Here and Now: Road Work




	Road Work Friday, January 08, 2010 < V.1.2. "Road Work" is the working title of a of a book I'm hoping to put out next year, a compilation of my road poems, Kerouac for the over-the-hill-dog-in-the-back-seat-holiday-inn set. But the title of this week's post has nothing to do with that. The title of the post is about the photos I'm using - the titles almost always are, as most of you have already figured out - all taken a couple of years ago on a road trip up the west coast, staying as close to the coast as the the roads would allow. Highway 1 and 101 along the coast is the most beautiful drive I've ever done, with pull-over space about every hundred yards, it seem, places to look and to take pictures. I came home with over 900 pictures, 600 of them, probably, of waves crashing over rocks. (Let us all praise digital cameras.) It's a treat for me to look at the pictures again, and I hope you enjoy them as well. I have a number of fine poets this week, including Beki Reese, our feature poet. There will be more about Beki shortly - in addition to writing other fine poetry, she is a master of the short form. So, all that explanation explained, here's my poet roster for the week. Beki Reese 3 poems Me new year wishes Allen Ginsberg America Change Beki Reese 3 poems Jacinto Jesus Cardona Musing Under a Mezquite Bar America Escapologist Upon Contemplating Pascal's Pensee That All of Man's Troubles Would End If He Learned To Stay Quietly In His Room Libro-Breath Me a grand time Amy Gerstiler Watch Beki Reese 3 poems Dennis Tourbin Private Moment Me the ghost in the attic Charles Harper Webb Girl at a Window Marilyn's Machine Beki Reese 3 poems Me turnip balls Lorenzo Thomas Sightseeing in East Texas An Afternoon with Dr. Blumenbach Whale Song Beki Reese 4 poems Kakinomoto Hitomaro In the autumn mountains... Me leaning toward the fire Maura O'Connor Gravity Simon J. Ortiz I Told You I Liked Indians Hattie Jones Subway Poem Words Me I don't like old men so much I'm featuring this week our friend Beki Reese who does masterly work with short form poetry. Beki is a Circulation Supervisor at a county library in Southern California. She says she has been writing poetry since she was ten years old and won her first poetry contest when she was eleven. Her poetry has been appearing in small press poetry journals and online for 15 years. Beki is a serious collector of Disney's Beauty and the Beast memorabilia. She also brags on her two granddaughters who she admits are her heart's delight. I have 16 poems from Beki this week, spread over the course of the post. Here are the first three. February first - the familiar comfort of jasmine tea ~~~~~ snowy silence - in the dead of winter one perfect tree ~~~~~ crimson ribbons weave through cerulean sky - Idaho sunset Time for everyone to make their New Year wishes. Here are mine. new year wishes christmas day, clear, bright as midday on a beach in the tropics, quiet, too, and cold enough to freeze the little mousies' tails if they were stirring, which they are not, having overindulged in little mousie eggnogs at their christmas party last night, and, meanwhile, it being a week before 2010, it's a good time to be thinking about my wishes for the new year, and, i guess, what i wish for next year, aside from the Miss America stuff like world peace and an end to hunger, which would be nice, but there's no reason for me to waste my wish on it if Miss America has it taken care of, so, mainly, i guess, my wish for next year is that i'll still be alive at the end of it, and, also, this year having gone pretty well, more of the same for next year would work just fine for me What better way to start a new year than Allen Ginsberg, and money. The poem is from The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, published by the Harvard University Press in 1985. American Change The first I looked on, after a long time far from home in mid Atlantic on a summer day Dolphins breaking the glassy water under the blue sky, a gleam of silver in my cabin, fished up out of my jangling new pocket of coins and green dollars - held in my palm, the head of the feathered indian, old Buck-Rogers eagle eyed face, a gash of hunger in the cheek gritted jaw of the vanished man begone like a Hebrew with hairlock combed down the side - O Rabbi Indian what visionary gleam 100 years ago on Buffalo prairie under the molten cloud shot sky, 'the same clear light 10000 miles in all directions' but now with the violin music of Vienna, gone into the great slot machine of Kansas City, Reno - The coin seemed so small after vast European coppers thick francs leaden pesetas, lire endless and heavy, a miniature primeval memorialized in 5 cent candy- store nostalgia of the redskin, dead on silver coin, with shaggy buffalo on reverse, hump-backed little tail incurved, head butting against the rondure of Eternity, cock forelock below, bearded shoulder muscle folded below muscle, head of prophet bowed, vanishing beast of Time, boar body rubbed clean of wrinkles and shining like polished stone, bright metal in my forefinger, ridiculous buffalo - Go to New York Dime next I found, Minerva, sexless cold & still, ascend- ing goddess of money - and was it the wife of Wallace Stevens, truly? and now from the locks flowing the miniature wings of speedy thought, executive dyke, Minerva, goddess of Madison Avenue, forgotten useless dime that can't buy hot dog, dead dime - then we've George Washington, less primitive, the snub- nosed quarter, smug eyes and mouth, some idiot's design of the sexless Father, naked down to his neck, a ribbon in his wig, high fore- head, Roman line down the nose, fat cheeked, still showing his falsetooth ideas - O Eisenhower & Washington - O fathers - No movie star dark beauty - O thou Bignoses - Quarter, remembered quarter, 40 cents in all - What'll you buy me when I land - one icecream soda? - poor pile of coins, original reminders of the sadness, for- gotten money of American - nostalgia of the first touch of those coins, American change, the memory in my aging hand, the same old silver reflec- tive there, the thin dim hidden between my thumb and forefinger All the struggles for those coins, the sadness of their reappearance my reappearance on those fabled shores and the failure of the Dream, that Vision of Money re- duced to this haunting recollection of the gas lot in Paterson where I found half a dollar gleaming in the grass - I have a $5 bill in my pocket - it's Lincoln's sour black head moled wrinkled, forelocked too, big eared, flags of an- nouncement flying over the bill, stamps in green and spiderweb black, long numbers in racetrack green, immense promise, a girl, a hotel, a busride to Albany, a night of brilliant drunk in some faraway corner of Manhattan a stick of several teas, or paper or cap of Heroin, or a $5 strange present to the blind. Money money, reminder, I might as well write poems to you - dear American money - O statue of Liberty I ride en- folded in money and in my mind to you - and last Ahhh! Washington again, on the Dollar, same poetic black print, dark words, The United States Of America, innumer- able numbers R956422481 One Dollar This Certificate is Legal Tender (tender!) for all debts public and private My God My God why have you forsaken me Ivy Baker Priest Series 1953F and over, the Eagle, wild wings outspread, halo of the Stars encircled by puffs of smoke & flame - a circle of the Masonic Pyramid, the sacred Swedenborgian Dollar America, bricked up to the top, & floating surreal above the triangle of the holy outstaring Eye sectioned out of the aire, shining light emitted from the eyebrowless triangle - and a des- ert of cactus, scattered all around, clouds afar, this being the Great Seal of our Passion, Annuit coeptis, Novus Ordo Seculorum, the whole surrounded by green spiderwebs designed by T-Men to prevent foul counterfeit - ONE Following that long poem by Ginsberg, here are the next three short poems by Beki Reese. lazy Sunday - above the birdsong drone of a plane ~~~~~ in the west celestial pendulum - venus and the moon ~~~~~ after the storm no fishermen on the pier - gulls beg in vain The next several short poems are by Jacinto Jesus Cardona from his book Pan Dulce, published by Chili Verde Press of San Antonio in 1998. Cardona is from Alice, Texas, a small town in South Texas I am familiar with, having grown up a ways south of there, then spent half my working life in the immediate area. Reading his poems are like a trip back home in the old days. He is a National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Scholar at Boston University and Harvard and the recipient of the 1999 Trinity University Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the 2002 Ford Salute to Education award for outstanding achievement in the fine arts. His poetry has been featured on National Public Radio and published in numerous collections and anthologies. He now teaches English at Incarnate Word High School and creative writing for the Upward Bound Program at Trinity University, both in San Antonio. Musing Under a Mezquite the cash box mocks me, the vault lisps its sacred digits. I am a peon all over again. I leave the glass bank to rest my bones under a parking lot mezquite. While I wait for my spitball of a credit history, the cry of a cricket rises from an asphalt crack. Bar America Where "Ladies Are Always Welcome" and Jimmy Edwards and the Latin Breed battle it out with Timi Yuro on the jukebox. John F. Kennedy descansa en pas in a plastic frame next to the packets of dry shrimp and fried pork skins. Un chaparrito in his blue seersucker suit se despide de sus compas including la mujer sola in the red booth who confides to Lola that her cigarette lighter leaks in her purse while I jot down a title; The Idea of Fraternity in American. Escapologists Abhorring knots and handcuffs, escape artists all, the thought of escape is our aphrodisiac. With or without that ball of magic thread we all seek those golden gates of sweet escapement. Daedalus, Icarus, all of us ache to break away from the double axe of laberintos, even on wings of wax. Upon Contemplating Pascal's Pensee That All Of Man's Troubles Would End If He Learned To Stay Quietly In His Room I want to ruminate, but I can't. Rumor has it that I am a windswept street, yet I see myself more like a broom whose handle takes pride in being properly propped. My elbows bend, all my bones obey me, but my brain remains a stone at the bottom of a slope. I wish I could stretch out like a legend left for dead. My eyes are the double f's of ineffectiveness. Oh, how I envy hinges! How I wish I could lash myself to a mast; it's all a matter of wax. I want to ruminate, but I can't. I'm as passive as a prickly pear before blue butane flames. Libro-Breath Dedicated to the Alice Public Library After reading all afternoon en la biblioteca publica, I reek of libro-breath. Stepping out into the sunlight, I kick my fenderless bike, mi junka, mi unica junka, waiting by the yucca plant. Hopping on my black bicycle seat, I pedal down wright Street, my lips chanting eu-ca, eu-ca, eu-ca-lyp-tus. Coasting down my street, I am glee personified, my chavalon bones bouncing like xylophones. Here's a bit I wrote a couple of days before Christmas about a family feast and get-together. a grand time feeling deprived of my annual yuletide poking and prodding by fat women in flip-flops i went to WalMart yesterday to buy a set of folding chairs for the big Christmas dinner we have planned for tomorrow - 14 diners we're expecting and our dining room table is only good for six without crowding so some satellite tables will be required - it will be a fun occasion, bringing people together for a Mexican Christmas - tamales, mole, fajitas, rice, beans, and the works - all prepared by my son, a grand time on a day i haven't paid much attention to in a while - a grand time on a bright winter day, even if conversation may sometimes require yelling between tables in adjoining rooms Amy Gerstiler was born in San Diego in 1956. At the time the next poem was published in The Best American Poetry, 2005, she was teaching at the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College and at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. The poem was originally published in Sycamore Review. Watch Yesterday, your tired wife and I drove to the medical examiner's to retriever your personal effects. She dropped me off at the front entrance. The women at work in that bland flat-roofed building looked like secretaries at various high schools you were principal of over the last thirty years. The back room was being remodeled, so ideal placement of FAX machines and the shredder were under discussion. An older woman with dyed blonde hair searched the property closet twice for your watch. "It's here on the computer," she said, shaking her head. "but I can't locate it on the premises." She phoned the exam room to see if they still had it "down there." Finally, on her third trip to the closet , she found it. I signed for the sealed, formaldehyde smelling plastic bag, a form printed on it in black ink. Reason confiscated/ offense. Arresting officer/chain of custody. Location where obtained. The same form for every crime, accident, fatality. When I returned to the car, I found your wife asleep at the wheel. Not wanting to disturb her, I stood and watched her awhile through the rolled up window. What would I give this waking minute, my car my house every book I ever owned, trifles all, to be able to kiss your brow and rouse you now as if from a needed sleep? I tore the bag open with my teeth. It tasted awful. Inside, your everyday watch with brown leather band, still ticking. Next, three more of our 16 poems from Beki Reese. birdwhistle lingers above the river's song - suddenly...the crickets! ~~~~ stones spin and tumble with water's summer rush - riverdance! ~~~~~ beneath these pines meadowlark and river-rush - summer harmony The next poem is by Dennis Tourbin from his book In Hitler's Window, published The Tellem Press of Ottawa in 1991. Tourbin was a poet, painter, performance artist, novelist, and art and poetry-magazine publisher. Born in 1946, he died in 1998. Private Moment Is there one short moment, a split-second of time before the trigger is pulled and the bullet spreads itself, exploding... a private moment beyond indecision, the barrel in his mouth, As he stands before the mirror, the trigger melting on his finger, his wide eyes staring deep through glass and tortured vision, is there one short moment before the trigger is pulled.... Instantly, the finger reacts and his own eyes fail to record the image. Is it that fast.... This is about the phenomenon of the fading voice, something I, soon to celebrate my 66th birthday, began to notice about a year or so ago. the ghost ini the attic it's why we talk so loudly, us old men, it's because for most of our lives we've been accustomed to being heard and heeded and now that we're older, it seems nobody listens, and the older we get the less we're heard try sitting at table with a group of younger people; try joining in whatever conversation is going on at the table, it's like telling a story in the middle of a noisy bus station, nobody hears anything you say until, for some reason all the noise stops for five seconds and your voice, suddenly very loud in the silence, gets out four words before the noise starts again, four words from the middle of the story, inane in their isolation from the rest of the story, four words, that, alone like some tiny Pacific atoll, make you seem like a doddering old fool - i think it is that even those who haven't heard all your stories a dozen times assume they have, and, they just do not hear what they're sure they've heard too many times before, and if they pay any attention at all they just see you talking, just watch your mouth move, exuding little bubbles of gibberish and old news and, frankly, who cares about any of that when you're young and have it all figured out already it's just the way it is and i've come to accept it, given up any thought of ever finishing a sentence the rest of my life my only worry is - what next? invisibility? do i just turn into a bundle of an old man's clothes, the fleshly frame that holds the bundle up unseen by anyone is it like a progression - first unheard, then unseen, then what? is old age only the first step to becoming the ghost in the attic? The next two poems are by Charles Harper Webb from his book Reading the Water, the 1997 Morse Poetry Prize published by Northeastern University Press. Girl at a Window The moths which used to swirl like snow Around the streetlamps, are gone Snow is gone too, since it's early spring. And the rain which fell last weekend. And the tulips which bloomed all day Till night snuffed them like candles. I stand hidden by curtains and watch you Stride past the lamps into the black street Gouged like a river through a battlefield. It flows with corpses every workday Empty now but still stinking of death, It readies to carry you away. You zip your coat as if keeping something in, Fish in your pocket, find your keys, Drop them. I hear the click, See your head jerk as you curse And stoop to pick them up. I watch Unseen, the way I've watched you sleep. You fumble with the lock, and slide into your car. Still warm from me, smelling of me, You're changing, as I am, Elements reshuffling. What creatures Will wear our clothes tomorrow? What will they feel for one another? I've read how, each dusk, Aztecs watched The sun die - then, before each dawn, offered Their gods human hearts, praying for a miracle. We must pray for a miracle. Here where everything dies, changes, We must offer our hearts, Bleed, sacrifice to feed love And chase away the night. Though In the end we need a miracle. Each sunrise, heartbeat, breath, Instant of love ends in a death, Begins a miracle by flickering back again. Marilyn's Machine She bought it because her baseball player didn't want her to, because her playwright and her President and her Attorney General disapproved. You're a star, they said: the one thing they agreed on. Stars don't wash their own clothes. Too timid to defy them, she rented a little room and brought her purchase there, safe in its cardboard box. Disguised in a black wig and flowered muumuu, she sat and stared at the machine, imagining the famous bras, nylons and panties, tight sweaters and skirts sighing as they rocked, settling down into the warm detergent bath. Sometimes she cried, thinking of the men who dreamed about her clothes and what went in them. How many orgasms had she inspired, who'd never had one of her own, her breathy voice warding off "Was it good for you?" She loved selecting temperatures: hot/warm, warm/cold, cold/cold, and her favorite, hot/cold. She loved the brand name "Whirlpool Legend." She loved the cycles, especially "Rinse" and "Spin." She whispered their names, thinking of a man thinking of her some distant day where she is nothing but an image made from movies, photos, gossip, exposes - an image thinking of him thinking of her in her black wig and flowered muumuu, rinsing, spinning till the dirt is washed away. And now, the next three of our poems by our friend Beki Reese. silver and gold - wingtips dust the clouds with sunlight ~~~~~ outside the palace in a sea of umbrellas one hatless mourner ~~~~~ wild geese flying south - shadows that cross the moonlight cross the water, too It doesn't always come out the way you want. Sometimes you have to just push on past and keep on truckin'. turnip balls so say you go to this fancy feast and you see the table beautifully laid with flowers and fine china and gleaming silverware, straining under great mounds of delicious looking food and you sit down and take your first bite and your first bite is from a turnip ball or something equally disgusting do you throw your fork down and leave the table, leave behind all that other great looking food? no ma'am you do not, you move on to the next dish and just eat around that disgusting turnip ball that's what you do well that's what i'm doing right now, going around the disgusting turnip ball of a poem i wrote earlier this morning and threw away i'm sure it's gonna get much better this time around a great poem right around the corner, just waiting for me to catch it and write it down starting any minute now Lorenzo Thomas, was born in Panama and grew up in New York City. He is a poet, critic, and professor of English at the University of Houston - Downtown. The next three poems are from his book, Dancing on Main Street, published by Coffee House Press in 2004. Sightseeing in East Texas These towns are orphans of the Interstate A slow-motion beauty often fires these town squares With sparks of homely pride Marvelous stately oaks Or bright and loved azaleas Accenting solid buildings From the 1880s Which keep, somewhere within, Bound yellowed scraps Of what this place has been That nothing in the Courthouse Parking slips filled with new cars Dust-plated pickup trucks And small-town silences Even provides a whispered hint Once happened here What kind of folks could watch and cherish Memories of seeing A man nailed to a tree Of crimes not hidden in the dark But planned as carefully with glee As county fairs or picnics Hearing wept prayers And piercing screams turn to mute shock Brisk bidding sweeps the crowd For toes and fingers, ears As flames of hatred Eddy around numb feet Then catch a kerosene-soaked cuff And suddenly, A human form of flesh and soul Is drowned in fire? Just us. Don't think too long Buckle up your seat belt And drive on. We have survived a history that proves That people, not necessarily humans, Can live without hearts. An Afternoon with Dr. Blumenbach ...yet in beauty of our Saviour blacknesse is commended, when it is said, his locks are bushie and black as a Raven. - Sir Thomas Browne Light with a veil of dust Climbs through the window and pauses to investigate A shelf of skulls This new disguise suits me I think. To probe To not disturb the Doctor's thoughts Though I intrude Methodical and passionless The Doctor places shot into the scales Weighing a fragile monument To breath and sadness His concentration like a steady flame Would please Hermes Bent to a greater task Than Adam's charge from god Man to name Man himself To rank and classify his tribes The Doctor's sure science Cannot predict advent of fools Alfalfa Bill in academic robes Like Nott and Stoddards doctors with heads as empty as those on his shelf and hearts as cold as bone Calling accursed My own beloved ones Who dance my tropics Praising me Into whose faces I have signed my name But in this one I'll invest some time Of course, my visit cannot take too long I have more calls to make A fierce Red poet waits And then a young American On Fire Island I wonder should I beg him to come ride with me And make a housecall on a troubled century Crowded with those who cannot even see The universal skull beneath the skin Doctor, what must we do To make them see the light within? Whale Song You just don't know How hard it is To be uncivilized You think that everyone you eat Deserves to be eaten Lunch for me Means someone ain't coming home So what If breakfast might have been The tuna that found a cure for cancer? Damn sure was tasty! Now here's the last four of our poems this week by Beki Reese an early frost, and just one cicada to sing me to sleep ~~~~~ first snowfall - children wade through drifts laughing out clouds ~~~~~ moonless night - missing my shadow ~~~~~ seaside neon - waves shimmer red and green beneath the pier This is one of those places where I get all tied up with contradiction. an antidote a clear, cold day a scent of wet and fresh-cut wood a Paul Bunyon day everything appearing larger than real a day of contradictions like the way those whose language flows confuse, in their own lives, the inarticulate with the unfeeling yet still hold greatest regard for the strong, silent type of our mythology, the Gary Coopers and Clint Eastwoods who endure all without a sign of pain or emotion, who, in the end, reward us with the smallest flicker of eye or twitch of cheek assuring us with the most subtle signs that there is, within them, the same cauldron that burns with us as well no place in our Pantheon for the verbose; no time for explainers, or whiners or loose-lipped fools - we find enough of all of that in ourselves - it is an antidote to us we seek not a mirror to our blathering selves The next poem is from Japanese Love Poems - Selections from the Manyoshu. The Manyoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) is the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, compiled some time around 759 A.D. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the final in a series of compilers, is believed to be Otomo no Yakamochi, a statesman and waka poet in the Nara period and a member of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals . The collection contains poems ranging from A.D. 347 through 759, the bulk of the poems representing the period after 600. The poem I'm using is by Kakinomoto Hitomaro, a poet and aristocrat of the late Asuka period who lived from the year 662 to 710. He was the most prominent of the poets included in the Manyoshu and is considered one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals. In the autumn mountains... In the autumn mountains The yellow leaves are so thick. Alas, how shall I seek my love Who has wandered away? - I know not the mountain track. I see the messenger come As the yellow leaves are falling. Oh, well I remember How on such a day we used to meet - My wife and I! In the days when my wife lived, We went out to the embankment near by - We two, hand in hand - To view the elm-trees standing there With their outspreading branches Thick with spring leaves. Abundant as their greenery Was my love. On her leaned my soul. But who evades mortality? - One morning she was gone, flown like an early bird Clad in a heavenly scarf of white, To the wide fields where the shimmering kagero rises She went and vanished like the setting sun. the little babe - the keepsake My wife has left me - Cries and clamours. I have nothing to give; I pick up the child And clasp it in my arms. In her chamber, where our two pillows lie, Where we two used to sleep together, Days I spend alone, broken-hearted: Nights I pass, sighing till dawn. Though I grieve, there is no help; Vainly I long to see her. Men tell me that my wife is In the mountains of Hagai - Thither I go, Toiling along the stony path; But it avails me not, For my wife, as she lived in this world, I find not the faintest shadow. Difficult choices face us during these difficult days. But there's no getting around them. leaning toward the fire the front has been slowed by the hills so it's not as cold yet as it will be by noon but rain and sleet has come ahead and is falling now, icy needles like arctic ant bites sting i will stay a while and watch the rain fall and the cold creep across the city, but sometime soon i'm going to have to decide what to do with the day a good day for deep thinking and hot chocolate in a warm nest of thick blankets; a good day for deep sleep in front of the fire unsure, still, which it will be, but right now i'm leaning toward the fire The next several poems are from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, published by Thunder's Mouth Press in 1999. The first poem from the book is by Maura O'Connor. Although I find a number of "Maura O'Connors" in Google, I can't find one that looks like this "Maura O'Connor." The biography at the back of the book, apparently written by the poet, is not very informative, although it does mention a book she published, The Hummingbird Graveyard, which I also cannot find reference to on Google. She is a terrific poet and it seems incomprehensible to me that she could have slipped from view to the point of not being found by Google. I mean, even my name gets a bunch of Google hits, some referencing things I said/did 10 to 15 years ago. Surely hers should be way more than mine. Gravity Today I am fragile pale twitching insane and full of purpose. I'm thinking of my lover: my soft lips pressing his coarse belly, my tongue on a salmon nipple, his hand buried in my thick orange hair the telephone ringing. I'm thinking we tend our illnesses as if they are our children: fevered screaming demanding attention and twenty dollar bills, hours we could have spent making love with the television on. Faith is a series of calculations made by an idiot savant. I'm in love. I,m alone in this city of painted boxes stacked like alphabet blocks spelling nothing. These are things I know: trees don't sing birds don't sprout leaves the sky never turns to wine roses bloom because that's what roses do, whether we write poems for them or not. I concentrate on small things: ivy threaded through chain link, giveaway kittens huddled in a soggy cardboard box, a fat man blowing harmonica through a beard of rusty wires brown birds chattering furiously on power lines. I try not to think about lung cancer. AIDS, the chemicals in the rain; things I can't imagine any more than a color I've never seen My heart is graffiti on the side of a subway train, a shadow on the wall made by a child. Nothing has been fair since my first skinned knee I believe death must be. I cling to love as if it were an answer. I go buying eggs and bread, boots and corsets, knowing I'll burn out before the sun. I'm thinking of the days I tried to stay awake while the billboards and T.V. ads for condoms, microwave brownies, and dietetic jello lulled me to sleep. A brown-eyed girl once told me a secret that should have blown this city into a mass of unconnected atoms Our sewage is piped to the sea. Beggars in the street are hated for having the nerve to die in public. Charity requires paperwork, Relief requires medication as if we were the afterthoughts of institution greater than our rage. Gravity chains us to the asphalt with such grace we think it is kind. We all go buying lottery tickets Diet Coke and toothpaste as if the sky over our heads were the roof of a gilded cage. We provide evidence that we were here: initials cut into cracked vinyl bus seats, into trees growing from squares in concrete, a name left on a stone, an office building, a flower, a disease, a museum a child. Tonight the stars glitter like rhinestones on a black suede glove. In the coffin my room has become, I talk to God about the infrequency of rain about people who can't see the current of gentleness running under the pale crust of my skin. I tell him under the jackhammer crack, the diesel truck rumble, even the clicking sound traffic lights make switching from yellow to red, there is a silence swallowing every song, conversation, every whisper made beside graves or in the twisted white sheets of love. I tell him I can't fill it with dark wine, blue pills, a pink candle lit at the alter the lover touching my hair. God doesn't answer. God doesn't know our names. He's only the architect designing the places we occupy like high rise offices or ant hills I know this the way I know sunrise and sunset are caused by the endless turning of the Earth. My next poem from the book is by Simon J. Ortiz who I've used here often, usually from his own books. I told You I Like Indians You meet Indians everywhere. Once, I walked into this place - Flagler Beach, Florida, you'd never expect it - a bar; some old people ran it. The usual question, of course, "You're an Indian, aren't you?" "Yes, ma'am.” I'm Indian alright. Wild ignorant, savage! And she wants me to dance. Well, okay, been drinking beer all the way from Hollywood. We dance something. You're Indian, aren't you? Yeah, jesus christ, almighty, I'm one of them. I like Indians! "There's an Indian around here." What? and in walks a big Sioux. Crissake man, how's relocation, brother? He shakes my hand. Glad to see you. I thought I was somewhere else. We play the pingpong machine, drink beer, once in a while dance with the old lady who like Indians. I like Indians. I told you You meet Indians everywhere. Finally, from the book, I have two short poems by Hattie Jones, who published several books of poetry, as well as a celebrated memoir of the Beat scene, How I Became Hettie Jones. Subway Poem Yo, Spring! We need weather baby, We need tulips, lilacs, dandelions in the grass and your sweet ass Words are keys or stanchions or stones I give you my word You pocket it and keep the change Here is a word on the tip of my tongue: love I hold it close though it dreams of leaving. It's true, those of us of the more mature and masculine variety truly can be a pain in the butt. i don't like old men so much i don't like old men so much - not much to talk about after the first couple of jokes with these old guys who haven't learned anything new since their 37th birthday or the day they lost their virginity, whichever came first, what response can you make when they say stuff like the country's really gone to hell since the liberals kicked out ol' Richard Nixon - Im not at all like them - i make a point of learning something new every day - course that don't mean i remember any of it That's it for this week. Come back next week and we'll have stuff equally excellent as that which set you aquiver this week. In the meantime, I remind you that the material in this blog remains the property of those who created it. But you can use any of my stuff that you might want, just note, when used, where it came from. 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