers,
or trying to explain Perry Como
or Andy Williams
to the crowd at
a Slipknot
concert

we can think we know things we cannot feel,
but without the feeling the knowing is always incomplete

Michael Jackson is dead, and while millions know
what that means, i do not and cannot and never will

Karl Malden is my loss, another in a long line of losses
known only to fading number of us for whom each new loss
is another partial loss of self - the young, so fortunate,
do not yet see
that end








Here are several short poems by Japanese poet Yorifumi Yaguchi, from the anthology Three Mennonite Poets, published by Good Books of Intercourse, Pennsylvania in 1986.
Yaguchi was born in 1932 in Ishinomati, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from Tohoku Gakuin University with a B.A. in English, from International Christian University with an M.A. in Education, and from Goshen Biblical Seminary with a B.D. in theology.

He spent a year as American Council of Learned Societies Visiting Scholar at the State University of New York, Buffalo and recently taught a semester at Shenyang, China. He is presently professor of American poetry in the literature department of Hokusei Gakuen College.
Yaguchi has published two collections of English poetry and five volumes of Japanese poetry, some of which have been translated. His work has also appeared in poetry magazines in England, Australia, India, the United States and Japan.



Praying Mantis

This morning I saw a male
praying mantis being
eaten by his female.

I could almost hear his
wild shout of ecstasy
as his wife ate him

and his joy seemed to increase
the more as his body was
violently bitten along.

The complete trance of
self-oblivion came at the moment
when his last part was bitten.

- Tonight when I am exhausted
after our long and
violent intercourse,

I think of the male mantis,
wondering if his swallowed body
was digested or is still praying in her.


Grandpa

Grandpa suddenly gets up at midnight and
shouts, "It's time!" and
throws off our futon and makes us get up and
sit in line in the living room.

After calling our names, he sits
before his desk with the blackboard behind and
begins giving a lecture he had repeated
for thirty years at a university.

We have to take notes on whatever he tells us,
because during his lecture
he checks our notes carefully and
scolds us if they are not satisfactory.

His clouded eyes glitter,
his bent back straightens and
his mustache trembles like a float.
But the lecture finishes too soon.

He collapses and starts snoring, pissing
in his pants, his snot forming a bubble
on the end of his nose, and repeating in his sleep,
"The Kamikaze are coming!"


Usually

I love peace
but when I wear a soldier's uniform,
I begin to wish a war would happen
and to feel like killing
as many enemies as possible
by raiding them, if so ordered,
and dying willingly
for the sake of the emperor
and our country.


A

withered leaf
hanging on a twig
heavy as the earth


A Woman

naked
is lying
deep
in the grass
on a mountain
with the red
full
moon
between her
thighs








Next, here's a neat little piece by another of our Hawaiian friend, the transplanted Californian Alice Folkart.



I Thought I saw . . .

I thought I saw
the milkman delivering a pizza,
a sheep's-milk smile upon his face,
as he kissed the lady next door
who is married to the
car salesman
who I saw making out
with the lady cop
in the black and white and I don't mean cow.

I thought I saw
a little lavender woman
step out of a silver craft
behind the barn,
sprout antennae, roll her eyes,
wink, snap her fingers,
and become my Auntie Meg,
a woman from elsewhere,
an alien who'd dare.

I thought I saw
mama and papa wrapping up
a case of canned spinach
for me, for Christmas,
when all I wanted was a bike,
and not green and not canned.
But, I know they have
my best interests at heart,
damn them.

and then, I thought I saw myself free,
but now I know that cannot be.








Next I have a couple of poets from the quarterly Poetry East, Number 44, Spring 1997 issue.

I'll start with several short poems by Cid Corman.


Corman was born and grew up in Boston. His parents were both from the Ukraine. He attended Boston Latin School and in 1941 he entered Tufts University, where he achieved Phi Beta Kappa honors and wrote his first poems. He was excused from service in World War II for medical reasons and graduated in 1945.

Corman studied for his Master's degree at the University of Michigan, where he won the Hopwood poetry award, but dropped out two credits short of completion. After a brief stint at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he spent some time traveling around the United States, returning to Boston in 1948.

Here he ran poetry events in public libraries and, with the help of his high-school friend Nat Hentoff, he started the country's first poetry radio program. A prolific poet from an early age, he was born in 1924 and died in 1984.


Chinese Painting

What's left
out
opens

to let
us
in on.


No Never

As my brother says -
Mother - bless her -
used to say: Bring me

the roses now.
Here I am only
a lifetime late


~~~~~~~~~

In the hills
for a few days -
couldn't write

Gone further found
less - maybe
you know the place


~~~~~~~~~~

I have come far to have found nothing
or to have found that what was found was
only to be lost, lost finally
in that absence whose trace is silence.

~~~~~~~~~~

If poetry has
any meaning it
has to be this - it

has to be yours and
you it. Every
word finally fits


~~~~~~~~~~

The cow
belongs
to the good
green grass

crops close
but doesn't
bruise or
devour

~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes it feels
as though we had
never come. Stop

for a moment.
Ask yourself if
you are present

or even if
this is. Is it
a matter of

come and go? Who
is it asking?
What wants to know?

~~~~~~~~~~

Sooner or later
it comes out of your
own pocket - the hole.



Also from the book, two poem by Charles Bukowski, a more thoughtful Bukowski than we often see.


Old Man, Dead in a Room

this thing upon me is not death
but it's as real,
and as landlords full of maggots
pound for rent
I eat walnuts in the sheath
of my privacy
and listen for more important
drummers;
it's as real, it's as real
as the broken-boned sparrow
cat-mouthed to utter
more than mere
and miserable argument;
between my toes I stare
at clouds, at seas of gaunt
sepulcher...
and scratch my back
and form a vowel
as all my lovely women
(wives and lovers)
break like engines
into some steam of sorrow
to be blown into eclipse;
bone is bone
but this thing upon me
as I tear the window shades
and walk caged rugs,
this thing upon me
like a flower and a feast,
believe me
is not death and is not
glory
and like Quixote's windmills
make a foe
turned by the heavens
against one man;
...this thing upon me
crawling like a snake
terrifying me love of commonness,
some call Art
some call poetry;
it's not death
but dying will solve its power
and as my grey hands
drop a last desperate pen
in some cheap room
they will find me there
and never know
my name
my meaning
nor the treasure
of my escape.


The Priest and the Matador

in the slow Mexican air I watched the bull die
and they cut off his ear, and his great head held
no more terror than a rock.

driving back the next day we stopped at the Mission
and watched the golden red and blue flowers pulling
like tigers against the wind.

set this to metric: the bull, and the fort of Christ:
the matador on his knees, the dead bull his baby;
and the priest staring from the window
like a caged bear.

you may argue in the market place and pull at your
doubts with silken strings; I will only tell you
this: I have lived in both their temples,
believing all and nothing - perhaps, now, they will
die in mine.








I had thought I might get past the worldwide mania following the death of Michael Jackson without writing a poem about it.

But, I didn't.



michaeljackson

i was going
to write a poem
about
michaeljackson
worldwide
phenomena
of hype and glitter
and gold-plated
coffin, grown
man with
Tinkerbell
fantasies,
child
molester
maybe
maybe not
eccentric
madman
genius
and some
where
within all that
good
friend
good
father and
millions come
out to mourn
who
the friend
the father
or the
madman
the child
life brought
short
the poor
lost child
of him the
madman
his fantasy
made real
in death

this
death poem
not
what i
intended








Next, I have three poems by one of my favorites, Jane Hirshfield. The poems are from her book Of Gravity & Angles, published by Wesleyan University Press in 1988.

Hirshfield was born in 1953 in New York City and received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University in the school's first graduating class to include women. She later studied at the San Francisco Zen Center.

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



See How the Roads Are Strewn

See how the roads are strewn
white,
as if your hand, traveling my body,
came to be that flock of blossoms,
sent of February in the dark.
See how my hips eclipse your hips,
how the moon, huge as a grain-barge, passes by.
And promises do not hold,
certainties do hold hold,
the risen cries fall and fail to hold,
but my body, confusion of crossings, I give you
broadcast, to move with your hand,
where nothing is saved but breaks out in a thousand directions,
armful of wild plum weeds.


I Have No Use For Virgins

I have no use for virgins -
give me the cup
with a chipped lip,
whose handle is glued back on
and whose glaze is dark from use.
Let many men and women
drink from us before
we drink -
I taste their breasts on your breast,
you cover their blaze between my legs.


Tonight the Incalculable Stars

tonight the incalculable stars
have me thinking of
Catullus and his Lesbia,
who began counting once
and could not stop
until every schoolchild's tongue
pronounced their kisses
interminable,
stumbling through memorized passion
past ancient, jealous crones -
the old arithmetic of love,
got down by heart,
the hard way
in a foreign tongue, too young.








Now, I have four short pieces from our friend and frequent contributor Joanna Weston



Hidden Sweeps

red palaces
against blue silk
hard-edged

cut my eyes
upward
and inward

to scale
the brittle ladders
of history

into chimneys
that hide
small boys crying


A Poem of Birds

laugh the bird into a poem
sing it into a reading of poets
round the table with coffee

let the song laugh into rhythm
that lilts a sonnet into speech

then let the bird fly up
and out on wings of rhyme
undone by the past
sung into the present
with poems feathered
and spread to the wind


From Now to Then

I touch moss
   earth is
as it was
small, friable
in an immensity

I rub the bark of an arbutus
   nothing has changed since
your hand held mine

I walk on rock overlooking ocean
   it is what it was
before you and me


The Student

camera in hand
she paused to study
cherry blossom

I waited
at the stop light
until she raised
the lens

the light
changed
I drove away
and I don't know
if she took
the photo

but she turned
smiled at me








I have a couple of poets now from the anthology Breaking Silence, An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets, published in 1983 by the Greenfield Review Press.


The first two poems from the book are by Tina Koyama, who seems to be a poet and a jewelry maker. I can't find any details beyond that.


Ojisan After the Stroke: Three Notes to Himself
        for my uncle

Early morning.
Small birds drop from the plum tree
to the yard. Every day, their patterns
in my window the same: my window
always the same.

Afternoon.
Voices from the kitchen buzz in
and out of the room. I catch my name
in the corners like too much light.
Wasted on my left side.

Night.
The moon is half empty,
but I can't remember
if it's growing or shrinking. It creeps out
of my window
and into the rest of darkness.


Next

Probing my mouth as if searching for gold,
eyeing the lower left molar, his raw, unpolished jewel,
the man with snaps on his shoulder leans into me, so
eager I'm surprised he doesn't jump
right in, take a dip in cool pools of saliva.

"Keep it open, please," he smiles, then asks about my dog,
undergraduate education, the muffler on my car,
smiling, always smiling, his kind moon eyes expecting
answers. He knows my life can be answered with a nod,
knows the stoney surface of my tooth
and the narrow parabola of my jaw
better than his own hand. He fears
extraction will be necessary, taps with his mirror

deep cracks that even promises won't fill. Here
decisions come in the shape of pliers. I nod,
swallowing old questions with a numbing tongue.


The next poet is Cyn. Zarco, native of Manila and a poet-journalist-photographer.


lolo died yesterday
    they called him bill
    short for villamor
    i called him lolo
    lolo doming
    grandfather
    even though he was my mother's uncle
    even though he wasn't my real
    grandfather
    i called him lolo
    star barber at the star barber shoppe
    on 6th & mission
    he talked about the navy
    the american navy
    he showed me the calligraphy
    on his silver lighter
    he showed me his diploma
    from cosmetology school
    lolo
    lolo doming
    hung out with the boys
    at the mabuhay gardens
    gambled in reno
    got drunk with the pinoys
    kumpadres mga kassamahan
    died dancing
    on treasure island


The last poet from the anthology is Jessica Hagedorn. In 1983, she lived in New York city were she wrote and performed in the theater and led her band, The Gangster Choir. Her first book Dangerous Music was in it's third printing and her latest book Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions was the recipient of an American Book Award for that year.


Ming the Merciless

  dancing on the edge / of a razor blade
  ming / king of the lionmen
  sing / bring us to the planet
  of no return...

king of the lionmen
come dancing in my tube
sing, ming, sing...
blink, sloe-eyed fantasy
and touch me where
there's always hot water
in this house

o flying angel
o pterodactyl
your rocket glides
like a bullet

you are the asian nightmare
the yellow peril
the domino theory
the current fashion trend

ming, merciless ming
come dancing in my tube
the silver edges of your cloak
slice through my skin
and king vulgar's cardboard wings
flap-flap in death
(for you)

o ming, merciless ming,
the silver edges of your cloak
cut hearts in two
the blood red dimensions
that trace american galaxies

your are the asian nightmare
the yellow peril
the domino theory
the current fashion trend

sing, ming sing...
whistle the final notes
of your serialized abuse
cinema life
cinema death
cinema of the ethnic prurient interest

o flying angel
o pterodactyl
your rocket glides
like a bullet
and touches me where
there's always hot water
in this house








I wrote this next poem on July the 4th, not quite an independence day poem, but kinda.



asserting my independence

it being the day for it,
i'd like to write a sizzily
whizzily yankee doodle dandy
put on your star-spangled spats
4th of july poem, but it's more complicated
than that

to start with, i'm worried

despite the wars that have to be finished well
and economic crises and environmental crises
and health care crises and all the rest of the crises
known and not that lurk around the corner,
i'm reminded today of the early 1960s
when there was a feeling in the air that
whatever lay ahead, we had leaders
with the brains and courage and competence
to deal with it - many people feel that way now,
a return of confidence in our leaders
and our institutions and in our country

but also like the early '60s,
there is an undercurrent of fanaticism
fed by paranoia and contempt
for all those things that reassure the rest of us -
this disquiet emanating not from the neighborhoods
of the poor and dispossessed, but from plush suburbs
where, among the most pampered people
ever to live in this world,
a great sense of grievance flourishes, where "tea parties"
are organized by people who can't tell the difference
between those who don't want to pay taxes
without representation
and those who just don't want to pay taxes at all,
a class of disillusioned and delusional people,
enamored of their own imagined
martyrdom,
finding corruption and malfeasance
behind ever idea not their own

i know where these dark roots led us in 1963
and i worry where they will take us today...

dark subjects, these,
and deep,
and my wrestling with them accomplishes nothing

making it time to put aside such thoughts on this day
we celebration our country's independence

and attend instead to my own independence,
my freedom to leave this unproductive
pondering and concentrate instead
on the fine beauty of the young Asian girl
who sits at the table
across from mine,
sparkling








My next poem is by William Meredith, from his book Effort at Speech, published in 1997 by Northwestern University Press.

I picked this poem as especially appropriate for this week because our two Hawaiian friends, 'Ilima Stern and Alice Folkart, whose poems appear here this week.



An Account of a Visit to Hawaii

Snow through the fronds, fire flowing into the sea
At a goddess' will who does not ask belief -
It is hard to reconcile extremities
Of any size, or to find their centers out,
As paradoxes demonstrate, and griefs,
And this old kingdom running sweetly out.
You would not think to say of a custom here
"This is the place itself," as you might elsewhere.

There are no snakes and very little lust;
Many decorums have made life decorous.
Fish stands for food and hospitality,
And the innocence of symbols generally
Is surprising, now that we think absurd
The Noble Savage. Midmercy - one word -
Is perhaps the closest European concept
To name the culture, surely to name the climate

Which has the ocean's powers of deception
When unrippled. The women stringing flowers
To keep the shade describe a slow ellipse
From June to June, like sundials at their hours.
And people have mistaken toy ships
For the ship to take them back across the ocean
And later stayed too long. The practical
Chinese put ripples in the year with Catherine wheels.

Mildness can enervate as well as heat.
The soul must labor to reach paradise.
Many are her detained in partial grace
Or partial penalty, for want of force.
The canefields burn in fire that does no harm,
The cataracts blow upward in the Trades,
For all the world as if there were no rules.
It is no easy place to save the soul.

And there is danger to the native pride
Of a land where dreams make the economy
Like tourists, dreams distort the things they buy
And float an easy currency, until
There is no talking to the native heart.
Nightly descending through the baroque cloud
That decorates these hills, riding on air,
Thousands arrive by dream at their desire.

One of the last kings sold the Sandalwood
To buy a fleet. For every ship, they filled
An excavation dug to match the hull.
You can see these to this day - volcanic holds.
It rains at night. The trees the old king sold
Do not grow back. The islands have their perils
Which if you do not feel, no one can tell you.

There is another meaning for aloha,
A greeting as ambiguous as the place:
Not a promiscuous welcome to all strangers,
But what is more hospital than that,
Warning of taboos and a hundred dangers -
Whether to you, you must decide alone.
And it is not safe to come here yet,
One of the things aloha means is: wait.

A place to live when you are reconciled
to beauty and unafraid of time.
(They languish, abstract, when no more opposed.)
A placed to earn in more chastising climates
Which teach us that our destinies are mild
Rather than fierce as he had once supposed,
And how to recognize the peril of calm,
Menaced only by surf and flowers and palms.








I had a whole bunch of weird, disjointed days in a row for a week or two, then, finally, a regular old everyday day and my old familiar haunts with all the old familiar faces.



usual suspects

the old guys
are here
and the tattooed
fat lady is here
and the always neat
and clean homeless guy
with his tightly wrapped
foam bedroll, heavy looking backpack
and professorial look
behind little half-lens glasses
as he spends the day reading
in the air conditioned
cool,
and the mama
with her little blond girl trailing behind,
baby-doll in one arm and pink little purse
in the other, and little plastic dangly
bracelets on both wrists
that she shakes as she passes, and
the young mother with two little girls,
heading for the bathroom, double-time,
passing a new guy, a long, white haired
Sam Elliott looking guy in short pants
reading "Guns & Ammo" magazine,
and a couple of the medical student
regulars, and the short-haired cowboy guy
with the bad arm, and the two gay guys
that show up a couple of times a week
(and, ok, maybe they're not gay, but
they sure are sharp dressers),
and the middle-aged woman, a mid-life
student, who always looks like she's mad
at me because i always get here first
and take the table by the door
next to an electric plug where she'd like to be,
and the dorky looking guy and his dorky looking wife
who come in and stare at each other and never
say a word the whole time they're here, and
the old guy with the thick glasses and magnifying
glass who writes tiny numbers in tiny columns
in a spiral notebook, eyes inches from the
magnifying glass inches from the paper,
and the table of law students, arguing
with each other like it was a Supreme Court
appearance, and and the oriental guy reading
Shopenheimer haiku and the girl with the long auburn
hair and acne scared cheeks, a cheeky girl
with a constant air of amused observation
and i'm thinking if she was 50 years older
she might share the joke with me, assuming
it's not me that's the joke, of course,
a possibility i do not discount....

all the familiar faces in all the familiar
places on a mostly typical Thursday





Photo by Marc San Marco




Nothing of further interest to report this week, so, until next week, remember all of the material included in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
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Introducing Christina Hymes   Thursday, July 09, 2009


IV.7.2.



I am featuring Florida artist Christina Hymes this week.

Chris says she first started her creative endeavors by writing in 2005. Then, in 2006, she started working in photography. Recently, she expanded her interests again to include painting. With her painting she is attempting, she says, to find a way to express what she cannot in words or photos.

Her poetry appeared in "Here and Now" some time ago. This is the first time we get to see what she's doing as a painter.

Here's who we have this week in addition to Christina.

Mark Nowak
moje swiadectwo
Strazak

Me
Solzhenisyn didn't know how good he had it

David Ray
At the Washing of My Son

Rumi
Someone Digging in the Ground

Charles Levenstein
Bees
Window of Desire

Arthur Munoz
From a Cop's Journal
Guadalupe Street
"Hey, Kid"
Let's Walk

Me
thinking about religion
in the dark

G.E. Patterson
I Used To Go to Church
Poem Without a Title
And

Dan Cuddy
Random Morning Images

Pablo Neruda
From Air to Air

Me
disquieting medical news

Lester Paldy
Wildflowers at Babi Yar
Swallows

Gary Blankenship
Pilot

Laurie Lico Albanese
Blue Suburbia, Aerial View
Moon over New York

Me
hope

Alice Walker
Gift
Thief
Rage

James Hutchings
Killing Sorrow

Me
elephant walk

Edgar Lee Masters
Ann Rutledge
Peleg Poague
Rev. Abner Peet

Me
fugitive from the poetry police






"Waterfall"
Painting by Christina Hymes




My first two poems this week are by Mark Nowak from his book Revenants published by Coffee House Press of Minneapolis in 2000. This was Nowak's first book length collection of poems, exploring in this case the Polish American neighborhoods in and around Buffalo, New York. He is an associate professor at the College of St. Catherine in Minneapolis.

I like just about everything I read in the book, but because of the way it's put together in a nearly continuous flow, with additional material inserted from several different sources, this look like the only two poems I can use here. I really hope I can figure out a way to use more material from this book in future posts.

I almost forgot to add, the titles of the poems are in Polish. The first title translates to "my testimony" and the second to "scarecrow."



moje swiadectwo

Northern fields, a half-
dozen pears, one yellow jacket
caught between
the storm window and the storm.

The sunlight is over

and over again


Strazak

cast into
the firepit.

"He'll get
religion

from this."
Women

look for
cups of

rain. Men
order flame

-proof
clothes.






untitled
Painting by Christina Hymes




The weather has been awful here, triple digit temperatures five or six days a week, with an average for the week of 102 degrees. No rain, no relief.



Solzhenitsyn didn't know how good he had it

103 degrees
day
after
day
and who
knows
how hot
in the sun
and i don't know
why
i'm here
when i
should
be home
soaking up
some cool in
my easy chair
sleeping
dreaming
of iceberg
lettuce
broad green
leaves
slightly damp
from icebox
dew
laid cold across
my face
dreaming
iceberg
poems
in my easy
chair
that's where
i was and that's
where D is
and why
the hell i left
to come here
to try
and write
a real poem
is beyond my
understanding
when i ought
to know by now
that i can't write
crap
when it's 103
degrees
day
after
day
it
just sweats
it
right out
of me
you
know
creativity
i'm talking
about
wilts right
down
to a soggy
sobbing
nub
of i don't
know nothing
never knew
nothing
don't wanna
know
nothing
leave
me along
when it's
103 degrees
day
after
day
Solzhenitsyn
didn't know
how good
he had it
out there
on that frozen
cold
cold
cold
gulag
where it
may have been
a bit nippy
but was
never
never
never
103 freaking
degrees
day
after
freaking
day





"Depression23"
Painting by Christina Hymes




My next several poems are from The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, a poetry anthology put together by Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade. The book was published in hardcover in 1992 by HarperCollins.



The first poem is by David Ray. Although he's published 21 collections of poetry, I couldn't find a bio for him. I did find this endorsement from Studs Terkel: "David Ray's poetry has always been radiant even though personal tragedy has suffused it."

As a father, this poem speaks to me.


At the Washing of My Son

I ran up and grabbed your arm, the way a man
On a battlefield would recognize a long-lost comrade.
You were still wrinkled, and had a hidden face,
Like a hedgehog or a mouse, and you crouched in
The black elbows of a Negro nurse. You were
Covered with your mother's blood, and I saw
That navel where you and I were joined to her.
I stood by the glass and watched you squeal.
Just twice in a man's life there's this
Scrubbing off of blood. And this holy
Rite that Mother Superior in her white starched hat
Was going to deny me. But I stood my ground.
And then went in where for the first time you felt
Your mother's face, and her open blouse.


Here, also from the anthology, is a poem by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.


Someone Digging in the Ground

An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
a head has one use: For loving a true love.
Legs: To run after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. the mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
On the way to Mecca, many dangers: Thieves,
the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink.
Still each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
with pure longing, feeling in the surface
the taste of the lips he wants.

This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,
while the real work is done outside
by someone digging in the ground.





untitled
Painting by Christina Hymes




Next, I have two poems from a friend new to "Here and Now," Charles Levenstein.

Chuck is professor emeritus of work environment at University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has published poems widely in e-zines and has two books available now' Poems of World War III and Animal Vegetable.

Both of these poems are from the Fall 2007 issue of Loch Raven Review, an excellent web-zine, which, before I quit spending most of my time on my own little blog here, also published a couple of my poems.



Bees

(Thanks to Elizabeth Kolbert)

Maintaining this hive,
an enterprise started as a divine joke
or, at most, an explosion of interest
in the otherwise dreary void,

requires more of my time
and less of hers, she seems to have lost
interest, preferring hard bodies
or growing minds to an old honey -

Possibly standards have risen,
in the beginning, "dirty" was without substance,
but with germ theory and profit centers,
leaving well enough alone won't do.

Perhaps we/I have been dropped off
in a distant suburb, too much bother,
loving care of an untrainable, slothful
swarm, best returned to the no-kill pound

which is where I find myself
considering honey in a superannuated apiary.


Window of Desire

If you sit in the same place each morning,
The blind cat snoozing on a leather hassock,
The wild one prowling for Cinderella moths,

Seasons walk by, slowly enough
To document colors and preeminent wildlife,
The urban skunk ever present,

Squirrels from fat to lean and back again,
Sparrows and starlings, songbirds and cranks,
Until winter, a time for theory, not practice.

We migrate then with more ambitious fowl,
Find a beach where mango daiquiris are served
And a pile of novels consumed without interruption;

Or we remain at this window of speculation,
Watch endless snow cover our mistakes,
Contemplate the dimming landscape of desire.





"Bubble Painting"
Painting by Christian Hymes




Next, I have probably the most unlikely seeming poet you'll read this week.

Arthur Munoz was born in Los Angeles in 1924. After two stints in the Marine Corps (during World War II and in Korea), Munoz moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, completed high school, attended Texas A&I University and, briefly, St. Mary's Law School and began what would be a 23 year career as a patrol officer, investigator, and homicide detective with the San Antonio Police Department. He later worked as an investigator with the Texas Department of Human Services and finally as a Poet in the Schools with the San Antonio Independent School District. He wrote through it all, publishing his first book, In Loneliness in 1975. The next poems are from his book, From a Cop's Journal & Other Poems, published by Corona Publishing of San Antonio in 1984.

I haven't been able to get any current information on Munoz so I don't know if he's still active or even still alive. I do like his work though.

I have three poems from the book, beginning with the title poem.



From a Cop's Journal

Mass was read tonight.
He was 22
killed with a .38
in the hands of one
also 22.

Now one is being mourned, while
the other cries in jail.

They had been pals -
served in the Marines together.
Later, one took the oath
to uphold the law;
the other
the street's cred.

When their paths would cross
they talked of old times,
shared a beer,
helped each other
if there was need.

Last night the two met
inside a store
closed hours before...

They used to play catch
together!


Guadalupe Street

It has no super stores
with aisles of food,
no drive-in cleaners,
stations with rest rooms
or fast-food chains.
But if you want to dance
in the afternoon,
drink a beer,
score -
it's all there.

You want to eat?
There's Mexican bakeries
two blocks apart
and taco joints side by side
where you get more
for your money
than any place in town.

If your Chevy is down
with a flat
and you're short on change
a dollar will get it fixed,
or a recap sold
and guaranteed!

More artisans are at work
in one block on this street
than you'll find
in your largest mall:
grillwork moorish style
pottery
custom cabinet makers
stone cutters
still chiseling by hand
candy makers
and artists designing paper flowers.

This the street where
the football hero
and the addict meet
shake hands and smile
while the cheer leader and the whore
share a smoke.
And why not? They're brothers and sisters,
not one good and one bad,
meeting for news from home
or some friend in jail.

Guadalupe Street is the heart
of San Antone,
the barrio's main line
where the mamas and the papas
swear by their kids
and the church bells ring
announcing births and marriages,
turning everyone into family.


"Hey, Kid"

It was always,
"Hey, Kid,
I need a shine."

In his pocket he carried
his extras:
rags, cans of polish,
and a brush.
In the homemade box
one of each
plus water for that spit shine

He worked the street
like a pimp works his girls,
relentlessly.
From the cop shop to the bank
to the basement bettors,
he walked it all -
the business man
in tennis shoes and jeans,
barefoot in summer.

He played the street
to his tune
smart,
smiling,
a real con,
banking all on his knowledge
of shoes: blacks, two-tones, whites,
and browns
in their seasons.

The ten-year-old rascal
had money
and he loaned it for a fee
to waitresses, winos,
gays, or whores.
To him they were all the same:
just pay me!

Sunday morning he was dead
behind the M.P. depot.
No one knew where he came from
and no one knew where he went.



I said i was going to do three poems from the book, but I ran across this one and liked it too much, so let's call it four.


Let's Walk

I want to see your reflection
in the river
as you stand by its edge,
looking soft
like a Spring cloud,
strong as Winter's reed,
and still,
tuned to be touched -
then let our sigh
and the magic of childhood
undress us.





"Eye Abstract"
Painting by Christina Hymes




As the result of a little appetite suppressant pill, Ol' Doc gave me (sleep suppressant, more like it, speed is what it is) i spent a sleepless night some days ago, brain racing and nowhere to go. The product of the night was four poems, two which made no sense at all and these next two, connected, in a way, to each other and the subjects of God and life, and all that kind of stuff that leaks out when your brain won't stand down.



thinking about religion

thinking
about religion this evening
for some reason

it is a mystery to me,
the whole business of the thing,
of praying and looking for omens,
of denigration of self
if favor of a higher power
who follows you around all day
checking on you
seeing if you're being naughty or nice

the biggest mystery to me though
is not the belief
but the people who believe

as an intelligent atheist
it's hard for me to understand
how an intelligent being can be
anything but an atheist

and i'm talking about really smart people
people smarter than me,
not just word-smart people,
but really smart people, astrophysicists
who study the cosmos every day, people
who every day deal with the rigid requirements
of reason and science, people who
in the everyday corporal world require
evidence as a precursor to knowledge
but then toss it all away, toss away
all evidentiary requirements for truth
and accept the realm of magic - willing
to believe things that in their regular lives
they would never accept, divine hands
that can overrule all rules, a divine mind
that creates from nothing, a divine being
who was there to create when there was no there,
when there was nothing at all

i am left to believe that there are people,
no matter how smart, who cannot accept,
will never accept, the outcome
of nothingness, of no greater meaning
to anything other than those paltry meanings
that can be seen, of no long term plan,
an accidental existence the truths
of their minds predict and require

as for me, i am
incapable of the denial of self
that blind and untested faith requires,
making me, i suspect the loser in this,
living with this inability to set aside
reason for the comforts of belief


in the dark

i believe in a physical universe
because i can see it
but my seeing it is only
a matter of perspective

from a different perspective,
through the lens of an electron
microscope, perhaps, i see
that the hand i thought i saw
in front of me is really
mostly empty space

and what of other perspectives
unavailable to me, what
might i see from there

this could be an area
for metaphysics,
an explanation for,
if not the existence of God,
at least the existence of
the possibility of God
among many possibilities
we have not yet imagined,
suggesting a hallway of many
unopened
doors

or it could just be a dark room
where we still fumble to find
the light switch

a student of zen might say
we fumble
in the dark because
we look for light
in the wrong places, true
illumination,
the student might say,
can only come from within

taking us back
to a physical universe
of mostly empty spaces





"Dragonfly"
Painting by Christina Hymes




The next poems are by G.E. Patterson from his book Tug, published by Graywolf Press in 1999.

Patterson, poet, critic, and translator, grew up along the Mississippi River and was educated in the mid-South, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the western United States.

Tug, his first book won the Minnesota Book Award. His most recent collection of poems is To and From was published by Ahsahta Press last year.

His work has also appeared frequently in magazines and anthologies. His awards include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Cave Canem, the Djerassi Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

After living in the Northeast and on the West Coast, he now makes his home in Minnesota, where he teaches.



I Used To Go To Church

When my doctors thought
I was dying
I saw my father
slumped over
in a painted chair
in 6 A.M. sunlight
wearing faded paisley
boxer shorts

Before I was sure
if I should call
out to him
he got up
& moved through the room
looking at everything
picking up photographs
of my friends
cupping the mug
I'd used for tea

His hands ran
along the edge
of the dining table
as if the objects
he touched
could tell him
the few things
he wanted to know
about my life

My old man
opened a window
& the wind rushed in
bringing birds
Pigeons perched
on his outstretched arms
& on his head

Each one cooed
a single note
but the sounds mingled
together
like a chorale
of bell ringers
& my father
he did nothing

to stop it


Poem Without a Title

A shadow rises

From the pile of leaves I made

And it follows me


And

One Friday, when I was in love with Dan,
we went out to see friends of his perform.
We had dinner first at a little place
on Haight Street, Cha-Cha-Cha. We drank sangria.
I drank sangria that whole spring and summer
with everyone I had a small crush on.
I was desperate to be festive and loved.
After eating we drove around 'til dusk,
then headed for the projects below Grove
where he anarchistic play would be staged.
In a city of high-rent Victorians,
some of the prettiest were here, Dan said,
but most were torn down in urban renewal.
tenants were paid to move across the Bay.
Soon, of course, they saw the house prices rocket.

I began to think about his mind more
than his eyes, or his ass, or even his dick
- the dick i'd dreamt about the night before.
So when he drove me home, we just kissed.
We didn't call it a date, but it was.





"Motion"
Painting by Christina Hymes




Here's a poem from our friend, Dan Cuddy, one of our regulars here.



Random Morning Images

dawn is a cold washcloth
the breath of chimneys

feathered warriors attack
scraps of bread

machines grumble
half-asleep drivers

last night's lights beacon still
but fade like the moon enlightened

how un-uniform the color of sidewalks
undeciphered history adheres like cement

neighbors that never greet in the winter
thaw out of their houses

depressing mist
evaporates with the sizzle of eggs, bacon

soon morning will be an office of gray faces
in chairs, looking at screens, conversing in sign on language

soon egotists demand loyalty
darkness becomes metaphorical, seeps into brains

outside trash trucks grind
yesterday compacted

few newspapers to spread
still fewer trees grow
circumstances are bound to a power-grid
yesterday's sci-fi arrives at breakfast





"Horizon"
Painting by Christina Hymes




This is piece is by Pablo Neruda from his book The Heights of Macchu Picchu, first published by Noonday Press in 1966. The book's translation from Spanish to English (it's a dual language books, the text in both languages on facing pages) are by Nathaniel Tarn.

The piece is from Section I of the book. Actually, it is Section 1 of the book.



From Air to Air, like an empty net,
dredging through streets and ambient atmosphere, I came
lavish, at autumn's coronation, with the leaves'
proffer of currency and - between spring and wheat ears -
that which a boundless love, caught in gauntlet fall,
grants us like a one-fingered moon.

Days of live radiance in discordant
bodies: steels converted
to the silence of acid:
nights disentangled to the ultimate flour,
assaulted stamens of the nuptial land.)
Someone waiting for me along the violins
met with a world like a buried tower
sinking its spiral below the layered leaves
color of raucous sulfur:
and lower yet, in a vein of gold,
like a sword in a scabbard of meteors,
I plunged a turbulent and tender hand
to the most secret organs of the earth

Leaning my forehead through unfathomed waves
I sank, a single drop, within a sleep of sulfur
where, like a blind man, I retraced the jasmine
of our exhausted spring.





"The Rush"
Painting by Christina Hymes




I had my regular quarterly visit with my doctor a couple of weeks ago.

Had a real scare.



disquieting medical news

visited Ol' Doc
last week,
my regular
every three months
check-in to see
if all the parts
are in place and
working

Ol' Doc
poked and prodded
as he is prone to do
and declared me good
for another fifty years

disquieting
news it was

i had
given myself ten
years on the outside,
planning to spend
all ten daily writing
my poem
of the day with
my comrades on
Blueline's House of 30

but fifty years,
gawd man,
do you know
what that means?

i may have to go
back to work!





"Heart"
Painting by Christina Hymes




My next poems are by Lester Paldy from his book Wildflowers at Babi Yar, published by Night Heron Press in 1994.

Paldy is Distinguished Service Professor at he State University of New York at Stony Brook where he has taught since 1967, with occasional leaves to serve on US arms control delegations in Geneva and at the UN.

He published his first book of poetry, for an okay free woman, in 1992.



Wildflowers at Babi Yar

June is parched this year in Kiev
with dust lying on the city like a pall,
but the unmowed grass
at Babi Yar is green and fresh
where its roots touch deeper springs.
A little girl in a red dress
slips from her mother's side
and picks violets which pierce
the meadow floor
like stars mirrored in a calm sea.
She places them on the stone
where her mother gestures
pausing for only a moment
before turning away
with a toss of braids
to skip along the path
that leads back to the crowded street.
Even a trolley's sharp metallic clamor
pales against the great stillness
at Babi Yar
where wildflowers speak.


Swallows

Rush hour is over
but gray fumes still shroud
the grimy church
at Piazza San Eustracio.
Cars double-park
across the curbside
but no one seems to mind.
Swallows wheel in the twilight
calling in very high pitched chirps
as if they have more on their minds
than finding moths
in Rome's summer heat.
There is nothing left for me to do
but imagine what it would be like
if you were here
having a biscotti
or at least a iced of mine
along with your coffee
at Piazza San Eustachio
with the swallows
calling overhead.





"Abstract"
Painting by Christina Hymes




Gary Blankenship is a retiree from Bremerton, Washington, whose avocation is poetry. He edits, moderates forums, and writes, but still says he is lazier by the day and does not publish enough.

I would agree with that, not the lazy part, but the not publishing enough part. Gary is a long time friend of "Here and Now," appearing here frequently with poems from his book and poems from the various series he has worked on.

The next poem is from a series he completed a year or so ago, a series of poems bringing to new life characters/occupations mentioned in Section 15 of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, the first truly American poem by the first truly American poet.



Pilot

The pilot seizes the kingpin, he heaves down with a strong arm

I grab another
and another
truncheons juggled
as my tug pushes a barge up the river
past deadheads
sunken boats
rotten wharves

and an old black man
asleep on the river bank
as the world's largest catfish
nibbles his hook clean

I juggle
a wife in Orleans
mistress in KC
another at Natchez

dodging cannonballs
from a lost rebel regiment





"Depression"
Painting by Christina Hymes




The next poem are by Laurie Lico Albanese from her book Blue Suburbia, Almost a Memoir, published by HarperCollins in 2004.

Albanese teaches creative writing in the Montclair, New Jersey, school system and was awarded a 1997-1998 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship in fiction. She has one novel out and her poetry has appeared in a number of journals.

It's hard to describe this book, except it has a narrative that flows through the collection from first poem to last. To give you an idea of that narrative, here are those first and last poems.



Blue Suburbia, Aerial View

Follow the highway
from Kennedy Airport
out to Grumman's old factory

see the used car lots,
strip malls, body shops,
rusted swing sets,
red rooftops, yellow
school buses

come closer,
peer in through our kitchen window
on Christmas Eve

Watch Dad
putting together a tricycle,
Mom frying sausage
for turkey stuffing

listen to my sister snoring
baby whimpering
Dad cursing
neighbors shouting
with whiskey in their blood
see me putting out
a plate of snacks
for Santa

waking up
to find stacks of presents
under the tree

hear me asking
how the fat man
and his reindeer
fit through our window

see my mother
puffy-eyed
dragging on her cigarette

saying never you mind
you are too damn smart
for your own good.


Moon over New York

My father looks at the moon
and wonders if I am looking at it, too.

Can you imagine
the man who threw me down
the basement stairs
sent me barefoot into the snow
beat red stripes into m legs
and locked me out of the house
loves me so much now

that he pumps oxygen
into his fragile lungs
opens his front door
looks up at the night sky

and a hundred miles away
in my own backyard
I think of him
while I watch the moon
wane and fae
   disappear

and come back again
ad again and
again.





untitled
Painting by Christina Hymes





I was having breakfast last week at The Egg and I, sitting behind a couple of kids that set me to thinking.



Hope

they're sitting
in the booth in front of me
at the restaurant
having breakfast, sharing
an omelet, it looks like

a young man and woman,
could be sixteen,
maybe a little older, i
can't tell anymore,
though i lean more toward
sixteen

all i can see of the boy
is the back of his head, buzz-cut
hair, like my Aunt Josie
used to give me in the summer
when i was a kid,
and ears,
what ears this kid has,
sticking out the side of his head
like wings, if he could flap those ears
i think he might just fly

and the girl -
a beauty, dark hair drawn back,
a thin face, with sharp features,
combining the Aztec/Oriental look you see
sometimes in the ethnic and DNA soup
of the Hispanic Americas

in a large city
you can tell where kids are from
by how they look and how they dress
and knowing where they're from
can tell you where they've been
and where they're likely to go in their life

these are west side kids, barrio kids
up late from yesterday or up early for today,
i could make up a story
for them, but it's hard to know
how it should end
since nothing is sure for them
except that the way will be hard

whatever the story,
i must be sure to include
a large measure
of hope





"Dance of Life"
Painting by Christina Hymes




Best known for her novels, The Color Purple among others, Alice Walker is also a fine poet. The next poems are from her second book of poems, Revolutionary Petunias, published by Harcourt Brace.



Gift

You intend no doubt
to give me nothing,
and are not aware
the gift has already been
received.
Curse me then,
and take away
the spell.
For I am rich;
no cheap and ragged
beggar
but a queen,
to rouse the king
I need in you.


Thief

I wish to own only the warmth
of your skin
the sound your thoughts make
reverberating off the coldness
of my loss
to love you purely
as I love trees and
the quiet sheens and
colors
of my house
my heart is full
of charity
of fair play
although on other
occasions
it has been acknowledged
I am a thief.


Rage

In me there is a rage to defy
the order of the stars
despite their pretty patterns.
To see if Gods who hold forth now
on human thrones
can will away my lust
to dare
and press to order the anarchy
I would serve.

The silence between your words
rams into me
like a sword.





"Birth"
Painting by Christina Hymes




Here's another of our Friends, James Hutchings, 58 years old, a a truck driver and a poet. James says he started writing poetry when he was in school, where he played in garage bands and wrote the songs. A sort of natural progression to poetry followed.



Killing Sorrow

The flower withers and falls from the stem
taken back to the earth to start anew
a grandfather passes, and a grandson begins
a heavy heart healed by fresh smile

it seems as if I have mourned a lifetime
from one goodbye to another, endlessly
the weight of loss too much to take
I beg for release and understanding

as the dreamer, the fantasy monger
I can conjure up a scene from the past
but, it is temporary, and fades
leaving me with a taste of sadness

photographs sometimes bring a moment
a peaceful respite from mundane existence
but, gone all to soon, as with life
bringing me back to truth and realness

I know I have to push this plowshare alone
tilling the soil of forever, my tiny minute
trying to gain the upper hand on death
pretending to stay a step ahead

but, it was so good when they were here
those shapers of my soul and heart
brothers and friends, blood of my vein
father and icon, giver of my spirit

the trail, once long, is now too short
strength wanes, eyesight fails
wrinkles from laughter and tears
legs struggle to hold my burden

I give in to the thoughts I chased away
unimaginable before, too easy to accept
it is said that time heals all wounds
but, how much will be enough....





untitled
Painting by Christina Hymes




Like I said earlier, it's very hot here, triple digits in the afternoon common for weeks now, and very, very dry.



elephant walk

i sat on my front porch
last night,
cross-legged, back
against the wall,
watching the sun set
behind the hill
on Inspiration Drive

the mama cat
sat beside me, eating,
along with her two shy kitties,
the braver one
with a little black spot
looking like a most dapper goatee on his chin
and his scardy-cat sister,
the beauty queen, a line
of black fur
under each eye
like sharply drawn eyeliner

they watched every slight move
i made,
ready to jump and flee
at the slightest sign of threat, like
if i adjust my legs
or scratch,
my ear,
little hind ends high in the air
as they leap

waiting for the rain,
the four of us,
along with the farmer
in Uvalde
watching his summer grain wither,
and the rancher in Medina,
cutting la tunas
from the hillside, burning off
las espinas, so the green paddles
can replace burnt pastures,
feed for the big-boned cattle
of the brush, tough animals
accustomed to adversity,
even they in distress
during these hot dry days

and the river guide,
with his inner tubes for rent
at a time when walking
the Guadalupe makes more sense
than trying to float
its shallow,
rocky
flow

and the restauranteur
dependent on the summer influx
of river floaters
and the hotel keeper
and a whole city rationing its water-use,
little things like fewer and larger
washer loads and
relearning the sweet relief
of a glass of cold aquifer water

all of us, farmers, ranchers,
suburban gardeners
watching for the rain, 30 percent
chance they tell us, the best chance
for rain in weeks, and we hope
as the temperature slips from 104
to 84 and the wind picks up
with an electric smell of rain
and the red and yellow swirl
on the radar edges closer

and then is gone,
just like that,
and, as usual, those
who bet on the 70 percent odds
win again while the rest of us
go back inside, settle down
to wait for tomorrow
when there's a 20 percent
chance of rain, another
long-shot bet, the best
we have to pin our hopes on
in these dry, dry days..........

meanwhile
the circus is in town
and elephants
are marching head to tail
down Houston Street
in a long line of gray inevitability,
like storm clouds that come and go
and some day come again





untitled
Painting by Christina Hymes




Reading Edgar Lee Masters and his book Spoon River Anthology and I think at first what a gamble it must have been, what poetic courage, to put out a whole book of poems about common, everyday people.

Then I remember Chaucer and think, maybe not.

Here are three poems about those common, everyday people from the book.



Anne Rutledge

Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
"With malice toward none, with charity for all."
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficent face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation.
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!


Peleg Poague

Horses and men are just alike.
There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
Black as a cat and trim as a deer,
With an eye of fire, keen to start
And he could hit the fastest speed
Of any racer around Spoon River.
But just as you'd think he couldn't lose,
With his lead of fifty yards or more,
He'd rear himself and throw the rider,
And fall back over, tangled up,
Completely gone to pieces.
You see he was a perfect fraud:
He couldn't win and he couldn't work,
He was too light to haul or plow with,
And no on wanted colts from him.
And when I tried to drive him - well,
He ran away and killed me.


Rev. Abner Peet

I had no objection at all
To selling my household effects at auction
On the village square.
It gave my beloved flock the chance
To get something which had belonged to me
For a memorial.
But that trunk which was struck off
To Burchard, the grog-keeper!
Did you know it contained the manuscripts
Of a lifetime of sermons?
And he burned them as waste paper.





"Swirlies"
Painting by Christina Hymes




Being on the lam again, i close out the week with this next poem.



fugitive from the poetry police

being less than
satisfied
with my recent output
i decide
today is the day i'll unleash
that deathless poem
i've been holding in reserve

now
if i can just remember
where i left it....

meanwhile
i need to clear my head
of the book i was reading
before i went to bed last night

happens to me
all the time

i stay up late
reading a book
then go to bed and dream
a continuation
of the story i was reading
so that when i return to the book
in the morning
i can't remember what plot
and character development
i read
and what i dreamed

and it's always a disappointment
when i sort things out
and realize
what i dreamed
is better than what i read
and since i can't go back to bed
and pick up on the dream
i'm stuck
with the story i'm reading,
not nearly as clever
as the one i dreamed

and talk about discouraging
i was just beginning a new line
to continue this poem
and i did it without looking at
the keyboard,
distracted, as i was,
by a young woman and man
who just came in and immediately went
all snuggly huggly
together on one of the faux leather chairs
they have by the window
and if i was her father i'd be saying
"watch out" because this guy looks a little hinky,
to me and maybe she ought to put off the
snuggle huggly
until we know a little more about him
probably sells drugs
is what i'm
thinking
because he has the look
or maybe some kind of terrorist
he has that look too

scraggly-looking goddamn
terrorist, pervert, drug dealing
chump...

but as i was saying i was distracted
by all the questionable snuggly huggly
on the faux leather chair
and wasn't paying attention
as i typed the first two characters
of whatever the next line was supposed to be
and then i looked down
and saw that i had typed
BS,
capital letters, just like that,
and decided this was my subconscious
talking to me
telling me something my conscious
wasn't ready to accept
that being
basically that this is another BS poem
and i ought to quit
while the quittin's good

before the poem
police
catch up with me
again




"Sunrise May 9"
Photo by Christina Hymes




If Christina stays with me on this, we'll be featuring her photos sometime in August. Since I miscounted and ran out of paintings for this issue, i serve you up the photo above, a preview of what's to come in August.

Before then, for next week, I'm working on poems by Tony Hoagland, Paul Durcan, Jane Hirshfield, along with a variety of poets from several anthologies.

Until next week, remember, all of the work presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
2 Comments:
at 7:48 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just wondering, have the copyright holders given permission for you to use their work? I know most if not all of the things you've reproduced here are not in the public domain.

at 6:09 AM Anonymous Arunansu said...

Congratulations for compiling such rich collection, Allen. Love your blog.

Post a Comment



Poem from the Rooftop - June 19, 2009   Thursday, July 02, 2009


Photo by Chris Itz
IV.7.1.




Hear (and read) the poem from the rooftop here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKUZuv6_bus

Having heard, do not forget.



Meanwhile, our own efforts for the week include:


John Engles
Instances of Blood in Iowa

Me
quineceanera

Japanese Death Poems by 9 Haiku Masters

Alex Stolis
Within your reach
Color me impressed

Me
green and purple pills
behind the green door
nonsense
Aii! Neda

Jimmy Carter
Alkways a Reckoning

Barbara Moore
Ice cream sundae blues
Note on freezer door

Me
stringbean

Sidney Wade
Monosonnets

Me
thinking about places i liked to go that have shut down in the past 12 months

Christopher T. George
Yoria Macedonia

Allen Ginsberg
Multiple Identity Questionnaire

Norman Anderson
Summer 1970

Me
dreams of wet

Pierre Martory
The Landscape is Behind the Door

Me
the magic flute

Wakter Durk
Disappearig

Sonia Sanchez
Dancing
Song
Ten untitled short pieces

Me
& that's it


More of me than usual this week. Think of it as an overstocked sale.








I'm starting this week with a poem by John Engles, a poet I don't believe I've read before. The poem is from Engles' book Sinking Creek, published by The Lyons Press in 1998.

Engles was 76 years old when he died in June, 2007. He was a professor at St. Michael's College for 45 years. His book, Walking to Cootehill, was a Pulitzer finalist.



Instances of Blood in Iowa

     1

That year at Iowa there were with me
Calvin and Veronica and Karl
and Gail, each thinking we loved the other - not
that it matters now, for Calvin leaped

from the cliffs at Palomar, and broke, and died
on the sharp screes at the base, and I
am as slow to memory as to love:
of Gail, Veronica and Karl I no longer know.

     2

I make a picture of that year:
the engraving shows
the locks at Keokuk, about to close
on a black barge; a yellow mist;

and overhead, too high
in the orders of memory to clearly see
and give a name to, a giant bird
hanging in the sky, wings wide.

     3

I try remembering how blood
beat in my wrist the day I stared
at the fat model, whose big breasts
were the first that I'd seen bare,
or the night I chanced on Veronica,
surprised, transparent, naked
as a ghost upon the stairs, clutching
a white cloth to her chest. But when I tried

to make of picture out of this
the burin leaped in my hand, and cleanly
tor the palm - whereupon the proof
displayed itself: red meat and yellow fat,

the white shine of the mortal bone before
blood welled and streamed
onto the copper plate, and dried.

     4

Once, when I asked him why it was
he bothered to write poems, Karl sighed,
laid wrist to pale forehead, closed
his eyes, and cried: Because I must!

Blood deeply etched
the plate. For days
I scraped away at the dried crusts
with a palette knife, and meantime tried

to get my belly flat with fasting, but
it broke me, every time. One day I woke up
still full of blood and fat,
and was briefly considered for Suez,
though in the end, Ike spared my life
to such mean evidence of breath as this,
beyond which circumstance
not much. The ruined plate
I sailed far

into the woods. The nameless model hides
her breasts, like Veronica, and holds
a supine pose, all thigh and mottled
buttock. My hand is scarred. It shows.

     5

As for the rest:
I mostly think of Calvin
who gives me back the lean and distant look
from far beyond return of favor for

the night he wrestled down drunk
crazy Karl, who'd run
a bread knife through my hand, with one
knee held him there, and took

my wrists and turned my hand palm-up,
his fingers streaming with my blood, his feet
in blood, blood everywhere. And I
still can and do

largely mourn for Calvin, who is dead,
and carried with him everything we knew -
how in the last good days of that last year
we nearly fled,
took to the boats, jumped ship
in Borneo, stayed drunk
in Peleleu, but in the end
did not. Blood leaps

in my wrists. I think
of Calvin with his arms like wings
stretched wide to hold him steady
to and air, and I

am standing on the sharp, receptive rocks
and looking up, the cold sea
at my feet, and he -
to hight to clearly name

in the last free instant, arms wide,
hanging there.








There was a big event recently, two actually, my wife Dora's birthday and my youngest niece's Quinceanera.

I'd been to several Quinceanera celebrations previously, usually for a cousin's, aunt-in-law's, grandmother's hairdresser's neighbor's daughter who I had not seen before and have not seen since.

It's amazing how much more fun it is when the celebration is for someone you actually know and care about.



quinceanera

June 20 -
D's birthday
and my niece's
quinceanera - in Hispanic culture,
the coming of age ceremony for
girls on their fifteenth birthday

as Padrinos de la Tiara,
D and i will do our part in the ceremony
by placing a crown on the head
of our Princess for a Day - i proposed
the frisbee method of placement
and still think it would be impressive
if we could do it from our second-row pew

but was overruled
as strict orders from the Princess
that Uncle Allen
to be kept on a short leash
were enforced

we will be going to the dance
after the ceremony
and i have been informed that
it being a dance, i will dance,
an activity certain to bring some measure
of entertainment to the evening, something
like watching a three-legged elephant
do the tango on a trampoline

~~~~~~~~~~

given the dueling priorities today,
we decided we won't acknowledge
D's birthday until next weekend
when we'll head out
to Marble Falls for couple of days by the river,
the discussion remaining as to whether
these couple of days will be spent
at a bed and breakfast
or a regular hotel

D
being an only daughter
with six brothers
always had bathroom priority,
while, growing up one of a family of guys,
I always had to struggle to keep my place
in line at the bathroom door

meaning that
while D sees bed and breakfast places
as quaint and comfy,
i see them only as one more place
where i have to fight for the bathroom








I picked up an interesting book at the used book store this morning. The book, Japanese Death Poems, is a collection of "jisei", or death poems, traditionally meant to be written in the very last moments of the poet's life. The poets in this cbook are Zen Monks and Haiku poets.

I imagine I'm not alone in suspecting that most of these poets did not actually wait until engaged in their last gasp before writing these poems, however much tradition might demand otherwise.

The book is divided in two, one part Zen Monks and the other Haiku poets. This time, I've included only the Haiku poets. Next time I do the book, I'll do the monks.

I'll let you do your own Wikipedia search on the poets' names, beginning with one most readers will not have to look up.



Basho

Died in 1694 at the age of fifty-one

On a journey, ill:
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields


Gohei

Died in 1819

A lone paulownia leaf
falls through
pure autumn air.


Koha

Died in 1897

I cast the brush aside -
from here on I'll speak to the moon
face to face


Kizan

Died in 1786

Clouds drifting off:
the sight of
moonlit heavens.


Riei

Died in 1794 at the age of twenty-two

All freezes again -
among the pines, winds whispering
a prayer.


Sakyoku

Died in 1790 at the age of twenty-one

How sad...
amidst the flowers of the spring equinox
a journey deathward.


Saruo

Died in 1923 at the age of sixty-three

Cherry blossoms fall
on a half-eaten
dumpling.


Tembo

Died in 1823 at the age of eighty-three

I wish this body
might be dew in a field
of flowers.


Dohaku

Died in 1675

Cargoless,
bound heavenward,
ship of the moon.








Our friend Alex Stolis is a poet of the streets and neon lights and dark places and I love what he does.

These next poems are from a recent project of his. I think I might have used them before, but I don't care. I like them and this probably won't be the last time I use them either.



Within your reach

I'll steal the words from your mouth
make them my own
and when the last moment is wrung out

of the last drink, we can run headlong
in the same direction, follow the smoke sifting
its way under the door

then bookmark our thoughts,
pray for shadows and forget how to walk
in a straight line

because it's easier to believe the world is flat,
when you're broke and desperation becomes
the softest shoulder to lean on


Color me impressed

Alice Blue

waking up in Rapid City, hung over and bled white
she wanted to turn back the clock and make me
say I love you

Kelly Green

a punk rock Veronica Lake with black
fishnets and a loaded gun - we were long
dead before we even started drinking

Jade

lipstick traces and burnt coffee,
everything else went out the window
when she lost her nerve

Ruby

L.A.'s in a blackout, San Francisco
can't remember my name and she forgot
our alibi before the lights went up

Sandy Brown

Seventh Street entry and a blue eyed girl wasted
beyond her years - the last great pick up
line fell flat broke on the pavement








Next I have four poems, another inadvertent series, I wrote on successive days during the early parts of the recent uprising for democracy and freedom forces in Iran. As folks who read my stuff know, I don't often approach things directly in my poems, preferring to slip in while nobody's looking with the things truly on my mind. That's true of the first three of these poems, but not the last.



green and purple pills

for some reason
i woke up this morning
thinking of Ray Stephens,
specifically
his song about A-hab the A-rab
which is probably pretty insulting
to Arab peoples
unless they have a sense of humor
which
from what i read in the papers
isn't allowed
in most Arab countries

i'm not sure why this was the morning
of A-hab the A-rab
except maybe it was the disappointing election
in Iran
but that doesn't make sense
since Iranians, including that Abbarabadaba guy,
are Persians, not Arabs
so everything i'm thinking about this morning
is just plain stupid

(it amazes me the way other people can write
whole books of poems without saying something stupid
while it seems i have to say something stupid
at least once in every poem - oh, well, can't
let periodic stupid storms interfere with the
full expression of my art or whatever)

anyway
they're rioting in Iran today
which demonstrates how they're
such a primitive country
while we're so much more advanced
and how they should look to us
for guidance
on how to deal with stolen presidential
elections
since we had one of our own a few years back
and we didn't go rioting in the street
and causing trouble

we just wrote nasty poems
and fiery letters
to mostly disinterested newspaper editors...

stuff like that

or the Iranians could, maybe just zone out,
meditate,
seek their center,
remember that from adversity
comes strength...
someday...
some say...
or just listen to some good music,
find relief in Stephens' recommended
remedy for mental and physical distress -
"Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated
Quick-Dissolving,
Fast-Acting
Pleasant-Tasting
Green and Purple Pills"

worked for me


behind the green door

i found a dim, cool place
to sit this morning
with good old fifties rock and roll
overhead
and i'd be just as happy
to sit here and do nothing
but this is my poem of the day time
so a poem is expected

but what kind of a poem,
a poem about what?

not about the weather,
i'm sick of the weather, it's hot,
and that pretty much covers it, and

not about politics,
i'm sick of that as well,
sick of responding with a geyser
of stomach acid at every dumbass
right-wing kook crap i read or see or hear -
people who were so wrong about so much
for so long, you wonder where they get the nerve
to say anything at all, and see there i went again
responding, making me pretty much as dumbass
as they are, except i'm not getting paid for it

and not about global warming - what's to be said
that people don't already know, not counting
those people, like those during the middle ages
who kept their personal plague-infected flea circus
at home when thousands
all around were being carried from their houses
in plague-carts for burning, wrap themselves
in a reassuring cocoon of denial

not about what's going on in Iran - we hold our breath
and hope for the best, fearing that all those young faces
we see on TV, raising their hands and their hearts
against oppression, are, in fact, in the preliminary stages
of their own early death, as no tyrant can be felled solely
by good intentions, blood must flow, with, most often,
the blood of martyrs shed in causes that will not win

and not about urban renewal, though that would be
interesting, decline and renewal, different faces
of the same life process, could be, maybe is,
the subject of thousands of poems, but not mine
since i just don't feel up to it today and probably
couldn't justice anyway -

probably couldn't do justice to any of those deeper
urgings today, the fifties rock and roll overhead
has my soul and it's that moment i prefer to
remember, joining old friends like rocking robin meeting
ally oop and charlie brown behind the green door -

that's where i want to be...


nonsense

despite more protentous
events
shaking the world scene
i decided to write
a poem
this morning
about people who back
into parking spaces -
leave the portentous stuff
to people with more
portense

i never saw anyone
purposefully
back into a parking space
until about 15 years ago
when a fella who worked
for me did it all the time

he was from
New York City
so i figured oh well
backing into parking spaces
is just one of strange things
New York City people do

but in the last couple of years
i see more and more people backing
into parking spaces
at the grocery store
wherever
young men with hot rod racing flame decals
on their Honda Civics,
women with babies in their SUV's,
grannies
in ginormous three quarter ton pickups
all backing into their parking space,
guaranteeing
among other things
traffic confusion and pile up
as they try to negotiate into a parking space
backwards
and the fact that they'll be driving
in entirely the wrong way
on a one way
parking lot lane
when they drive out frontward

i not only don't get
why they do it
i also don't get why all of a sudden
so many people decided
they were supposed to do it -

was it something on the internet
or a traffic directive from state troopers
or another of those damn memos i missed
why
all of a sudden
are some many people doing something
that makes no sense all

but that's the point
so many do so much that makes no sense
at all, some for reasons silly
and some for reasons profound,
like the hundreds of thousands of people
in Iran, old people, young, men and women,
who, making no sense at all in a world of
self-centered gratification,
stand firm before the water canon, the rifle,
the tear gas, the might of state and official religiosity -

some day generations hence in Iran will owe all they have
to these nonsensical people just as we owe unpaid debts
to those people in our own history who, lacking
any common sense at all, stood firm against
the tyrannies of their time

so it is that just as we enjoy such freedoms as were
earned for us, some day Iranians will have their own freedoms
so tendentiously and tenaciously won -

not including in either country the right to screw up traffic flow
by backing into a supermarket parking space


aii! Neda

aii!
Neda
i watched you die

beautiful in life
your eyes

in this frantic moment
blank and unseeing

your blood
a crimson flood

on the thug
strewn streets
of your oppressor

aii!
Neda
i watched you die

one of many

seeing your damaged face
i see them all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdG0mpRvUqQ









This being the day before the 4th of July, I submit to patriotic fervor and present this poem from a fellow second-life poet, Jimmy Carter. It is the title poem from Carter's book Always a Reckoning, published by Random House in 1995.



Always a Reckoning

There always seemed to be a need
for reckoning in early days.
What came in equaled what went out
like oscillating ocean waves.
On the farm, our wages matched
the work we did in woods and fields,
how many acres plowed and hoed,
how much syrup was distilled,
how many pounds of cotton picked,
how much cordwood cut and stacked.
All things had to balance out.

I had a pony then that lacked
a way to work and pay her way,
except that every year of two
Lady had a colt we sold,
but still for less than what was due
to buy the fodder, hay and corn
she ate at times she couldn't be
on pasture.

        Neither feed nor colts
meant all that much that I could see,
but still there was a thing about
a creature staying on our place
that none of us could eat or plow,
did not give eggs, or even chase
a fox or rabbit, that was sure
to rile my father.

        We all knew
that Lady's giving me a ride
paid some on her debt, in lieu
of other ways - but there would be
some times I didn't get around
to riding in my off-work hours.
And I was sure, when Daddy frowned
at some mistake I might've made, he
would be asking when he could,
"How long since you rode Lady?"








Next I have two short poems by our New Yorker friend Barbara Moore.



ice cream sundae blues

here come the scammers
taking their noon break
scarfing fudge sundaes
man from the wheelchair
palsy pretender
woman whose line is
"please help me I"m blind"
ensconced in his chair
reading a horoscope mag
moving behind her
pushing one-handed
man tremorless walks

we locals, resigned
many coins lighter
eyes with dimmed interest
watch them eat ice cream
we don't expose them
won't blow that whistle
there but for dumb luck
with sprinkles on top




Note on freezer door

How many times can you tell yourself
all your mirrors lie
the dryer shrinks your underwear
the apology will come
things will turn round
the book will write itself?

Catch more sleep each night
Go easier on the ice cream
Stop waiting for Godot
Serenade yourself with song
Pump the music up loud
Dance, laugh, weep, remember

Then write it all down perfectly
in every imperfect detail








Iran isn't the only thing that's been in the news.

I wrote this next piece after the Republican senator from Nevada was outed on his infidelity, only to have the poem validated a week later by the Republican governor from South Carolin as he got caught in his Argentine adventure.



stringbean

string
bean
looking fella
in a cowboy
hat
and shit
kicker boots
sitting
across
from me
drinking
from a quart
carton
of 2% milk
reading some
kind of
technical looking
book with
graphs
and shit
and one hand
looking
paralyzed fingers
tight
against his palm
like Bob Dole
'cept this
fella
isn't holding
a pen
in this clenched
fingers
like Bob Dole
always
did
good ol'
guy
that Bob
Dole
might'a been
a fine presi
dent
if he hadn't
been Republican
and 143 years
old -
probably
wouldn't
a'been fucking
around with no
chubby
interns any
way
what is it
with politicians
and their dicks
anyway
like just another
one this
week
screwing around
love me
love
me
love me
they're all
saying
all the time
waving their
dicks
around
starting wars
or
screwing
women either
too young
or too
married
for any man
with good
sense
to mess with
i mean
put your dicks
back
in your pants
and
grow up
for christ's
sake
you're supposed
to be
running
the country
fool
not running
around
on your dearly
beloved
who ought to be
whopping
you
across the head
three or
four
times a day
till
you get it on
straight

fool








Next I have and interesting piece by Sidney Wade from his book, Stroke, published by Persea Books of New York in 2007.

Wade is the author of four previous poetry collections and has published translations from Turkish in numerous periodicals. She is Professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

I like these little "monosonnets." May try some myself sometime.



Monosonnets

Pity the Poor Orange

bald
white
orb

on
the
table
rests

it's
veined
membrane
exposed

flayed
for
zest

Adam and the Snake Prepare to Recite Some Verse

Snake
says

let's
go
mezmerize
some
pomes

Adam
says

I
prefer
to
mammarize
them

After the Flood, Frogs

assemble,
whirp
and
fart,
dissemble,
delve
and
prong,
prolonging
the
agglutinant
song
of
themselves

The Spontaneous Combustion of a Shopkeeper from Alcohol

He
mus
have
ignited
red
and
fast

the
crusty
knave
light
spirited
at
last

Stroke of Genius

windfall
display
of art

playing
a
signal
part

flaying
the
heart

of
indignant
enigma








I am a guy who likes his routine, that's for sure. Never though I was, but I am. No problem with that until environmental changes force a change in routine. I'm still dealing with one such challenge.




thinking about places i liked to go that have shut down in the past 12 months

i am a creature of routine -
my greatest excitement is when
everything works out
so that my routine is not interrupted

i take it as validation
that my path is true and karma-appropriate

like all creatures of routine,
part of my routine has to do with the places
where i routinely spend my time

places that lend
a sense of peace and feng shui orientation
conducive to writing things
i sometimes cleverly disguise
as poems

one unwelcome result of the flow
of business and life
over the past 12 months
is the loss to me of places
that had become essential to my routine,
places rich with karma and feng shui,
places where legions of trees could fall in the forest
and i would neither hear nor care

those places gone and
not likely to return,
i now ensconce myself at Borders in the morning,
quiet enough most times, other times, like today,
overcome by screaming children
and mothers so accustomed to the screams
of four-year-olds that they seem not to hear
as if their children were screaming in a forest
and they refused to hear so no one else would either

but even on the quiet days,
i feel so much older here, in the company of old men
who gather each day to curse the Democrats
and queers and others of similar radicalist bent -
how i miss the young girls at Ruta Maya who danced
in the morning to the music overhead
as they brought my coffee and pan dulces

and that's why
i sit here, singing
polly wolly doodle all day,
thinking about places i use to like to go
that have shut down in the past 12 months








Here's another poem from our friend Christopher T. George. We just had a couple of poems from Chris a week or two ago, but I like this one so much I decided to set aside my usual practice of trying to spread some time between a poet's appearances.

And, though it makes no sense at all from the text, it still strikes me as a fourth of July type of poem, honoring, not in a nationalistic sense, but in a kind of universal way, the fight for family and country wherever it might occur. I might even find a thought for the good people of Iran here.



Yoria Macedonia
To George T. Matchett (1892-1987)

My grandfather deployed to Greece
as part of the British Salonika force,
front contra Hun and Johnny Bulgar.

And there men and beasts died
just the same, junked by Fokker
machine-gun fire, high-velocity shells

that zeroed in on mules and mule-men,
coordinates defined by Taube observation
planes, string-bag monoplanes, as Royal

Army Medical docs and nurses scrambled
to staunch the blood of men if not
beasts. The Greeks called Grandad

'Yori' (for George); he mused,
if he survived he would name
his daughter 'Yoria' as a gift.


Chris notes:
"My mother, christened Yoria Christine
Matchett, born September 27, 1920,
is still alive, aged 88 years young."








Next, I have a poem by Allen Ginsberg, written during the last year of this life. The poem is from the book Death and Fame, Last Poems, 1993-1997.



Multiple Identity Questionnaire

                "Nature empty, everything's pure:
                Naturally pure, that's what I am."

I'm a jew? a nice jewish boy?
A flaky Buddhist, certainly
Gay in fact pederast? I'm exaggerating?
Not only queer an amateur S&M fan, someone should spank me for
        saying that
Columbia Alumnus class of '48, Beat icon, students say.
White, if jews are "white race"
American by birth, passport and residence
Slavic heritage, mama from Vitebsk. father's forebears Grading in
        Kamenetz-Podolska near Lvov.
I'm an intellectual! Anti-intellectual, anti-academic
Distinguished Professor of English Brooklyn College.
Manhattanite, another middle class liberal,
but lower class second generation immigrant,
Upperclass, I own a condo loft, go to art gallery Buddhist Vernissage
        dinner parties with Niarchos, Rockefellers, and Luces
Oh what a sissy, Professor Four-eyes, can't catch a baseball or drive a
        car - courageous Shambhala Graduate Warrior
addressed as "Maestro" Milano, Venezia, Napoli
Still student, chela, disciple, my guru Gelek Rinpoche,
Senior Citizen, got Septuagenarian discount at Alfalfa's Healthfoods
        New York subway -
Mr. Sentient Being! - Absolutely empty neti neti identity, Maya Nobo-
        daddy, relative phantom nonentity

                July 5, 1996, Naropa Tent,
                Boulder , CO








Here's a poem from a friend, Norman Anderson, who we haven't seen in a while. Norm works as a Direct Support Professional in a group home. he takes care of six mentally challenged men. He says he's written a couple poems about Roger and the rest of the men in the group home. He's also working on a book about his job because , he says it's hilarious even though often serious.

Norm has written two screenplays he's trying to sell and a book.



Summer 1970

Summers that never end?
For me
it was
1970
it was me and my Schwinn Sting Ray
riding down
to a Lake that is Erie
My bike was blue
The water?
not even close to
being blue
we loved that "Dirty Water"
We didn't sit around
and play "Gangsta's Hijacking Grannies
For Their Huvarounds"
video games.
It was Leef Bubble Gum
and playing Little League Baseball
under the lights
no IPods or Blackberry's
we listened to CKLW
AM radio
it was the best music ever
"Spill the Wine" by Eric Burdon and War
"War" by Edwin Starr
no Hyundai hybrids
nothing like the sound
of those muscle cars
roaring through
town
with engines as big as me
no carb counting, no fat, low fat
no nutritional facts
printed on my
Necco Wafers pack
here's a fact for ya,
it's sugar for cryin out loud!
no 500 channels and nothings on
we had three TV networks
Ed Sullivan;
"Okay kids quite down
quite down now kids
here they are
The Rolling Stones"
Nobody was "vertically challenged"
no "misguided criminals"
no "differed success"
you were either good or bad
you passed or failed
meanwhile
a 19 year old soldier
crosses over into
the jungles
of Cambodia
his summer will never
seemed to end
I'm sure








I saw this very striking woman at the Borders coffee shop several days ago.



dreams of wet

the
woman
with very large feet
orders a latte,
flexes her long
red-tipped
toes
in her flip-flops
as she waits, hums

tall
with the lean, rangy body of an athlete,
blond hair with a look of chlorine burn
hangs down her back in a pony tail

a swimmer
is my guess, very active in her sport,
maybe professional,
the look of a fish
out of water
good swimmers get when forced
to make their way on dry land
amidst us dirt people

i can tell she is one of those

dreams
of wet whenever
dry








Next, the curious case of a French poet, unknown in France and first published in America. The poet is Pierre Martory and his debut collection published by The Sheep Meadow Press of Riverdale-On-Hudson, New York in 1994 is The Landscape Is Behind the Door, translated from French by John Ashbery.

Born in Bayonne in southwest France, of partly Basque ancestry, Martory spent much of his childhood in Morocco. Escaping Paris in June 1940, just as the Germans arrived, he joined the French Army in Tunisia and spent the years after the war working at odd jobs, novels, and writing theater and music reviews for Paris-Match. Until shortly before the publication of this book, he kept his poetry as his own secret, never trying to publish it and never showing it to anyone who might have been interested. As a result, until publication of this book, his work was entirely unknown in France.

Born in 1920, Martory died in 1998.

This is the title poem from the book.



The Landscape is Behind the Door

The landscape is behind the door.
the person is there...New York is full
Of similar places where a world,
A large cloud, is being built. Only
The heads stay put. You pay
Before arriving, a long time before
Opening your mouth. There are things
Near us which all have their green sides.

You wear your eyes and lose them.
A caterpillar makes the difference.
A girl whose face is full of blood
Stops and asks the time.
It's a year that doesn't know it's number:
A smile at the bottom of a pocket.
Look! the liar-bird, brother of secrets,
Leaves the familiarcreek bed:
The life of others painted on a lampshade.

"I draw you like a salary.
You are my superfluous statue
Hatched beneath hot tears.
I'm digging toward the antipodes.
I unwind the bandages, the horoscope:
It's my body, it's my cocoon, surprised
In a sleep of prolific sand,
That I'm uncovering, like a Cyclops that fainted."

I would be enough to enter, to sit
Near a book, to fold the shadow
To one's knees, to know who
Walks on the bed, who passes the mirror.
Dust tints the linens gray.
Photos choke on night.
Now nothing is visible in the room
Except the inaccessible landscape outdoors.

Down there, the fires of prehistory continue stubbornly
To glow. The lost felucca ferries a skeleton
To its grave. A disc feeds the sky.
In the hollows of geysers dolphins are taking
Advantage of their incognito to cry.
A pious hand is strangling the pity
And slips into the letter-box
The perfumed sadness of silence.

The door placarded with such moments
Doesn't open. The cigarettes unrolled
In smoke (a supplementary beauty)
Leave on the fingers the smell of time past.
Intelligence like a geometer paces
The distance from inside to outside.
Everything is in place, nothing is missing.
Weary of strife the bee on
The windowpane finally renounces the flower.








Great news, archeologically speaking, a couple of weeks ago, a great find, a find that tells us something about grand ourselves and our ancestors back in the deepest, darkest tunnels of times past. We are progeny of music and art and the musicians and artists who create it.

How's that for great?



the magic flute

35 thousand years ago
or more
a kind of human
in a cave in Germany
made music on a flute
made from the bone
of a bird

before God
there were gods
and before gods,
spirits of the earth
and sea and sky,
and before that
a kind of man
searching for the spirits
with his music,
creating gods
with his art

searching for
realities
beyond our own
from our earliest time

35 thousand years later
and we still
search








Here's a poem from our friend Walter Durk.



Disappearing

come look I shouted as
I waved
she stood across the blackened street
and crossed
crossed the lawn to where I stood
near newly-planted plants
she was not in the mood I
could tell well-dressed as she was
just returned from her office
but I pointed out the new plants to her
Loropetalums, Rhaphiolepis,
the Buford Hollies
she believed in the power of prayer
placed her hands on my sore back
to pray invoked the name of Jesus
her brain tumor disappeared
this way is what she said
why would I question her as
she stood before me
about three weeks ago
three weeks now since I've seen her
hacking a tree root from her lawn
her drive is full of cars now
none of them are hers








So many poets in the world, and so few of them known to me. But there are used book stores and walking into one on a good day is like finding the mother load of all those poems and poets i've never read before.

One book mined just this morning is Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, a collection of poems by Sonia Sanchez published by Beacon Press in 1998.

Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver in 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama. After her mother died in childbirth a year later, Sanchez lived with her paternal grandmother and other relatives for several years. In 1943, she moved to Harlem with her sister to live with their father and his third wife.

She earned a B.A. in political science from Hunter College in 1955. She also did postgraduate work at New York University, studying poetry. Sanchez formed a writers' workshop in Greenwich Village and, along with other poets, including Nikki Giovanni, formed the "Broadside Quartet" of young poets.

She married and divorced Albert Sanchez, a Puerto Rican immigrant whose surname she has used when writing. She was also married for two years to poet Etheridge Knight.

During the early 1960s she was an integrationist, supporting the philosophy of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). But after considering the ideas of Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, she focused more on her black heritage from a separatist point of view.

Sanchez began teaching in the San Francisco area in 1965 and was a pioneer in developing black studies courses at what is now San Francisco State University, where she was an instructor from 1968 to 1969. In 1971, she joined the Nation of Islam, but by 1976 she had left the Nation, largely because of its repression of women.

Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and several published plays. She has also written a number of books for children.

Among the many honors she has received are the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

Sanchez has lectured at more than five hundred universities and colleges in the United States and had traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Cuba, England, the Caribbean, Australia, Nicaragua, the People's Republic of China, Norway, and Canada. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University, where she began teaching in 1977, and held the Laura Carnell Chair in English there until her retirement in 1999. She lives in Philadephia.

The book includes a number of short poem. For this week, i'm using a number of those poems, in the order in which they appear in the book. Some are titled. Some are not.



Dancing

i dreamt i was tangoing with
you, you held me so close
we were like the singing coming off the drums.
you made me squeeze muscles
lean back on the sound
of corpuscles sliding in blood.
i heard my thighs singing.

~~~~~~~~~~

you asked me to run
naked in the streets with you
i am holding your pulse.

~~~~~~~~~~

Song

i cannot stay home
on this sweet morning
i must run singing     laughing
through the streets of Philadelphia.
i don't need food or sleep or drink
on this wild scented day
i am bathing in the waves of your breath.
~~~~~~~~~~

let every breast dance
a wild sculpture of rain
i raise my glass

~~~~~~~~~~

i don't know the rules
anymore i don't know if
if you say this or not.
i wake up in the nite
tasting you on my breath.
~~~~~~~~~~

i count the morning
stars the air so sweet i turn
riverdark with sound.

~~~~~~~~~~

i come from the same
place i am going to my
body speaks in tongues.

~~~~~~~~~~

i have caught fire from
your mouth now you want me to
swallow the ocean.

~~~~~~~~~~

love between us in
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.

~~~~~~~~~~

i await your touch
come magnify our smell
make of us a long journey

~~~~~~~~~~

i turn westward in
shadows hoping my river
will cross yours in passing

~~~~~~~~~~

i collect
wings what are
you bird or
animal?
something that
lights on trees
breasts pawnshops
i have seen
another
path to this
rendezvous.








When it's over, it's over. That's it.



& that's it

it is sunday
morning
and i am
where
i usually am
on sunday
morning
just a couple
of hours later
than i usually
am
due to a con
fluence of
events
which may
or may
not
be fodder
for a poem
a question
i am pursuing
at this very mo
ment as i
typidy
type
ty
p
e
hoping for the
best
but you know
we always
hope
for the best
even know
ing we'd hap
pily settle
for not so
bad
and even
not so bad
may be much
to ask for
today
as i feel like
crap
having 3 drinks
last night
tequila collins
if you must
know
which is
like
three months
of drinking
for
me
since i stumb
led on the
path of the
straight
and narrow
some 30
years ago
and that's
really all
i have to say
about it so may
be i should just
stop
and let you
get back
to your biscuits
and sausage
until
tom
mor
ow
&
that's
it








Done again for this week. Gather up your ooooooms and come back next week when, in addition to the usual suspect, me, I expect we'll have a taste of Pablo Neruda, Mark Nowak, G.E. Patterson, Laurie Lico Albanese, the most unlikely poet you're going to read next week, retired homicide detective Arthur Munoz, and other wonders yet undiscovered.

As usual, all of the work presented in this blog remains the propery of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
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