Mariposa
Friday, October 10, 2008
 III.10.2.
The past week as been a busy one for me, making, as mentioned in a couple of this week's poems, a trip to the coast where I took some pictures (including some in this issue) and arranged to do a signing and reading next week in Corpus Christi. I invite all my friends from that area to join me. I'll be at Half-Price Books on South Padre Island Drive, Saturday the 18th. More information is available at the store.
Anyway, for this week, this is what I have.
From my library
Langston Hughes Hanna Howard Seitu J. Hart Sandra M. Gilbert Federico Garcia Lorca Brian Branchfield James Laughlin Andrey Voznesensky Cornelius Eady Tao Lin
From friends of "Here and Now"
Joe Miller Katie Sottak Mary Jo Caffrey Christopher George Gary Blankenship
And the usual several from me.

I begin this week with several poems by Langston Hughes from the book Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Vintage Classics in 1990.
Hughes, born in in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, was a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.
Due to the separation of his parents, Hughes was raised by his grandmother, whose storytelling skills he claimed to have influenced the rest of his life. After her death, he lived for two years with family friends and later returned to his mother after she had remarried.
While in grammar school, he was designated class poet, because, according to Hughes, he was one of only two black students in the class and the teacher, who always emphasized the importance of rhythm in poetry, assumed he, as a black person, must surely have it. During high school in Cleveland, Ohio, he wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began to write his first short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, When Sue Wears Red, was written while he was still in high school.
Despite a difficult relationship with his father who had left the United States because of it's racism and refused to return, Hughes went to him for help paying for college. Initially, his father had hoped for Hughes to attend a university abroad, and to study for a career in engineering. He did not support his son's desire to be a writer. Eventually, the son and the father came to a compromise agreement. To get the support of his father, Hughes agreed to study engineering, so long as he could attend Columbia. While at Columbia in 1921, Hughes managed to maintain a B+ grade average but left in 1922 because of racial prejudice within the institution. At the same time, his interests had come to revolve more around the neighborhood of Harlem than his studies, though he continued writing poetry.
After leaving Columbia, Hughes worked various odd jobs, serving a brief tenure as a crewman aboard the S.S. Malone in 1923 and spending six months traveling to West Africa and Europe. In Europe, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for a temporary stay in Paris.
After becoming part of the black expatriate community in Paris in the early 1920s, he returned to the United States in 1924 to live with his mother in Washington D.C., eventually gaining white-collar employment in 1925 as a personal assistant to the scholar Carter G. Woodson within the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Not satisfied with the demands of the work and time constraints this position placed on the hours he spent writing, Hughes quit this job for one as a busboy in a hotel. It was while working as a busboy that Hughes would encounter the poet Vachel Lindsay. Impressed with the poems Hughes showed him, Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet, though by this time, Hughes' earlier work had already been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry.
The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University, eventually receiving a B.A. degree in 1929 and a Litt.D. in 1943. Except for travels that included parts of the Caribbean, Harlem was Hughes' primary home for the remainder of his life.
Langston Hughes died in 1967 at age 65 from complications after abdominal surgery related to prostate cancer.
Song for Billie Holiday
What can purge my heart Of the song And the sadness? What can purge my heart But the song Of the sadness What can purge my heart Of the sadness Of the song?
Do not speak of sorrow With dust in her hair, Or bits of dust in eyes A chance wind blows here. The sorrow that I speak of Is dusted with despair.
Voice of muted trumpet, Cold brass in warm air. Bitter television blurred By the sound that shimmers - Where?
Old Walt
Old Walt Whitman Went finding and seeking. Finding less than sought Seeking more than found, Every detail minding Of the seeking and the finding
Pleasured equally In seeking as in finding, Each detail minding, Old Walt went seeking And finding.
Desert
Anybody Better than Nobody.
In the barren dusk Even the snake That spirals Terror on the sand -
Better than nobody In this lonely Land
One
Lonely As the wind On the Lincoln Prairies.
Lonely As a bottle of licker On a table All by itself
End
There are No clocks on the wall, and no time, No shadows that move From dawn to dusk Across the floor.
There is neither light Nor dark Outside the door.
There is no door!

This is something I wrote a week or two ago. I suppose it could be a companion piece to "come, Lord Jesus, be our guest" piece I used here a couple of issues ago.
if i believed
if i believed in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior i'd try not to be an asshole about it as so many are and i wouldn't be one of those staid and dour churchgoing stiff-upper-lip- pew-potatoes that populate all those grand chuches with robed priests and high-rise steeples
none of that corporate salvation for me
i'd be a holy-rolling hell on wheels singing dancing look-at-me-lord fool every minute of every hour of every day of the year and not give a shit what people thought of me
i mean for christ's sake pious is ok but resurrection and eternal life that'd be something to jump and shout about

bum rush the page is a book of poem by performance poets published by Three Rivers Press in 2001.
Here are two poets from the book.
The first poet is Hannah Howard from Brooklyn.
soulgroovin ditty #7
little green men play a samba in my mind maddening little rhythm it gets me every time i dance the bossanova to appease them the funky disco elves in my head i find myself singing just to please them snatches of songs long forgotten still they play incessantly forever and ever pestering me forcing me to move my feet keeping time i whip i whirl throw in the bump do a little grind they keep me dancing twirling prancing body movin funky groovin the loco little disco elves the people/party/happening elves the soultrain/getdownboogie elves that gyrate in my mind
And a second poet from the book, Seitu J. Hart from Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Sundays
I went to the church and walked by niggas dealin got in the church and watched single mothers give 10% of their income to the upkeep of the church and pastoral homes in the suburbs while they reside in chic urban projects where pastors rarely drive their lexuses, benzes or town cars I watched folks like me lose their inhibitions and praise the Lord, reminding me in the small ways of my ancestors and their spiritual discourses. I sat open-mouthed and watched homos sing and direct revenue generating mass choirs while being castigated. Chided. CONDEMNED. I laughed loudly catching the eyes of stern ushers. Their looks forced me to concentrate on the "WORD" and the sounds of the Pastor's AMEN CORNER as he made the connotation that all PHARAOHS were evil, satanic, based on the tales of MOSES and the PHARAOH down in EGYPT LAND making me to go home to ponder, chant, meditate, stand before the tree PRAY. Light candles Speak with the CREATOR consult my astrology books touch my stones reread my favorite bibical passage to figure out this madness Then the answer came: WRITE A POEM.

Next, I have Joe Miller a new friend of "Here and Now" making his first appearance here.
Joe is an 18 year old country-folk singer/songwriter and poet from Dallas, Texas. He says you can listen to some of his music on his My Space page.
myspace.com/joemiller155292
from my hotel window
I watched the night sink its coyote teeth into gutted cat meat. Shadows under street lights stood prouder than the objects they reflected.
The odor of human smells and the melody of human songs climbed to my window like bacteria from a rotten peach.
The asphalt-black hours rolled on.
As the sun started her morning coffee a man hid behind the proud shadows. His heavy, green eyes rested in wooden hands.
As the sun finished her morning coffee, he had embraced his mortality with aching solitude.
From my hotel window, I watched him cheer for every mundane detail dawn had to offer.
Black Crow Blues
For the last few nights I've watched a black bird land on my porch to drink out of flower pots and eat worms and june bugs.
But tonight when I opened my window the poor bird was lying under a bush. I had a dead bird on my porch.
After a moment of silence I scooped him up in a trash bag and threw him over my fence so a mindless black dog could eat a mindless black crow.
I'm giving back to the natural order of things,
but I've been feeling a little lonely lately and thinking that I want to be like that bird. Eat, sleep, pro-create and never question anything.
I changed my mind today.
At least when I die I may or may or not find what I'm looking for.

Born in 1936 Sandra M. Gilbert, Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis, is a literary critic and poet who has published widely in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She is perhaps best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic in 1979, considered a landmark in 1970s American feminism.
Gilbert received her B. A. from Cornell University, her M. A. from New York University, and her Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University in 1968. She has taught at California State University, Hayward, Williams College, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and Indiana University. She held the C. Barnwell Straut Chair of English at Princeton University from 1985 until 1989. She was named the M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell University for the spring 2007 semester. Gilbert will be the Lurie Distinguished Visiting Professor for the Creative Writing MFA program at San Jose State University in the Spring 2009 semester.
The mother of three and grandmother of four, Gilbert lives in Berkeley, California, and in Paris, France.
The next several poems are from her book, Kissing the Bread, published by WW Norton in 2000. I selected the pieces from a sub-section in the book titled Some Definitions.
Some Definitions
1.Aperitif
Take a cup of breath, stir in a silence, stones on a shore,
twirl, whip - add glinting, minnows,
groan of oars and beat in.
and beat in the darkness that creeps from the inland mountains,
the darkness that clots the eye of the tiger, the rat, the pig.
Beat in one clump, the another.
5. Fog on the Coast
Lid on thin milk across the light, skin of mist
above the waters, weight of vacancy pressing
against the eyes, great shapeless throat of silence
swallowing everything: here's where trawlers disappear, black
bluffs melt, ambitious summer houses step into nowhere
and only the closeup has a chance, the mouse and her grain,
the jagged pebble, the nettle standing its groudn
among a few spare outlines of sound - the faint hint of a gull, the sea still hungrily thumping its table.
7. Enormous Wind
buffets the sea, creasing the blue- green shine, rock-polishing the dazzle cast by billows of light, by bursts of sudden uncoloring, un patterning
the waves that just an hour ago were staid and shapely in their mild arc and spray, their falling hopes. their rising expectations
8. Mexican Sage
Purple but minimal, as if the curled-up hardly daring petals
were so embarrassed by the thread of reddish pink desire pumping
through the long coarse stems they ride that they'd grow smaller
rather than grow at all. yet nonetheless they have to keep on
beading the gray-green quiet with this humiliating
flush, have to love the touch of touch, the quiver
in tiny silence, have to be plush in the cold.

Here are two poems I wrote on successive days last week. They kind of go together, so I'm posting them together.
to the coast
heading for the coast
short trip
overnight
take some pictures maybe sell a book or two
thinking again how good were the years i lived there
a smaller but fuller life there than the one i moved to
but life is like that full of choices that once chosen can never be undone
each new day a new page blank waiting to be filled
no way of knowing how different the new page might become had a different story been told four pages back
best to remember with a smile and a small heart tug rather than the false nostalgia of regret
back home
the dogs acted like they were glad to see me and the cat was like she didn't give a damn but then rubbed against my leg when the dogs weren't looking
good trip
sold a couple of books
made arrangements for a signing and reading in a couple of weeks where i might sell some more
enough outcome to justify the hotel bill to IRS anyway
took some pictures - just a few - not much can be done with a large flat body of water unless a fish jumps or something and you happen to catch it
had to walk way the hell out on a jetty to get it but did get a nice shot of the marina and downtown from out in the bay
damn near fell off at one particularly slippery point proving once again that i'm just too damn old to be climbing around on rocks stuck out in Corpus Christi Bay
saw some old buildings that didn't used to be old
talked to some old people who haven't held up any better than the buildings
buildings or people - funny how we see the wrinkles first then after a while you're back to seeing what you saw thirty years ago
the only thing that saves us from ultimate final depression i think
the capacity to look past the present and see the past as if things were still the way the were
back home in time for lunch
checked the fridge
found some fried talapia left over from night before last
smells a little fishy but that's why God invented ketchup
it'll fix most anything

Next, I have several poems by Federico Garcia Lorca from the book In Search of Duende.
Garcia Lorca, born in 1898, was a Spanish poet and dramatist, as well as a painter, pianist, and composer. He was a member of the Generation of '27, a group, including Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, who would become influential artists in Spain.
He was killed by Nationalist partisans in August, 1936, at the age of 38 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
Night
Candle, lamp, lantern, and firefly.
The constellation of the dart.
Little windows of gold trembling, and cross upon cross rocking in the dawn.
Candle,lamp, lantern, and firefly
(English translation by Jaime DeAngulo)
Seville
Seville is a tower full of fine archers.
Seville to wound. Cordoba to die in.
A city that lurks for long rhythms, and twists them like labyrinths. Like tendrils of a vine burning.
Seville to wound!
Under the arch of the sky, across the clear plain, she shoots the constant arrow of her river.
Cardoba to die in!
And mad with horizons, she mixes in her wine the bitterness of Don Juan and the perfection of Dionysys.
Seville to wound. Always Seville to wound!
(English translation by Lysander Kemp)
Early Morning
But like love, the archers are blind.
Over the green night the arrows leave tracks of warm lilies.
The keep of the moon breaks purple clouds and the quivers fill with dew.
Ah, but like love, the archers are blind!
(English Translation by W.S. Merwin)
 Painting by Katie Sottak
We extend the "Here and Now" family this week with these three pieces (one above and two below) by artist Katie Sottak, Katie is currently working on her bachelor of fine arts degree in visual art at Florida Atlantic University. Her work has been featured in a gallery in Stuart, Florida and adorns the walls of cafes in that area. She is very active in the numerous art festivals presented in south Florida.
I meant literally what I said about extending the "Here and Now" family. Katie is the daughter of poet, friend, and frequent "Here and Now" contributor, Michael Sottak.
 Painting by Katie Sottak
 Painting by Katie Sottak

Brian Blanchfield was born in Winston-Salem in 1973. He grew up in Charlotte and Paris, Tennessee. Now in New York he teaches creative writing and literature at Pratt Institute of Art. His poems have appeared in anthologies and magazines big and small, and he writes reviews and essays for Talisman and American Book Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and sometimes Tucson.
The next poem is from Blanchfield's book Not Even Then, published by the University of California Press in 2004.
Two Moons
The moon will all but disappear, which is to say the world is in the way again. It will take two hours to return to full, which is what we, in our way, call a whole half lit.
The last eclipse I didn't understand what I do now.
I was stunned by lawn sculptures of waves outside the long lobbied Delano on South Beach, its oceanside wide open, its twenty-five-foot billowing white drapes sucked to my back and then not and then sucked again, its cavity fighting mine.
The galaxy is all wrong with a nine-dollar cosmopolitan. I couldn't get daylight's alibi.someone said gimme and O. I said gimme another. We couldn't get the bartender's attention. Obtundity nearly knocked me over.
Dennis said he didn't know about lunar ones but the wind that rushes in when the sun goes out brings the scent of your secret desire.
At Grand Army Plaza, by nine lanes spinning into fewer, I make it to the middle. The moon is already phased to the size of an eyelash, or someone's distant hand cupped at his sunned brow, making you out. Poor white parenthesis, is everything inessential? Should everything come between? Someone cheer the sidereal.
But no on has outsprinted our coverlet to star in a warmth on rock. I imagine it new, another tournament beginning, an open, an invitational.

This next piece comes from my people-watchinig, an observational piece, source of much of what I do.
friends
chipmunk-cheeked from the chemo
she lunches with friends on a hamburger and rings
laughter and loud talk interrupting each other to finish sentences as friends often do
there is a relish to every moment every laugh every interruption
friends for now
friends forever
no matter what happens...
friends

James Laughlin 30 October 1914 – 12 November 1997) was a poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers after being told by Ezra Pound, "You're never going to be any good as a poet. Why don't you take up something useful?" Following Pound's suggestion, he founded New Directions with money from his wealthy family. Despite Pound's suggestion, he continued to write poetry.
Laughlin died in 1997 of complications related to a stroke in Norfolk, Connecticut, at age 83.
The Longest Journey
As a young man, full of eagerness, I set out to conquer my little sphere. If it were only a finger's width, it would be mine, all mine. And I walked, as the old poet said, "multas per gentes et multa per aequora" in pursuit of the voices that called me. And some were where I expected to find them and some were not. And as I drew near to them many faded away and were no longer audible. Now, in old age I think back to those I loved rather than to anything I took from anyone for my enrichment, for I know now that "the beauty is in the walking; we are destroyed by destinations."

Mary Jo Caffrey is a retired Air Force member living in Gretna, Nebraska. She enjoys writing poetry for children and adults. she is a member of the Nebraska Writers Guild and Nebraska Writers Workshop.
After one of my general solicitations for poems, Mary sent this really beautiful piece to me and it got stuck in a crack or something and I just found it again. A Good One
God knows I miss him, for all our jawing about money and food and children scattered like apples from a barrel. Can't see much any more, this old house dim inside with echoes of him.
If I sit quietly in my chair and the wind isn't rattling the window, just beyond the beat in my ears, I hear that laugh buzzing round my head, can feel his breath on my cheek and that tickle.
Too flighty, ma said, look at those legs, long, and feet like beaver paddles, meant for walking. Oh, but that smile! How it beguiled, sweet scent of something good on his skin, a man bubbling greatness and me great, too, by association. Glory! He danced on that old dirt barn floor like it was air and he gravity-free under the spell of strings on Pa's violin.
On our wedding day, Mamma cried and hugged me tight, her advice, "keep a good coop," my dowry sure enough. Our farm prospered through three boys and one girl, his joy like light rain through all the good that passes through - in marriage, in life, on our farm.
Why he left I suppose is just nature, sirens on every rock, behind every hill too much for me, just a plain farmer's wife with only the dream to live and grow old with my man and sown seeds. In time, when I'm ready to go - that lasting part of me will follow a wandering bee lilting on a soft westerly breeze to blossom-full branches promising summer's great bounty and shading the grass where he rests.

Andrey Voznesensky was born in 1933 in Moscow, where he still lives and works.
Early in his life, he was fascinated with painting and architecture and, in 1957, graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute. His enthusiasm for poetry, though, proved to be stronger than architecture. While still a teenager, he sent his poems to Boris Pasternak who became a friend and strong influence.
His first poems were published in 1958 and, in the mid-1960s, when the Cold War began to show signs of thaw, he was one of several Russian poets, including Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Bella Akhmadulina, who attained a kind of pop star status in Russia and drew large crowds in Europe and the United States. (I think I remember Yevtushenko even appearing on television's Ed Sullivan Show, which had to have been a first.)
In 1978 Voznesensky was awarded the USSR State Prize. He is an honorable member of ten academies, including Russian academy of learning (1993), the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Parisian Académie Goncourt and others.
A minor planet 3723 Voznesenskij, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1976 is named after him.
These next two poems are from the book, Voznesensky - selected poems, published by Hill and Wang in 1966. The poems were translated into English by Herbert Marshall.
Bikes
To Victor Bokov
The bikes are lying in the wood in the dew the road is shining through birch trees new
they reached there, they fell, handlebar to handlebar pedal to pedal mudguard to mudguard
you'll never stir them - not on your life - those torpid monsters with chains intertwined
so big and surprised stare from the earth at hazy-green skies resin oozes bees purr amid clamorous plenty mint and camomile deep they lie forgotten and sleep and sleep and sleep
The next poem was first dedicated to Leo Tolstoy, but to everyone in the know at the time, it was clearly meant to honor Boris Pasternak, the great Russian author and poet in such ill flavor with the authorities that he turned down his Nobel Prize out of fear that if he left Russia to collect it he would be stripped of his citizenship and not allowed to return.
Crowns and Roots
They carried him not to entombment. They carried him out to enthronement.
Browner than bronze, Greyer than granite, smoking like a locomotive, the artist lived, dishevelled, To him more divine were shovels Than sacred like lamps!
Languished his lilac tree... Like starfall in sweat, His back so steamed As in the oven - bread!...
His house gapes wide open. Floors yawning holes. In the kitchen no one. In the district - not a soul.
The artists are departing, As in a cathedral, bareheaded, To birch trees and oak trees Through humming green meadows.
Their flight - a victory Their departure - a sunrise To plains and planets From tinselled lies.
Crowns fall from the woods. But powerfully beneath the land Twist and turn the roots Of gnarled and wrinkled hands.

This is another piece from my brief visit to the coast last week.
that's all there is to it
Fred's Fresh Fried Fish
on a little spit of sand sticking out into Oso Bay
fish anyway you like it as long as you like it fried
and the beer of your choice as long as you choose Lone Star or Tecate
big windows on either side suck gulf breezes across scarred wood tables
in the kitchen the sound of grease bubbling at the tables fried fish on paper plates rings
of beer bottle dew hot sauce ketchup plastic forks and jalapenos
lots of talk mostly loud mostly profane
a place to eat fried fish Fred says and that's all there is to it

Cornelius Eady was born in 1954 in Rochester, New York and is an author of seven volumes of poetry. His first book of poetry, Kartunes was published in 1980, with several books of poetry following it. Recently awarded honors include the Strousse Award from Prairie Schooner, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and individual Fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Eady has also recently collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don't Miss Your Water, Running Man, Fangs, and Brutal Imagination. In 1996, Eady and fellow poet Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization for black poets. Cornelius Eady has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The Writer's Voice, The College of William and Mary, and Sweet Briar College. Formerly an associate professor of English and Director of the Poetry Center at State University of New York at Stony Brook and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the City College of New York, Eady currently lives in South Bend, Indiana and is on the faculty of the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Notre Dame.
The next poem is from his book Brutal Imagination, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 2001. The book includes two cycles of poems. The second, Running Man, was drawn from his libretto for the music-drama by the same name. The poems in the second cycle are written as if narrated by the black kidnapper Susan Smith invented to cover up her killing or her two sons.
In this poem, Eady notes that the sections in itallics are taken directly from Smith's handwritten confession.
Birthing
When I left home on Tuesday, October 25, I was very emotionally distraught
I have yet to breathe.
I am in the back of her mind, Not even a notion.
A scrap of cloth, the way A man lopes down a street.
Later, a black woman will say: "We knew exactly who she was describing."
At this point, I have no language No tongue, no mouth.
I am not me, yet I am just an understanding.
__________
As I rode and rode and rode, I felt Even more anxiety.
Susan parks on a bridge, And stares over the rail. Below her feet, a dark blanket of river She wants to pull over herself, children and all.
I am not the call of the current.
She is heartbroken She gazes down, And imagines heaven.
__________
I felt I couldn't be a good mom anymore, but I didn't want my children to grow up without a mom.
I am not me, yet. At the bridge, One of Susan's kids cries, So she drives to the lake, To the boat dock.
I am not yet opportunity.
__________
I had never felt so lonely and so sad.
Who shall be a witness? Bullfrogs, water fowl.
__________
When I was at John D. Long Lake I had never felt so scared and unsure.
I've yet to be called. Who will notice? Moths, dragonflies, Field mice.
__________
I wanted to end my life so bad And was in my car ready to Go down the ramp into the water
My hand isn't her hand Panicked on the Emergency Break.
__________
And I did go part way, But I stopped.
I am not Gravity, The water lapping against The gravel.
__________
I went again and stopped. I then got out of the car.
Susan stares at the sinking. My muscles aren't her muscles, Burned from pushing. The lake has no appetite, But it takes the car slowly, Swallow by swallow like a snake.
__________
Why was I feeling this way? Why was everything so bad In my life?
Susan stares at the taillights As the slide from here to hidden.
__________
I have no answers To these questions.
She only has me, After she removes our hands From out ears.

Our Liverpool born, Baltimore residing friend, Christopher George is back with us this week with two short reports from the center of the financial storms about to chew out or rear ends all the way to our neckbones.
Black Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
The stock market crashes, politicians vie and fuss, neglect to reach a solution;
still, this autumn morning, a mockingbird springs onto a "No Entry" sign, tail up,
and fall crocus thrust pinkly through the loam. Red, White, and Blewy
While Congress debates the Stock Market bailout, a kite bobs above the Mall.

As I foraged through the poetry shelves at Half-Price Books, I ran across this strange pink little book of poems by 23-year-old poet Tao Lin titled Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. His other work includes a novel, Eeeeee Eee Eeee, a short story collection, Bed, and an earlier poetry collection, You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am. He also maintains a blog, Reader of Depressing Books.
It's a fascinating book. And funny, too.
I know at all times that in four hours i will feel completely different
when you kill yourself the universe learns how to console you nothing i type is true; for example i am going to go outside and meet interesting people actually i will never meet an interesting person if you ask me what happens to me i will tell you that after coffee my brain is harder and shinier my face is less worried and my eyes move faster if you ask me what happened to sad people i will tell you that pieces of water move from the inside of their heads to the outside and then i think the water evaporates when my brain thinks it makes squishy noises not all brains are like this i like to point my worried face at different areas of the physical world, and this is a mischievous thing my face is at the front of my head do you believe i am a good person? i am going to go away for two hours when i return i will accurately predict the actions of everyone i know for the next three weeks,because that's how i am: industrious severely disillusioned pass me the organic sesame seed salt substitute industrious people who are severely disillusioned enjoy squishy noises more than the average person i laugh at the average person i don't know why i do that i will never squish a human brain with both my hands looking down at the brain inside the skull i have bought and sold over three hundred things on ebay ebay is incredible three word sentences console me and this is a dangerous thing the most dangerous weapon in the universe is the sphere-shaped knife let me explain about the sphere-shaped knife the insanity of the sphere-shaped knife i am going to sleep now i am going to turn off the light now

I'm going to finish up this week with more religion. Many would say, anti-religion, but i don't mean them that way. I don't have the right to fault anyone on faith terms, but thinking our own thoughts out loud is what this whole writing thing is about.
I don't think you can think about the big questions without considering God, eternal entity who created it all and may or may not watch over its ongoing operation, even if, in the end, you dismiss him/her/it as farfetched.
God-belief as come up with some pretty wild ideas and has been used to justify both good and evil. A light in the sky indicates God's favor or disfavor (take your pick) with King Whatsakaneezer so he must be exalted or beheaded (take you pick). We've read that story before.
But science/reason, in trying to answer the big questions, comes up with some pretty far out stories of its own. (So what does this gravity stuff look like, what shape, what color, how much does it weigh?)
The difference, the one approach burns heretics at the stake, while the other accepts, in fact requires, questioning and critique.
I'm basically a anti-burning-at-the-stake-guy. (Also an anti-burning-the-steak-guy, but that's a different issue.)
It all comes down in the end to a question of faith and how much faith you have in faith as a way to explain the universe and it's meaning, including whether it even has a meaning.
Here are two poetic responses to "faith," first by me and second by our friend and frequent contributor, Gary Blankenship.
Here's mine.
believe it or not
so they found this way ancient bowl over in Israel where they find all this way ancient stuff and an inscription that circles the bowl makes reference to a Jesus the Magician
and i'm reading this and all of a sudden think zounds! there's the nub of it
there's lots of magicians around past and present and if you're gonna believe in the magic of one how can you not believe in the magic of all the rest i mean
what's our criteria here
if Jesus the Magician has the right mojo what about the Great Oz or The Great Waldo or Moola the Magnificent
myself i like Waldo especially his black tux and yellow spats but that's like showmanship do i have to believe in his magic as well
seems to me you have to believe them all and that includes Tinkerbell Snow White and Little Red from the hood or you gotta believe none of them
i choose none
it just gets too damn complicated otherwise
And now here's Gary's take on the question of faith. more subtle, as usual, than mine.
Believes
(thanks to Neal Stephenson)
I believe in tangerine dragons, plaid, who belch undiluted bleach - but not those spotted, striped, red, white or blue who fart acid...
I believe in dragons of any shape or color found in nature, who excrete every toxin in a mad scientist's lab - but not in flying turtles, unicorns, angels or horned devils...
I believe in dragons, airborne turtles, and all matter of creature, humanish or not, but not in gods who thunder, dabble in the affairs of men, or care about more than where's the next party and when does it start...
If I believe in a profusion of gods, creeds, cults and superstitions, then I can believe anything including that you will someday return the hedge clippers you borrowed...
(inspired by his Anathem)

And that's the story for now. Come again next week, when all the material presented in the blog will continue to be the property of its creators and the blog itself will still be produced by and the property of me...allen itz.
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good, good, good, Allen - you're not only providing a platform for both old and new poets, showing us with your photographs a world we might not see, introducing us to poets and, this time, painters we might never know, but you're also educating us. I didn't know all that stuff about Langston Hughes - about giving up that 'plum' of a job with the study of Africans guy to be a bell hop and regain his freedom. My kind of guy. And, my new favorite poem of the world is his Desert - yes, when life is so lonely, when you're so isolated, and the world seems so barren, even the company of a venomous snake is better than nothing - great poem. And, then Lorca - I knew, but I'd forgotten, and to die for really no reason (but there's been a lot of that in this world) at 38. I hope it was a bullet through the brain and not gangrene. And I love Seitu Hart's answer to everything - 'write a poem' - it just takes a while to figure out that it's that simple, doesn't it? Love Sottak's paintings, especially the girl on the beach - love the way the cleavage of her bottom and her breasts echo each other. Wonderful composition and color, and great spaces.
And, of course, the photography - an especially the Mariposa - I long to hear Spanish spoken. Must get myself to Mexico, some little town with no tourist pretensions and a cheap casa de huespedes with a courtyard and maybe an orange tree and a cat.
Nice issue, Allen, and all of your poetry nice to see again.
Alice
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