1 Comments:

at 1:18 PM  Alice Folkart said...

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

Thanks for including my work. I am honored.

Alice

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Morning at Peaceful Valley Ranch   Friday, April 25, 2008

III.4.4.



And here we are, now, with another week of poems and other pleasures.







I ended last week with a short poem by A.R. Ammons. This week I'm moving him to the front of the line. Both the poems this week and the poem last week are from Poetry East, Spring 1997 Issue, a journal published twice a year.


Fuel to the Fire, Ice to the Flow

In knee boots men work at the street grills
to plunge flow through the leaves plugging the

storm drains; what I mean is, it rained a lot
and you know when it does autumn leaves wash

down the runoff and get stuck in the drains,
plug up the drains till the water backs up

and elongates lakes along the street or fits
nicely into concrete boundaried corners, but

if the language doesn't caper or diddly, who
cares what the water does or if the men get in

over their boots: I have the same clogging
problems with my gutter spouts (among other

things): this guy put in a sieve to keep the
leaves out of the pipe when the opaque sieve

reduced the flow to zero and the gutters
overspilled: I am a patient man and can -

though just barely - afford some experimentation
but after a while I'd just as soon move somewhere

else, Arizona or the Sahara: I just can't
take it when things do not go right, although

I patiently grit my teeth and persist in calm:
trouble is it all breaks out at night, some

kind of itching or bowel contraction or loose
saliva: anyway, it seemed like a poetic

thing to think of men in their yellow
rain gear and black hip boots looking down

trying to find an open bottom to a pond, with
it still raining, etc., you know.


That was fun, here's another.


How Things Go Wrong

One person shortcuts across the lawn because
a new building is being added to the complex,
changing everything,

and his shoes press the grass over so
another walker sees away already waged, and
pretty soon the root texture, like linen,

loosens on the ground, worn through rain
puddles in a heel print so walkers walk
around, broadening direction's swath: more

rain widens the mud so that given the picky waywardness
of walkers one could soon drive a chariot
right down the middle of recent developments.








The second of Ammon's poems above reminds me of one of my own that I wrote in 2003. It was published that same year in Eclectica and I later included it in my book, Seven Beats a Second.



where things went wrong

life
gets more screwy every day

and I don't like it

I liked it better
when I didn't have to play dodge'em
on the highway
with all the beam-me-up-scotties
with cell phones in their ears

I liked it better
when the crazy person on the sidewalk
talking to the air
really was a crazy person talking to the air
and not a dweeb yuppie
talking to his dweebette girlfriend
on some kind of phone thing too small
for me to even see

I liked it better when men were hard
and women were soft and cars had fins
and the president was smarter than the
average dumbass drunk at the corner bar

I liked it better
when Desi loved Lucy
and Georgeous George was the meanest guy
in TV wrestling

I liked it better
when a microwave
was what your girlfriend did
when she was across the room with her
parents

I liked it better
when I was young

a real up-and-comer

and the pretty girl on the park bench
was waiting for me







It's been a number of months since 've used anything from the huge volume of World Poetry - An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity to Our Time. I'll rectify that this week with a couple of poems from India at about the turn of the first millennium.

The first is written in language of the Kannada spoke in the southern state of Kannada in India. The poet is Mahadeviyakka who lived from 1130 to 1180.

At the age of ten Mahadeviyakka was initiated by an anonymous guru into Shiva worship, an event she considered so significant that she counted the days of her life as beginning only from that act. In her devotion to Shiva, she decided somewhere along the way that, in spite of the endless male attention coming her way because of her beauty, clothes were a needless adornment for one who wanted only the lord, covering her self only with her long tresses from then on.



Like an Elephant

Like an elephant
lost from his heard
suddenly captured,
remembering his mountains,
     his Vindhyas,
          I remember.

A parrot
come into a cage
remembering his mate,
          I remember.

O lord white as jasmine
show me
your ways,
     Call me: Child , come here,
          come this way.

(Translated by A.K. Ramanujan)


The second poem was written in sanskrit by Kshemendra, a poet, satirist and historian who lived about the same time as Mahadeviyakka. The poem is excerpted from Kavikanthabharana, a book on the education of a poet.


A poet should learn with his eyes
the form of leaves
he should know how to make
people laugh when they are together
he should get to see
what they are really like
he should know about oceans and mountain
in themselves
and the sun and the moon and the stars
his mind should enter into the seasons
he should go
among many people
in many places
and learn their languages

(Translated by W.S. Merwin and J. Mousaieff Mason)








This next piece is by Robert McManes, a frequent contributor to several of the workshop forums I post on.


bangs were popular once

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

this is our legacy

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

and this is
e-z

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

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

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

and one day it ends
with or without
the bang








My next poem is by Henri Coulette from his book The Collected Poems of Henri Coulette published by The University of Arkansas Press in 1990.
Coulette was born in 1927 in Los Angeles, California and died in 1988 of apparent heart failure. After graduating from Los Angeles State College in 1952, he enrolled in the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. His work was included in the New Poets of England and America anthologies in 1957 and 1962. His first book, The War of the Secret Agents and Other Poems, published in 1966, won the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second book, The Family Goldschmitt, published in 1971, was almost lost when virtually the entire first printing was accidentally destroyed in the publishers warehouse and never reprinted. He did not publish another book in his lifetime. The Collected Poems that I pulled the poem from was published two years after his death.

Although his background included a Hollywood stint in the publicity department of RKO Studios (where he is said to have saved the publicity stills for Citizen Kane from the same fate as his own book), most of his working life was spent in academia. He taught for many years at California State University, Los Angeles, where he was teaching at the time of his death.



The Academic Poet

My office partner dozes
at his desk, whimpering now
as he dreams his suicide.
The November light kisses
the scar of his last attempt.
I open my mail: a plea
for the starving Indian
children of North Dakota;

a special offer from Time,
Life, and Fortune; a letter
from a 65-year-old
former student, suggesting
a gland transplant that will make
a man of me; it hurts him
to hear what they are saying
about me behind my back.

It hurts me to hear what they
are saying to my face, pal.
I circle two misspelled words
and write, "Help I am being
held captive at Mickey Mouse
State College," across the top,
wondering is this the one,
or the fat woman, perhaps,

with the post-menopause craze
for strict forms. "The sestina -
can you use any six words?"
Well, yes, but they should define
a circle, which is the shape
I describe, chasing my tail
from class to class, the straight line
disguised, degree by degree.








Here's something I wrote just a couple of days ago, something unique, a poem complete with its own critique.



the sun was bright today

the sun
was bright today
and the sky
blue
as an ocean sigh

while
we toiled
in a garden
of dark
obsession,
harvesting shadows
and sly glances
and blossoms
of dark distrust

the sun
was.......
.
.
.
....such painstakingly
constructed
bullshit
this is.
every word dredged
like a lead weight
from some pestilent depth,
like the sludge at the bottom
of a ship channel
where diesel fuel and dead cats
industrial waste
and the shit of a city's worth of human
defecation
lays a coat of muck
of once pristine sand,
a
spew of
toxic
waste,
is this poem,
no heart, no soul...

no balls...

deadly to the poet
as to the reader

i
would burn this poem
but just as there are good days
and bad days
there are poems good and bad,
precious
all
for the tick-tocks of the clock of a lifetime
spent writing them

to throw them away,
to throw away even the worst,
is to throw away time
from an already
too
short life








I always have fun reading Spoon River Anthology. Edgar Lee Masters presents his characters with a wonderful sense of irony and, when appropriate, quiet venom.

Here's one that fits right in for this time at the tail end, we hope, of the Democrats nominating process.



Hiram Scates

I tried to win the nomination
For president of the County-board
And I made speeches all over the County
Denouncing Solomon Purple, my rival,
As an enemy of the people,
In league with the master-foes of man.
Young idealists, broken warriors,
Hobbling on one crutch of hope,
Souls that stake their all on the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
Flocked about me and followed my voice
As the savior of the county.
But Solomon won the nomination;
And then I faced about,
And rallied my followers to his standard,
And made him victor, made him King
Of the Golden Mountain with the door
which closed on my heels just as I entered,
Flattered by Solomon's invitation,
To be the County-board's secretary.
And out in the cold stood all my followers:
young idealists, broken warriors
Hobbling on one crutch of hope -
Souls that staked their all on the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
Watching the Devil kick the Millennium
Over the Golden Mountain.







Here's a poem by Sara Zang. Sara is administrator of the workshop forum "The Peaceful Pub."

What a pleasant idea Sara presents here - that the ills of the world could be solved with a twist of our wrist.




Snow Globe

The glass round and smooth
warms to the touch of my hands,
It is the world and I own it...
Shake it, watch the snow
settle over the enclosed planet,

A small universe,
but nevertheless, mine.
Even upside down
the steeple holds
to the church,

The ground stays grounded,
A child frozen in play shows no surprise
at finding his feet above his head,
I hold the globe upside down
until I fear he might be dizzy,

Then with gentle hands
and the ultimate conceit,
with just the twist
of my wrist,
I set the whole world straight.








In the July 27th 2007 issue of "Here and Now" I copied this from the only on-line source of any but the most basic information on Doc Dachtlerr:

"This is as close as I could come to finding biographic information on the web for Doc Dachtler, He has lived and worked in Nevada County for over 35 years. He is as much a social historian as he a poet and storyteller. Dachtler's writing often deals with everyday rural life and the people and events that weave the fabric of community he calls home. He has worked as a one-room schoolteacher at the North Columbia Schoolhouse and currently plies his skills in the trades as a carpenter. He is widely published and is credited with two books of poetry, Drawknife in 1985 and Waiting for Chains at Pearl's in 1990. He is also the founder of Poison Oak Press, specializing in limited edition letterpress poetry broadsides. To listen to Doc Dachtler is to sit in his living room, share a cup of coffee and enjoy the company of a friend. Unless there are several Doc Dachtler, he has also worked as an actor and general contractor."

That"s what I could find out then and there"s nothing new from a Google search now, except the "Here and Now" piece from before.

The poem I've chosen is from his second book.



Dakota Same

I see much that is the same there.
Much that is the same
slow, round way
of most things and events in the universe.
Watch a fish circle round the bait
and make itself an arc of the same round
and later in the pan if it is cooked fresh enough
it will make itself into the same arc.
I have seen it again.
I have caught it again on an arched pole
for the arched hunger
in my arched stomach.

The turn of the swather wheel
lays the tangled clover hay down
in a round window.
The arc of a well thrown horseshoe
resembles the wheel coming up and going around and
down
and the arm of the thrower does the same.
The wheels of the side delivery rake
mound the hay into slightly curving rows
like the prairie of Dakota
which is slow to round but does it all around
and whatever isn't is called a Butte.

The speech of the people there has a slowness;
the inflection of a question comes into many statements
that circle a point
with the same beauty and grace
that my Uncle Shorty displays when he rubs
his huge belly in a big circle with his right hand
to show he is thinking something over.








I wrote this next thing a couple of weeks ago and apparently never used it here. Well, here's to fixing that.



ok, so you're telling me this so-called malthusian theory
of population growth and the inevitability of catastrophic
overpopulation wasn't, strictly speaking, my idea

i decided several years ago
that, being involved
in nothing else of consequence,
i should further my education

so i went to the university
in the city where i lived at the time
and signed up for a Masters Degree
program centered around
English Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies

I took my first class -
The Rhetorical Tradition -
basically a philosophy survey course
(seems the Greeks identified
Philosophy and Rhetoric as
basically the same thing) -
three hours a
night
four nights a
week
after an eight hour
day job,
it was not a bundle
of laughs,
but I did well,
as well as it was possible to do,
in fact, which reassured me
that, even in a class
with a bunch of kids
who could have been the kids
of my kids,
I could do better than hold my own

i did not go back the next semester
because it didn't seem my mind fit
the kind of mind
that higher level of education was aimed at,
minds directed toward classifying
and cataloguing
someone else's intellectual
output
rather than the kind of creative
intellectual adventure i was looking for

i'm an assimilator of facts and ideas,
every thing i know and think,
the entirety of the contents of my mind,
is the result of interaction with other minds,
but i could no more tell you
how those interactions occurred
or with whom
than I could tell you the chemical composition
of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

i know
what i know
but i'll be damned
if i know
how i know it

not
higher level education
material
at all








My next poem is by Rita Dove from her book On The Bus With Rosa Parks published in 1999 by W.W. Norton and Company.

Born in 1952, Dove was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1987 as well as a long list of recognitions and honors for her work. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.



I Cut My Finger Once On Purpose

I'm no baby. There's no grizzly man
wheezing in the back of the closet.
When I was the only one,
they asked me if I wanted a night-light
and I said yes -
but then came the shadows.

I know they make the noises at night.

My toy monkey Giselle, I put her
in a red dress they said was mine
once - but if it was mine, why did they yell
when Giselle clambered up the porch maple
and tore it? Why would Mother say
When you grow up, I hope you have
a daughter just like you

if it weren't true, that I have a daughter
hidden in the closet - someone
they were ashamed of and locked away
when I was too small to cry.

I watch them all the time now:
Mother burned herself at the stove
without wincing. Father
smashed a thumb in the Ford,
then stuck it in his mouth for show.
They bought my brother a just-for-boys
train, so I grabbed the caboose
and crowned him - but he toppled
from his rocker without a bleat;
he didn't even bleed.

That's when I knew they were
robots. But I'm no idiot:
I eat everything they give me,
I let them put my monkey away.
When I'm big enough
I'll go in, past the boa
and the ginger fox biting its tail
to where my girl lies, waiting...
and we'll stay there, quiet,
until daylight finds us.








Shawn Nacona Stroud has appeared several times on "Here and Now." His poetry has also appeared in the Crescent Moon Journal, Mississippi Crow Magazine, Loch Raven Review, and The Poetry Worm. His work has appeared in the poetry anthologies Poetry Pages Vol IV and Poetry From The Darkside Vol 2. He was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize for 2008.

This poem was previously published in The Poetry Worm.



1:00 am on Lake Harney

The night sky is scratch art,
a trillion glinting specks
stylus sketched
on a black plane,
carbon copied into rippling water.

I manipulate grains of sand
with my toes. The dark blusters
with sonance. A chorus
of horny frogs blare
over squeals of cicadas,
drowning the cricket's frail rings.

A warm Florida breeze gentles my face,
Spanish moss sways as the moon jumps
in a flicker of yellow
back and forth in the lake.

Behind me the house is dark,
concealing its conked-out contents,
eluded in a Sominex sleep -
they cannot discern what they lack,
I've shed them like a skin
discarded at my back.

I disown mortality -
that flesh cocoon has ensnared me
ten years too long and it knows it, it's ready
to give as I step onto the tide-slapped pier
and fishy-air taints my nostrils.

Brittle boards stretch out before me -
a plank that destiny blades my back to walk,
stupid pirate, I creak those slats willingly.

As I step forward a heron bursts
into the sky from the water,
white feathers spread
wide like an angel's.

If only such beauty could change me.








My next poem is by Anne Silver from her book Bare Root.

She earned a M.A. in Poetry from San Miguel de Allende in 1972 and a M.S. in psychology from California University Los Angeles in 1982.

Silver was an internationally recognized author of three books. A political and environmental activist, she also provided expert witness testimony on matters of handwriting analysts.

A cancer patient at the time this book was written, she described her poetry as the bridge that kept her connected to life. Born in 1951, Silver succumbed to her cancer in 2005.



Limitless

Could I love the starlit sky
if I did not also love the sun
the reflection of the meadow in a horse's eye
the curve of my nose
even the sound of my own voice
though I have spoken with the spirit of Esau
and wept because I had asked for too much?

How can I not love and thank
the Host of this entire universe?
I can't imagine not begging to stay
no matter when it's my time,
but when I must,
I want to leave
blowing kisses off my fingertips
and using my last breath to say
I have loved it all.








I'm putting this issue together on what I ardently hope is the last of the Democratic primaries, this one in Pennsylvania. Usually, I know from the beginning who I'm for and who I'm against. I think this might be the first time in my 44 years of voting when my mind has been changed by what I saw and heard during the campaign.



Strange


strange

after
seven and one half years
looking forward
to our next presidential
election
i could so now
wish
it was over

strange

after
all those
years
i could in so few
months
come to understand
why
the Clintons
are so despised
by so many








Aaron Silverberg has been writing since graduating in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1978.

He is an improvisational flutist, ecstatic dancer, organic gardner and personal life coach. This poem is from his book Thoreau's Chair published in 2001 by Off the Map Enterprises of Seattle.



Wild Skins

dead ahead
not three paces
two mule deer
female
5 feet plus

50-lb. pack creak
twitching noses
furrythick ears
liquid brown eyes
large enough to drown in

no possessions
quickened hearts exchange

hooves prancing closer
gamey smell devours
our knowing

shutters click
and they're gone

soon at the trailhead
we lean our packs against the car
and shed our wild skins.








Alex Stolis, a prolific poet both on the web and in print, lives in Minneapolis. Alex has recently published a series of poems based on the Tarot deck. Some of those have appeared here, including the very first poem in the series. This week we close the circle with the two poems that end the series.

I can't immediately get my hands on information about where details regarding the published series can be found. If I get that information later, I'll pass it on.



Card XIX

The Sun feels responsible for the death of the Moon

if only i had listened
closer to the wind
as it chimed its way
up the mountain
like an ink stain
spreading slowly
over the clouds

instead i watched
a bird's wing
score lines
in the night sky
and remembered

there was a time
i could sing
and words
would float
down stream
dissolve in water
one by one

until only vowels
were left sinking
slowly to the bottom
to mix with sand and stone


Card XX

The Last Judgment

will start on a dead end street at that just right time before the sun dies








After reluctantly concluding that our 18-mile-per-gallon Cadillac no longer made sense in a three to five dollar a gallon world, we bought a new car, a small SUV, not as great in the mileage area than we could have done, but it's high off the ground and easy for an old folk to get into, it's red and easy to find in a parking lot, and it beats the old car by about 10 mpg and I like it.

After it's first night parked under a tree, our shiny, red new car was customized in a variety of runny looking colors by bird poop...reminding me of this poem written in about 2001, first published in Poems Neiderngasse in 2002 and later included in my book Seven Beats a Second



Did You Ever Watched a Pigeon Walk?

notice the way its head thrusts
forward then back with each step

validation
I think at first
of the advice often given that to get ahead
you have to stick your neck out

then a closer look reveals
that though they walk with such purpose
they don't really go anywhere but in circles
which makes we wonder
about the whole concept of risk and reward

perhaps better to be the jay who sits
without moving, in a tree and shits on my car,

making his mark on the world
without the pigeon's phony hustle-bustle








My next poem is from Across State Lines, an anthology of poems about the fifty states by a variety of poets, some well known and some not.



This poem is by Michael Pettit.

Born in West Texas and raised in New Orleans, Pettit graduated from Princeton University, then ran a family ranch in Pearl River County, Mississippi. For the past thirty years, he has written award-winning prose and poetry published in numerous anthologies and journals. He has been a professor of English and also directed the Mount Holyoke Writers Conference, the Santa Fe Writers Conference, and was cofounder of the National Association of Writing Conferences. A National Endowment for the Arts fellowship winner, Pettit's books include The Writing Path, American Light, and Cardinal Points, which received the Iowa Poetry Prize. He now lives in New Mexico.



Virginia Evening

Just past dusk I passed Christiansburg,
cluster of lights sharpening
as the violet backdrop of the Blue Ridge
darkened. Not stars
but blue-black mountains rose
before me, rose like sleep
after hours of driving, hundreds of miles
blurred behind me. My eyelids
were so heavy but I could see
far ahead a summer thunderstorm flashing,
lightning sparking from cloud
to mountaintop. I drove toward it,
into the pass at Ironto, the dark
now deeper in the long steep grades,
heavy in the shadow of mountains weighted
with evergreens, with spruce, pine,
and cedar. How I wished to sleep
in that sweet air, which filled -
suddenly over a rise - with the small
lights of countless fireflies. Everywhere
they drifted, sweeping from the trees
down to the highway my headlights lit.
Fireflies blinked in the distance
and before my eyes, just before
the windshield struck them and they died.
Cold phosphorescent green, on the glass
their bodies clung like buds bursting
the clean line of a branch in spring.
How long it lasted, how many struck
and bloomed as I drove on, hypnotic
stare fixed on the road ahead, I can't say.
Beyond them, beyond their swarming
bright deaths came the rain, a shower
which fell like some dark blessing.
Imagine when I flicked he windshield wipers on
what an eerie glowing beauty faced me.
In that smeared, streaked light
diminished sweep by sweep you could have seen
my face. It was weary, shocked awakened,
alive with wonder far after the blades and rain
swept clean the light of those lives
passed, like stars rolling over
the earth, now into other lives.



Just as I finished up posting the Pettit poem above I realized it was not the poem I had planned on using. The one I wanted was the poem before the Pettit poem, this one by Hayden Carruth celebrating Vermont. They're both lovely poems, so I'll just use both.

Born in 1921, Carruth has been writing for more than 50 years and is the author of more than 30 books of poetry, criticism, essays, a novel and two anthologies. The recipient of many awards and honors, he is professor emeritus at Syracuse University where he taught for many years.

Here is his poem, celebrating, once again, the state of Vermont.



The Cows at Night

The moon was like a full cup tonight,
too heavy, and sank in the mist
soon after dark,leaving for light

faint stars and the silver leaves
of milkweed beside the road,
gleaming before my car.

Yet I like driving at night
in summer and in Vermont:
the brown road through the mist

of mountain-dark, among farms
so quiet, and the roadside willows
opening out wheel I saw

the cows. Always a shock
to remember them there, those
great breathings close in the dark.

I stopped, taking my flashlight
to the pasture fence. They turned
to me where they lay, sad

and beautiful faces in the dark,
and I counted them - forty
near and far in the pasture,

turning to me, sad and beautiful
like girls very long ago
who were innocent, and sad
because they were innocent,
and beautiful because they were
sad. I switched off my light.

But I did not want to go,
not yet, nor knew what to do
if I should stay, for how

in that great darkness could I explain
anything, anything at all.
I stood by the fence. And then

very gently it began to rain.








Mary S. Clemons lives in Florida. Her poems have been published in Loch Raven Review, Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, and soon to be in Strong Verse.

Mary is active in several on-line workshops such as Wild Poetry Forum, where I first saw and liked this poem, Penshells, and The Critical Poet as well as a local group, The Poet's Corner.



Rural Highway

When the neon of Dad's Bar and Grill
wanes from your rear view, the last
of the street lamp's

buttered dots melt into pavement.
The woods shrivel to comatose,
high beams glimpse consciousness,

then flat line. Imbedded line markers glow
like runway guidelines, merge
at the point of lost perception.

The radio blurs, a web of sound
wrapped in the road's silky rhythm.
Awareness buckles, lost

in familiarity. A lone car
is a lighthouse beacon,
cutting the night in slices.

You're a ship in the dark sea.
A gated fence, an estate's silent
lions assure the turn lies ahead.

The blinker ignites
shoulder grass, the heart grinds -

freedom lies where lines converge.








Now, here's another few minutes in the life of my main man, Charles Bukowski.



like a movie

it was like a movie.
I got the phone call and picked her up
at a bar off of
Vine St.
she was waiting in a booth
and the patrons were watching a
baseball game.
Friday evening.
she was drinking white
wine.
I got the tab: $4.75
and left a
quarter tip

when she saw my 15-year-old car
she said,
Shit.

I said, do you want to get in or not?

she got in.

at my place I rolled her a joint
and poured 2 scotch and
sodas.

she put her head in my lap
and said,
that fucking job is killing
me.

I rubbed her temples, her nose,
her eyebrows. she arched her back
to kiss me. I kissed
her.

the phone rang. I got up and
answered it, came back, sat
down.

that was Vickie, I said, you've got to
go.

shit, she said from flat on her back,
when do you write?

I smiled at her
as she left
and closed the
door.








We'll end this week with this little piece of coffee shop observation I wrote a couple of days ago.



fantastic news!

the chess master,
a young physician with
an unfortunate resemblance
to Harpo Marx,
enters the room
and a boy,
his pupil,
races to greet him,
"I have fantastic
news,"
he says,
pride-full, excited
to be telling the master
of his own mastery of something,
but his teacher
sees an acquaintance
and stops to talk
and doesn't notice the boy
who stops
as if suspended in mid-step
before an invisible
barrier,
then turns,
his face hung low,
and walks back slowly
to where his father waits

the teacher
finds a table
and lays upon it his board
and chess pieces
and turns back
to talk to his friend again

the boy
goes to the table and quietly sits,
aching to tell the news stuck
still
in his throat
waiting
until, finally, the master joins him

"I have fantastic
news," the boy tries
again

"Tell me
this fantastic news,"
says the master,
"before we begin our lesson."








No bull, it's time to go.

Fold your chairs and put them against the wall until next week. Until then, remember, all of the material presented on this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me....allen itz.

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Alla En El Rancho Grande   Friday, April 18, 2008

III.4.3.



Welcome to "Here and Now."

This issue is a little longer than usual this week, even though I don't have as many poets as I normally present, The difference is a couple of longish and one very long poem. I won't speak to the longish ones, since they are mostly mine, but I will say the very long poem is a masterwork I know you will enjoy.

Now, with things to do, things to do, no preamble this week, I'm just moving right to it.







I mentioned in closing out last week's issue that it seemed tamer than usual, so I'm trying to start off this week with a little more fire.

I'm afraid the best I can do is this poem by Michele Serros from the anthology bum rush the page - a def poetry jam. Maybe it's not so fiery, but it is funny.

Serros is from California and is the author of Chicana Falsea: And Other Stories of Death, Identity & Oxnard, and How to Be a Chicana Role Model.



Mr. BOOM BOOM Man

Here he comes!
Distorted bass
nearly three blocks away
I wait
at the mercy of the traffic light
waitin
n waitin
for it to change
from red to green
so I won't have to deal
with him......
Mr. BOOM BOOM Man.

But in my rearview mirror
it doesn't lie
n pumping his system
from my behind
I see his calling card
baby lavender twinkle lights
hugging a chrome-plated license plate
five-digit proclamation:
Double O Bad
coming at me!

A fifty-pound medallion
heaving a hickey-stained neck
closer
to the center of his manhood:
his beeper.
He pulls up slowly...
lowered Nissan mini truck
fills the vacancy on my left
n the automatic tinted window
makes it slow way down,
I start to wonder
Why,
why can't I be like the cool girls
and like the cars that go:
BOOM BA BOOM...?

Dig the way quarters
bounce off vinyl roofs?
Funky, fresh and stoopid
they say.

But then a flash
of gold gilded teeth
blinds my thoughts
n Mr. BOOM BOOM
shouts ut:
Hey!
Sen-yo-reeeeta!
mamacita!
You speak English?
Hey...YOU
I'm talkin to you...
aaah, you deaf bitch!

And then
I remember.

I wanna yell out,
Yeah, I speak English,
Pig Latin too
so Uckfay Offay
Mr. BOOM BOOM
Take your fade
n f-f-fade away!

But the light has turned green
n I don't have the time
(or the balls, really)
I take off
FAST
leaving behind
Mr. BOOM BOOM
Bu-foon








Trying to stay light and funny, I have this piece I wrote a couple of months ago. I don't think I've used it here yet.



the night I got chased out of Mexico

this
is a story
about the time
I got chased out of
Mexico
by a posse
of Mexican taxi cabs

I was a young guy
just old enough
to get a taxi license
and I was driving
cab
on the Texas side
of the border

I picked up a fare
outside
one of the hotels
who wanted
to go to Mexico
and I said
hell yes
cause it was about
35 miles
and at 35 cents
for the first mile
and 10 cents a mile
thereafter
it was a pretty good
payoff
of which I'd get
a third
which never was
a hell'uv a lot
most nights
but better for a
trip
like this

so we headed out
down 281
for Matamoros
through Brownsville
and across the bridge
from where I knew
how to go two places
boys town
about which we
will speak no more
and the central plaza
which was close
to the mercado
and lots of good
nightclubs
good food
music
and floor shows
with sometimes
naked women
and that's where
the fella I was
carrying
wanted to go
so we went there
and I dropped
him off at the plaza
and while he paid me
I noticed all
the Mexican cabbies
giving me the eye
and I noticed
when I left
some of those
Mexican cabs
started following
behind
and then I noticed
I had ten to fifteen
Mexican cabs
riding my back
bumper
and I said to myself
oh shit
I screwed up
and the way
they were following
close and honking
it looked pretty clear
that they were
pissed
about whatever
it was I did
so I took off
for the bridge
as fast as I could
trying to remember
as I flew
which of the many
one way streets
in Matamoros
were going my way
and which were going
to either get me lost
of back to the plaza
where more trouble
was sure to be
waiting
and when I reached
the bridge
I tossed my 8 cents
to cross
to the Mexican
border guard
without
hardly stopping

when I got back
my dispatcher
told me the rules -
cabs don't cross
borders
fares are dropped
at the bridge
where they can
walk across
and get a local
cab
so
I really felt dumb
and never did that
again
though one time
I did pick up a guy
at the bridge
who had been in
jail
in Matamoros
for three days
and was beat
all to shit
and bleeding and
barely conscious

I took him home
and dropped him off
at the hospital
and his friend
who had gone
to Matamoros
to get him out
of jail
and had ridden
back with him
gave me a $3
tip
which was pretty
good
for the time








My next poem is by Daniel Donaghy from his book Street Fighting Poems, published by BkMk Press in 2005.

Donaghy holds a B.A. from Kutztown University, an M.A. from Hollins College, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Cornell University. At the time the book was published he was working on a Ph.D. in English at the University of Rochester.



Ann's Corner Store

Ann Russell worked the nigh shift,
listened to Phils' games with the sound low
so her husband wouldn't hear it upstairs,
so her son wouldn't wake into the pain
he'd become from cancer, skin sliding from bone,
teeth gone, gauze hiding the scalp
once crusty from a slicked-back wave.
The boy's mitt waited by the register
while Ann bagged my candy ad gum,
her chapped lips a line of worry
while Kalas called the play-by-play,
whispering into the radio
for a sign that the Phils would pull it out,
get by the Dodgers into the Series,
that the store wouldn't get robbed again
or her daughter pregnant by a corner boy,
that her son would get better
and back onto Lighthouse Field,
owning short and third, hitting cleanup,
or else die soon and get it over with,
Ann gone those tight minutes
before she came back with my change,
flipping coins into the air,
pulling one from behind her ear
before she slid them into my cupped hands.








And now, the latest from our friend, Alice Folkart, caught in mid-loll on the beaches of Hawaii.



Sometime in July with Jude

"Hey Jude, don't be afraid,
take a sad song and make it better...."
That was the sound track of my own backpack-Europe Movie
the summer of '69, and I was the star.
It seemed to be playing in every the sidewalk cafe
and youth hostel dormitory
from Oslo to Ostia, Vienna to Varrenes.

It penetrated
through the hashish haze,
the wine wonderment,
the pot ponderings,
the ale addledness ,
because it was in English,
the blessed, beloved English
that I yearned for.

I didn't hear much English that summer,
never read a paper, except laboriously in my crumpled French.
No TV, no radio, just the sound track on the train, in the cafe.
The greater world off the trail meant nothing to me.
Only my world was real, only experience mattered.

On a mid-July evening in Amsterdam,
or San Sebastian, or Venice,
I heard that there were men dying,
our men, their men, women and children,
all for what someone thought
was a good enough reason - Vietnam.


But the Beatles told me what I could do:

"....don't be afraid,
take a sad song and make it better."

I tried.
I'm still trying.








I mentioned in the last issue that I was going to try to begin a new, occasional music review and commentary feature. We begin that feature this week with suggestions from Big G on getting out of a musical rut to cultivate an appreciation of different kinds of music than you're accustomed to.

Two things I can tell you about Gary - first, he really is big and, second, after years of listening closely to all kinds of music, he has developed an ear and a taste worth paying attention to.

Here's what he's got to say about broadening your musical horizon.



Music Seen

Hello my name is Gary and I live in San Antonio, Texas. I'm a somewhat obsessive music fan who has been collecting CDs for nearly three decades. During that time I have seen many genres of music come and go as well found great respect for music done well. However, a couple of years ago I wondered if I was becoming too locked in to a specific type of music. This often leads to a musical experience that wakes nostalgic or awaits the new arrival of some movement that will repeat that experience. I decided to explore other types of music I had not paid attention to. The rise of metal particularly in Europe caught my attention.

I had been exposed to this area somewhat by my friend John through bands like Helloween, Gamma Ray, and SymphonyX. The influence of classical music on the complexity of the music and the thought provoking lyrics was intriguing. How far down that road toward more extreme metal could I go? It was time for a journey.

I began with three albums - Natural Born Chaos by Soilwork, ReRoute to Remain by In Flames, and Blackwater Panic by Opeth. I tapped into a stream of music that forced me to listen not just hear. The lyrics provoked thought and perspective. The voices ranged from powerfully melodic to visceral growling that drew me in. I was listening instead of hearing or anticipating what I had heard before. Sometimes I felt the need to interpret what was going on. The more I expanded my view the more I realized so many great bands I had missed by restricting my taste.

The albums I mentioned are the examples I used but others may suit your taste as well. Even if the journey only goes a short way it is worth every minute. You may not go as far as the bombastic brilliance of Dimmi Borgir or the guttural musings of Six Feet Under but at least you may expand the territory you have seen.

       You Can't Hear What You Have Not Seen
            Big G








And speaking of music, I wrote the next piece seven or eight years ago after witnessing an event at a performance by a ska band my son was in at the time. Guitar, bass guitar, drums and three trombones, they brought the house down whatever kind of house they played, whether a bar on West Street, a raggae dive in the hood, a summer punk festival, or a downtown New Year's Eve street party.

On this particular night, they were playing a converted railroad depot near the Alamodome.

The poem is included in my book, Seven Beats a Second, available at select book stores or on-line by clicking on the "back to 7beats" link on the top of the page.



gotta dance

shirt off
chest glistening
sweat-wet hair long
swinging as he dances
atop the amp rack
twenty feet in the air
arms pumping feet pumping
skanking
lost in the island beat
oblivious
to the bouncers
sweeping across the room
like an ebony tide
converging on him
when he jumps down
and breaks for the door
smothering him
like a black cloud
on a sunny day

it's the music
he says
can't you hear it

gotta dance
man
gotta dance








I had intended to start this issue with this poem by Rudolfo Anaya from the anthology The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. But, it's very long and I didn't want to lose readers before they even got started.

Rodolfo Anaya was born in 1937, in a rural village in New Mexico, the fifth of seven children. He graduated from the University of New Mexico and worked as a public school teacher in Albuquerque from 1963 to 1970. He worked as the director of counseling for the University of Albuquerque for two years before accepting a position as an associate professor at the University of New Mexico.

His first and best-known work is a novel, Bless Me, Ultima. The novel was rejected by numerous East Coast publishing houses, until finally, in 1972, a group of Chicano publishers accepted his book which went on to win the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol award and is now considered a classic Chicano work.

As I said about this poem, it's a very long piece, much longer than I usually use on "Here and Now." But, in addition to being long, it is also mind-blowingly excellent. I cannot imagine that a finer appreciation of Whitman has ever been written and certainly not another such as this written with a passion to equal to Whitman himself.



Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico

I met Walt, kind old father, on the llano,
     that expanse of land of eagle and cactus
Where the Mexicano met the Indio, and both
     met the tejano, along the Rio Pecos, our
     River of blood, River of Billy the Kid,
     River of Fort Sumner where the dine suffered,
     River of the golden Carp, god of my gods.

He came striding across the open plain,
     There where the owl calls me to
          the shrine of my birth,
     There where Ultima buried my soul-cord, the
          blood, the afterbirth, my destiny.

His beard, coarse, scraggly, warm, filled with sunlight,
     like llano grass filled with grasshoppers, grillos,
     protection for lizards and jackrabbits,
     rattlesnakes, coyotes, and childhood fears.

"Buenos dias, don Walt!" I called. "I have been
     waiting for you. I knew you would one day leap
          across the mississippi!
     Lap from Manhattas! Leap over Brooklyn Bridge!
               Leap over slavery!
     Leap over the technocrats!
          Leap over atomic waste!
     Leap over the violence! Madonna!
          Dead end rappers!
               Peter Jennings and ungodly nightly news!
     Leap over your own sex! Leap to embrace la gente
          de Nuevo Mexico! Leap to miracles!”

I also knew that. I dreamed that.

I knew you would one day find the Mexicanos of my land,
     the Nuevo Mexicanos who kicked ass with our
     Indian ancestors, kicked ass with the tejanos,
     And finally got their ass kicked by politicians!
     I knew you would find us Chicanos, en la pobreza,
     Always needing change for a ride or a pint,
     Pero ricos en el alma! Ricos en nuestra cultura!
     Ricos con suenos y memoria!

I kept the faith, don Walt, because I always knew
     you could leap continents! Leap over the squalor!
     Leap over pain and suffering, and the ash heap we
     Make of our earth! Leap into my arms.

Let me nestle in your bigote, don Walt, as I once
     nestled in my abuelo's bigote, don Liborio,
     Patriarch of the Mares clan, padre de mi mama,
     Farmer from Puerto de Luna, mestizo de Espana y
     Mexico, Catolico y Judio, Moro y indio, frances
     y mountain man, hombre de la tierra!

Let me nestle in your bigote, don Walt, like I once
     nestled in the grass of the llano, on summer days,
     a child lost in the wide expanse, brother to lagarto,
     jackrabbit, rattlesnake, vulture and hawk.
     I lay sleeping in the grama grass, feeling
     the groan of the earth beneath me, tierra sagrada!
     Around me, grasshoppers chuffing, mockingbird calling ,
     meadowlark singing, owl warning, rabbit humping,
     flies buzzing, worms turning, vulture and hawk
     riding air currents, brujo spirits moving across
     my back and raising the hair of my neck,
     golden fish of my ponds tempting me to believe
     in the gods of the earth, water air and fire.
     Oriente, poniente, norte, sur, y yo!
     Dark earth groaning beneath me, sperm flowing
     sky turning orange and red, nighthawks dart, bats
     flitter, the mourning call of La Llorona filling the
     night wind as the presence of the river stirred, called my
     name: "Hijo!Hiiiii-jo!"

And I fled, fled for the safety of my mother's arms.

You know the locura of childhood, don Walt -
     That's why I welcome you to the llano, my llano,
     My Nuevo Mexico! Tierra sagrada! Tierra sangrada

Hold me in the safety of your arms, wise poet, old poet,
     Abuelo de todos, Your fingers stir my memory.

The high school teachers didn’t believe in the magic
     ot the Chicano heart. They fed me palabras sin sabor
     when it was your flesh I yearned for. Your soul.
     They teased us with "Oh, Capitan, My Capitan"
     Read silently so as to arouse no passion, no tears,
     no erections, no bubbling love for poetry.

Que desgracia! What a disgrace! To give my soul only
     one poem in four years when you were a universe!

Que desgracia! To give us only your name, when you were
     Cosmos, and our brown faces yearned for
     the safety of your bigote, your arms!

Que desgracia! That you have to leap from your grave,
     Now in this begetting time, to kick ass with
     this country which is so slow to learn that
     we are the magic in the soul! We are the dream
     of Aztlan!

Que desgracia! That my parents didn't even know your name!
     Didn't know that in your Leaves of Grass there was
     salvation for the child.
     I hear my mother’s lament: "They gave me no education!"
     I understand my father's stupor: "They took mi honor, mi
     orlgullo, me palabra."

Pobreza de mi gente! I strike back now! I bring you
     don Walt to help gird our loins!
     Este viejo es guerrillero por la gente!
     Guerrillero por los pobres! Los de abajo!

Save our children now! I shout. Put Leaves of Grass in their
     lunch boxes! In the tacos and tamales!
     Let them call him Abuelo! As I call him Abuelo!

Chicano poets of the revolution! Let him fly with you
     As your squadrons of words fill the air over
     Aztlan! Mujeres chicanas! Pull his bigote as you
     Would tug at friendly abuelo! His manhood is ours!
     Together we are one!

Pobreza! Child wandering the streets of Alburque! Broken
     by the splash of water, elm seed ghost, lost and by winds
          of spring mourned, by La Llorona of the Rio Grande
mourned, outcast, soul-seed, blasted by the wind
          of the universe, soul-wind, scorched by the
     Grandfather Sun, Lady Luna, insanity, grubs scratching
          at broken limbs, fragmented soul.

I died and was buried and years later I awoke from
     the dead and limped up the hill where your
          Leaves of Grass lay buried in library stacks.

"Chicano Child Enters University" the papers cried.
     Miracle child! Strange child! Dark child!
          Speaks Spanish Child! Has Accent Child!
     Needs Lots of Help Child! Has No Money Child!
          Needs a Job Child! Barrio Child!
     Poor People Child! Gente Child! Drop Out Child!
"I’ll show you," I sobbed, entering the labyrinth of loneliness,
     dark shadows of library, cold white classrooms.

You saved me don Walt, you and my familia which held
     me up, like a crutch holding the one-leg man,
          Like armor holding the lover,
               Like kiss holding the flame of Love.

You spoke to me of your Manhattas, working men and women,

     miracle of democracy, freedom of the soul, the suffering
     of the great war, the death of Lincoln, the lilacs' last
     bloom, the pantheism of the Cosmos, the miracle of Word.

Your words caressed my soul, soul meeting soul,
     You opened my mouth and forced me to speak!
     Like a cricket placed on dumb tongue,
     Like the curandera's healing herbs and
     Touch which taught me to see beauty,
     Your fingers poked and found my words!
     You drew my stories out.
     You believed in the Child of the Llano.

I fell asleep on Leaves of Grass, covering myself with
     your bigote, dreaming my ancestors, my healers,
     the cuentos of their past, dreams and memories.

I fell asleep in your love, and woke to my mother's
     tortillas on the comal, my father's cough, my
     familia's way to work, the vast love which was
     an ocean in a small house.

I woke to write my Leaves of Llano Grass, the cuentos
     of the llano, tierra sagrada! I thank the wise
     teacher who said, "Dark Child, read this book!
     You are grass and to grass you shall return."

"Gracias don Walt! Enjoy your stay. Come again. Come
     Every day. Our ninos need you, as they need
     Our own poets. Maybe you'll write a book in Spanish,
     I'll write one in Chinese. All of poetry is One."








Next, I have a poem by Joanna M. Weston.

Joanna has had poetry, reviews, and short stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty years. She has two middle-readers, The Willow Tree Girl and Those Blue Shoes, in print; also A Summer Father, poetry, published by Frontenac House of Calgary.



Wind In Branches

the curve and loop of wind
when doors are closed drapes drawn
sound of beating wings
the dip and rise of them

gusts move fabric
pluck leaves by the fistful
frittering their colour

sparrows cling to the feeder
impervious to the thrust
and force against them

wind finds its word
in microscopic throats
with seeds of meaning
blown down channels of song
releasing music
into the rush of air








For baseball fans we have a treat this week, from O Holy Cow!, the recently discovered poetry of Phil Rizzuto, the Hall of Fame shortstop and Yankee game broadcaster for years and years and even more years.

What I have actually are short, live, impromptu snippets from Rizzuto's many years of announcing Yankee games, arranged and formatted by editors Tom Peyer and Hard Seely.

Rizzuto died in 2007, eighty years from his birth.



Reversal of Opinion

And he hits one in the hole
They're gona have to hurry.
THEY'LL NEVER GET HIM!
They got him.
How do you like that,
Hold cow.
I changed my mind before he got there
So that doesn't count as an error.

July 10, 1992
Seattle at New York


Dickie Poem Number One

Dickie Thon the batter.
Now way way back when he first came
Into the big leagues,
I mention the fact that I used to play
With his grandfather.
Baseball.
Sandlot baseball.
He went away to the minor leagues.
And during the service time,
He was in Puerto Rico.
And he was a very
Astute young man.
Don't forget,
This was way back
In the Second World War.
Grounder to short,
And Velarde just flips
To Stankiewicz for the force.
And that'll do it.
And I'll finish my story later.

April 27, 1992
Texas at New York








I wrote these little pieces a couple of years ago after reading from the Tao Te Ching and freely admit there are no new thoughts or ideas here. My aim was to try to rewrite what I had read in language closer to my own, aiming, in the process, to get a better understanding behind the deceptively simple text.



along the way

i

listen to silence
and know a true mystery

whose answer is seen only
in darkness complete

ii

beauty is not known
in the stars

and water not found
in the seas

wet is a thing
of deserts searing and dry

and beauty
a diamond in the mud

iii

with this mark
i rend the universe

with this voice
i cry the apocalypse

together,
we will defy all eternity

iv

from birth comes death
our birthright to die

leaving the unborn to live
forever, stay forever, be forever

while we pass in and out
of the eternal wake

v

sing softly
and let the song
become your voice

be at one
with the one
that encircles all

become the center
by letting the center
find the one that is you

vi

look at me
and see a construct
of belief

for i am not
until we agree
i am

vii

find the value
of that which is not

the hole in a cup
that makes a bowl

the cut in the wall
that opens a door

the empty corner of a heart
that awaits the embrace
of a love other-than-self

that which is not
is the nurture
for that
which may someday be

viii

the gifts of old
can only be seen
by those with a gift
for seeing anew

the blur of familiarity
blinds us

eyes tight shut
restores our deeper vision

ix

water flows
as it will go

bringing life
with the indifference
of a pure force true
only to its own measure

we can ride its tides
but never change them

x

listen

if i say nothing
you will hear the truth
of all i know

if you hear me speak
you hear a lie
for the truth cannot be told








James Laughlin is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He founded the publishing house of New Directions in 1936, while still an undergraduate at Harvard. His own first book of poems, Some Named Things, appeared nine years later. He published his Collected Poems in 1994, then published The Country Road in 1995 and The Secret Room in 1997.

This poem is from The Secret Room.



The Truth Teller

As I was walking along the sidewalk
Of 14th Street I encountered a mad-
Woman who, without pause, was talking
To herself in a loud voice, making
Wild gestures as she went along. I
Turned around to follow her, thinking
She might have a message from, some-
Thing I ought to know about. Perhaps
She was in her fifties, a dumpy
Little person, her hair all in
Unkempt tangles. She was wearing
A bright red dress which must have
Been given her by the Salvation
Army. Her high sneakers were filthy.

Although I got close to her, she
Was hard to understand. At times
Her voice rose to a shout. Was it
Yiddish, Polish, Italian she was
Speaking? None of those that I
Could recognize. Was she echolalic?
Probably she had been let out of
A mental hospital as harmless.
Then I got it: she was cursing
God in very rough language. "You've
Made a fucking mess out of this
Fucking world. No place for us
Poor people to live, nothing to
Eat unless we beg for it. Only
The fucking rich people have
Anything and they don't give a
Shit about us. And the fucking
Police rousting us out of the
Good begging streets, fucking
Bastards the lot of them."

That was the message, and it
It was the truth, a true message.
When we stopped for the lights
At Eight Avenue I reached for
My wallet and gave her all the
Bills I had. She didn't thank
Me, didn't even look at me. She
Just stuffed the money into the
Neck of her dress and ran across
The avenue, still shouting and
Swearing. "Fucking world you've
Made, all shit, fucking shit."








The next poem is by Laurel Lamperd.

Laurel says she lives within sight o