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Black and White and Read All Over
Friday, January 11, 2008 III.1.2. Welcome, again, to "Here and Now." As suggested by the title, I'm doing something different this week - all my images are black and white. Color pictures are pretty but they lack the punch and versatility of black and white, which can be presented in a way that is strictly reportorial or they can be suffused with a mystical aura that reduces everything to shapes and shadows only faintly reminiscent of whatever the subjects pictured are objectively. But maybe I'm just old-fashioned, a product of black and white tv and movies. I can remember when you could tell how serious a movie was by whether it was color or black and white? If it was color, it was probably fluff; if black and white it was serious. I know people now, who won't go to a movie if it's not in color. They make me think of movies I've seen in the past and how the ones still emotionally alive to me were rarely made in color. Anyway, all the images this week are black and white.  I had a hard time picking my first poem for this issue. I usually give a lot of thought to that, figuring if I can get people to read through the first poem, they'll probably go on to read the rest. I went through five different books, looking for something that would pull people along without finding anything that didn't bore the crap out of me. Finally, I remembered Travis Watkins. I had forgotten about him, despite haven given him the longest introduction on his first appearance than was given to any other poet before him. And so, here he is, number one of the list of poets for this issue. I know he'll pull you on to the second poem and beyond. I mentioned this the last (first) time I used his work, but it is worth mentioning again. Check out laymanlyric.com to hear Watkins and other poets in performance. To get there, just click on the link on the right. Here's the first poem for this week, from Watkins' book My Fear is 4 U. Your Village For Mom They say, "it takes a village" Huh! I had my mom. And mom was a white as burning bright big city night lights That Pierce the black of midnight. And Dad was black as midnight And I'd stay up till midnight But Dad was out past midnight So I must have missed him then... And I must have missed it when, Addiction took him in And he sinned, Over And Over again. He beat down the doors of prison with ill decisions Till Them 'bars would let him in And I did not know then But Them 'bars were his old friends And He'd be back again But Let me say again, I had my mom. And mom would shield me from those hateful glares That Didn't care how much she loved me They didn't know who much she loved me God Knows how much she loved me And I know how much she loved me But You cannot hide from truth... And you cannot hide from youth I'd hear, "Hey Travis, you got a white boy's name" I thought I was. "But, hey Travis, you got a black boy's mane" I thought I was. Guess I never really thought, I just... Was. But then came that exam I am, Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, non-Hispanic Pick a struggle, pick a burden , pick a race. Funny! All this time I though we were human. But the white boys called me nigger And The black boys called me nigga. So I figured that's what I became. Filled in the "black" bubble by my name And waited for daddy to come back But, I had my mom. And mom was as wise as ten thousand black men But She could not teach me black... I needed Du Bois, I needed Carmichael, I needed Malcolm, Baraka, and Hughes But She could not teach me that And Dad couldn't teach me that And School wouldn't teach me that So Who's gonna 'teach me black? Guess The world would teach me that. And... In hindsight, Mom had fine sight to see past all colors But the world sees all colors, To the world, I'm just colored! And the world's not contrite. But all was right with the world When we got that call... No operator No fees No, Barriers at all. Just dad And He was out for good! He Changed his life for good!! He Left them bars for good!!! But He could not stay for good... I wish he would... But I had my mom. And mom worked like a slave for her sons So We were often left alone. We Faced the world alone! We Grew as men alone!! We Found ourselves alone!!! But alone does not suit all. And I can remember how small I felt Seeing big brother melt down, And succumb to pent-up pain... You see had dad remained, I wouldn't have listened I was stubborn But Mike needed a dad to govern His growth into a man But Dad was not a man! And mom was not a man By no fault of her own. It's hard being a white woman Raising two black men alone! Working two late shifts alone!! Earning two incomes alone!!! Cause 'your so called man, left you alone!!!! But mom was strong... And I'm so glad I had my mom, And mom and dad would finally work things out But They couldn't change our past. They couldn't erase our past. They couldn't relive our past. They Couldn't forget our past... But no one ask. You see we all have a village And Every village has dark alleys And Low valleys That We would soon forget But Don't forget... Those same dark alleys And Low valleys Are where we learned to love Where we learned to care Where we learned to hope Where we learned to dream Where we learned to fight And where we learned to stand! Understand... Your village made you human. And you don't always have to love your village But It will always be, Your village. (Spring '04)  I have our friend Alice Folkart back this week with a new year's poem. Hope it Fits The old year, full of moth holes, stained with forgotten meals, mulberry juice, goose gravy, is unraveling. This year always feels like all there is, forever, but then the unraveling begins, one strand, all past, past, past, but all future too. We unravel the past to get the yarn for the future, and so it goes, kinks and faded bits and all, the old year into the New year. Hope it fits.  What would the new year be without some good old-fashioned German expressionism. So, how about Hugo Ball, from the anthology Music while drowning, German Expressionist Poems. Ball studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg. In 1910, he moved to Berlin and became an actor and collaborated with Max Reinhardt. He was one of the leading Dada artists, creating the Dada Manifesto in 1916. The same year as the Manifesto, in 1916, Ball wrote his poem Karawane,, a German poem consisting of meaningless, nonsensical words, reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism. As confounder of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, he led the Dada movement there, and is one of the people credited with naming the movement "Dada," by allegedly choosing the word at random from a dictionary. He was married to Emmy Hennings, another member of Dada. His involvement with the Dada movement lasted approximately two years. He then worked for a short period as a journalist and eventually retired to the canton of Ticino where he lived a religious and relatively poor life. He died in Sant'Abbondio, Switzerland in 1927. His poem Gadji beri bimba was later adapted to the song entitled I Zimbra on the 1979 Talking Heads album Fear of Music. His poem was translated for the book by Anselm Hollo. King Solomon with the crash of cymbals the blare of trumpets he broke the mute circle of demons lit up the night grown dim and grey with their breath a woman we saw by his side swaying forward receding swaying eyes like a mummy ecstatic the white peahen from Sheba and the King himself in his tent its entrance fringed with flames stretched out his arms and the walls rose the cedar-trunks fused and countless beasts and devils saw dancing down dancing down  Writing a "poem-a-day" is a tough regimen, possible sometimes only through excuse-making. As I did here... set out to write a poem i set out to write a poem right now, the first for the new year, but it's a bright and beautiful day and i'm as sleepy as a dog in a patch of winter sun so literary ambitions must be set aside dreamtime calls and a mistress not to be denied is she  My next poem is by Danielle Legos Georges from the anthology bum rush the page, published by Three Rivers Press in 2001. Georges is a Boston based poet. She is book review editor for Obsidian III. Her own work has appeared in The Beacon Best of 1999, The Butterfly's Way and Step into a World. Grasshopper I turn my head and say, Ah, grasshopper. I turn my head and say, Ah, grasshopper, in imitation of the master who teaches David Carradine that life is a series of mountains to be destroyed or resurrected in the imagination, or a blade of grass atop which titters a water drop that sticks to the hind legs of an insect that flits across grass as if across water. Water-crawler, with legs so light, body so weightless that it lifts water to it, does not sit on the oily surface, glosses surface, like a balloon whose belly is lighter than the air around it. Translated it goes in and through and out; in and through and up in a cloth bubble that takes us around the world in a fraction of eighty days; the Himalayas, the hemispheres below us like a chain of glass beads; the Indies East and West in the seismic tremor of lifting a hand to the breeze; in the ease with which a world is glossed. The huge wave of an arm across a distant horizon; the gesture here is where it all begins. But the fortieth days finds our man Jesus in the desert, darkness settling him the light around him glowing, refracting to show the most beautiful angel the great wings beating still, the land spread before him, a new world panorama. Yours if you'll love me, the light breathes. We know the story: He eventually returns on a donkey to the city that will kill him. Martyrs always get it in the end, but do grasshoppers? I turn my head and say, Ah, grasshopper. I turn my head and say, Ah, grasshopper.  Next I have young San Antonio poet, just months returned from military service in Afghanistan, Rob Soto. I take his poem from the little pocketbook of his work produced by LeArt Works, Atheist in a Foxhole near life experience Silent signals reach me in my sleep. They take th silk road past empty desert outposts to my inner ear and vibrate my spine which has become accustomed to their frequency. The bombardment of megahertz of metaphors leaves radiation burns on my dreams until I can count every single star in the unobstructed sky again. The wind pauses only long enough to cock back like a fist and rip through the particulate energy of life itself. And as awful as it sounds, I imagine the footprints of conquers impressed into the blood stained ground before me only to be swept up in another dust storm and filling my naked lungs. Suddenly North Dakota doesn't seem so bad. The green is starting to make sense to me now, even if it is all blue. Moonlight falls apart in the palm of your hand and even though you hate the cold it makes so much sense to you now. Chopper blades and low yield explosions sound like sadness bouncing off the walls of mountains which curtain the sky. Jackals are the only ones to find any of this funny. So they laugh somewhere out in the darkness choosing not to fill us in on the joke. You can taste morning there. The metallic caress of a canteen cup against your tongue. The soft quake of sunrise meets bloodshot eyes. Tracer rounds fill you thoughts, fire fills your dreams, longing fills your heart. Humanity doesn't seem existent from the valley floor. The view from the air isn't much better, but at least you can cover more ground. Words can fall apart over and ocean and for a while or so you're actually foolish enough to think you left it all behind. After that every three dollar pitcher of beer at O'Corley's is a surrender. You're not really happy if the only people you hang out with are just as miserable as you. These are the sort of things your mind will fool you into believing are perfectly normal until you figure out where you want to go.  My next poem is by Sapphire, from her book American Dreams. The is the last section of a poem too long to post here completely. It is about the murder of a 15-year old girl. from Strange Juice (or the murder of Latasha Harlins) 2. I don't remember what I did wrong. Somebody hit you, you hit 'em back. She didn't have to shoot me. I was born here and someone can shoot me and go home and eat turkey on Thanksgiving - what kinda shit is that? Videotape the bitch killing me, the hoe's own videotape recording the end of my days reeling obscenely for tv cameras - my blood sweet Jesus Rolling 20s Bounty Hunters PJs Imperial Courts NWA LAPD South Central Hollywood 18th Street Diamond Riders Easy Riders it's a brown thing it's a black thing Crips Bloods, Mexicans together forever tonight. I don't remember... I jus' wanted some juice and now I'm dead. Killed by a model minority success story. Listen, is anybody gonna say anything? I was gonna get a new orange leather jacket to match my Reeboks. I was passing math and doing good in English. Fuck history, I'm tired of hearing 'bout George Washington and Columbus. I told the cracker, "Shit, mutherfucker what about us?" No, I wasn't pregnant, but I was gonna have a baby, definitely, one day I like Luther Vandross, Tone-Loc and Queen Latifa. Listen, is anybody gonna say anything? Community service! A white bitch with a pink slit between her legs like mine, drips red. A white girl that probably got into law school on the affirmative action birthed by black people's struggle, sitting on a seat that was opened up for her by Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer, nig - no, black people, African Americans, like me marching under fire, hoses, broken glass gasolined bodies testicles sliced off, strange fruit, tossed to dogs. Swinging from trees. This white Judge woman hooded in mahogany-walled chambers decides my life is not worth nothing. A fifteen-year-old black girl equals zero in this white bitch's book. She sentences this yellow gunslinger to community service and probation. What are the terms of her probation, that she don't kill nobody white? Does anybody hear me? Without my tongue. Fifteen and out of time. Listen to the gasoline on the wind. Listen to my blood rhyme - drip drop on the sidewalk. Hear me children - and BURN.  I can be an angry poet, too. Just watch me here. dang! some days are lost from the start I began at 8 am to work on my printer it whirrs and buzzes and beeps and whistles and scrapes and scrunches but it does not it is now 9 pm and it still does not neither does the new one I bought this afternoon at 3 pm well, doggone it, I said (not really, but this is a PG rated poem so that'll have to do) this can wait until tomorrow I promised Reba I'd be right back for our walk (already overdue at 9 pm) then went to Borders for a latte and a nice quiet read of today's funnies I always save the comics for later in the day when I'm hard up for a laugh, but not funny this, the newspaper has disappeared from my car and Borders is sold out of everything but the Times and it doesn't have comics (and whattheheck is it with them, anyway, dadburn New York liberals think they're too good for Dagwood and Pickles and Zits and Ruthie and Mutts and the rest) so I'm stuck here with a nice latte and no comics, expressing my frustration on this little napkin that keeps tearing into shreds as I write and I realize this is kind of therapeutic in itself, tearing these little napkins into shreds and throwing them up over my head and everyone's looking at me kind of funny so now I have to leave dang!  As you may have noticed, I'm paying special attention this week to younger, unknown or lesser known poets. The youngest of this group is probably Brigid Milligan, who published her first book while a senior at a San Antonio high school. This poem is from that book, Mija, Never Lend Your Mop.... Insult the greatest insult is to be rejected in a poetry contest you won the year before sunk between the sagittal sutures within her consciousness is a ballroom where all good poets win poetry contests everyone writes with pencil those who quote cliches are dragged out into the street and shot plagiarism is an art form and honesty is mass produced abstract art hung over every piano crawling out of her rhythmic sonnets she awakens, notices her mirror too short for her head too tall for her feet never quite seeing the whole picture writing for critics and reviewers something is lost in the translation she is found verbose and vague again running out of breath and words and stories she sits with sharpened pencils on an overstuffed sofa forming adjectives from nouns making up for lost time praying no one notices her absence of thought small handwriting that further complicates the readability of her meaning the greatest insult is to be rejected in a poetry contest you won the year before and everyone forgetting you wrote poetry  Now another San Antonio poet, our erudite eminence, Dr. Waldazo Suppository Poem 6.3.06 1:42 AM The pharmacist hurt my feelings today. I merely asked a question... Let me explain what he had to say. I didn't care for the direction or the destination In his reply response When I ask for instruction On the proper use of suppositories. Being a neophyte Not a medical whiz, not well-read, I want to get all procedures just right. I take literally every word that is said. Surely he could understand my initial reaction. I was taken aback. But, now I see the obvious, The fundamental nature of his exclamation. After a detailed explanation I understand what he meant About where they went. I just think he could have said something with more class Than simply, "Stick it up your ass." Bush has a suppository presidency. Every plan that he's got Is shoved up my ass. There's no consultation about his approach. Whether it's about medicine, schooling for kids, Gay marriage, abortion, the Bill of Rights, Or if it's okay to toke on a roach. The War in Iraq Is a great example of the same shit. 'I'm the President, so get over it." "It's my way or the highway." He is a hard pill to swallow Not any easier to take When it's shoved up my sphincter By a self-righteous decider Who is dumber than what his approach Is trying to eliminate... Namely, that I might give him some shit.  Here's another poem from bum rush the page, this one by Jacqueline Jones LaMon, a member of the faculty at Antelope Valley College in California. Sammy Davis Jr. who can make the sun rise? sprinkle it with dew... she awakened me with tears get up baby / get up & pack martin luther king, jr. has been shot & killed you & I baby / we're going to atlanta mom & i flew there to pay our respects say goodbye to a man & hello to his dream I have a dream that one day... we crashed a hotel segregated high rise tower on peachtree street with white valets & nervous executives eager to appease they sorta welcomed our presence kinda treated us proper like tellin us 'bout all the amenities this four star had to offer so many things but i only heard the pool / the pool we have such a lovely pool so first things first i went to swim lap after lap back 'n' forth like ester mae williams come down outta da hood oblivious to the scavengers & piranha angry white men pointing / disgusted flustered white woman in high heels / appalled there's a NEGRO in our pool a COLORED girl, I tell you mommy, will she hurt the water we can't go in til she comes out I executed my backstroke eyes climbin higher towards heaven & fixed upon a hip black man stridin balcony tough jumpin / projectin non-containin himself you stay in that water, girl you swim & swim some more doncha pay no mind to those circlin sharks look up / see God / & swim girl swim sammy took us out to lunch said what I had done was no different than martin or rosa or harriet even cuz that is how we swim this meet just livin life as we choose to live one backstroke at a time  Here's another of my dog-walk poems. I have a lot of these during the cool part of the year; not so many in the summer. a fair wind a fair wind tonight, bare tree limbs clapping together like dominos on a wooden table, and the rustling of leaves blown down the street and behind it all, wind chimes playing their different tunes from backyard patios all up and down the street a quiet night with a fair wind symphony of neighborhood sounds  I have to take back what I said about Brigid Milligan being our youngest poet. I just found Tennessee Reed, born in 1977, who began writing poetry when she was five and published her first poetry collection,Circus in the Sky when she was eleven. This was followed by several more two collections, Electric Chocolate in 1990 and Airborne in 1996. She then published another collection in 2003 and then another City Beautiful in 2006. She has read her work across the United States and abroad and has had her poems set to music by two different composers. This poem gives us a modern update on an old story, with a funny statement on the fine art of product placement along the way. Disney's Cinderella She would wake up every morning to an evil stepmother and jealous stepsisters She was treated like a slave, doing the cooking and cleaning Her stepmother always complained about her food: "Cinderella, the pasta is too sticky, and the salad has ice burn" or "Cinderella, potatoes are too hard." Then Cinderella had to make her dinner again One of the stepsisters accused her of stealing her dark blue boot-cut jeans and white cotton blouse by Guess? The other stepsister accused her of driving her Chevy Cavalier without asking her when she went to pick up Ivory soap at Duane Reade (It turns out that her stepsister's ugly boyfriend had borrowed it) Her punishment was to go upstairs to her stepmother's room to hear a long list of new chores like changing her new baby stepsister's Pampers Baby Dry disposable diaper, cleaning the kitchen with Clorox wipes and wiping down the bathroom with Windex and Pine-Sol Despite all this, Cinderella was an upbeat young woman, she did what she was told, and she was very pleasant. There were times when Cinderella would give up, like when her animal friends had made her a dress for a ball that was superior to Versace and Miyake and it was ripped apart by her stepsisters There were other times when she would lose her temper or her patience like when her name was called every two seconds "Cinderella, it’s Tuesday night, take out the garbage," or "Cinderella, the hamper is full" She had people/animals in her corner like her mice, her dog, horses and birds as well as her Fairy God Mother Because of the Fairy God Mother's storied enchantment Cinderella was able to attend the ball which was RSVP only It was held at the Pierre Hoel and Peter Duchin's band performed The prince had his eye on her even though there were hundreds of others in the room including her stepsisters who had crashed the gate One was eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts even though she was diabetic The other was eating a big bag of Cool Ranch Dorito chips She licked the remainders off of her fingers The Blue Book Crowd was thinking, "How grotesque" The prince was stunned by Cinderella's beauty and disappointed that she vanished all except for her slippers He arrived at her house in his shiny, gold Lexus and slipped a shoe on her, which was more fancy than the latest shoe by Giuseppe Zanotti They flew off in his private jet to honeymoon in Walt Disney World and Disney's private island in the Bahamas The angry stepsisters and mother showed up at the gate but it was too late His plane was taxiing out to the runway  Next, a little musing by my favorite poet from New Zealand, Thane Zander, on some of his travels, complete with a couple of footnotes to help us through any language difficulties. Pacific Island Reverie This happened, I tell you so privileged to serve in the Navy and every year when New Zealand wintered a Pacific tan would beckon and away we went. We'd spend three months surveying ten days working, 4 days playing, in such environs as Western and American Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Funafuti, Tokelau and Niue. Can't forget the Cooks neither each island group with it's own microcosm of Island Life and language, music too dancing the night away in many places I remember Apia for instance, for a kilikiti game, on a cricket ground hastily prepared near the President's place, up the hill from Apia, afterwards relaxing at either Aggie Greys or perhaps the sunken bar called Otto's Reef or perhaps even the Tusitala itself, talofa palangi(*1), then when the evening drew on, up the hill to the nightclub, Mount Vaea Club for a cooling rum, or perhaps Tonga, Nukualofa to be precise, Joe's Hotel or the Dateline, keep your shirts on the locals have strict codes of conduct, obeisance, the pool at the Dateline a fresh taste of relaxation. Niue is different, so hard to get on there, but rugby shared, a look around the island, no beer I seem to remember, still an Island of utter beauty and remoteness. We'd stay more often around Fiji, so much work there enough to keep us coming back for four years, yes four years straight I had an all round tan, mainly based out of Lautoka, many fine nights the Lautoka Hotel one of our homes, another a long forgotten nightclub of dubious report, the bottle store and a nearby park a hang out with locals, share a beer, woman, guitars going then the next morning off to Treasure Island a trip out on the Tui Tai to the island, rum punches the order of the day, sizzled the rapport with other foreigners, Canadians and many Australians, plus some Kiwis, a day on a deserted island with just a small bure (*2) sun baking, swimming, wind surfing, Bula vanaka,(*3) The other main island Vanua Levu, sugar cane country Labasa, not many bars, the one that was open a call back to western times, grills everywhere, across the bar, across the stereo speakers, across the door if you're fool enough to enter, already stoked of Frigate Rum and Kava we all enter and have a great time, as sailors do, the dance music calls some to dance, the local girls a treat for sore eyes, and some leave with one, I never tasted the ladies, their lives mapped for them. The underlying key to being welcomed as kiwi's was our own Polynesian history, we're all islanders we know the taste of salt, the bright of sun, the language of companionship, touche I used to know a lot of the languages where I had been, made it a point to at least converse in the local dialect, now my addled brain barely recognizes basic commands, I sit here and replay beaches, coral reefs, singing The Last of the Robert Louis Stevensons, a writer now eager to get things to paper, for me, and my girls, they need to know that there is another world, one that revolves around peace and harmony. *1 Talofa Palagi - Samoan for Hello stranger *2 Bure - Fijian for small house without walls *3 Bula Vanaka - Fijian for Hello or welcome  Since I started "Here and Now" two year ago, I've read a lot of poets I had never read before. Some bore me, some confound me, and some have become permanent new additions to my favorites list. Young Korean-American poet Ishle Yi Park is one of those who jumped immediately to my good list the first time I read her. Most of her poems are firmly rooted in a specific place and time, almost sociological in their examination of people and events. A few are more personal, like this one, taken from her book The Temperature of This Water. A Simple Bridge These days I feel out of touch with lightning, fire, even the loneliness of wind. My soul sings to itself because it is alone. And then, I think lightning, fire, wind are all solitary forces: they can't help but touch things in their path. It is the reaching - the space between the paper's edge, the blue fingers of flame, between the wind and sharp, breathless leaves, between the whiteblue jolt, the one bare tree, branches open to light and burning - it is a simultaneous distance and longingly my body recognizes. A simple bridge inside me waits to be crossed by lovers in both directions - who meet in the middle of the arc at four hours: the pink hour, the pitch hour, the starless hour, the soft waking hour.  Here's a little shortie from me. while walking in the neighborhood, late the few leaves still clinging to the trees rustle in the breeze like water over rocks the cold north wind bracing - like drinking from a mountain stream  Now, I'd like to go back to Walt Whitman, which is kind of like trying to breath up the sky - you just can't ever get finished with it. from Song of Myself 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from the soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same. I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance. retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgot, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. 2 Houses and rooms ae full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes. I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillating, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me. The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn. The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind. A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag. The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reacon'd a thousand acres much? have you recon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems. You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from our self As always with Whitman, I read ahead and want to continue typing, but must stop, lest this too-long issue get even longer.  Next, we have a friend we haven't seen in a while, Arlene Ang, with a poem from her book, The Desecration of Doves. Arlene lives in Italy and has published her poetry in a number of journals. She was for a time, and might still be, editor of the Italian edition of Poems Niederngasse, a very fine bimonthly journal you can access by clicking on the link on the right. Confessions of a Ballpoint Thief I cast fingers into public offices, private libraries, even my boss' stationery disk. I pull close elbows before a nonchalant face that hides my hands disappears pens into pockets. Passion for the sea, they say, can drive men to surreptitiously wear wide sleeves, stitch extra pockets on clothes in order to make room for the daily catch. Not even Poseidon would deprive men of running wet tongue along the scales of small fish I net so discretely with my own hands. Every night I position every pen I've ever disappeared on white floor. Each ballpoint, like a lighthouse, sheds its own colored beam. I lie on my back surrounded by a myriad of unspilled ink like a sated crocodile in a pond of freshly dead fish.  Here's a poem by Sonia Sanchez from the anthology Making Callaloo, 25 Years of Black Literature. In 2002, when the anthology was published, Sanchez was Laura Cantrell Professor of English at Temple University, where she also served as Director of Women's Studies. She has published 13 books, most recently Like the Singing Coming Off the Drum, Shake Loose My Skin, and Does Your House Have Lions, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998. Sequences 1. today I am tired of sabbaths. I seek a river of sticks scratching the spine. O I have laughed the clown's air and now my breath dries in paint. 2. what is this profusion? the sun does not burn a cure, but hoards while I stretch upward. I hear, turning in my shrug a blaze of horns. O I had forgotten parades belabored with dreams. 3. in my father's time I fished in ponds without fishes. arching my throat, I gargled amid nerves and sang of redeemers. (o where have you been sweet redeemer, sharp redeemer, (o where have you been baroque shimmer? i have been in coventry where ghosts danced in my veins i have heard you in all refrains.) 4. ah the lull of a yellow voice that does not whine with roots. I have touched breasts and buildings unanswered. I have breathed moth-shaped men without seeds. (indiscriminate sleeves) (once upon an afternoon i became still-life i carried a balloon and a long black knife.) 5. love comes with pink eyes with movements that run green the blue again. my thighs burn in crystal.  This poem was a kind of assignment. There is a small group (lots of room for growth) that meets on Monday every week to read poetry to each other, our own or someone else's. The meeting is at La Taza Coffee Shop in the retail center on the corner of Crown Meadow and Hwy. 281 (watch for the easy to see HEB sign). This is a very informal little gathering - no orating from behind a podium, just sitting in a friendly circle reading poems and listening to others read. There's plenty of room at the inn and San Antonio area readers of "Here and Now" are more than welcome. We start at 8 in the evening and usually shut down by 9. Anyway, normally we just read whatever we brought with us. But, last Monday a challenge was issued. We each picked an object and agreed to write a poem about that object at our meeting next Monday. My object is a clock or a watch or some equivalent something having to do with time. I wrote this piece this afternoon and, unless I come up with something better in the meantime, will read it next Monday. time's up i'm never without my watch, but, if, on some dark day, the universe goes into a skid on icy rails and i am without my watch and ask the time of some impertubable soul, i dont want to hear "about three" or "a little past six" or "almost noon," i want to know what time it is... exactly! or when D calls and wants me to meet her downtown for dinner and I ask when I don't want her to say "oh, sevenish," which is not a time at all but an anti-time, I want to know is that seven, seven-fifteen, six-forty eight or quarter to eight, cause I don't want to be late and I hate to wait when I'm early but i am time compulsive and D is more attuned to ancient spirits who understood time, if at all, only in terms of dark times and light, moons, seasons, events, heroic feats that mark a particular memorable period as in - oh, yes that was when uncle hawk-flies-straight killed the grizzly bear which was before leaping-fish stole fourteen horses from the kikapoos, but after eyes-of-gray-wolf married that hussy little-green-meadow in the snow up to their knees you have to ask yourself how did those guys ever get to dinner on time?  And, speaking of time, it is time now to end this production for week 2 of month 1 of year 3 of "Here and Now." Over the past two years I have used poems here that left me without as clue as to what the poet was trying to say, as well as poems that damn near put me to sleep as I typed them. But I figured well, different people like different things. No taste is universal, especially not mine. But this week I put that aside and tried especially hard to find the kind of poetry I like. I'm just too damn old to have much patience with artificial mysteries offering no clues for solution, poems where you would have had to have been in fifth grade with the poet to know what the hell he or she is talking about. I equally lack patience with those who confuse obscurity with depth or malice with wit. What I like is poetry that is natural and direct, with nothing in it that requires academic elaboration or obfuscation. That's what I like to read and that's what I try to write - poetry for people who don't read poetry, as well as for people who do. I hope you also like what I found this week. Remember as you file quietly out the door, all work presented in this blog remains the property of it creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me...allen itz. |
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