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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