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Introducing Lawrence Trujillo
Thursday, May 21, 2009 Tribute to Barnette Newmann by Lawrence Trujillo IV.5.4. All the images in this issue are by friend , former coworker, and San Antonio artist, Lawrence Trujillo. Lawrence was born in 1971, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After studying art at New Mexico State University, he traveled extensively throughout the Western and Midwestern U.S. to promote his experimental visions. Using his numerous sketchbooks as source material, his paintings evolve arbitrarily, and tend toward the geometric. In addition to galleries, he has exhibited in a deli, a library, a liquor store, at home, and portably, using lightweight displays and easels. His work is in a growing number of collections, including those of The University of Texas at San Antonio and the New Mexico Department of Transportation, and various private supporters. In 2009, Lawrence has upcoming shows in New Orleans, Louisiana and Rio Rancho, New Mexico, as well as several ongoing exhibits in San Antonio. A visit to his San Antonio studio is chronicled in the online literary magazine, invasivethoughts.com: From Event to Studio. More art can be found at Lawrence Trujillo's Artsite, now listed in YourArt.com, and also in myspace, at www.myspace.com/lawrence_trujillo. In talking about his vision as an artist, Lawrence says "I combine colors, lines, and shapes at will to achieve vibrant, layered, and highly contrasting oil and acrylic paintings. Though the subject matter may sometimes vary, a common thread of all artworks is my outright refusal to use rulers or straightedges; I believe that the sanctity of the drawn line is paramount." ..... I'm going a bit longer than usual with this issue, mainly because it got done in bits and pieces, right in the middle of a bunch of other stuff, and it just kind of grew while I wasn't watching. So, in addition to Lawrence's art, here's the list of our poets for the week: Selections from the book Chiyo-ni, Woman Haiku Master Me as the cookie crumbles Rose Becallo Raney Fresh Marilyn Kallet Fireflies Joan Shroyer-Keno Knowing Susan B. McDonough Flower Bits Federico Garcia Lorca from Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias Me apology Arlita Jones January Meatwrapper's Lyric Alice Folkart Pure Trash Chinatown Sunset Last Night in Chinatown Rose Romano So I Lost My Temper Laura Boss At the Nuclear Rally Alan Chong Lau The Upside Down Basket Me stirring in the mist Edwin Arlington Robinson Mr. Flood's Party William Shakespeare When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes Percy Shelley Ozymandias Barbara Moore Dares go first, diana rigg Me the NRA is ascared of me Thomas R. Smith Com in From the Rain Me on this Mother's Day start with biography  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo I begin this week with a little gathering of haiku from the book Chiyo-ni, Woman Haiku Master, published by Tuttle Publishing in 1998. This is the first book in English on a woman haiku poet. Chiyo-ni, the poet was born in 1703 and died in 1775. She is Japan's most celebrated female haiku poet. A student of two of Basho's disciples, she worked in an age when haiku was largely a male domain. She was a poet, painter, and Buddhist nun. All the poems in the book were translated by Patricia Donegan andYoshie Ishibashi. The book's poems are divided into seasons. flying of cranes as high as the clouds - first sunrise one mountain after another unveiled - the first mists Under New Year's sky holding Mount Fuji's smile New Year's sake - until the next, this first delight first dream even after awakening the flower's heart the same Spring wrapped around this world's flower - hazy moon green grass - between, between the blades the color of the water to be in a world eating white rice amid plum fragrance butterfly - what's it dreaming fanning its wings? morning and evening the dew swells on the buds Summer the moon's coolness - on that leaf, this leaf not only light keeping cool - in the deep night strangers on the bridge the coolness - of the bottom of her kimono in the bamboo grove change of kimono: showing only her back to the blossom's fragrance moonflowers - the beauty of hidden things autumn at the crescent moon the silence enters the heart twilight is left in the maple leaves moon viewing - after coming home nothing to say first wild geese - the nights are becoming long, becoming long moonlit night - a cricket sings out on a stone winter snowy night - only the well-bucket's falling sound sleeping alone awakened by the frosty night... sewing things - I fold in dreams on a December night the passing year - irritating things are only water anyway leave it to the wind - dry pampas grass  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo You know how it is, sometimes you just have to kick loose all the traces chase down some excitement. as the cookie crumbles having a chocolate-chip cookie with my latte this morning, leaving me aquiver with the excitement at such a foray into the world of wild and crazy guyhood it's a sign, these palpitations are, of my normally serene and laid-back heart, that i'm on a tear for sure, set to become again the adventurer of my youth when a bottle of Lone Star for breakfast, followed by pancakes three eggs, sausage and a gallon of coffee, was the start of many a day (i knew it was breakfast because the light hurt my eyes) i'm ready this getting old and creaky crap has run it's course it's time to fight back against the deprecations of excessive birthdaying, smoke inhalation from all those candles a major source of deterioration of elders' respiratory functions .......... the cookie's finished, every last crumb, and, though dizzy now from the big chocolate chunks, i'm still up to the fight but i'm going home first to take a nap after that, those mattress tags better beware cause i'm on a crazy desperado law-busting tear  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo The next several poems are from All Around Us: Poems from the Valley published in 1996 for the Knoxville Writer's Guild by Blue Ridge Publishing. This the second anthology of poems from their region by the Guild, the first being titled Voices from the Valley. The new anthology includes the work of 72 poets. The first of the poems I'm using this week is by Rose Becallo Raney, a senior technical writer and editor for a scientific and engineering management firm in Oak Ridge. She completed her MA in English with emphasis in creative writing in 1992 at the University of Tennessee in 1992 and was one of two first-place winners in the 1994 Tennessee Writers Alliance poetry competition. It is getting close to dinner time as I write this and I was very hungry, even before I read this poem. Fresh He stands by the wheelbarrow full of sweet potatoes. "Big as your arm," he says, turning tubers over in their dust and soft clods. Fuzzy root hairs hang down from them - fresh, ripe, snapping with harsh orange in brown dirt skins. He scrubs them down, sloughs off warm mud, gnarled fingers knuckling in the knots of his work as he dreams the steaming baked potatoes mashed across with butter, yellow running with some of the white corn and those beefsteak tomatoes: wavering rinds, sliced-through sleeves. The smile wrinkles as his shirt billows soft. The next poem from the anthology is by Marilyn Kallet, a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A poet, translator, essayist, and editor, Kallet is widely published, including six books of her own, and winner, in 1988, of the Tennessee Arts Commission's Literary Fellowship in Poetry. Fireflies In the dry summer field at nightfall, fireflies rise like sparks. Imagine the presence of ghosts flickering, the ghosts of young friends, your father nearest in the distance. This time they carry no sorrow, no remorse, their presence is so light. Childhood comes to you, memories of your street in lamplight, holding those last moments before bed, capturing lightning bugs, with a blossom of the hand letting them go. Lightness returns, an airy motion over the ground you remember from ring-around-the-rosie. If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies again, not part of your stories, as unaware of you as sleep, being beautiful and quiet all around you. My last poem this week from the Knoxville Writer's Guild anthology is by Joan Shroyer-Keno who published frequently in area literary journals. Knowing Crickets, feather pillow, old soft sheets against my cheek. My mother, does she sleep or turn and bend fourteen hours on the night shift? My grandmother curled on her side, snoring. My great grandmother flat on her back. Stomach rising, falling. Like her mother and her mother before her: rising, blooming, enduring, falling back to earth. I see them in their fields, kitchens, factories. Under their moon-white sheets darned and bleached their eyes in darkness, blinking. Each seeing the lives of their mothers longed for, but never had.  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Here's a series of little poems about flowers by our friend Susan B. McDonough. Sue is a master gardner who creates gardens for a living and enjoys the journey of transplanting words into poetry. She has one foot in Arizona and the other in Maine. Her poems can be found both on-line and in print. If I have my timing right, she has just left Arizona and is busy preparing her gardens in Maine now. What a great life that must be, except for all the hard work. Flower Bits 1 Bachelor buttons lust for Evening Primrose her soft pink petals exposed to twilight 2 The clover that refused to grow: lays lush covering paths in a thick abundant emerald carpet now that the plan has been scrapped. 3 I wonder where tiny grains of pollen land (besides in our nostrils) I envy imagined voyages adrift on the whim a late morning's wind. 4 I pretend I am from another planet, It is May and I have discovered bright yellow flowers; something called Dandelions. I find them exquisite. 5 My woods were someone else's once. The first fresh air camp for kids with juvenile diabetes. Each spring I find their flower memories greening again; day lilies from beneath dry oak leaves and I know that their giggles and summer shrieks rest here too. 6 I watch African Daisies react to light. They blink through wind blown dappled. They telegraph sun to shade, sun to shade I watch for a few minutes while they open a bit and close and wonder how it is they know.  Painting by Lawence Trujillo I have a poem now, actually a part of a poem, by Federico Garcia Lorca from the book In Search of Duende, published by New Directions in 1998. I'll leave it anyone unfamiliar with Garcia Lorca do their own google search. The following are two sections from a long poem lamenting the death of a matador. The poem was translated by Stephen Spender and J. I. Gili. from Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias 2. The Spilled Blood I will not see it. Tell the moon to come for I do not want to see the blood of Ignacio on the sand. I will not see it! The moon wide open. Horse of still clouds, and the grey bullring of dreams with willows in the barreras. I will not see it! Let my memory kindle! Warn the jasmines of such minute whiteness! I will not see it! the cow of the ancient world passed her sad tongue over a snout of blood spilled on the sand, and the bulls of Guisando, partly death and partly stone, bellowed like two centuries sated with treading the earth. No. I do not want to see it! I will not see it! Ignacio goes up the tiers with all his death on his shoulders. He sought for the dawn but the dawn was no more. He seeks for his confident profile and the dream bewilders him. He sought for his beautiful body and encountered his opened blood. I will not see it! I do not want to hear it spurt each time with less strength: that spurt that illuminates the ties of seats and spills over the corduroy and the leather of a thirsty multitude. Who shouts that I should come near! Do not ask me to see it! His eyes did not close when he saw the horns near, but the terrible mothers lifted their heads. And across the ranches, and air of secret voices rose, shouting to celestial bulls, herdsmen of pale mist. There was no prince in Seville who could compare with him, nor sword like his sword nor heart so true. Like a river of lions was his marvelous strength, and like a marble torso his firm drawn moderation The air of Andalusian Rome gilded his head where his smile was a spikenard of wit and intelligence. What a great torero in the ring! What a good peasant in the sierra! How gentle with the sheaves! How hard with the spurs! How tender with the dew! How dazzling in the fiesta! How tremendous with the final banderillas of darkness! But now he sleeps without end. Now the moss and the grass open with sure fingers the flower of his skull. and now his blood comes out singing; singing along marshes and meadows, sliding on frozen horns, faltering soulless in the mist, stumbling over a thousand hoofs to form a pool of agony close to the starry Guadalquivir. Oh, white wall of Spain! Oh, black bull of sorrow! Oh, hard blood of Ignacio! Oh, nightingale of his veins! No. I will not see it! No chalice can contain it, no swallows can drink it, no frost of light can cool it, nor song nor deluge of white lilies, no class can cover it with silver. No. I will not see it! (This next, and final section of the poem follows part 3, The Laid-Out Body 4. Absent Soul The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree, nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house. The child and the afternoon do not know you because you have died for ever. The back of the stone does not know you, nor the black satin in which you crumble. Your silent memory does not know you because you have died for ever. The autumn will come with small white snails, misty grapes and with clustered hills, but no on will look into your eyes because you have died for ever. Because you have died for ever, like all the dead of he Earth, like all the dead who are forgotten in a heap of lifeless dogs. Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you. for posterity I sing of your profile and grace. Of the signal maturity of your understanding. Of you appetite for death and the taste of its mouth. Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety. It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. I sing of his elegance with words that groan, and I remember a sad breeze through olive trees.  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Every once in a while a newspaper headline hits close to home, even when home is a little bitty place few others have ever heard of. apology the first swine flu death of an American in the US was a 33-year-old woman from Harlingen, Texas who taught school in Mercedes, Texas, both cities very familiar to me as the bracket my old home town on Highway 83, one the west and the other to the east, 7 miles in either direction both important to me in their proximity as places we could go to do the things we didn't dare do in our little home town where everyone knew us and our parents and where we lived and we couldn't get away with nothing without hearing about it at home Mercedes is a little town about the same size as La Feria, where i grew up, famous for it's annual live stock show and rodeo, bringing in "big names" in the country-field for it’s midweek musical performances, the old singing cowboy, Gene Autry, one year, and most notoriously, Dan Blocker, the big guy who played Hoss on the tv show Bonanza, who got drunk in Mexico before the show and had to be tied to his horse to keep him from falling off during the his ride around the arena (some cowboy skills were required of all performers, singing cowboy or tv actor, as well as rodeo riders) we didn't have much else to do with Mercedes except for a couple of fights with Mercedes kids over a swimming hole about halfway between the two towns (a great swimming hole, right beside a field of watermelon which we stole until the farmer finally wised up after three summers and planted cotton instead - what i wouldn't give for a watermelon that tasted that good again) Harlingen was where we most hung out, a larger city of 30-35 thousand, with several movie theaters, English and Spanish, and two drive in movies, for when you had better things to do that watch a movie; two drive in restaurants about fifteen blocks apart, good for 60-70 miles a night cruising back and forth, to see, to be seen, important in equal measure (hard as it is to believe as i look at the pictures, but i looked a little older than my friends and was usually the one to supply the alcohol that helped fuel the cruising - bought it in a little town called Bluetown, a few miles south of home, almost right on the Rio Grande neither blue nor much of a town, but with at least one little cantina with a healthy disrespect for gringo law and Constable Pinky who preferred to stay well north of Bluetown where he might have to prove the existence of several personal characteristics like toughness and personal grit he'd prefer to have just assumed by one and all) other times, we crossed the river to buy hard liquor, a hassle, since, being underage we couldn't declare it and had to smuggle it across - our greatest coup when we smuggled 25 pints of rum across the river inside the front seat of a friend's '61 Ford station wagon, becoming famous among our rum drinking friends) the city also hosted an Air Force base, closed after the 1960 election, bringing hardship to many families, including some of my friends', leaving a ghost town of grass-grown streets and derelict barracks that i helped dismantle several years later while on a summer job, tearing apart the skin and bones of the former lifeblood of many workers and their families .......... all this remembering from the death of one person unknown to me and unborn for many years after these memories were created would she care about any of this - very unlikely, few will i would suppose, making this a poem to myself (as most are) a poem extended to myself even more blatantly that usual, with apologies for dragging you along but, you know, it's what i do and if i didn't do what i do, well, i'd hardly be doing anything at all  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Alaskan butcher's daughter, meatwrapper, and poet, Arlitia Jones, won the 2001 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize with her first collection of poems, The Bandsaw Riots, published by Bear Star Press. Here are two poems from that book. January Morning is a black wing flaring at a window feathered with ice through which there's nothing to be seen but Anchorage hunkered under halogen limps. Industry stops. Too cold even to work inside at Wholesale Tendermeats where the butchers move like slow bears dazed in the chill of the cutting room, white luggers stretched over bulk of winter coats and longjohns. At break the coffee in their cups turns cold before they drink it. They pass sections of newspaper - a well-worn currency between them. I see they're selling health insurance for pets now, says the bookkeeper behind the counter who, at age forty-eight and uninsured, could finally pay cash for her first mammogram. And the butcher scrabbling his fingers in the candy dish set out for paying customers swears These fucking people drive me nuts, and tells about the border collie he had when he was a kid. Smacked by a car, not bad enough to kill it. I had to hide him under our porch or my dad would've shot him. we never heard of a veterinarian. Says his father worked swing at he railroad, coupling, un coupling the cars, In his house nothing went to the animals. Hardly anything to the kids. In the office black and white floor tiles tell the lie: wrong and right remain distinct, one from the other. It's the cold platform they stand on every day. Their break stretches to a half hour and still they're reluctant to hit it. With four hours and twenty-six minutes of light, dark rules the beginning to every year and appetite sets the price for red meat. Out of Nebraska beef tenders run twelve bucks pound when you can get them. For months Americans have been stockpiling New Yorks and Tenderloins to prepare for the barrenness of a new century. They pay dearly to avoid hunger, to avoid chicken. One of the butchers worries about pipes on the outside wall of his house. In weather like this something always bursts. Every thing shuts down. In her reflection in the window glass the meat- wrapper watches her self trying to breath warmth into her hands. You never think it'll come to this. The kid who once believed she would fly, vowed to throw herself to the wind, is hunched in a chair, conserving body heat, cold and grouchy as the thought of getting up. Meatwrapper's Lyric Out of the corner of my eye I peg her to be the pretty wife of an important man. Always, it's ones like her who ask, "How can you stand the sight of blood?" She watches me weigh out the three pounds of extra lean ground round and wipe my hands on my apron to keep from spoiling the clean white butcher paper I wrap it in. "You get used to it," I shrug and think of the blood's aged color - not that hot red shock of a life leaked out - more brown and watery as old coffee, blood dull as engine oil on the cutting floor where we've tracked through with our heavy boots. Thursday night must be her night to cook for husband and two kids. Her recipe, from a magazine, will clutter her kitchen with forty-eight separate ingredients, an electric chopper and, I'd bet money, a double broiler. I smile. Count back change. "It's no big thing. I wash my hands a lot and when I get home the kides dog goes apeshit licking my feet."  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Here's a kind of a series of poems by our friend from Hawaii, Alice Folkart. Alice was involved in a spoken word project that had its rehearsals in Chinatown. From her observations and impressions, came these poems. I'm hoping to see more because I really like these and the sense of time and place that makes them so real. Pure Trash Pure trash, that's one thing you can count on in Chinatown. Nothing with any life left in it is ever thrown away. Unsmiling old women in black cloth shoes eye even banana peels - they must be good for something! Piled high on lava curbstones, yellow, pink, blue and white, plastic bags bulging with nail parings and dead rats, wait for Monday pick up. Even the orange striped cat walks past without sniffing. Chinatown Sunset Orange striped cat sniffing in the drain pipe in a Chinatown gutter. Are you someone's idea of a meal, cat meat with lobster sauce, in this haven of the poor? Is that why you won't look when I call, "Pretty cat!" Woman on a blue-plastic stool, gold front tooth glinting in the setting sun that a mile away, on Waikiki Beach sends tourists ohhhing and ahhhhing. Seated on the dirty sidewalk, tossing grain to filthy pigeons to entertain just-learned-to-walk son. Last Night in Chinatown Crooked little man in a boy's striped tee shirt orange and brown, sitting on a produce box in a dirty doorway in the bad part of Chinatown, peel the rotten leaves off yesterday's Brussels Sprouts to make them new for tomorrow. What were your dreams?  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo My next couple of poems come from a book I just picked up at Half-Price Books. The book, Unsettling America, An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, was published by Penguin Books in 1994. A great buy, this book, at $3.48. My first poem from the book is by Rose Romano, poet, editor and publisher. The granddaughter of Neapolitan and Sicilian immigrants, she was born and raised in Brooklyn. So I Lost My Temper Another one was coming toward me yelling and wagging his finger in my face. So I lost my temper. I yelled louder than he could. I backed him into a corner. His wife tried to console him. It's an Italian trait, she explained. I went out and bought a votive candle and a little glass cup to put it in. Then I went home and made a big pot of spaghetti. Another on said he didn't believe I could be that way, that Italian women are much to sexual to be like that, that he was sure I knew how to make a man feel appreciated. I went out and bought some tomato seeds and a small clay pot. Then I went home and lit the votive candle, planted the tomato seeds, and made a big pot os spaghetti. Another one assured me that all women's bars are owned and operated by the Mafia, that the women who signed the papers, redecorated the place, stand behind the bar every night, serve the drinks, sweep up at closing time, and count the money, are just a front. I went out and bought a statue of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Then I went home and put her on my dresser, lit the votive candle in front of her, watered the tomatoes, and made a big pot of spaghetti. I'm walking down the street and I hear the words - garlic eater. I tuck holy cards into the corners of the mirror over my dresser. I hear the word - greaseball. I staple a tiny palm cross on the door frame in my bedroom. Dago - I put a red and white checked tablecloth on the little round table in my kitchen. Guinea - I redo my bathroom in green, white and red. Wop - I stop shaving the little black hairs growing out of my chin If this trend continues, when I'm eighty years old I'll wear black shapeless dresses, black stockings, black chunky shoes. and my hair in a bun at the back of my neck. Now I'm thinking maybe this is how Italian women become grandmothers. Now I'm thinking maybe this is how Italian grandmothers last long enough to become boss of the family: they lose their temper. The next poem from the anthology is by Laura Boss. Her books of poetry include Stripping and the Alta Award-winning On the Edge of the Hudson. At the Nuclear Rally thinking of my father who died of cancer of the pancreas now linked to radiation thinking of my father who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission that ran security checks on him questioning our neighbors in Woodbridge thinking of my father with a pen in his pocket who could add four columns of figures in his head but stayed poor working for the OPA while colleagues took expensive presents thinking of my father who embarrassed me, singing in the car with the radio on as I now do who returned from government trips with marzipan strawberries, bananas, grapes who cooke Sunday breakfast of chocolate French toast (his special recipe) and let my mother sleep late thinking of my father who was born Jewish but never went to temple never was Bar Mitzvahed thinking of my father who smelled of Chesterfields who never hit, never spanked me told me he was glad I walked home with the only black woman in my high school class thinking of my father who would have been at this rally next to me tonight. My last poem from Unsettling America is by Alan Chong Lau, whose books include a collection of poetry entitled Songs from Jadina. The Upside Down Basket For Connie Young Yu, Chinese American Scholar "the chinese came to california for gold, they worked on the railroad and wore hats that looked like upside down baskets." - from a california state history textbook now in use my grandmother rakes up chicken shit mixed with mud to feed her roses head protected by and upside down basket dares the sun to get closer her shirt ablaze with hawaiian pineapples she imitates the cackle of hens as they run merry off nests wings flapping dust an egg still warm cuddles the round of my chin a tickle unbearable so i laugh and she does too so hard the upside down basket trembles as though shaking a fist at the heat we walk home the musk of rotten apples everywhere incense curling into skin on the porch the upside down basket sits rightside up we drink gallons of lemonade  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Strange things afoot. If you don't believe me, look at this. stirring in the mist heavy haze weights down the air thick and gray days for the past week, the buildings downtown like tall-walking ghosts at midday a time for sussing out mysteries, opportunities to discover new delights abounding - pledge week on public radio, a chance to investigate the rest of the dial, alternating between NPR, the all-jazz format of KRTU at Trinity University until late at night, the eccentric, eclectic mix of KSYM at San Antonio College, and, every once in a while, the "golden oldies" at 101.1, where the good old days are now starting in 1980; that's the reason i don't stop in there often, i'm looking for Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and they're giving me early Madonna, no different from late Madonna, except not as buff and stringy and that's the way it is about getting old, all the good stuff either dies or gets stringy, it's all about change, mostly bad, but sometimes good, sometimes even amazing, like Kumar, going from "White Castle" and "House" to the White House, and Harold, now new helmsman on the SS Enterprise, boldly going anew where no one has gone before that's the way it is on these dim and hazy days, strange things stirring in the mist  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Next, I have a couple of poets from another book I found at the used book store, A Pocketful of Poems, Vintage Verse, Volume. one in a series of anthologies directed at students. This first volume was published by Thompson Advantage Books. My first poet from the book is Edwin Arlington Robinson. Born in 1869, Robinson grew up in Maine, describing his childhood later as "stark and unhappy." His parents, having wanted a girl, did not name him until he was six months old, when they visited a holiday resort and other vacationers, deciding that he should have a name, selected a man from Arlington, Massachusetts to draw a name out of a hat. Although he endured a slow start to his literary career, he eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for the years 1922, 1925 and 1928. During the last twenty years of his life he became a regular summer resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where he maintained a solitary life. He died in 1935. Mr. Flood's Party Old Eban Flood, climbing alone one night Over the hill between the town below And the forsaken upland hermitage That held as much as he should ever know On earth again of home, paused warily. The road was his with not a native near; and Eban, having leisure, said aloud, For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear: "Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon Again, and we may not have many more; The bird is on the wing, the poet says, And you and I have said it here before. Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light The jug that had had gone so far to fill, And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood, Since you propose it, I believe I will." Alone, as if enduring to the end A valiant Armor of scarred hopes outworn, He stood there in the middle of the road Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn. Below him, in the town among the trees. Where friends of another day had honored him, A phantom salutation of the dead Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim. Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child down tenderly, fearing it may awake, He set the jug down slowly at his feed with trembling care, knowing that most things break: And only when assured that on firm earth It stood, as the uncertain lives of men Assuredly did not, he paced away, and with his had extended paused again: "Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this In a long time; and many a change has come To both of us, I fear, since last it was We had a drop together. Welcome home!" Convivially returning with himself, Again he raised the jug up to the light; And with an acquiescent quaver said: "Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might. "Only a very little, Mr. Flood - For auld lang syne. No more sir; that will do." So, for the time, apparently, it did. And Eben evidently thought so too; For soon amid the silver loneliness Of night he lifted up his voice and sang, Secure, with only two moons listening, Until the whole harmonious landscape rang - "For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out, The last word wavered; and the song being done, He raised again the jug regretfully And shook his head, and was again alone. There was not much that was ahead of him, And there was nothing in the town below - Where strangers would have shut the many doors That many friends had opened long ago. I don't I've ever featured this particular poet before, but here he is, from A Pocketful of Verse,, William Shakespeare. When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless' cries, and look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and this man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least, Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think of thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate. For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. Having done Shakespeare, why not Percy Shelley, also from the anthology and also a poem we learned to recite in high school. I wonder if they still do that. Ozymandias I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Here's a poem by our friend from New York, Barbara Moore. Barbara was born in Danville VA. in 1948. She earned a B.A. from Hofstra U., majoring in English, and an M.S.W. from Fordham U. She has been a research assistant at Reader's Digest as well as a substance abuse counselor at Long Island College Hospital. Now writing full-time, Barbara is awaiting publication in a Goldfish Press anthology. Dares go first, diana rigg We were in bed as we usually were back then, a regular yoko and john without a cause, in your boyhood bedroom in your parents' house (independent were we) watching and half watching emma peel and john steed avenge with a vengeance of elegance and grace you said something or failed to say something Feeling ignored, discounted and jealous of diana rigg i pouted; you kidded with your usual "got your goat, barbs got another one here's another look at all these goats, barbs you're losing all your goats you're not smiling. barbs" and I wasn't smiling i was not amused this time Throwing back the bedcovers all high drama now i walked with dignity toward the bathroom tossing in my wake "you don't care about me i'm going to off myself." closing the bathroom door i pushed in the flimsy lock and began my search through the medicine cabinet Q-tips, craig martin toothpaste the one without fluoride you insisted on using, (as our teeth cried for mercy) because it had pepto bismol, cheap seconal chaser, that soothed your stomach. you wouldn't buy a bottle of pepto. That was for people with more serious problems not for junkies-in-training Your parents kept the cabinet childproof murine, guest soap, stool softener vicks vaporub, emory boards but on the top shelf behind the lavoris lurked bayer aspirin bottle of 100, nearly full mindlessly, i began to swallow pills a few at a time with water my attention span waned this would take forever In a light bulb moment i emptied the bottle into the waste paper basket coverng the pills with tissue. i unlocked the door and called for you before stretching out on the cold bathroom floor feigning a death pose worthy of ms. rigg Forced to leave daring dianna you approached with annoyance that swiftly turned to fear enough to awaken your parents. you and your dad carried me back to bed shook me and talked at me while your mom mixed together some concoction in the kitchen something to swallow dry mustard was in it i remember that much I was supposed to vomit but I never did your mom got suspicious she looked for and found the unswallowed pills in the trash she was not pleased you defended me though took all the blame said you'd double dared me they believed you because they needed to because they wanted to go back to sleep  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Sometimes, after a triple dose of classical, it just feels great to bust loose. Like this. (Thin-skined gunowners with heart conditions and no sense of humor should avoid this next poem at all cost - save yourself a lot of heartburn and just skip on to the next poem.) the NRA is ascared of me been reading the NRA people are scared that i'm gonna take away their pistols and their hunting rifles and their AK47's and their machine guns and their grenade launchers and their anti-tank mines and their bunker buster missiles and whatever, if it makes a bang they want it - makes their dicks grow, you know, and they're sure i'm going to take it all away and leave them alone with their inadequacies, and i would of course, if i could, but i can't, and the the lily-livered, chicken-gizzard politicians in Washington sure as hell aren't going to risk their weekly pay-offs by doing it, so that's the way it is, at some point, you or me or both of us are going to be blown away by some NRA card-carrying pencil-dick wacko with mother issues and a NRA certified shoot-all-the-motherfuckers-with-one-trigger-pull 50 calibre machine gun all because his mother dressed him in little girlie-panties and didn't quit breast-feeding him until he was twenty-six years old  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo The next poem is by Thomas R. Smith, from his book Horse of Earth, published by Holy Cow! Press of Duluth, Minnesota in 1994. Smith is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Dark Indigo Current . He writes criticism for Ruminator Review and teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Come In From the Rain Many remain mute. This one kneels on a folded blanket sodden with rain and sways toward the wall, his face floating in the long bay of his hands. He is one of the sad beggars of Barcelona who kneel on sidewalks barefoot, hold out cigar boxes, display some deformity or wound. Some grip signs saying merely, "I am hungry." Coins dropped on his laboriously printed plea glisten, kings' faces drowning. He seems oblivious of the winter wind on the alley, the great stains devouring his shoes. Such men turn up without explanation or history on the streets of every city of the world, delivered in our path as if ejected by some shabby womb to be rained on or frozen drunk under a viaduct, without dry clothes or honor. For God's sake, man, it's time to come in from the rain! But I do not say it. Beneath my umbrella, I'm unsure whether I'm addressing this Gypsy - master of cruel discipline - or my father, my brother, men of my country.  Painting by Lawrence Trujillo Every year I try to write a Mother's Day poem and am never satisfied. This year I tried two, one light, one not, and neither worthy of their subjects. Another year of failure... on this Mother's Day early start on this Mother's Day at the supermarket to buy flowers, chocolate and a card preprinted with sincere and humorous sentiments the crowds and long checkout lines demonstrating the demographic fact that there are, indeed, one heckuv a bunch of mothers and procrastinators in the world today rushed my hard-won sentiments home and presented them to a mother of my long acquaintance along with a kiss that truly did Hallmark proud, then treated the same mother of my long acquaintance to her favorite breakfast, that being my specialty, world-famous french toast and extra crispy call-the-fire-department-honey bacon - truth in poetical reporting requires me at this point to admit that the fire department has never actually been called on behalf of my bacon and, while it might be a stretch to call my french toast world famous, many who have experienced it might declare it should be so - following breakfast we continued with our regular Sunday morning routine of caffein-enhanced newspaper wallowing the news of the day digested - best done, as usual, on an empty stomach - we hopped into my little red truck and hied ourselves off to Austin for a mid-afternoon brunch with our first-born at a little Mexican cafe not to far from his house, blackened fish tacos for the mother-of-my-long-acquaintance and our more gastronomically sophisticated first born, while i enjoyed my standard enchiladas, rice, and beans the meal complete, the after dinner conversation about all those things that never quite get said on the telephone duly explored, we dropped F.B. off at his house and, after hugs and proper motherly nagging, made out way back to San Antonio where we noticed, driving in from the heights, that the haze downtown had lifted, a result, it could be, of a day of rest taken by those in Mexico burning their fields, or a gift, it could even be, from Mother Nature on this, her special day start with biography start with biography youngest child, mother dead at her birth father an independent produce man, he bought fruits and vegetables in the fields and orchards of South Texas, hauled his produce to city markets in San Antonio and Houston and sold his truckload for what the market allowed a hard day to day hand to mouth way to support five children with few good years and many poor as crops failed or abundance caused prices to fall so that a truck load this year might be worth only as much as a half load last year, the years few when supply and demand balanced and better times left money for a pair of winter shoes to be proudly worn and shown on the buckboard ride to school widowed with a young son while still in her teens, years struggling to feed the child, marriage finally to the man, my father, with whom two more sons were born more years of struggle, working at home to supplement a blue collar income, making prom corsages out of discarded hosiery, dyed the color of leaves and roses, baking, wedding cake, birthday cakes, skillfully decorated with her sure hand, always better and cheaper than the professional competition - she worked at such a bakery during the years of struggle with her first son, and, as always, never let a day pass without learning something new - living through the decline and death of another husband, nursing him, caring for him like the nurse she'd learned to be raising three sons, holding his hand as he died - finding new life then days spent as a hospital volunteer, learning to paint, supporting the hospital gift shop with her flower arrangements, then managing the gift shop as a volunteer, taking music lessons, learning the basics of auto repair, carpentry and plumbing, learning the joys travel, sometimes on her own, or with her friends, or with her sons, always on the move, until the Thanksgiving Day in her 81st year when she finally lay down to rest and did not rise again and beyond this biography, what do i know of this woman i know that, though poorly educated herself, she taught me to read and write before i attended my first day of school i know that, though often hungry, her children were always well fed i know that, though stern when discipline was required, she was gentle in her comforting i know that, though a simple country woman at heart, she could always calm the most complex storms of the heart i know that there were four deep and abiding loves in her life, and one of them was me i know that, once again on this mother's day as on the last, i have failed to write the poem she deserves  When I introduced Lawrence Trujillo at the beginning of this issue, I neglected to mention that, in addition of his primary work as an artist, he is also a poet. For a period of time, he and I were meeting for weekly poetry sessions at a local restaurant. Eventually, when we were unable to gather a consistant crowd, we gave it up. I thought I might close this issue with a picture showing another side of Lawrence's talent as he reads at one of our gatherings. And with that, once again, "Here and Now" is done for the week. One last thing though As I was finishing up on the issue, I got word that a very old friend and patron passed away, which means I'll be going back to the coast for his funeral on Friday, which means, in turn, that I'll be posting this either early, like Thursday, or very late, like Sunday or Monday. So, this will be posted when it gets posted. When it does, let it remind you that all of the work presented in "Here and Now" remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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