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Poem from the Rooftop - June 19, 2009
Thursday, July 02, 2009 Photo by Chris Itz IV.7.1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKUZuv6_bus Having heard, do not forget. Meanwhile, our own efforts for the week include: Instances of Blood in Iowa Me quineceanera Japanese Death Poems by 9 Haiku Masters Alex Stolis Within your reach Color me impressed Me green and purple pills behind the green door nonsense Aii! Neda Jimmy Carter Alkways a Reckoning Barbara Moore Ice cream sundae blues Note on freezer door Me stringbean Sidney Wade Monosonnets Me thinking about places i liked to go that have shut down in the past 12 months Christopher T. George Yoria Macedonia Allen Ginsberg Multiple Identity Questionnaire Norman Anderson Summer 1970 Me dreams of wet Pierre Martory The Landscape is Behind the Door Me the magic flute Wakter Durk Disappearig Sonia Sanchez Dancing Song Ten untitled short pieces Me & that's it More of me than usual this week. Think of it as an overstocked sale.  I'm starting this week with a poem by John Engles, a poet I don't believe I've read before. The poem is from Engles' book Sinking Creek, published by The Lyons Press in 1998. Engles was 76 years old when he died in June, 2007. He was a professor at St. Michael's College for 45 years. His book, Walking to Cootehill, was a Pulitzer finalist. Instances of Blood in Iowa 1 That year at Iowa there were with me Calvin and Veronica and Karl and Gail, each thinking we loved the other - not that it matters now, for Calvin leaped from the cliffs at Palomar, and broke, and died on the sharp screes at the base, and I am as slow to memory as to love: of Gail, Veronica and Karl I no longer know. 2 I make a picture of that year: the engraving shows the locks at Keokuk, about to close on a black barge; a yellow mist; and overhead, too high in the orders of memory to clearly see and give a name to, a giant bird hanging in the sky, wings wide. 3 I try remembering how blood beat in my wrist the day I stared at the fat model, whose big breasts were the first that I'd seen bare, or the night I chanced on Veronica, surprised, transparent, naked as a ghost upon the stairs, clutching a white cloth to her chest. But when I tried to make of picture out of this the burin leaped in my hand, and cleanly tor the palm - whereupon the proof displayed itself: red meat and yellow fat, the white shine of the mortal bone before blood welled and streamed onto the copper plate, and dried. 4 Once, when I asked him why it was he bothered to write poems, Karl sighed, laid wrist to pale forehead, closed his eyes, and cried: Because I must! Blood deeply etched the plate. For days I scraped away at the dried crusts with a palette knife, and meantime tried to get my belly flat with fasting, but it broke me, every time. One day I woke up still full of blood and fat, and was briefly considered for Suez, though in the end, Ike spared my life to such mean evidence of breath as this, beyond which circumstance not much. The ruined plate I sailed far into the woods. The nameless model hides her breasts, like Veronica, and holds a supine pose, all thigh and mottled buttock. My hand is scarred. It shows. 5 As for the rest: I mostly think of Calvin who gives me back the lean and distant look from far beyond return of favor for the night he wrestled down drunk crazy Karl, who'd run a bread knife through my hand, with one knee held him there, and took my wrists and turned my hand palm-up, his fingers streaming with my blood, his feet in blood, blood everywhere. And I still can and do largely mourn for Calvin, who is dead, and carried with him everything we knew - how in the last good days of that last year we nearly fled, took to the boats, jumped ship in Borneo, stayed drunk in Peleleu, but in the end did not. Blood leaps in my wrists. I think of Calvin with his arms like wings stretched wide to hold him steady to and air, and I am standing on the sharp, receptive rocks and looking up, the cold sea at my feet, and he - to hight to clearly name in the last free instant, arms wide, hanging there.  There was a big event recently, two actually, my wife Dora's birthday and my youngest niece's Quinceanera. I'd been to several Quinceanera celebrations previously, usually for a cousin's, aunt-in-law's, grandmother's hairdresser's neighbor's daughter who I had not seen before and have not seen since. It's amazing how much more fun it is when the celebration is for someone you actually know and care about. quinceanera June 20 - D's birthday and my niece's quinceanera - in Hispanic culture, the coming of age ceremony for girls on their fifteenth birthday as Padrinos de la Tiara, D and i will do our part in the ceremony by placing a crown on the head of our Princess for a Day - i proposed the frisbee method of placement and still think it would be impressive if we could do it from our second-row pew but was overruled as strict orders from the Princess that Uncle Allen to be kept on a short leash were enforced we will be going to the dance after the ceremony and i have been informed that it being a dance, i will dance, an activity certain to bring some measure of entertainment to the evening, something like watching a three-legged elephant do the tango on a trampoline ~~~~~~~~~~ given the dueling priorities today, we decided we won't acknowledge D's birthday until next weekend when we'll head out to Marble Falls for couple of days by the river, the discussion remaining as to whether these couple of days will be spent at a bed and breakfast or a regular hotel D being an only daughter with six brothers always had bathroom priority, while, growing up one of a family of guys, I always had to struggle to keep my place in line at the bathroom door meaning that while D sees bed and breakfast places as quaint and comfy, i see them only as one more place where i have to fight for the bathroom  I picked up an interesting book at the used book store this morning. The book, Japanese Death Poems, is a collection of "jisei", or death poems, traditionally meant to be written in the very last moments of the poet's life. The poets in this cbook are Zen Monks and Haiku poets. I imagine I'm not alone in suspecting that most of these poets did not actually wait until engaged in their last gasp before writing these poems, however much tradition might demand otherwise. The book is divided in two, one part Zen Monks and the other Haiku poets. This time, I've included only the Haiku poets. Next time I do the book, I'll do the monks. I'll let you do your own Wikipedia search on the poets' names, beginning with one most readers will not have to look up. Basho Died in 1694 at the age of fifty-one On a journey, ill: my dream goes wandering over withered fields Gohei Died in 1819 A lone paulownia leaf falls through pure autumn air. Koha Died in 1897 I cast the brush aside - from here on I'll speak to the moon face to face Kizan Died in 1786 Clouds drifting off: the sight of moonlit heavens. Riei Died in 1794 at the age of twenty-two All freezes again - among the pines, winds whispering a prayer. Sakyoku Died in 1790 at the age of twenty-one How sad... amidst the flowers of the spring equinox a journey deathward. Saruo Died in 1923 at the age of sixty-three Cherry blossoms fall on a half-eaten dumpling. Tembo Died in 1823 at the age of eighty-three I wish this body might be dew in a field of flowers. Dohaku Died in 1675 Cargoless, bound heavenward, ship of the moon.  Our friend Alex Stolis is a poet of the streets and neon lights and dark places and I love what he does. These next poems are from a recent project of his. I think I might have used them before, but I don't care. I like them and this probably won't be the last time I use them either. Within your reach I'll steal the words from your mouth make them my own and when the last moment is wrung out of the last drink, we can run headlong in the same direction, follow the smoke sifting its way under the door then bookmark our thoughts, pray for shadows and forget how to walk in a straight line because it's easier to believe the world is flat, when you're broke and desperation becomes the softest shoulder to lean on Color me impressed Alice Blue waking up in Rapid City, hung over and bled white she wanted to turn back the clock and make me say I love you Kelly Green a punk rock Veronica Lake with black fishnets and a loaded gun - we were long dead before we even started drinking Jade lipstick traces and burnt coffee, everything else went out the window when she lost her nerve Ruby L.A.'s in a blackout, San Francisco can't remember my name and she forgot our alibi before the lights went up Sandy Brown Seventh Street entry and a blue eyed girl wasted beyond her years - the last great pick up line fell flat broke on the pavement  Next I have four poems, another inadvertent series, I wrote on successive days during the early parts of the recent uprising for democracy and freedom forces in Iran. As folks who read my stuff know, I don't often approach things directly in my poems, preferring to slip in while nobody's looking with the things truly on my mind. That's true of the first three of these poems, but not the last. green and purple pills for some reason i woke up this morning thinking of Ray Stephens, specifically his song about A-hab the A-rab which is probably pretty insulting to Arab peoples unless they have a sense of humor which from what i read in the papers isn't allowed in most Arab countries i'm not sure why this was the morning of A-hab the A-rab except maybe it was the disappointing election in Iran but that doesn't make sense since Iranians, including that Abbarabadaba guy, are Persians, not Arabs so everything i'm thinking about this morning is just plain stupid (it amazes me the way other people can write whole books of poems without saying something stupid while it seems i have to say something stupid at least once in every poem - oh, well, can't let periodic stupid storms interfere with the full expression of my art or whatever) anyway they're rioting in Iran today which demonstrates how they're such a primitive country while we're so much more advanced and how they should look to us for guidance on how to deal with stolen presidential elections since we had one of our own a few years back and we didn't go rioting in the street and causing trouble we just wrote nasty poems and fiery letters to mostly disinterested newspaper editors... stuff like that or the Iranians could, maybe just zone out, meditate, seek their center, remember that from adversity comes strength... someday... some say... or just listen to some good music, find relief in Stephens' recommended remedy for mental and physical distress - "Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving, Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills" worked for me behind the green door i found a dim, cool place to sit this morning with good old fifties rock and roll overhead and i'd be just as happy to sit here and do nothing but this is my poem of the day time so a poem is expected but what kind of a poem, a poem about what? not about the weather, i'm sick of the weather, it's hot, and that pretty much covers it, and not about politics, i'm sick of that as well, sick of responding with a geyser of stomach acid at every dumbass right-wing kook crap i read or see or hear - people who were so wrong about so much for so long, you wonder where they get the nerve to say anything at all, and see there i went again responding, making me pretty much as dumbass as they are, except i'm not getting paid for it and not about global warming - what's to be said that people don't already know, not counting those people, like those during the middle ages who kept their personal plague-infected flea circus at home when thousands all around were being carried from their houses in plague-carts for burning, wrap themselves in a reassuring cocoon of denial not about what's going on in Iran - we hold our breath and hope for the best, fearing that all those young faces we see on TV, raising their hands and their hearts against oppression, are, in fact, in the preliminary stages of their own early death, as no tyrant can be felled solely by good intentions, blood must flow, with, most often, the blood of martyrs shed in causes that will not win and not about urban renewal, though that would be interesting, decline and renewal, different faces of the same life process, could be, maybe is, the subject of thousands of poems, but not mine since i just don't feel up to it today and probably couldn't justice anyway - probably couldn't do justice to any of those deeper urgings today, the fifties rock and roll overhead has my soul and it's that moment i prefer to remember, joining old friends like rocking robin meeting ally oop and charlie brown behind the green door - that's where i want to be... nonsense despite more protentous events shaking the world scene i decided to write a poem this morning about people who back into parking spaces - leave the portentous stuff to people with more portense i never saw anyone purposefully back into a parking space until about 15 years ago when a fella who worked for me did it all the time he was from New York City so i figured oh well backing into parking spaces is just one of strange things New York City people do but in the last couple of years i see more and more people backing into parking spaces at the grocery store wherever young men with hot rod racing flame decals on their Honda Civics, women with babies in their SUV's, grannies in ginormous three quarter ton pickups all backing into their parking space, guaranteeing among other things traffic confusion and pile up as they try to negotiate into a parking space backwards and the fact that they'll be driving in entirely the wrong way on a one way parking lot lane when they drive out frontward i not only don't get why they do it i also don't get why all of a sudden so many people decided they were supposed to do it - was it something on the internet or a traffic directive from state troopers or another of those damn memos i missed why all of a sudden are some many people doing something that makes no sense all but that's the point so many do so much that makes no sense at all, some for reasons silly and some for reasons profound, like the hundreds of thousands of people in Iran, old people, young, men and women, who, making no sense at all in a world of self-centered gratification, stand firm before the water canon, the rifle, the tear gas, the might of state and official religiosity - some day generations hence in Iran will owe all they have to these nonsensical people just as we owe unpaid debts to those people in our own history who, lacking any common sense at all, stood firm against the tyrannies of their time so it is that just as we enjoy such freedoms as were earned for us, some day Iranians will have their own freedoms so tendentiously and tenaciously won - not including in either country the right to screw up traffic flow by backing into a supermarket parking space aii! Neda i watched you die beautiful in life your eyes in this frantic moment blank and unseeing your blood a crimson flood on the thug strewn streets of your oppressor aii! Neda i watched you die one of many seeing your damaged face i see them all http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdG0mpRvUqQ  This being the day before the 4th of July, I submit to patriotic fervor and present this poem from a fellow second-life poet, Jimmy Carter. It is the title poem from Carter's book Always a Reckoning, published by Random House in 1995. Always a Reckoning There always seemed to be a need for reckoning in early days. What came in equaled what went out like oscillating ocean waves. On the farm, our wages matched the work we did in woods and fields, how many acres plowed and hoed, how much syrup was distilled, how many pounds of cotton picked, how much cordwood cut and stacked. All things had to balance out. I had a pony then that lacked a way to work and pay her way, except that every year of two Lady had a colt we sold, but still for less than what was due to buy the fodder, hay and corn she ate at times she couldn't be on pasture. Neither feed nor colts meant all that much that I could see, but still there was a thing about a creature staying on our place that none of us could eat or plow, did not give eggs, or even chase a fox or rabbit, that was sure to rile my father. We all knew that Lady's giving me a ride paid some on her debt, in lieu of other ways - but there would be some times I didn't get around to riding in my off-work hours. And I was sure, when Daddy frowned at some mistake I might've made, he would be asking when he could, "How long since you rode Lady?"  Next I have two short poems by our New Yorker friend Barbara Moore. ice cream sundae blues here come the scammers taking their noon break scarfing fudge sundaes man from the wheelchair palsy pretender woman whose line is "please help me I"m blind" ensconced in his chair reading a horoscope mag moving behind her pushing one-handed man tremorless walks we locals, resigned many coins lighter eyes with dimmed interest watch them eat ice cream we don't expose them won't blow that whistle there but for dumb luck with sprinkles on top Note on freezer door How many times can you tell yourself all your mirrors lie the dryer shrinks your underwear the apology will come things will turn round the book will write itself? Catch more sleep each night Go easier on the ice cream Stop waiting for Godot Serenade yourself with song Pump the music up loud Dance, laugh, weep, remember Then write it all down perfectly in every imperfect detail  Iran isn't the only thing that's been in the news. I wrote this next piece after the Republican senator from Nevada was outed on his infidelity, only to have the poem validated a week later by the Republican governor from South Carolin as he got caught in his Argentine adventure. stringbean string bean looking fella in a cowboy hat and shit kicker boots sitting across from me drinking from a quart carton of 2% milk reading some kind of technical looking book with graphs and shit and one hand looking paralyzed fingers tight against his palm like Bob Dole 'cept this fella isn't holding a pen in this clenched fingers like Bob Dole always did good ol' guy that Bob Dole might'a been a fine presi dent if he hadn't been Republican and 143 years old - probably wouldn't a'been fucking around with no chubby interns any way what is it with politicians and their dicks anyway like just another one this week screwing around love me love me love me they're all saying all the time waving their dicks around starting wars or screwing women either too young or too married for any man with good sense to mess with i mean put your dicks back in your pants and grow up for christ's sake you're supposed to be running the country fool not running around on your dearly beloved who ought to be whopping you across the head three or four times a day till you get it on straight fool  Next I have and interesting piece by Sidney Wade from his book, Stroke, published by Persea Books of New York in 2007. Wade is the author of four previous poetry collections and has published translations from Turkish in numerous periodicals. She is Professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville. I like these little "monosonnets." May try some myself sometime. Monosonnets Pity the Poor Orange bald white orb on the table rests it's veined membrane exposed flayed for zest Adam and the Snake Prepare to Recite Some Verse Snake says let's go mezmerize some pomes Adam says I prefer to mammarize them After the Flood, Frogs assemble, whirp and fart, dissemble, delve and prong, prolonging the agglutinant song of themselves The Spontaneous Combustion of a Shopkeeper from Alcohol He mus have ignited red and fast the crusty knave light spirited at last Stroke of Genius windfall display of art playing a signal part flaying the heart of indignant enigma  I am a guy who likes his routine, that's for sure. Never though I was, but I am. No problem with that until environmental changes force a change in routine. I'm still dealing with one such challenge. thinking about places i liked to go that have shut down in the past 12 months i am a creature of routine - my greatest excitement is when everything works out so that my routine is not interrupted i take it as validation that my path is true and karma-appropriate like all creatures of routine, part of my routine has to do with the places where i routinely spend my time places that lend a sense of peace and feng shui orientation conducive to writing things i sometimes cleverly disguise as poems one unwelcome result of the flow of business and life over the past 12 months is the loss to me of places that had become essential to my routine, places rich with karma and feng shui, places where legions of trees could fall in the forest and i would neither hear nor care those places gone and not likely to return, i now ensconce myself at Borders in the morning, quiet enough most times, other times, like today, overcome by screaming children and mothers so accustomed to the screams of four-year-olds that they seem not to hear as if their children were screaming in a forest and they refused to hear so no one else would either but even on the quiet days, i feel so much older here, in the company of old men who gather each day to curse the Democrats and queers and others of similar radicalist bent - how i miss the young girls at Ruta Maya who danced in the morning to the music overhead as they brought my coffee and pan dulces and that's why i sit here, singing polly wolly doodle all day, thinking about places i use to like to go that have shut down in the past 12 months  Here's another poem from our friend Christopher T. George. We just had a couple of poems from Chris a week or two ago, but I like this one so much I decided to set aside my usual practice of trying to spread some time between a poet's appearances. And, though it makes no sense at all from the text, it still strikes me as a fourth of July type of poem, honoring, not in a nationalistic sense, but in a kind of universal way, the fight for family and country wherever it might occur. I might even find a thought for the good people of Iran here. Yoria Macedonia To George T. Matchett (1892-1987) My grandfather deployed to Greece as part of the British Salonika force, front contra Hun and Johnny Bulgar. And there men and beasts died just the same, junked by Fokker machine-gun fire, high-velocity shells that zeroed in on mules and mule-men, coordinates defined by Taube observation planes, string-bag monoplanes, as Royal Army Medical docs and nurses scrambled to staunch the blood of men if not beasts. The Greeks called Grandad 'Yori' (for George); he mused, if he survived he would name his daughter 'Yoria' as a gift. Chris notes: "My mother, christened Yoria Christine Matchett, born September 27, 1920, is still alive, aged 88 years young."  Next, I have a poem by Allen Ginsberg, written during the last year of this life. The poem is from the book Death and Fame, Last Poems, 1993-1997. Multiple Identity Questionnaire "Nature empty, everything's pure: Naturally pure, that's what I am." I'm a jew? a nice jewish boy? A flaky Buddhist, certainly Gay in fact pederast? I'm exaggerating? Not only queer an amateur S&M fan, someone should spank me for saying that Columbia Alumnus class of '48, Beat icon, students say. White, if jews are "white race" American by birth, passport and residence Slavic heritage, mama from Vitebsk. father's forebears Grading in Kamenetz-Podolska near Lvov. I'm an intellectual! Anti-intellectual, anti-academic Distinguished Professor of English Brooklyn College. Manhattanite, another middle class liberal, but lower class second generation immigrant, Upperclass, I own a condo loft, go to art gallery Buddhist Vernissage dinner parties with Niarchos, Rockefellers, and Luces Oh what a sissy, Professor Four-eyes, can't catch a baseball or drive a car - courageous Shambhala Graduate Warrior addressed as "Maestro" Milano, Venezia, Napoli Still student, chela, disciple, my guru Gelek Rinpoche, Senior Citizen, got Septuagenarian discount at Alfalfa's Healthfoods New York subway - Mr. Sentient Being! - Absolutely empty neti neti identity, Maya Nobo- daddy, relative phantom nonentity July 5, 1996, Naropa Tent, Boulder , CO  Here's a poem from a friend, Norman Anderson, who we haven't seen in a while. Norm works as a Direct Support Professional in a group home. he takes care of six mentally challenged men. He says he's written a couple poems about Roger and the rest of the men in the group home. He's also working on a book about his job because , he says it's hilarious even though often serious. Norm has written two screenplays he's trying to sell and a book. Summer 1970 Summers that never end? For me it was 1970 it was me and my Schwinn Sting Ray riding down to a Lake that is Erie My bike was blue The water? not even close to being blue we loved that "Dirty Water" We didn't sit around and play "Gangsta's Hijacking Grannies For Their Huvarounds" video games. It was Leef Bubble Gum and playing Little League Baseball under the lights no IPods or Blackberry's we listened to CKLW AM radio it was the best music ever "Spill the Wine" by Eric Burdon and War "War" by Edwin Starr no Hyundai hybrids nothing like the sound of those muscle cars roaring through town with engines as big as me no carb counting, no fat, low fat no nutritional facts printed on my Necco Wafers pack here's a fact for ya, it's sugar for cryin out loud! no 500 channels and nothings on we had three TV networks Ed Sullivan; "Okay kids quite down quite down now kids here they are The Rolling Stones" Nobody was "vertically challenged" no "misguided criminals" no "differed success" you were either good or bad you passed or failed meanwhile a 19 year old soldier crosses over into the jungles of Cambodia his summer will never seemed to end I'm sure  I saw this very striking woman at the Borders coffee shop several days ago. dreams of wet the woman with very large feet orders a latte, flexes her long red-tipped toes in her flip-flops as she waits, hums tall with the lean, rangy body of an athlete, blond hair with a look of chlorine burn hangs down her back in a pony tail a swimmer is my guess, very active in her sport, maybe professional, the look of a fish out of water good swimmers get when forced to make their way on dry land amidst us dirt people i can tell she is one of those dreams of wet whenever dry  Next, the curious case of a French poet, unknown in France and first published in America. The poet is Pierre Martory and his debut collection published by The Sheep Meadow Press of Riverdale-On-Hudson, New York in 1994 is The Landscape Is Behind the Door, translated from French by John Ashbery. Born in Bayonne in southwest France, of partly Basque ancestry, Martory spent much of his childhood in Morocco. Escaping Paris in June 1940, just as the Germans arrived, he joined the French Army in Tunisia and spent the years after the war working at odd jobs, novels, and writing theater and music reviews for Paris-Match. Until shortly before the publication of this book, he kept his poetry as his own secret, never trying to publish it and never showing it to anyone who might have been interested. As a result, until publication of this book, his work was entirely unknown in France. Born in 1920, Martory died in 1998. This is the title poem from the book. The Landscape is Behind the Door The landscape is behind the door. the person is there...New York is full Of similar places where a world, A large cloud, is being built. Only The heads stay put. You pay Before arriving, a long time before Opening your mouth. There are things Near us which all have their green sides. You wear your eyes and lose them. A caterpillar makes the difference. A girl whose face is full of blood Stops and asks the time. It's a year that doesn't know it's number: A smile at the bottom of a pocket. Look! the liar-bird, brother of secrets, Leaves the familiarcreek bed: The life of others painted on a lampshade. "I draw you like a salary. You are my superfluous statue Hatched beneath hot tears. I'm digging toward the antipodes. I unwind the bandages, the horoscope: It's my body, it's my cocoon, surprised In a sleep of prolific sand, That I'm uncovering, like a Cyclops that fainted." I would be enough to enter, to sit Near a book, to fold the shadow To one's knees, to know who Walks on the bed, who passes the mirror. Dust tints the linens gray. Photos choke on night. Now nothing is visible in the room Except the inaccessible landscape outdoors. Down there, the fires of prehistory continue stubbornly To glow. The lost felucca ferries a skeleton To its grave. A disc feeds the sky. In the hollows of geysers dolphins are taking Advantage of their incognito to cry. A pious hand is strangling the pity And slips into the letter-box The perfumed sadness of silence. The door placarded with such moments Doesn't open. The cigarettes unrolled In smoke (a supplementary beauty) Leave on the fingers the smell of time past. Intelligence like a geometer paces The distance from inside to outside. Everything is in place, nothing is missing. Weary of strife the bee on The windowpane finally renounces the flower.  Great news, archeologically speaking, a couple of weeks ago, a great find, a find that tells us something about grand ourselves and our ancestors back in the deepest, darkest tunnels of times past. We are progeny of music and art and the musicians and artists who create it. How's that for great? the magic flute 35 thousand years ago or more a kind of human in a cave in Germany made music on a flute made from the bone of a bird before God there were gods and before gods, spirits of the earth and sea and sky, and before that a kind of man searching for the spirits with his music, creating gods with his art searching for realities beyond our own from our earliest time 35 thousand years later and we still search  Here's a poem from our friend Walter Durk. Disappearing come look I shouted as I waved she stood across the blackened street and crossed crossed the lawn to where I stood near newly-planted plants she was not in the mood I could tell well-dressed as she was just returned from her office but I pointed out the new plants to her Loropetalums, Rhaphiolepis, the Buford Hollies she believed in the power of prayer placed her hands on my sore back to pray invoked the name of Jesus her brain tumor disappeared this way is what she said why would I question her as she stood before me about three weeks ago three weeks now since I've seen her hacking a tree root from her lawn her drive is full of cars now none of them are hers  So many poets in the world, and so few of them known to me. But there are used book stores and walking into one on a good day is like finding the mother load of all those poems and poets i've never read before. One book mined just this morning is Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, a collection of poems by Sonia Sanchez published by Beacon Press in 1998. Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver in 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama. After her mother died in childbirth a year later, Sanchez lived with her paternal grandmother and other relatives for several years. In 1943, she moved to Harlem with her sister to live with their father and his third wife. She earned a B.A. in political science from Hunter College in 1955. She also did postgraduate work at New York University, studying poetry. Sanchez formed a writers' workshop in Greenwich Village and, along with other poets, including Nikki Giovanni, formed the "Broadside Quartet" of young poets. She married and divorced Albert Sanchez, a Puerto Rican immigrant whose surname she has used when writing. She was also married for two years to poet Etheridge Knight. During the early 1960s she was an integrationist, supporting the philosophy of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). But after considering the ideas of Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, she focused more on her black heritage from a separatist point of view. Sanchez began teaching in the San Francisco area in 1965 and was a pioneer in developing black studies courses at what is now San Francisco State University, where she was an instructor from 1968 to 1969. In 1971, she joined the Nation of Islam, but by 1976 she had left the Nation, largely because of its repression of women. Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and several published plays. She has also written a number of books for children. Among the many honors she has received are the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Sanchez has lectured at more than five hundred universities and colleges in the United States and had traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Cuba, England, the Caribbean, Australia, Nicaragua, the People's Republic of China, Norway, and Canada. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University, where she began teaching in 1977, and held the Laura Carnell Chair in English there until her retirement in 1999. She lives in Philadephia. The book includes a number of short poem. For this week, i'm using a number of those poems, in the order in which they appear in the book. Some are titled. Some are not. Dancing i dreamt i was tangoing with you, you held me so close we were like the singing coming off the drums. you made me squeeze muscles lean back on the sound of corpuscles sliding in blood. i heard my thighs singing. ~~~~~~~~~~ you asked me to run naked in the streets with you i am holding your pulse. ~~~~~~~~~~ Song i cannot stay home on this sweet morning i must run singing laughing through the streets of Philadelphia. i don't need food or sleep or drink on this wild scented day i am bathing in the waves of your breath. ~~~~~~~~~~ let every breast dance a wild sculpture of rain i raise my glass ~~~~~~~~~~ i don't know the rules anymore i don't know if if you say this or not. i wake up in the nite tasting you on my breath. ~~~~~~~~~~ i count the morning stars the air so sweet i turn riverdark with sound. ~~~~~~~~~~ i come from the same place i am going to my body speaks in tongues. ~~~~~~~~~~ i have caught fire from your mouth now you want me to swallow the ocean. ~~~~~~~~~~ love between us in speech and breath. loving you is a long river running. ~~~~~~~~~~ i await your touch come magnify our smell make of us a long journey ~~~~~~~~~~ i turn westward in shadows hoping my river will cross yours in passing ~~~~~~~~~~ i collect wings what are you bird or animal? something that lights on trees breasts pawnshops i have seen another path to this rendezvous.  When it's over, it's over. That's it. & that's it it is sunday morning and i am where i usually am on sunday morning just a couple of hours later than i usually am due to a con fluence of events which may or may not be fodder for a poem a question i am pursuing at this very mo ment as i typidy type ty p e hoping for the best but you know we always hope for the best even know ing we'd hap pily settle for not so bad and even not so bad may be much to ask for today as i feel like crap having 3 drinks last night tequila collins if you must know which is like three months of drinking for me since i stumb led on the path of the straight and narrow some 30 years ago and that's really all i have to say about it so may be i should just stop and let you get back to your biscuits and sausage until tom mor ow & that's it  Done again for this week. Gather up your ooooooms and come back next week when, in addition to the usual suspect, me, I expect we'll have a taste of Pablo Neruda, Mark Nowak, G.E. Patterson, Laurie Lico Albanese, the most unlikely poet you're going to read next week, retired homicide detective Arthur Munoz, and other wonders yet undiscovered. As usual, all of the work presented in this blog remains the propery of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz. |
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