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Mission Walls   Friday, September 18, 2009

IV.9.3.



We're back to regular form this week, with library poems, a few poems from me, and poems from our friends out in poetry land.

Here's the program for the week.


Luci Tapahonso
Little Pet Stories
Light a Candle

Cornelia DeDona
September Nights in Kahaluu

William D. Barney
Imploded

Me
lost again

William Heyen
Evening Dawning

Gary Blankenship
Stay in School

Eugenio De Andrade
Song
To Waken
At the Mouth of the Well

Me
ironing 3 shirts on Sunday

Pablo Neruda
Integrations

Robert McManes
above average

Gunter Kunert
Forgetfulness
Encounter

Me
scant skits

'Ilima Stern
Wedding

Kay Kelly
Playing With Foxy's Nose

Me
the poem i should have written for September 11th

Jerry Ratch & Sherry Karver
from Homeowner Haiku

Teresa White
Bear Shoot, New Jersey
IQ Test

John Oughton
The Perceivability of Poetry

Me
eleven little rain dances








I start this week with a story and a poem by Luci Tapahonso, from her book, Saanii Dahataat: The Women Are Singing, published in 1993 by the University of Arizona Press.

Born in 1953 on the Navajo reservation,Tapahonso was raised in a traditional way along with 11 siblings. English was not spoken on the family farm, and Tapahonso learned it as a second tongue after her native Dine bizaad. Following schooling at Navajo Methodist School in Farmington, New Mexico, and Shiprock High School, she began studies at the University of New Mexico. In 1982, she gained her MA, and went on to teach, first at New Mexico and later at the University of Kansas and now at the University of Arizona.

Her first collection of poetry, assembled when she was still an undergraduate, was published in 1981, but did not make much impact. The collection I've taken the following work from was the first to gain for her an international reputation.

An interesting fact about how she writes is, she writes her first draft in her native language, then translates the work to English for publication.



Little Pet Stories

Some years back, we had a dog named "Sando-wool" after old man
Sandoval, who lived about a mile south of us. My father pronounced
his name "Sando-wool" because that was what he called his old friend.
Old man Sandoval would ride by our house on his horse, with five or
six dogs running alongside. He wore a tall black had and exchanged
silent waves with us. He died long ago. We remember him each time
we talk about the pets we have had over the years.

Once my father was at the post office, leaning against the pickup and
talking to his buddies, when a little straggly kitten crept around the
corner. He picked it up and examined it. He put it in the pickup like it
was his, then brought it home to us. We fed it, bathed it, and named
it "Polly." Polly stayed with us for years, and had many kittens. She was
a pretty calico, and for a long time, we were able to trace her offspring
through the many relatives and families who took kittens of hers.

Once my father and brothers were digging postholes for a chaha'oh,
a summer shade house. Then my brother stopped suddenly because
there was an open hole underground where he was digging. He called
us and we looked inside and there were several tiny baby rabbits. My
mother's pet, Anna, had babies earlier that day. We were amazed at
how small and pink the babies were. Their fur was thin and transpar
ent. Carefully, my brother lifted them out and we wrapped them in
handkerchiefs in Anna's hutch. We watched them until Anna came
hopping back and immediately, they nuzzled into her long fur, sensing
warmth and safety. The men decided to move the chaha'oh over a few
yards, in case there were other homes they couldn't see.


Light a Candle

For Hector Torres

The other night thunder shook the house
and lightning slashed brilliant blue across the bed.
I slept in bits, my heart raced with each explosion of noise and rain.
And though he held me, my breathing was ragged and exhausted.
I may never sleep through these storms.

Hector, light a candle for me.

Last week we returned to our birth place,
and as we drove through southern Colorado,
we were stunned by the beauty of autumn leaves,
the deep cool mountain canyons,
and twice, deer stood beside the road.
They watched as we passed through their land.
Their eyes glistened black softness.
Misty said, "Isn't it neat that we saw them on our way home?"

Hector, light a candle for her.

In a small reservation town, a little boy shakes his mother.
She has passed out on the floor and he is hungry.
"Mama," he says, "can you make some potatoes?"
She stirs, "Leave me alone, damn it!"
He climbs up on the counter, takes down a box of cheerios
and sits back down to watch TV.
The noise he makes eating dry cereal is steady and quiet.

Hector, light a candle for him.

Some evenings Leona just wants to sit with her sister and mother
around the kitchen table and talk of everything and nothing.
Instead, she sits in the quiet kitchen, and outside
leaves blow against the window - the wind is cold and damp.
In front of Leona, the table stretches out clean and shiny.

Hector, light a candle for her.

North of here, the Kaw rushes westward, a wide muted roar.
The trees alongside sway and brush against each other,
dry, thin leaves swirl in the cold wind.
The river smell and the heavy wind settle in my hair,
absorbing the dull thundering water,
            the rolling waves of prairie wind.

This time I have walked among the holy people:
the river, the wind, the air swirling down from the hills,
the exhilaration of the biggest catch,
the smooth grace of eagles as they snatch their prey,
the silent pleas of those who drowned here.

Hector, light a candle for me.
        Light a candle for me.








Here's a piece of a quiet Hawaii evening from our friend from the islands, Cornelia DeDona



September Nights in Kahaluu

Fountain water splashes
echoes
across the koi pond.
Clever
Great Danes
bark their hello,
jump into the air
to chase
after chew bones
anxious for a moment
of attention.
Sultry trades
shift
Alexander palm branches
nod their approval.
Plovers march across manicured lawns
searching for tiny morsels,
recently
back
from
Alaska.
It is late afternoon -
Pau Hana time.
Pretty soon,
the air
will be redolent with
beef stew,
fresh baked bread
grilled Mahimahi
and rice.
Voices will fill the
peaceful valley and become paler
as night falls.
Chickens will roost in invasive
octopus trees.
Bullfrogs will sing love songs
attracting mates
and life will go on.
Wrapping up
another steamy day
meditating
by the Mango tree
while gazing at
pink clouds and
orange
parrots beak
heliconia.








The next poem is by William D. Barney from his book, A Cowtown Chronicle, published in 1999 by Browder Springs Books of Dallas.

Barney, born in Oklahoma in 1916, simultaneously managed two very diverse careers for over 35 years, being both a recognized, widely published poet and a postal worker with the US Postal Service. He died in 2001.



Imploded
       Medical Arts Building

Nothing in Nature dies like this:
a redwood toppled swings an arc
full ninety degrees and stretches
its ruin out. A coarse-stemmed gourd
gnawed by the borer wilts away,
collapses into a yellow shrivel.
Glaciers let go huge lump by lump,
great dribbles of themselves into sea.
This artifact of air, glass, stone,
its roots being pulverized
in an instant, almost dreamily
quivers and begins to faint,
to wrinkle in upon itself
into a pitiable mound of rubble.

Do men and women meet downfall
so? Slain men on battlefields -
that Spanish soldier, caught in mid-death,
the bullet spurting into his head;
some ballerina turned a swan,
neatly depositing her flesh
into a huddled remnant; a child
fantasizing an old fable,
a mimic to catastrophe?

How fitting here, this thing of stone
and glass and air, made by Man's hand,
should fail like him - strength sapped away,
alien element storming in
from all sides, earth with ineluctable pull
reaching, and all coming down, coming slowly
down, with a sort of puzzled look,
knowing it was not made to last
but not having thought at all of this,
to be so suddenly dust and bones.








Things are just so darn complicated these days. Not at all what I expected it to be when I got older.



lost again

feeling
like an old woman
without her Buick inherited
from her husband five years ago
when the smoking and the drinking
caught up with
him
and the shiny '01 Park Avenue
was her reward
for putting up with the old
grouch
for 57 years

lost,
that's how i feel

lost in the complexities
of life that i thought
would be,
in my 66th year,
someone else's
to deal with

like the cats on the front porch,
mama cat and two kittens -

i don't mind them being
there,
in fact i kind of like them
being there in that they discourage
other cats from pooping
on my doorstep,
i just don't want any more of them
being there,
so i figure spay and neuter
would be the answer,
but before i get them spayed
and/or neutered (as appropriate)
i have to catch them
and since they are as wild as if
they and all their feline ancestry
were native to the jungles of
Borneo
a trap is required
and to get a trap i have to spend
4 hours in training at the Kiss Your Cat
Foundation, learning,
from a very nice cat-lady
with a delicious British accent,
the art and science
involved in the proper capture, fixing,
and releasing of your cat, which involves
first,
getting an appointment at the Cut Your Cat
Foundation, then securing a trap, then trapping
your cats, then driving them to their
appointment then
taking them home and making them
nice and snuggly and then closely
observing
them for twenty-four hours
to make sure they do not suffer,
inordinately,
from the effects of the anesthesia
used during the course of their
surgery

a three-day process, it looks like

i would have thought that, after
all these years they would have made
this process simpler rather than more
complicated, on-line castration, maybe
strap your cat spread-eagle to the
monitor screen
and press enter or some computeristic
variation there of -
doing it on-line like everything else is on-line

but even that doesn't guarantee
simpler

like last Sunday,
trying to find movie show times,
searching "movie show times in San Antonio"
and getting about 12,000 hits, one
giving me show times for all the movies
starting with the letter K
at the Cosmo theater on the north corner
of Fifth and Phumfph and another showing
show times for all the movies starting
with the letter P
at the Ozmoo theater
on the south corner of Fifth and Phumfph
and you can see where it goes from there,
including, no where, a listing of show times
for all the theaters in San Antonio

i ended up
not going to a movie last Sunday,
just as it's beginning to look
as if i'm going to have 27 cats
on my front porch before i get through
the process of spaying or neutering
the first one

it's just too damn complicated
and i thought for sure things
would be
simpler
by now, i mean, all my old grandpa
did was sit on his porch
and rock in his rocking chair
and whittle and spit
and fart when he felt like

don't talk to me about
progress








Next, I have a longish poem by William Heyen from his book, Lord Dragonfly - Five Sequences, published in 1981 by Vanguard Press.

This is one of those sequences; this one titled, Evening Dawning.



i.

A crow's black squawk -
my white field lost again.

ii.

All bone,
feet numb
rhythm gone
I clod across the field.

iii.

From the outer world,
a siren, and a dog's
painsong

iv.

In high snow,
which way the root,
which way the tip
of the bramble arch?

v.

Sparrow hearts
criss-crossing
the frozen field.

vi.

In the long, lowest needles
of white pine,
a message,
frozen in urine.

vii.

White moon shell,
and a single gull
flying toward me
from shore.

viii.

Upswirl, sudden
white-out.
My cabin within,
I close my eyes to find it.

ix.

My footprints already
in front of me,
I walk toward the other world.

x.
Bowing,
I address the door,
pray, once more,
for that opening
to everywhere,
and enter.

xi.

Pine chair cold,
hands cold
mind clod
and ready.

xii.

World, mind, words -
wax, wick, matches.

xiii.

Under my cabin,
field mice,
and China.

xiv.

To see the white sea,
I and my old pen knife
scrape a porthole
in the frosted window.

xv.

Rabbit tracks,
rabbit pellets,
my own footsteps
drifting with snow.

xvi.

What kind of blood
in the red-twig dogwood?

xvii.

They disappear,
St. Francis now a spruce
receiving sparrows
into his dark boughs.

xviii.

Logic, logic -
trillions of intricate hexagons.

xix.

From anther time
at fields edge
the first ash
veiled in a dream
in falling snow.

xx.

Cardinal,
mote of male blood
in the winter ash.

xxi.

Under the snow,
infinitesimal pearls,
insects speeding
to summer.

xxii.

Already ferns
frost my window.

xxiii.

I am thirty-eight.
Evening is dawning.

xxiv.

Lord, winter,
I place this cabin
in your begging bowl.

xxv.

Dying, the brain
sheds cells.
In the end,
perfect numbers,
the mind
the Milky Way's stars.

xxvi.

Candlebeam and dust,
river and fish,
as long as they last.

xxvii.

Blue stars in the blue snow
over the elm stump

xxviii.

In the window,
holding out their pale arms,
my mother and father,
above, within, beyond the field.

xxix.

I have come to have
everything, but now
the miserable
weep in chapels
under the spruce boughs.

xxx.

Even winter evenings
spores of black knot, killer
of cherry, plum, and apple.

xxxi.

Mindless,invisible,
drift over the field,
but will anchor.

xxxii.

Verdun, Belsen, Jonestown - still,
from indwellings darkness, human
music, a summons
to praise.

xxxiii.

A boy, I killed these sparrows
whose tweet, tweet now
enters my cabin,
forgiving everything.

xxxiv.

I still hear
the summer woodpecker, red
godhead hammering holes
into my heartwood

xxxv.

How long have I been here,
scent of pinesap
flowing through my chair?

xxxvi.

Snow clouds,
Milky Way nowhere in sight,
moon hidden, all
earth gone -
there is a life, this one,
beyond the body.








The next poem is by our friend from the state of Washington, Gary Blankenship. Gary and I have much in common, being both old retired guys seeking a second life in poetry after completion of our first life in business.

And like me, he's not sure whether we should laugh at the silly rantings of the current right-wing contingent as they follow the lead of the thugs on right-wing radio or whether we should, to use an old-fashioned phrase, "fear for the republic."

Having lived in close proximity to the John Birch malignancy of the 1950s, I see nothing new in all the current stupidity, though it still makes me very angry and a little worried.

Gary chose to laugh.



Stay in School

Work hard.
Study.
Get good grades.
Be all you can be.
Respect your parents,
teachers,
America.

But there must be
a hidden agenda,
some message
we can't hear.

He is too popular,
charismatic,
the kid will follow him,
blindly.

Wait until the next speech.

If we hadn't complained,
he would have,
could have...

You said bad things
about Bush.

Politics don't belong
in the classroom.

There is better things
to do with their precious
classroom time

And on and on,
it goes,
the babble goes on because
in reality,
they don't like the president

and it wouldn't have mattered
if he had executed Bin Ladin
during the speech

he is not legitimate,
he is different,
Hawaiian -
he is not a true American

The speech is over,
but the birthers
and deathers
and haters
still trumble on

only their delivery medium
different than those who spewed
in 1840,
in 1905
in 1950
in 1965

though I do wonder
how so many of them
hear alien voices
without a tinfoil cap
and paperclip antenna?








The next three poems are by Portuguese poet Eugenio De Andrade, from his book Forbidden Words, published by New Directions in 2003. It is a bilingual book, Portuguese and English, translated by Alexis Levitin, on facing pages.



Song

You were snow.
Cherished snow, caressed and white.
Tear and jasmine,
threshold of first light.

You were water.
Water of the salty sea when I
kissed you. Tall tower, soul, ship,
no beginning or end to this good-bye

You were the fruit within
my fingers, trembling.
We could have sung
or flown, we could have died.

But of the name
that May had memorized,
neither the color
nor the taste remain.


To Waken

Is it a bird, is it a rose,
is it the sea that wakens me?

Bird or rose or sea,
all is fire, all desire.
To awake is to be rose of the rose;
song of the bird, water of the sea.


At the Mouth of the Well

Sometimes even death can
acquiesce: at the mouth of the well
he stops his horse, doesn't quite dismount,
but allows you to linger,
contemplating the black waters,
th flock of distant clanging bells,
the nearby apple trees,
their fruit so curiously aglow.








Sometimes, by cracky, you just have to make a stand.



ironing 3 shirts on Sunday

it's Sunday morning
and i'm
celebrating
the beginning of a new week
in which i am
alive
by shaving
and ironing 3 shirts

which
means 3 days without pressure
to conform
to social norms of ironed shirts
and shaved faces

so
i'm good until wednesday
morning
when i will have to decide again
whether to conform
or go wild,
and proceed on my own un-predetermined
way

what would Jesus do?
i think

(it is important to consider historical
precedents like these
when making decisions about choosing
among alternate life paths)

and what about Abraham Lincoln
or Truman Capote?

and Cabeza
DeVaca - what would he do?

Jesus didn't shave
and hardly ever ironed his robes

Lincoln hardly ever shaved
and wore starched and crisply ironed
white shirts
except when splitting
rails

Capote
shaved and had someone else
iron his shirts

and Mr. Cabeza De Vaca Head of Cow
spent a large part of his life being chased
by cannibal indians in south texas
and had limited time
for shaving or shirt ironing

such things just weren't high on his daily
to-do lists -

so it seems
the best conclusion i can come up with
is
it's too hot for robes
and i have ugly feet which could be
considered a public nuisance if bared in
flip-flops or sandals,
and, rail-splitting
sounds like too much work
for a dedicated idler like me, and,
being not a rich and renown author,
i cannot afford
to hire someone to iron my
shirts,
leaving
only old Mr. Cow's Head,

who,
setting aside the issue of the
cannibal indians, which can best
be seen
as a symptom
of a condition not a
base condition
in and of its own self, said base con-
dition being the living of a full
and interesting life
with better things to do than
face-shaving and shirt-ironing

and
having a similar life of challenge and
adventure (despite the obvious lack of
cannibal
indians
in my life), i will observe the example
of my homeboy Mr. Head de Vaca and
not shave
or iron a shirt Wednesday

i will wait until
Friday
instead








The next poem is from Chilean poet, politician, and diplomat Pablo Neruda. The poem is from The Yellow Heart, published in 1990 by Copper Canyon Press. It is a bilingual book with Spanish and English, translated by William O'Daly, on facing pages. The book is one of Neruda's last, written as he prepared for his death by cancer and the imminent military coup in Chile of 1973 that, with a wink and a nod from the US, replaced a democratically elected president with a military dictatorship.


Neruda was born in 1904 and died in 1973. Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.



Integrations

After everything, I will love you
as if it were always before,
as if after so much waiting,
not seeing you and you not coming,
you were breathing
close to me forever.

Close to me with your habits
with your color and your guitar
just as countries unite
in schoolroom lectures
and two regions become blurred
and there is a river near a river
and two volcanoes grow together.

Close to you is close to me
and your absence is far from everything
and the moon is the color of clay
in the night of quaking earth
when, in terror of the earth,
all the roots join together
and silence is heard ringing
with the music of fright.
Fear is also a street.
And among its terrifying stones
tenderness somehow is able to march
with four feet and four lips.

Since, without leaving the present
that is a fragile ring,
we touch the sand of yesterday
and on the sea, love reveals
a repeated fury.








Now here's a poem by our friend Robert McManes. Mac lives near Scranton, Kansas and conducts poetry workshops and related writing presentations for the Kansas Author's Club.



above average

I will not write words
twisted or turned,
will not ask others to read
nor pretend
to comprehend tinted skies and
drive by drinking establishments
with honk and serve attitudes.

I shall write the happiest lines,
            with above average enthusiasm,
            nothing about the wicked
            nothing about the sad
nothing about death.

no martyrs in the making
I'll wipe the pity
from my eyes
from my mouth
on a silken poetic sleeve

I might write of love
or something less difficult
to get the good feel
for an above average read.








Gunter Kunert is often described as one of the grand old men of contemporary German-language poets. Born in Berlin in 1929, Kunert, prior to reunification, made himself unwelcome in his native East Germany and immigrated to West Germany in 1979 and has live in Hamburg since. He has published nearly three dozen books of poetry.

These two poems, which originally appeared in his book Late Show, were taken from Issue Four of Poetry International, published by San Diego State University Press in 2000.

The poems were translated by Gerald Chapple.



Forgetfulness

Time blots out names in
the brain. What's his name,
the last Byzantine emperor? And
the first secretary-general?
Mnemosyne, my faithless woman,
you've up and left me. And
taken our dowry with you.
Who do I ask for help if I
don't know a soul?
Nicholas, Wendelin, Blasius -
docking of receptors unsuccessful,

Allow me to introduce
myself to you? I am
who I was and already
a has-been.


Encounter

Chaotic still life
around the metal sarcophagi
of our civilized culture. The rotten smell
from the box of clothes. Battered tin cans
exude a mixtum compositum of
indeterminate nature. And
an unmatched rubber boot goes walking
through the world alone. The chips off the
toilet bowl remind
us of the way of all flesh.
Broken glass. Relics of packaging.
Tattered carpets, counterfeit Orient.
Bottle tops, mindlessly scattered
coupons. Here
I stand and can do nothing else -
what do I do with the discarded results of
my existence?
Out from behind the dumpsters
an old man appears zipping
up his fly. Muttering
I rue the day
that I created man
And steals away, stooped over,
shouldering the invisible burden.
And has never since been sighted.








Some might call this next "doodling." I wrote it and I guess I would probably have to call it that myself. But I don't care, it is what it is.



scant skits

the back door
is the front door
to those
who dawdle in
kitchens

~~

politics
is the art
of what can i
get away with
today

~~

superheros
never have to take
a whiz - part
of what makes them
super

~~

the short man
has a tall hat, which
are you going to believe

~~

the girls all look better
at closing time -
silly ideas
all seem wiser
in a panic

~~

that woman
has crooked toes
pointing in all different
directions
no matter which way
she goes

~~

the girl with the sly smile
and long tanned legs
knows i am
watching and
likes it

glad
to be of service
i think

~~

three old men
read their newspapers

hah,
they think,
could'a told'em so

~~

sex
can light up
both night and day

as i remember
it

~~

enough of this

time to write a real
poem

tomorrow








The next poem, by 'Ilima Stern, is written first in Hawaiian, then translated to English. I know nothing about Hawaiian except that it is, I'm told, a phonetic language. I try to read the poem applying that rule, and am left thinking how wonderfully musical it must be when read aloud by someone fluent in the language.

'Ilima includes a few introductory notes about the poem, as follows:

"I'm going to attend a wedding later today. My cousin is marrying her very good friend whose wife died recently after a long illness. Thinking about them made me remember this poem I wrote for the wedding of a hula student. Several things to note about this poem in Hawaiian with its English translation:

1) My student's name is Kawai, so that's why there are lots of words with wai used in the poem. I did that deliberately.

2) I used the device called linked assonance - the last word in one line becomes the first word(or almost) in the following line, all the way up to the line that ends with wailana.

3) The first line: he punawai kahe wale ke aloha is an 'olelo no'eau, Hawaiian wise saying. I used that as the inspiration for my poem and also ended with it."



Wedding

He punawai kahe wale ke aloha.
E aloha 'olua me ka pu'uwai piha pono,
Pono e waiolono kekahi i kekahi,
I kekahi waimaka, e wai nui 'ia ka 'aka'aka me ka wai kahe
A kahe ka waioha me ka wai welawela.
Wela ke aloha no ka wai 'apo,
E 'apo me ka waihona 'ike i ka wainohia me ka wailana.
Eia ka'u waipa no 'olua -
He punawai kahe wale ke aloha.
Aloha e, aloha e, aloha e.

Love is a spring that flows freely.
Love with your whole heart,
Be careful speaking to one another,
Should there be tears, have laughter flow in great quantities, like a stream
Until joy flows like a warm spring.
Keep the love for your spouse constant,
Maintain a life of peace and contentment.
Here is my prayer for you two -
Love is a spring that flows freely.
Love, love, love.








Cowboy poems are fun and here's one, by Kay Kelley, to prove it.

Kelley is from Santa Fe, New Mexico, married to one cowboy, widowed, and now married to another, a Texas cowboy raised on a ranch in Val Verde County, County Seat, Del Rio, a pleasant little town across the Rio Grande from Cuidad Acuna, Mexico.

The poem is from New Cowboy Poetry, A Contemporary Gathering, published by Gibbs-Smith Publisher in 1990.



Playing With Foxy's Nose

I have a bay cutting filly
That can sure scowl at a cow.
You'd be impressed by her classy moves
If you saw her sweep and bow.
But when we're not working cattle,
Where she has to be quick on her toes,
A quiet pleasure we both enjoy
Is playing with Foxy's nose.

As I stoke her fluttering nostrils
And our breaths we do exchange,
She smells of sweet alfalfa
And the grasses of the range.
And looking up into big, brown eyes,
Her concentration shows
Just how intent she is on our game,
While I'm playing with Foxy's nose/

Her strip flows down along her face
And puddles in a snip.
As I hold her velvet muzzle,
She never tries to nip.
So we share these peaceful moments,
While my filly snorts and blows.
Each breathing in contentment,
While we're playing with Foxy's nose.








I said in the last issue that I had written only one 9-11 poem. Well, I wrote a second this week. Here it is.



the poem i should have written for September 11th

2,979 people were murdered on
September 11, 2001,
by evil men
in an evil, unprovoked
attack

a tragedy
great in itself
and even greater in the excuse
it gave stupid, vengeful men
to initiate tragedies of their own

as many as one hundred thousand
to one million dead since,
depending on whose numbers
you count
an obscene number of men, women
and children killed,
whichever of the numbers you believe -
noncombatants
no less innocent than those
of our own
who died
on American soil

giving lie
to the vain hope
that good can come from evil

laying bare the truth -
evil's offspring
is always and only
more evil

leaving one hundred thousand
to one million
names waiting to be read
along with our
own








The next poems are from Homeowner Haiku, a fun little book of short poems by husband and wife team Jerry Ratch, a Realtor with eleven books of poetry and one novel to his credit, and Sherry Karver, an artist who exhibit nationally and whose work is in many private and corporate collections. They live in Oakland,California.



~~

Hanging one painting,
twenty-three holes in the wall -
what's a stud finder?

~~

Buddhist, Realtor, and
Designer meet at open house -
Feng shui fight erupts

~~

Om, om on the range -
Close your eyes, breathe deep, don't sweat
the mortgage payment

~~

The leaves turn brilliant
yellow, before they clog up
our rain gutters

~~

Autumn - fallen leaves
do a lazy backstroke a-
cross the swimming pool

~~

An icy patch waits
beneath fresh snow on the porch -
the mailman cometh

~~

Maybe good fences
make good neighbors _ tall fences
make them disappear

~~

Sink clogged, tub over-
flows, toilet backs up - two
PhD's, no plunger

~~

Starry starry night -
that's not a Van Gogh, it's a
pinhole in the roof








The next two poems are by our friend Teresa White.



Bear Shoot, New Jersey

Ursa Major, Ursa Minor,
your brothers wander through
back yard barbecues,
filch donuts from garbage cans.

They padded here before
the first board was nailed to a crossbeam.
Large and slow in winter coats,
there was nothing to fear.

Now, Boy Scouts flee the safety of fire,
mothers leash waddling toddlers,
dogs yaloo in crazy circles,
yet no one's been killed.

They would eat salmonberries
and paw for trout if they could.
I imagine a low growl,

cry with their ursine kind when
the rifles come,

whimper
for their rightful place
in the overarching sky.


IQ Test

You, dear, have always been smarter than me.
I can't tell what comes after the circle
in a square

or what time it will be when those two trains pass
each other - one chugging west out of Baltimore,
one streaming east from Seattle.

And I think I know which animal is out of place:
"donkey, horse, whale, kangaroo"

but don't ask me how many Bills like milk when Bill
likes it more than Jack.

I can usually tell which is most like "format:
system, shape, size, configuration"

but don't ask me to define "subsume;"
I only get lost under it.

Then there are shapes
like butter cartons spread out - don't ask
me to choose - I always get them wrong.

I persist in reading dictionaries,
the broad planes of my encyclopedias -
all I'm supposed to know.








The next poem is by John Oughton, taken from his book Counting Out the Millennium, published by Pecan Grove Press in 1996.

Oughton was born in Guelph, Ontario, and spent his formative years there, except for two years in Egypt and Iraq. He has since lived in Japan and Nova Scotia as well as Toronto. He studied literature at York University in Toronto and the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Active as a literary journalist and reviewer, he published three previous books of poetry. When this book was published, he was completing a doctorate in education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and teaching at a community college.



The Perceivability of Poetry

"The Native Hollander wears wooden shoes."
"Nebraska has no seacoast."
"The daisy is a common wildflower."
     As these syllables, words and sentences come in over the telephones, stand-ins for millions of Bell System subscribers rate them for clarity of reception

          - Bell Tel ad in 1959 Scientific American

True, few will listen when poetry calls:
they think they've got the wrong line
a harangue in some exotic tongue
a satellite call from Mars
a subscription offer to eternity

but I'm here to tell you
Nebraska has no sequels
the daisy has come in wildfire
Nate, in the collander wears, wouldn't choose

and this news has the clarity of any you receive
poetry's in the curve from mouth to ear
even as we talk we agitate carbon grains
that squeeze our words into a spiral cord
and boil them out the other end
and you still say poetry isn't clear.
Well, the word is a wildly common weed
but I seek no hose nor will Ned ask her
and the days you see are wood
shooting into a seacoast

what has more clarity than a daisy?
and yet I mean by "daisy": time, change,
pollen on the flying legs of bees
the sun surrounded by our white faces
the shaded meaning of any word
the petals that burst from the ear
when I sing

now tell me what you heard in what I said
and I'll let you go








I finish this week with a series of barku (my small contribution to poetry - ten words on six lines, a perfect size when you're having a drink and don't have anything to write on but a bar napkin and, of course, written with haiku sensibility - thus the name I gave the form - "barku").

These particular barkus celebrate the, at last, arrival of rain, nearly 5 inches so far in 3 days, more rain than the area had previously received in the past year and a half.



eleven little rain dances

black clouds
on blue
sky
may rain
today
may not

~~~~

great oaks
reach
for fat clouds
thirsty
dry seeking
wet

~~~~

farmer
kicks dust
needs
second job
to pay for
seed

~~~~

flags shift
flail north
gulf winds
wet
smell of
fish

~~~~

sky
pregnant
with promise
of rain
while we
stay dry

~~~~

dark
makes
it seem a
winter scene
don't be
fooled

~~~~

birds silent
dogs whimper
cat
stretches
doesn't believe
in thunder

~~~~

water rushes
curb to curb
leaves
like toy
boats
bob

~~~~


three days
rain -
we swim
in a
miracle
of green

~~~~

droopy
banana plant
straightens
its spine
stands stiff at
attention

~~~~

walking
in summer rain
wet
chilled
but in no
hurry








That's a wrap for this week.

Until next week, as usual, all the material presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. I produced the blog and am its owner. Any of the material in the blog created exclusively by me is available to whoever might want it, with proper credit....allen itz.

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Disconnect   Thursday, September 10, 2009

IV.9.2.



As well as being short of time this week, I'm feeling particularly lazy (perhaps it's the signs of autumn approaching that have so mellowed me) and have not gone out looking for "friends poems" as I usually do. Accordingly there will be no poem from our friends this week, only poems from my library and those I wrote myself.

A complication to this plan is, though I continued my poem-a-day routine last week, all the poems suck. Rather than posting the sucky poems I wrote last week, I'm going to the archives to find some of my older poems, mostly from my book Seven Beats a Second, still available for sale, by the way, at my primary website, www.7beats.com. Or, if you are interested, you can email me (allen.itz@gmail.com) and I'll give you a better price than on-line. The book is 154 pages of poetry, with color art by Vincent Martinez on every page. A CD of improvisational music by the Ray-Guhn Show Choir is included with every book.Thus ends my annual sales pitch.

So this is what you get for your investment of time this week, a bunch of me and some good stuff as well. All together, this:


Me
eyes of Sister Jude
the cruelty of cats at play
while a bald man burns
life is

Yuan Hung-Tao
Leaving Po-hisiang at Dawn
On Receiving My Letter of Termination

Yuan Tsung-Tao
Things Seen on the road to Hsin-Yang

Yuan Chung-Tao
Snow at the River Pavilion of Wang Lung-Hsi

Me
before you were flesh

Julia Alvarez
from Homecoming

Me
lying in the sun with susan

Czeslaw Milosz
Far Away

Me
my kind of people

Lawson Fusao Inada
Charlie Parker
Bud Powell
Listening Images

Me
about sex

Shirley Kaufman
Snow in Jerusalem

Me
burning

Paul Monette
Here

Me
outtakes from the first day of the war








Here are several short pieces from my book Seven Beats a Second, which continues to take up far too much space in my closet.



eyes of Sister Jude

sharp eyes
like tempered blades
that cut clean through when angry

guarded eyes
that weigh and judge
and stand ever alert for betrayal

dark eyes, deep,
softened once for love,
then moistened by a long night's weeping

but only once
and it was long ago


the cruelty of cats at play

her black smile
cuts like a dagger through the dark
      unseen
      slicing cleanly to the heart
"I have something to tell you,"
      she whispers


while a bald man burns

three gulls circle
while
a bald man burns
in the fierce island sun
while
i trace gargoyles
in the sand
with my toe
while
you pretend to study
the book in your hand
while
three gulls circle
in the fierce island sun


life is

life
is like a duck hunt

every time
your really start to fly

some
asshole in the weeds

shoots
your feathered butt

right out of the sky








I start my library delving this week with several poems from Pilgrim of the Clouds - Poems and Essays from Ming Dynasty China. The anthology was published in 2005 by White Pine Press. All translations are by Jonathan Chaves.

The Ming Dynasty ruled China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the earlier Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.


The poems in the book are by the brothers Yuan. The first below are by Yuan Hung-Tao, a poet of the late-Ming period. Born in 1568, he was the eldest brother, one of the major poets and essayists of the Ming Dynasty, and the most influential of the three. He died 1611, in the ending stages of Mind dynasty rule.

All three brothers take a common, open-eyed approach to their poetry, giving us, through their eyes, a compelling look at the China of their time, not Imperial China, but the China of villages and towns and common people.


Leaving Po-hisiang at Dawn

I get out of bed before sunrise
and, half asleep, climb into my carriage.
These official journeys are like food stuck in the teeth,
homesickness as unpalatable as spoiled water chestnuts!
A girl stands in front of an inn, her hair uncombed
a Buddhist monk boils water in a little hut.
Not intoxicated, but not sober either,
I listen as the morning drum sounds through the dust.


On Receiving My Letter of Termination

The time has come to devote myself to my hiker's stick;
I must have been a Buddhist monk in a former life!
Sick, I see returning home as a kind of pardon.
A stranger here - being fired is like being promoted.
In my cup, thick wind; I get crazy-drunk,
eat my fill, then stagger up the green mountain.
The southern sect, the northern sect, I've tried them all:
this hermit has his own school of Zen philosophy.


Next, from the book, I have a poem by Yuan Tsung-Tao, first brother of Yuan Hung-Tao.


Things Seen on the Road to Hsin-Yang

      1.

Sheer cliffs surround the rice paddies.
A little path lets through carriage and horse.
This, this is Peach blossom Spring;
why keep trying to find the way?

      2.

I look all around me - no road at all!
Driver, where are we going?
Suddenly I hear the whinny of a horse
that seems to come from empty sky.

      3.

Below the mountain, no signs of people.
On the mountain, no bird calls.
This leaves only the single wisp of cloud
to watch me ride through this place.


      4.

From the clouds unexpected barking and crowing?
Could it be the home of the immortal Liu An?
Looking more closely - blue smoke from the kitchens!
There is a village ahead on a mountain ridge.

      5.

The driver looks back, frightened:
"There's a tiger howling in the woods!"
but no, at the foot of the cliff
a mountain torrent roars against the rock.

      6.

Beyond the bridge, mountains piled high.
Along the bridge, rocks like bristling teeth.
They serve to gladden the traveler's heart,
But also to hurt the horses feet.


And, finally, a poem by the second brother, Yuan Chung-Tao.


Snow at the River Pavilion of Wang Lung-Hsi

      1.

The little building rests on rock,
roof tiles splashed by spray from the waves.
Traveler, don't lean against the railing:
that's the Yangtze River down below!

      2.

Biting cold - I stop arranging my books.
My face is still flushed from the morning wine.
I lean on the table, but can't fall asleep,
listening to the battle between water and rock.

      3.

Brilliant white, covering the whole bank,
and along the bank, a thousand masts.
I see no on in the boats,
only snow, on the boats.

      4.

The guests here - really happy.
The water and rocks - really mad.
At sunset, no boats on the river,
only a pair of white egrets.

      5.

Stick out your hand - a handful of river water!
Use it to wash the inkstone.
But move the wind jar away from the window:
the passing sailboats may knock it down.

      6.

The river is white in itself;
now brilliant snow fills sky and earth.
The river has a sound of its own;
now add the roar of a furious wind.








before you were flesh

before you were flesh
you were a spring blossom,
an amalgam of sun
and nurturing rain come softly
in the grace of night

before you were a blossom,
you were a fascination,
a free-floating design
in the all-reaching universe
of god's creative passion

before you were real
you were eternal

before you were one
you were all








Next, I have several of the diary-like poems by Julia Alvarez from her book, Homecoming, published by Grove Press in 1984, early in her career as a poet.

Alvarez was born in 1950 in New York City. When she was only three months old, her family moved to the Dominican Republic, where they would live for the next ten years. She grew up with her extended family in comfortable circumstances until 1960 when the family was forced to flee to the United States after her father participated in a failed plot to overthrow the island's military dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.

Her life in the Dominican Republic and her exile, as she saw it, back to the United States were the basis for one of the two novels for which she is most known, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. The other of her best known works is the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies.

The last third of her book of poems, Homecoming is made up of short poems written as daily diary entrees. I like these little poems for their honest and personal look at a young woman finding her way.



~~~~

Sometimes I'll fall in love with the wrong man
because I want the valentine movie
so much I'll play it with whoever leads,
I don't care who since I never see him
anyhow for all my projections on
his John Doe face. A couple of times I've
wondered if he's all there is to love,
and love's hard work is turning visions off,
adjusting my sights to a real person,
who's in turn trying to be genuine
in spite of romance programs he was taught...
both of us waiting, till the movie stops,
to learn to love. Between reels, I listen
to someone so close by...I could touch him.

~~~~

I'm watching a romantic movie play
in Plato's cave; half of the time I don't
believe in it and put the management
down for its taste: Take that crap off! I say.
Other times I get so addicted, I'm
one of the mainliners, high on romance,
hallucinating that in truth a man's
body is one of the Absolute Forms.
I look around when the houselights come on
and see...no one! I wonder if they're gone
out in the sunlight for enlightenment,
each half with its matched other, holding hands,
while punished for my doubts, I'm tantalized
with movies of what's going on outside.

~~~~

Why do we love one man, not another?
Seems like the heart is a child who ignores
an expensive gift so as to explore
the box it came in...We fall for trifles.
For Bruce because when his marriage broke up,
he counted all the steps to his new house
with his daughter and felt relieved it was
a number he could count to without help.
For Jamie because the week he visited,
he carved me a whole set of Plato's forms
in wood: a square, globe, cube, pyramid, cone.
His last night we picked favorites, then he used
the globe to prop my bedroom window open
because it was the one I had chosen.

~~~~

For Gordon because he wasn't ashamed
to say he loved his wife, unlike husbands
who tell their mistresses they stay married
with the mothers because of the children.
For Clive because that morning at the Tate
those luminous canvases of ships moored
to keep me in London, and suddenly,
before I could say love, my heart flooded
with light. I saw on Clive's face all
losses past and to come, Julian, Jamie,
Gordon, Steven, Bruce, John. I embraced Clive
because it was too late to stop myself.

~~~~

There we were at the Tate before Turner's
Ships of Sea in hot embrace. Tourists passed
smiling, even the guards grinned, no one asked
us to move apart so they could see Turner's
Ships at Sea. I thought, if there was thinking
going on inside my head, Clive, let's get
out or we're going to be on the carpet
in a minute. The ships at sea sailed on.
The tourists boarded the buses, London
traffic cymbaled and clanged as we clung on
to what there was of Other that wasn't
Us, waves of lust rocked us, the honeyed sun
fell in sweet streams through the seablue skylights....
We spent a week in love, promised to write
as I boarded. The plane climbed into light.

~~~~

Clive, who are you with these days? The mailograms
tied with a rubber band are in a box
in my parent's garage. Or Julian
has your new true love bothered you with lots
of questions about how we were? Tell her
everything. Don't spare her with softened truths
the hard loving we did. Tell her lovers
always bring their ghostly crew of past loves,
they feel like arks in which all those we've loved
are set adrift with us. We lay our heads
where another forehead lay....It touches me
to touch so many persons in one...
which is why love does for religion.








Here's another from Seven Beats a Second.



lying in the sun with susan

quiet bay

no sound but the light rustle
of marsh grass in the gulf breeze

she
lies on the deck, legs spread,
as if to thrust herself
at the summer sun

sweat glistens
on the inside of her thigh
and my tongue aches
for the taste of her








Czeslaw Milosz, born in 1911 in central Lithuania (then part of Russian empire), was a Polish poet, prose writer and translator. From 1961 to 1998 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

The next poem is from the four-part poem Far Away. The poem is from the book Provinces, Poems 1987-1991, published by The Ecco Press in 1991. I originally intended to use only the first and last parts of the poem, but once I had done that, I went back and added the two middle parts. It's a long poem, but breaking it up just didn't seem right.

Milosz died in 2004 at his Krakow home.

The poems in the book were translated by the poet in cooperation with Robert Hass.



Far Away

Great love makes a great grief.
Skarga

I

The chronicler is breathing, his heart is beating.
This is rare among chroniclers, for they are usually dead.
He tries to describe the earth as he remembers it
I.e., to describe on that earth his first love,
A girl bearing some ordinary name
From whom he will never again receive a letter
And who astonishes him by her strong existence
So that she seems to dictate whet he writes.

It happened a long, long time ago.
In a city which was like an oratorio
Shooting with its ornate towers up to the sky
Into he white clouds, from among green hills.
We were growing there next to each other, unaware of it,
In the same legend: about a subterranean river
Nobody has ever seen, about a basilisk
Under a medieval tower, about a secret passage
Which led from the city to a remote island
With the ruins of a castle in the middle of the lake.
Every spring we took the same delight in the river:
Ice is breaking, it flows, and look, ferry boats
Painted in blue and green stripes,
And majestic raft trains drift to the sawmills.

In the sun of April we were walking in the crowd.
Expectation was timid, nameless.
And only now, when every "he loves me, loves me not"
is fulfilled, when ridicule and grief
Are alike and I am at one
With these girls and boys, saying farewell,
I realize how strong their love was for their city.
Though they were unaware, it was to last them a lifetime.
They were destined to live through the loss of their country,
To search for a souvenir, a sign, something that does not perish.
And had I to offer a gift to her, I would have choose this:
I would place her among the dreams of architecture,
There, where St. Ann and the Bernadins,
St. John and the Missionaries meet the sky.

2

In the scent of savory, there where the path
Winds down towards the alders and the rushes
Of a small lake, in the sun, beehives.
The unchanging bees of our forest country
Work, as always, on the day we perish.

She was quick. She shouted: "Now!
No time to lose!" - and they grabbed the children,
They ran that path, from the house, by the alders, into the
  swamp.
the soldiers came out of the birch grove, were surrounding
  the house,
They had left their truck in the woods, so as not to scare
  people away.
"They did not think to let the dog loose,
It would have certainly led them to us."
Thus our country was ending, still generously
Protective with its osiers, mosses, wild rosemaries.
Long trains were moving eastward, towards Asia,
With the laments of those who knew they would not return.

Bees fly, heavy, to their mead breweries,
White clouds drift slowly, reflected in the lake.
Our heritage will be handed to unknown people.
Will they respect the hives, nasturtiums by the porch,
Carefully weeded patches, the slanting apple trees?

3

But yes, the restaurant's name was "A Cozy Nook."
How could I have forgotten! does it mean
I did not want to remember? And the city was falling
Into its sleepy molting, into a long season
Of people I could not imagine. It hardly, hardly
Returns. Why in my poems is there so little
Autobiography? Where did it come from, the idea
To hide what is my own as if it were sick?
Then, in the "Cozy Nook" I was still one
Of the gentlemen students, and officers, before whom
Little Matthew's waiters would put a carafe
Of vodka straight from the ice, misty with dew,
And to be adult made you proud,
Just as you felt proud coming of good stock.
This took place in a Europe of swamps and pine forests,
Of horse carts creaking on sandy highways.
Little Matthew, obliging, circulated among the tables.
Was he to become an informer? Or has he gone
To a gulag on one of the Siberian rivers?

4

How stupid is the business of the State.
I should not write about it and yet, I do.
For, after all, one pities people.

Here where I live they buy and sell
Every hour of the day and night.
In halls sprinkled with bluish light they heap
Fruits brought from five continents,
Fish and meats from the East and West,
Snails and oysters summoned against the clock,
Liquors fermented in sultry valleys.
I have nothing against the Polynesias in shop windows,
Against a virgin nature at a modest price,
And if I object, I keep it to myself, it's simpler.

I am not from here. From a remote province,
from a remote continent
Where I had learned the nature of the State.

By a river in the evening, our choral singing.
We were living beyond marshes, beyond woods,
thirty kilometers from the nearest railway station,
In manors, yeomen's lodges, farmhouses, hamlets.
Our singing was about division: this here
Is ours, that over there is alien, here poverty, there wealth,
Here ploughing, there trading, here virtue, there sin,
Here faithfulness to the ancestors, there treason,
And the worst of all, if one should sell his forest.
The oaks stood there for ages, now they were falling
With thunderous echoes, so that the earth trembled.
And then the road to our parish church
Led no more through shade with songs of birds
But through empty and silent clearings,
And that was like a presage of every kind of loss.
We implored the protection of the Miraculous Virgin,
We accompanied organ music with Latin chants.
Generation after generation we lived against the State
Which would not overcome us either with threat or punishment.
Till a perfect State appeared on the earth.

The state is perfect if it takes away
From every man his name, sex, dress, and manner,
And carries them at dawn, insane with fear,
Where, no one knows, to steppes, deserts,
So that its power is revealed
And, wallowing in their filth,
Hungry, humiliated, men renounced their right.
What did we know of this? Nothing at all.
And later on there were none among us
Who would be able to tell the world about this new knowledge.
The age passes, memory passes. Nobody will find
Letters begging for help, graves without crosses.








And another one from my book.



my kind of people

fat girls
need not apply

no skinny
bucktoothed boys
who masturbate
while reading historical
romance novels

no crinkly, wrinkly
old people
drooly-chinned
babies
with foul smelling
diapers
no bankers
who count their money
in a dark little room
at midnight

no judges, no fire chiefs,
no social workers,
no grocery store clerks,
barbers, bakers,
or used car salesmen

also, no candlestick makers
if they're still around

none of them either

no blonds
with dimples
and no swarthy skinned
men with mustaches

no baldheaded men
with beards
nor women
with brittle hair
piled higher than
six and one half inches

none too short
none too tall
none too big
none too small

and none too
in between

no men in tangerine
bermuda shorts
and no women
in pedal pushers
(any color)

no arabs, no blacks
no wops or jews

no russians, maldavians,
limes, frogs, krauts
poles, czechs, hunkies
greeks, swedes
irish sots
nor tightfisted scots

they just need no apply

and no chinamen, either,
and none of their oriental
cousins

no africans,
no egyptians,
and damn sure no syrians,

no mexicans
peruvians, chileans,
panamanians,
pomeranians,
argentinians,
and canadians, too

and kansans, californians,
new yorkers, iowa
porkers, nevadans,
or any of the rest

all of them
just need not apply,
all the riffraff
just need not apply
cause now we're
getting down to
the right kind of people

my kind of people

me

and, maybe

you








Lawson Fusao Inada, born 1938 in California, has been Oregon poet laureate since 1966.

Inada is a third-generation Japanese American and at the age of 4, he and his family were interned for the duration of World War II at camps in Fresno, Arkansas, and Colorado.

Following the war, Inada became a bass jazz musician, following the work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Billie Holiday, to whom he would later write tributes in his works. He studied writing at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Oregon, and the University of Iowa and has taught poetry at Southern Oregon University since 1966.

The next three poems are from his book Legends from Camp, winner of the 1994 American Book Award, published by Coffee House Press. He has received several poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and also won the 1997 Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.

Jazz, he has said, and his time in the camp have always been the greatest influences on his poetry. Here we see the jazz portion of that influence.



Charlie Parker

Yardbird. Bird. Yard.
Whatever he was called, whenever he played,
wherever we heard him wherever we are now,
Yardbird never left home.

On this corner, of 12 Street and Vine,
Pres and the Basie have just finished a set,
with the accomplished embellishments
of Mr. Pete Johnson.

This is Bird's place, and we hear it all.
Why leave this kind of yard?

People are downhome here, and in the know.
Sure, times may be tough,
but that don't excuse the music.
We're serious about it.
Go ahead, Bird, and blow!
If we can't follow you, we ain't worth it.

So there goes Bird deep down in the gutter,
passing the bottle around, taking it back.
So there goes Bird back in the alley
talking that trash, trashing the sack.

Go ahead, bird! We can dance to it.
If we can't dance, we can't use it.
We've cut off the sides of our shoes for you.

So there goes Bird all around the corner.
Mr. Preacherman Bird, going into a storefront
and coming out with a sanctified sermon.
Now here comes the whole congregation -
looking happy, feeling fancy, dancing!

Go ahead, Bird, Yardbird, Charlie!
Whomever he are, comes transportation:

come a taxi, come 52nd Street,
come Harlem, come New York city,
come Bud rubbing a glass piano,
come Monk meandering in the dark,
come Dizzy blowing the roof off,
come Klookamop, come Max making wax,
come Miles and miles of open sky,

come bebop and everybody else,
come the enhancement of anybody's life.

Come Yardbird right into your home.
Come Charlie beside you at the station.
Come Bird sneaking up with the blues.
Come Yard surprising from inside of you.

If you have blood, and pulse,
if you have heart - then there you are,
Welcome to the corner. You never left home.


Bud Powell

   "Parisian Thoroughfare"

Shops gleaming wares,
windows streaming with the streets of commerce as fragrance
from a nearby bakery fills and gilds the air
burgeoned to the brim with birds, butterflies, blossoms,
rising and falling
calls of children quickening the courtyards,
women whisking walks in the sunlit
briskness of rhythm
propelling, pulsing the entire populace, the entire
thoroughfare into action after the night's refreshing rain
promising spring thick with brilliance,
the surprising
turn of events where everything turns out happy...

("Hey, cut it, man!")


Listening Images

Lester Young

Yes, clouds do have
The smoothest sound.

Billie Holiday

Hold a microphone
Close to the moon.

Charlie Parker

Rapids to baptism
In one blue river.

Coleman Hawkins

A hawk for certain,
But as big as a man.

Ben Webster

Such fragile moss
In a massive tree.

Louis Armstrong

Just dip your years
And taste the sauce.

Roy Eldridge

Get in the car.
Start the engine.

Dizzy Gillespie

Gusts of gusto
Sweep the desert.

Miles Davis
3 valves, tubing...
How many feelings?

Clifford Brown

A fine congregation
This spring morning.

Art Tatum

Innumerable dew,
A splendid web.

Bud Powell

The eye, and then
the hurricane.

Thelonius Monk

Always old, always new,
Always deja vu.

Count Basie

Acorns on the roof -
Syncopated oakestra.

Duke Ellington

Stars, stripes, united
States of Ellington.

Gene Ammons
Chu Berry
Don Byas
Eddie Davis
Herschel Evans
Paul Gonsalves
Dexter Gordon
Wardell Gray
Rahsaan Kirk
Hank Mobley
Charlie Rouse
Sonny Stitt

Mountain mist,
Monumental totem.

John Coltrane

Sunrise golden
At the throat

Eric Dolphy

Coming across quick
Deer in the forest.

Delta blues

They broke bottles
Just to get the neck.

Son House

A lone man plucking
bolts of lightning.

Kansas City Shouters

Your baby leaves you on the train.
You stand and bring it back again.

Big Joe Turner

Big as laughter, big as rain,
Big as the big public domain.








And another one from my book, Seven Beats a Second.



about sex

sex
is about the heat
of rubbing parts together
passion
a function of finely calibrated
friction

some will say
it makes a big difference
which parts do what to who

bullshit
i say

it's a lot
like chicken nuggets

in the dark
parts is parts

you rub mine
and i'll rub yours
and we'll sort it out
in the morning








Born in 1923, Shirley Kaufman grew up in Seattle and lived in San Francisco for many years. She now makes her home in Jerusalem, where she has lived for a number of years. She has published four collections of her own poetry as well as a number of books of translation of Hebrew poetry. She also collaborated on a book of translation of poems by Dutch poet, Judith Herzbeg, which won a Columbia University translation prize.

The next poems is from her book Rivers of Salt, published by Copper Canyon Press in 1993.



Snow in Jerusalem

After it stops the air is still
whirling around our house and the pine trees
shake out their iced wings the way
dogs shed the sea from their bodies
after a swim, a white crust slides
like shingles down the backs of the branches,
soft clumps loosen themselves from
sills and ledges, fall past our window
with the swoosh of small birds
or of moths at night that beat themselves
senseless against the lamp until
we switch it off and reach for each other,
warm and slightly unraveled under
the worn nap, under the flannel
of the snow sky, under the overhanging
sorrow of the city listening to the
plop, plop, it's all coming clean now,
starting to thaw a little from the inside.








And, another one from my book.



burning

though
hot
i'm not

you truly set me burning
when you walked out those
swinging doors
in your skimpy white short-shorts

tight cheeks flexing against
the soft cotton
like two little monkeys
in a velvet bag

waving goodbye

seismic
is the word that comes to mind








The next poem is by Paul Monette from his book West of Yesterday, East of Summer, New and Selected Poems, 1973-1993, published by St. Martin's Press in 1994.

The poem is from a series of poems in the book titled Love Alone, 18 Elegies for Rog, elegies for his friend and life-partner Roger Horwitz who died of AIDS. Monette died, also of AIDS, in 1995.

In addition to his poetry and reviews, Monette wrote novelizations of films, including 1988 film Midnight Run, the 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre, the 1987 film Predator and 1983 film Scarface.



Here

everything extraneous has burned away
this is how burning feels in the fall
of the final year not like leaves in a blue
October but as if the skin were a paper lantern
full of tapped moths beating their fired wings
and yet I can lie on the hill just above you
a foot beside where I will lie myself
soon soon and for all the wrack and blubber
feel how we were warriors when the
merest morning sun in the garden was a
kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all
death it turns out war is what little
thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home
oh sweetie will you please forgive me this
that every time I opened a box of anytHing
Glad Bags One-A-Day KINGSIZE was
the worst I'd think will you still be here
when the box is empty Rog Rog who will
play boy with me now that I bucket with tears
through it all when I'd cling beside you sobbing
you'd shrug it off with the quietest I'm still
here I have your watch in the top drawer
which I don't dare wear yet help me please
the boxes grocery home day after day
the junk that keeps men spotless but it doesn't
matter now how long they last or I
the day has taken you with it and all
there is now is burning dark the only green
is up by the grave and this little thing
of telling the hill I'm here oh I'm here








Now an old poem that was not in my book.

The posting date for this issue being September 11th, I take note of the event on that date in 2001 by posting the next poem. It is the only poem I wrote about the event, which, in fact, is not really so much about the event, but an attempt put into words and form the event as we saw on TV that day and played over and over again on the days that followed.

The poem was eventually published in 2004 in The Muse Apprentice, an on-line journal that was publishing a number of my poems at the time.

I've never used it anywhere else because the HTML is such a pain to deal with.



outtakes from the first day of the war

                                   nothing

leads to anything

                                                                      short bursts
                                                                    of thought

                                     smoke

                                billows grey

                                    
  down
                                        city
                                  streets

no          connections

broken

                                 gray streets awash
                                  in a gray tide

            dreams
            bro
               ken

smaller
smaller

      p     i
      e     c      s
               e

                                    graypeopleghosts
                                        gray ghosts

                                          running

            mind bro
            ken

smaller
smaller

p   i
e     c
   e   s

     crashing down
in silence
     flowing
         like water
         down

riverwide
 riverlong
  riverdeep
   riverstrong
    riverflows
     riverlives
      rivertakes
       rivergives

                              puddling gray
                            in concrete and steel

      t
      h
      r
      e
      a
      d

thread

         l
         i
         m
         p

          lick it
          so it stays
          straight

                                   lick it

so it doesn't
flop down
like and old man's

     d
      i
      c
      k

make it straight

                            s t r a i g h t

through
the eye

     pull     tight


in    and   out

                                                            push in

                                                                      push out

                                                                        push in

                                        push out

          through the weaving
                                   patterns
                                                                      of our lives

     bring the pieces
     together

                              smoke

                               ash

                              ghosts surfing
                              gray tide
                             eyes wide

eyes wide
red-rimmed
in a gray mask

eyes wide
          in

     dis
con     nect








And that's the end of that.

Come back new week for bunches more of poetry. In the meantime, please recall that all material in this blog remains the property of its creators

I produced the blog and I own the blog and any material in the blog created exclusively by me is available to anyone who might want to use it.

Credit is proper and appropriate in such usage. Just spell my name right...allen itz.

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