Commuter Sunrise
Sunday, April 13, 2008
 III.4.2.
My lead picture this week is of sunrise at about 7:30 a.m. on the corner of Blanco Road and Loop 1604 in San Antonio.
As I mentioned last week I'm back in the ranks of the reluctant employed, maybe through June, which will present me with many more opportunities than I really want to view this scene at this time of the morning.
I think as long as I continue to think of each day as one tenth of a day of our next vacation, among the red and golden leaves of New England autumn, maybe, or basking on the sandy beaches of the Mediterranean, maybe, or even that west to east train ride across continental Canada that I've been wanting to do, I'll be able to suck it up.
Enough complaining.
But before we move on to the good stuff, I want to note that, after not sending anything out in quite a while, I finally made time in the last couple of weeks to submit some of my work to a couple of journals, with good results so far. Six of my poems were accepted by Blaze Vox and are included in their new issue online now. If you want to take a look, you can use the link on the right or just cut and past this url to your browser:
http://www.blazevox.org/index.htm

I begin this week with four poems from Korean poet, Ku Sang. The poems are from his book Wastelands of Fire, with translations by Anthony Teague.
Eros I
A torso like a ripe peach.
A butterfly fallen drunk in ecstasy on a flowery tomb.
A tongue with the perfume of melons.
A seagull plunging into blue waves that flash white teeth.
In a gaze fixed on the distant horizon.
A roe deer drinking at a secret spring in a virgin forest
Abyss of Eros, beauty of original sin.
Eros II
The purring cat's deceitful, mysterious face.
Venus' neck spun about with hempen locks.
On breasts of velvet the imprint of a hawk's claws.
An hour-glass navel.
Buttocks the smooth bottom of a wooden bowl, secret flesh of tree-trunk thighs.
The narrowing rapids of a rendez-vous, a grassy bank aflame on a spring day.
In primitive darkness, beneath an azalea-cliff blanket a naked woman on a foaming, lapping wave-white sheet joins her arms like cords that criminals are bound with
.....
The cooing of doves.
Breath-taking moment, oh, mystic ritual!
Eros III
I draw in empty space.
That face, that voice, that smile, those thighs, but that love cannot be drawn.
Things drawn in the heart may not be given form.
Eros IV
With that same hand that caressed her naked body I stroke my grey beard.
Passion faded into pale silver...
That loving, riding the bucket, has been drawn up to the heavens. Henceforth, all those places times and places are one with Eternity.

As I was typing Ku Sang's "eros" poems, it came to me that I have used them before. Well, never mind. They're good enough for many readings.
In the meantime, though it's risky to set oneself up in comparison to a master, they did remind me of one of my own poems. It's included in my book Seven Beats a Second (which you can buy, by the way, by clicking on the "return to 7beats" link on the top right hand of this page - sorry, I need to try to sell a book now and then, it's a tax thing).
cinnamon dreams
in the dim light at end of day I watch you sleep still damp from the shower curled on your side tangled in white linen pink like the center of a fresh-sliced peach floating in a bowl of sweet cream
your foot moves slowly brushes softly against mine
with a quiet rush of warm air you sigh the sweet breath of cinnamon dreams

Richard Wilbur is known as an excellent translator of poems by other poets as well as a creator of his own fine poetry. So, I'm going to use two poems from his book Collected Poems, 1943-2004.
This first poem is Wilbur's translation of a poem by Andre Voznesensky, a Russian poet born in 1933 and still writing. He is a rare poet who has a minor planet in another solar system named after him. Such was his fame in the USSR.
Foggy Street
The air is grey-white as a pigeon-feather. Police bob up like corks on a fishing-net. Foggy weather. What century is it? What era? I forgot.
As in a nightmare, everything is crumbling; people have come unsoldered; nothing's intact. I plod on, stumbling, Or flounder in cotton wool, to be more exact.
Noses. Parking-lights. Badges flash and blur. All's vague, as in a magic-lantern show. Your hat check, Sir? Mustn't walk off with the wrong head, you know.
It's as if a woman who's scarcely left your lips Should blur in the mind, yet trouble it with recall - Bereft now, widowed by your love's eclipse - Still yours, yet suddenly not yours at all...
Can that be Venus? No - an ice-cram vendor! I bump into curbstones, bump into passersby. Are they friends, I wonder? Home-bred Iagos, how covert you are, how sly!
Why it's you, my darling, shivering there alone! Your overcoat's too big for you, my dear. But why have your grown That moustache? Why is there frost in your hairy ear?
I trip, I stagger, I persist. Murk, murk...there's nothing visible anywhere. Whose is the cheek you brush now in the mist? Ahoy there! One's voice won't carry in this heavy air.
When the fog lifts, how brilliant it is, how rare!
Now, here's one of Wilbur's own poems.
Cottage Street, 1953
Framed in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward Bends to the tray of Canton, pouring tea For frightened Mrs. Plath; then, turning toward The pale, slumped daughter, and my wife, and me,
Asks if we would prefer it weak or strong. Will we have milk or lemon, she inquires? The visit seems already strained and long. Each in turn, we tell her out desires.
It is my office to exemplify The published poet in his happiness, Thus cheering Sylvia, who has wished to die; But half-ashamed, and impotent to bless,
I am a stupid life-guard who has found, Swept to his shallows by the tide, a girl Who, far from the shore, has been immensely drowned, And stares through water now with eyes of pearl.
How large is her refusal; and how slight The genteel chat whereby we recommend Life, of a summer afternoon, despite The brewing dusk which hints that it may end.
And Edna Ward shall die in fifteen years, After her eight-and-eighty summers of Such grace and courage as permit no tears, The thin hand reaching out, the last word love,
Outliving Sylvia who, condemned to live, Shall study for a decade, as she must, To state at last her brilliant negative In poems free and helpless and unjust.

Next, we have the return of Francina.
Born in 1947, Francina says she was "reared for the first thirteen years on river plying cargo vessels visiting Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.'
Later she studied accounting, French, English and German. "I have called home many different places over the years," she says, including the United States 12 years, moving back to The Netherlands 10 years ago. She says she has traveled to North Africa, Thailand, Caribbean as well most countries of Europe. Her interest in poetry began, she says, in 1990 when she became a member of the Wallace Steven Society. She says she has also developed a fondness for Japanese and Chinese poetry since then.
Upon Returning The wooden plank forms a bridge between the landlocked life
with daily strife that hushed the longing deep inside my soul,
and this, a world of bliss, silvery,
the wind and sea, pulling me back to where
I do belong, out on the deck when sails are set.

Next. I have a poem I like very much. It's from the book Horse of Earth by Thomas R. Smith.
Smith, born in 1948, grew up in Wisconsin in a paper mill town on the banks of the Chippewa River. After majoring in English at the University of Wisconsin- River Falls, he traveled for a year in Europe, becoming inspired by the work of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. In the early 80s, he directed Artspeople, a rural-based arts organization serving farm communities in western Wisconsin. As a poet, essayist and editor, his work has appeared in numerous journals in the U.S., Canada and abroad.
The book was published in 1994 by the Holy Cow! Press of Duluth, Minnesota.
Now, the poem.
Contempt
We don't understand our grandparent's satisfaction in not being famous - the hours spent practicing the piano because one longed to hear Chopin, the prairie light so calm on weathered boards of the shed.
The scripture pages the old ones ponder as death approaches are a walled garden no longer noticed by the television watchers admiring ingenious explosions in the dawn sky over Mesopotamia.
What does it mean that we are bombing the Garden? Contempt for simple aspirations, for ordinary and peaceful needs, shrieking down from dark cockpits as the passive nation looks on.
Unable to play an instrument or dance, we bomb the Bagdad of our human joy. In the four-gated city, our grandfathers and grandmothers become the children Christ asked to "come unto Him."

So, here's more in my continuing landlord saga.
cleaning the mess
another weekend of landlording cleaning up all the mess left behind by the last tenant, some of it to trash and some to Goodwill, then plastering over the fist-sized holes in all the walls...
(i mean, hell, dude, what's a man to do when his woman leaves him, he's just nacherly got to find something else to punch)
...painting, going blue inside and out, inside finished and looking good but Lowe's switched my paint order so instead of light blue with dark blue trim, outside's going to be the opposite, light on dark instead of dark on light, a strange look, an "miami vice avant garde" appearance we decided, and named the look as such, and by so naming established a rationale to it so that we we can say we meant to do it that way all along
we both painted today, but yesterday D did most of the painting while i mowed the grass - three quarters of an acre, high as it was, took most of the afternoon even with our big tractor mower, especially going slow as i was, carefully mowing around little patches of wildflowers
i'm thinking it'll take us a good three months to sell the place, which, with a wet spring, means ill be back mowing at least six weekends, giving time for the flowers to spread their seeds before they die, so whoever buys the place will wake up some morning next spring and find themselves with almost an acre of color, bluebonnets, indian paintbrushes and those pink things whose name i can never remember
i like the thought of that and almost wish i could be here to see it too

To paraphrase the play, I rely on the creativity of strangers, as well as friends, to publish this blog every week. I use a few of my own poems, but mostly I count on poems I beg from friends and poems I get from the used books I buy at places like Half-Priced Books. (I think I now have a larger poetry library than any bookstore in town, new or used.)
It's really convenient to find good used anthologies that have a large number of poems from a wide variety of poets, like for example, The Outlaw's Bible of American Poetry and the Native American anthology I have, as well as several others, Such anthologies provide material enough to do "Here and Now" probably longer than I'll be around to do it. One stop shopping, so to speak.
But it's also nice to find a book by an individual poet that provides a deep well of the kind of poems I can go to for material over and over again. One such book is Red Beans, a collection by Puerto Rican poet Victor Hernandez Cruz. I've gone to this book many times in the two plus years I've been doing "Here and Now" and I expect to go many more times as well.
There's lots of talk about immigration right now, a lot of it racist, in my opinion. So, here, on the subject of immigration, is the latest from Red Beans by Victor Cruz.
Snaps of Immigration
1 I remember the fragrance of the Caribbean A scent that anchors into the ports of technology.
2 I dream with suitcases full of illegal fruits Interned between white guayaberas that dissolved Into snowflaked polyester.
3 When we saw the tenements our eyes turned backwards to the miracle of scenery At the supermarket My mother caressed the Parsley.
4 We came in the middle of winter from another time We took a trip into the future A fragment of another planet To a place where time flew As if clocks had coconut oil put on them.
5 Rural mountain dirt walk Had to be adjusted to cement pavement The new city finished the concrete supply of the world Even the sky was cement The streets were made of shit.
6 The past was dissolving like sugar at the bottom of a coffee cup That small piece of earth that we habitated Was somewhere in a television Waving in space.
7 From beneath the ice From beneath the cement From beneath the tar From beneath the pipes and wires Came the cucurucu of the roosters.
8 People wrote letters as if they were writing the scriptures Penmanship of woman who made tapestry with their hands Cooked criollo pots Fashioned words of hope and longing Men made ink out of love And saw their sweethearts Wearing yellow dresses Reaching from the balcony To the hands of the mailman.
9 At first English was nothing but sound Like trumpets doing yakity yak As we found meanings for the words We noticed that many times the Letters deceived the sound What could we do It was the language of a foreign land.

I was paying for my latte at a Barnes & Noble coffee bar last week and say this little book on counter and bought it.
The title of the book is Ignorance is Blitz and it is selections from history essays by college students. As someone who occasionally reads student essays, I can tell you that nothing in the book seems to me to be unlikely.
Here are few essay snippets.
"Bible legend states that the trouble started after Eve ate the Golden Apple of Discord. This was the forbidding fruit. An angry God sent his wrath. Man fell from the space of grace. It was mostly downhill skiing from there."
"There was Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Lower Egypt was actually farther up than Upper Egypt, which was, of course, lower down than the upper part."
"Babylon was similar to Egypt because of the differences they had apart from each other. Egypt, for example, had only Egyptians, but Babylon had Summarians, Acadians, and Canadians, to name just a few."
"Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion."
"The three gods were 'Good,' 'Bad,' and 'Indifferent.' These beliefs later resurfaced among the Manatees."
"The history of the Jewish people begins with Abraham, Issac, and their twelve children. Judyhism was the first monlithic religion. It had one big God named 'Yahoo.'"
"Moses was told by Jesus Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the Sahaira Desert. The Book of Exodus describes this trip and the amazing things that happened on it, including the Ten Commandments, various special effects, and the building of the Suez Canal."
"Rome was founded sometime by Uncle Remus and Wolf."
"Eventually Christian started the new religion with sayings like, 'The mice shall inherit the earth.' Later Christians fortunately abandoned this idea."
"Cesar was assassinated on the Yikes of March."
"It is unfortunate that we do have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection. Society was arranged like a tree,with our nobels in the upper twigs and your pesants grubbing around the roots. This was knows as the manurial system where land was passed through fathers to sons by primogenuflecture. To some degree rulers diluted people into thinking that this was a religious opperation."
"Monks were assigned to monkeries, where they were supposed to live as nuns. Many, however, simply preyed by day and played by night. Fryers were required to take a vow of pottery."
"Medieval builders gave God his usual chair in the church roof. In a Romanesue church the stone roof is held up by a system of peers. The usual design was a long knave split by a crosshair. Without the discovery of the flying buttock it would have been and impossible job to build the Gothic cathedral."
And this goes on through the centuries until we're dealing with last night's news, such as "we are glad that the Persian war ended with victory to the cotillion. Current cause for concern is the creeping of fomentalism among the people. This spells out the whole thing in a nuthouse."
We will do some more of these in future issues. They break me up.

My next poem is by our friend, James Fowler.
Jim lives in Massachusetts, has eight grand kids and wants to retire, write poetry, garden, play tennis, cook and write some more poetry. I haven't eaten any of his cooking, but he does just fine in the poetry department.
Dark Stonee
Gunmetal day, green knoll slashed brown for burial. Gladiolas and roses rest near the hidden hole.
Shallow shovels dig the pit. Workers peer at the edge, measure its depth while he waits, condensed in ashes.
I want to smooth the granite, speckled like the back of his hands, transfer tears and love, gifts for his passage in dark stone.

The next poem from a collection of work by Arthur Sze titled The Redshifting Web Poems 1970-1998 published in 1998 by Copper Canyon Press of Port Townsend, Washington.
I was poetry illiterate when I started "Here and Now" two and a half years ago, knowing mainly what had not escaped my head since college literature classes, and not much more. One of the reasons I enjoy doing the blog every week is the chance it's given me to discover so many poets new to me whose work excites me. The poet Arthur Sze is one of those I'm particularly glad to have discovered. Since nobody can know everybody, one of the purposes of "Here and Now" is to share my own sense of discovery.
Sze is a second generation Chinese American born in New York City in 1950. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of six books of poetry. He has taught at Brown University, Bard College and the Naropa Institute. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico.
The Silence
We walk through a yellow-ocher adobe house: the windows are smeared with grease, the doors are missing. Rain leaks through the ceilings of all the rooms, and the ribs of saguaro thrown across vigas are dark, wet, and smell. The view outside of red-faded and turquoise-faded adobes could be Chihuahua, but it isn't. I stop and look through an open doorway, see wet newspapers rotting in mud in the small center patio. I suddenly see red bougainvillea blooming against a fresh whitewashed wall, smell yellow wisteria through an open window on a warm summer night; but, no, a shot of cortisone is no cure for a detaching retina. I might just as well see a smashed dog in the street, a boojumree pushing its way up through asphalt. And as we turn and arrive where we began, I notice the construction of the house is simply room after room forming a square. We step outside, and the silence is as water is, taking the shape of the container.

Here's another of my poems inspired by a painting. Strictly speaking, these "art" poems ought to stand on their own, and not as commentary on the painting, but as a poetic expression of the my reaction to the painting.
That said, I think this poem is really better if you look at the painting. As I've posted these painting-inspired poems in the past, I've include a url that you could go to to view the painting. (I'm sorry you have to cut and paste these url's to your browser, but I don't have link capability here in the body of the blog.) In this case, the poem is supposed to be funny and it doesn't work so well without the painting. I guess that makes this more of a cartoon caption than a poem, but I'm willing:
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425215698/116956/hannah-barrett-little-signund.html
fashionista (after Hana Barrett's "Little Sigmund" - oil on canvas)
he's a scrawny unimpressive looking fella, but a real fancy dan when it comes to clothes, silks and ribbons and lace and bows, a real fashionista
but here's the deal
somebody really needs to talk to him, tell him right straight out to his face...
"Mortimer, you can wear the hat or you can wear the dress, but you just can't wear both"
it'd be for his own good

My next poem is by Langston Hughes from Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, a collection of his poetry personally selected by Hughes shortly before his death in 1967.
The South
The lazy, laughing South With blood on its mouth. The sunny-faced South, Beast-strong, Idiot-brained. The child-minded South Scratching in the dead fire's ashes For a Negro's bones. Cotton and the moon, Warmth, earth, warmth, The sky, the sun, the stars, The magnolia-scented South. Beautiful, like a woman, Seductive as a dark-eyed whore, Passionate, cruel, Honey-lipped, syphilitic - That is the South. And I, who am black, would lover her But she spits in my face. And I, who am black, Would give her many rare gifts But she turns her back upon me. so now I seek the North - The cold-faced North, For she, they say, Is a kinder mistress, And in her house my children May escape the spell of the South.

Marie Gail Stratford is a freelance writer and dance instructor from Kansas City, Missouri, where she also works for a small computer retailer. Her work has appeared in several online periodicals, including The Loch Raven Review, Blue House, and Poems Niederngasse.
Marie Gail was with us just a couple of weeks ago. She's back this week with this intriguing piece that I saw on the Blueline Forum.
Tempid Whatnot
What happened to doing what you do because you love what it is, what it draws from you, what it becomes outside of you?
What perversion led so many to believe that what is worthwhile is measured only by what others say, by what success comes from whatever television network or webpage or whatever celebrity decides that what you do is worth saying what she thinks or spending what he will on whatever prime time special on whatever night brings him what he wishes in return?
What will we become when what pleases everyone is what we produce because what offends anyone is what we are afraid to become rather than what we are? We will become bland and repetitive, so that
what everybody wants becomes what no one really likes.

I have a poem now from the anthology From Totems to Hip-Hop edited by Ismael Reed. The book is subtitled "A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002."
The poem I'm using from the book is by Lawson Inada.
Inada, born in Fresno, California in 1938, is a third-generation sansei Japanese-American. During World War II he was incarcerated at the Fresno County Fairground, and later was interned in a Japanese-American concentration camps in Arkansas and Colorado. His first published collection of poetry, Before the War: Poems As They Happened, was the first poetry collection by an Asian-American writer to be published by a major United States-based publishing house. At the time the book was published, he was a professor in the English department at Southern Oregon College in Ashland, Oregon.
Filling the Gap
When Bird died, I didn't mind: I had things to do -
polish some shoes, practice a high school cha-cha-cha
I didn't even know Clifford was dead:
I must have been lobbing an oblong ball beside the gymnasium.
I saw the Lady right before she died -
dried, brittle as last year's gardenia.
I let her scratch an autograph.
But not Pres.
Too bugged to boo, I left as Basie's brass booted him off the stand in a sick reunion -
tottering, saxophone dragging him like a stage-hook.
When I read Dr. Williams poem, "Stormy," I wrote a letter of love and praise
and didn't mail it.
After he died, it burned my desk like a delinquent prescription...
I don't like to mourn the dead: what didn't, never will,
And I sometimes feel foolish staying up late, trying to squeeze some life out of books and records, filling the gaps between words and notes.
That is wy] I rush into our room to find you mumbling and moaning in your incoherent performance
That is why I rub and squeeze you and love to hear your live, alterable cry against my breast.

More from me on the domestic side of life.
settling in
Reba is not sitting behind me on her carpet as she usually does and i wonder why... until i notice that the ironing board i set out so i could iron a shirt for work tomorrow is sitting right on top of her carpet
well, no wonder
since i set up the ironing board i made one last turn through my nearly depleted closet and found, way over in the corner, a blue shirt i can wear with my new tan pants so there is no need for the ironing board at all, at least not tonight
happy happy joy joy, as Ren and Stimpy used to sing... what happened to them anyway, the company that owned the rights fired the artist who created the series is what i heard which sounds dumbass enough to be true...
but the point is, there being no need for the ironing board tonight, i moved it, thereby liberating Reba's carpet which she occupied immediately as it was cleared for her use
there was a look in her eye as she settled in with her normal old-dog set- tling in groan which seem clearly to me to be saying "thanks, pal"
and i say "nothing to it girl, anytime at all"

My next poem is from a fine poet I've only used once or twice since I bought her book. The poet is Mary Swander and the book is Heaven-and-Earth House published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1994.
Swander was born in 1950 in Iowa where she was raised.
She began college at Georgetown University, but finished an English degree at the University of Iowa. She earned her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. She was involved in a variety of pursuits for several years, including becoming a certified and licensed practitioner of therapeutic massage. She began teaching English at Iowa State University, Ames, in 1986 and continues to live in Ames and Kalona.
Jackpot
We're all here in Vegas - the look-alike Elvis, Ringo Starr, Sammy Davis Jr.... I shuffle into the clinic with the other arthritic for one more quack cure, drop my money in the slot. Oh, it's hot! The handle too warm to touch, the desert sun, outside bleaching the lizard's skull. I bet on reptiles, on the scaly-skinned, the spaderfoot toad who burrows backward and sleeps seven feet down in the sand. I go with the insects who breed and feed at night, with the single-celled protozoan protected from the heat by its own cyst. I bet on the woman on the couch with a growth on her cheek, the seven-year-old in cowboy boots with eczema head to toe. I roll for the shaky hand, spastic muscle, drooling lip. I roll for the palsied girl that she may walk, the diapered man that he may no longer drip. For I have faith in the communion of waiting rooms and know the inside secret of wheelchairs, IV poles, crutches and canes. I know the woman weeping on the examining table. She raises the ante and bets on Death Valley. I bet on the shuttle bus back to the motel near the casino, the ice machine, the clean plop into the bucket, the fresh towels and Gideon Bible in the desk drawer. I bet on the Book of Mormon next to the fish tank, the Newsweek with Oliver North on the cover. Yes, I roll for the silver dollar, the neon, salamander and tadpole, the quickie marriage of the kissing gouramis behind the glass. I wait for the cloudburst, the once-or-twice-a-year puddle, the underground tests to explode.

Here's another poem from Thane Zander, frequent contributor and our reporter on all things New Zealand.
Thane is a 49 year old ex Navy veteran (27 years) and currently an 8 year poetry veteran. The poetry came after leaving the Navy due to suffering Bipolar disorder. Thane considers himself a Web Poet, a place he has frequented since 1999. He says he found the Blueline Poetry in 2003 and is now a director of the Challenges and Workshop forums at Blueline. He also participates in the Poem a Day forum on Blueline, which has allowed his repertoire in seven short years to grow over 700 poems.
He says he also "at one stage busked his poetry on the streets (during a down time) and as a result made the local newspaper as a quaint oddity." His latest endeavour is to tackle a Creative Writing course at the local university, which he hopes he will do well. In short, he says, he eats and breathes poetry.
I am a very large fan of his work.
The Errant Life of an Ant and Anteater
Little ant, you are mine I watch you with avid interest as you scuttle to and fro watch you carry your burdens back to a nest dominated by an Errant Queen
Little earwig, you are mine I espy your daily carriage of objects heavier than 10 times your weight see you carry your prizes to a place I can't yet discern.
Little Ladybird, you are mine flittering and fluttering the day of the week means nothing to your insect life you just do what you have to do and then fly away happy.
Fantail, you are not mine you playfully dart and dash your tail feathers fanned to attract a mate, for life your fanciful dance through the air followed by a stint in a tree.
Welcome Swallow, you are not mine you fly fitfully in rapid motions your movement to catch a mate to, with grace and high speed you plunder the airwaves ready for a long trip home.
Tui, you are not mine you are a bird of extreme beauty your evening song heart wrenching your call for a mate mellow I hear your longing in every tone marvel at your persistence.
Kotuku, you are nobody's your white plumage and dress make for a pleasant thing to see your elegant movement your passive manipulation of dance sublime.
And there endeth the poem. I'm a nature beast, I live for nature, I love nature, I hate to see natural things end just because we want to build bigger cities and towns. The Government has in place a department called The Department of Conservation, to safeguard nature as it was before men arrived, to stop the clear felling of native forests and as a consequence, natures wonderful birds and insects here. My father was a local member of the Society, and he worked hard to stop the incorrect use of rivers and forests by people with agenda towards not caring.
I wasted years of my life stuck in a steel encased tomb at sea, but did have the pleasure of seeing life's creatures in their natural environment. When I see Beer Wrappers thrown away and washed out to see I feel for the Penguins and dolphins that are caught up in that mess. Yes real issues for me. I used to admonish people for chucking rubbish overboard without a moments thought. Food scraps, yes, but not stuff that could be stored until a suitable landfill was reached.
Sadly today I have almost lost touch with reality, but if not for the creatures I mention in the poem I would only have the flies and moths to tell me how Nature is going these days, and they tell nothing. Thankfully, I smoke, and I have to do it outside and every time I do go for a smoke, Nature smiles.

I've used this poem before, but it makes me think of a happy time and I like it so I'm using it again.
It's by Texas poet and underground film maker W. Joe Hoppe and it's from his book Galvanized.
Hombres Solitarios
Seven Mexicans on the stereo sing of loneliness together in fine harmony
Two kinds of accordions three kinds of guitars and a pair of fiddles believable lonely in the same key
Certain that this is the way a man truly exists

Finally, one last poem from me before we call it a week.
old men in jeans
you see old men in blue jeans all the time these days. hell, i am an old man and i don't wear hardly anything but jeans...
thinking back to my father and the khaki work pants he wore every day of his adult life except for four hours on Sunday morning when he wore a blue double breasted suit he bought when he and my mother got married
trying to imagine him in jeans and i can't - jeans were for kids and not for grown men, unless they were cowboys, real ones, not the phony ones you'd see at the dance on Saturday night when Adolph Hoffner and his Texas swing band would be playing at the Brown Bottle out on Highway 83
- you could always tell the difference between them and the real cowboys whose cotton shirts were homesewn from flowerdy flour sack material and whose boots under their jeans were a little scuffed and shiny on the outside instep from rubbing against a stirrup -
except for them, the real mccoys, grown men didn't wear bluejeans, just like they didn't do other things, like cuss in front of women or drink whiskey with little umbrellas or cry or wear perfume or get their nails done or talk too much about their feelings except maybe sometimes when they were really really drunk which grown up men didn't hardly do anyway, things like that, it just wasn't done
but that's the way it goes
i wear jeans all the time, and couldn't ever live in my father's world, just like he wouldn't want to have anything to do with mine

I guess that's enough for this bright and golden day. But before I live I want to mention that I'm expecting to start a new semi-regular feature next week, music review and commentary. I think most everyone's going to like it, especially since it's going to be presented by someone who lknows what he's talking about and not by me.
Also just noticed that this is a particularly tame issue. Nothing to raise a single hackle anywhere. I'll try to do better next time.
In the meantime, time to go out and recreate.
And as you recreate, remember, all the material presented on this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz
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Good to see pics of the famous Reba and the infamous rental house. I enjoy your visual formats a lot. Thanks for including me. Always an honor.
Kindest regards,
Marie Gail
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