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Impressions
Saturday, November 20, 2010 V.12.1. It is huge pleasure that I present as my featured poet this week, my friend Teresa White. And what could I say about Teresa that U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins didn't say better in his review of her book Gardenias for a Beast - More impressive than Teresa White's light touch on the tragic and her way of keeping her reader pleasurably off-balance is the fact that no word is wasted here. Every morsel of her diction counts. And she knows how to cut a line with unerring accuracy. She is a poet who not just deserves but requires our attention. She is a straight-on, honest and direct with her readers, poet, the kind of poet I prefer. And for pictures this week, I have more of my own. Last week we went to an exhibition of impressionist painters, mostly French and American. I love the light and feel of the impressionist, preferring the French, who invented impressionism, while enjoying the Americans, its earliest adopters, as well. Sometimes I try for the impressionist magic with my photos, as in the photos this week. Every once in a while I succeed; maybe one in twenty achieving he look and feel I was hoping for. As usual, and for better or worse, I did my best with the ones this week. Here are my poets for the week. Farewell to Xin Jian at Hibiscus Pavilion Du Fu Moonlit Night Li Shanglin To… Zhang Keqiu Sadness in Spring Me Grapecreek Road – December 1st Margaret Atwood A Woman Makes Peace with Her Faulty Heart Me the end as we come to know it Uvavnuk Moved Walt Whitman from Song of Myself Frances Horovitz Walking in Autumn Me like a coastal morning Deborah Digges The Way Into Stone Me the night not so encompassing Nila northSun they just fade away Stories from the Res. barrel-racer cowboy chaser something about cows hunter Me 5 birds David Meltzer Notes for Asaph 17:11;82 Teresa White Grocery Shopping with Anita Joy Ride The Price Dead Zone History Lesson at 2 a.m. Michael Van Walleghen Fishing With Children Me and a happy Thanksgiving to you as well Bernice Zamora Restless Serpents Denizens El Burrito Café Situation State Street 41 Trinkets So Not to be Mottled Pueblo Winter Me a norther blows in Paul Guest Elegiac Forecast Me Twit About Town Thomas Crofts The Workplace a Cruel Taskmaster Me I don’t care what Perry Como says, I don’t want no damn figgy pudding Bobby Byrd from Hospice Poems, poems written in memory of the poet's friend, Steve Sprague Me naked-rolling, parts-rubbing  I start this week with several poems from Chinese Love Poetry, published in 2004 by Barnes & Noble by arrangement with the British Museum Press. It is a beautiful book, slick paper and beautiful art by ancient and modern Chinese artist. The translator, or translators, of the poems are not credited in the book. The first poem is by the master, Wang Wei, painter, calligrapher, musician and poet of the early Tang dynasty. Wang was born in the year 699 and died in 759. Farewell to Xin Jian at Hibiscus Pavilion A cold rain mingled with the river at evening when I entered Wu; In the clear dawn I bid you farewell, lonely as Chu mountain. My kinsfolk in Luoyang, should they ask about me, Tell them: "My heart is a piece of ice in a jade cup!" The Next poem is by Du Fu who lived from 712 to 770, the period of the Tang dynasty greatest ascendancy. Moonlit Night There will be moon tonight over Fuzhou. In the woment's rooms she is gazing at it alone. From afar, I pity my little children: They do not know yet about Ch'ang-an. In the sweet mists her cloud-like hair is damp; In the clear shining her jade-white arms are cold. When shall we two lean beside the filmy curtain With moonlight on us both and the tear-stains dry? Li Shangyin who lived from 813 to 858, was a poet of the later Tang dynasty, known for the ambiguity of his meaning and the beauty of him imagery. To... Hard it was to see each other - harder still to part! The east wind has no force. the hundred flowers wither. The silkworm dies in spring when her thread is spun; The candle dries its tears only when burnt to the end. Grief at the morning mirror - cloud-like hair must change; Verses hummed at night, feeling the chill of moonlight... Yet from here to Paradise the way is not so far: Helpful bluebird, bring me news of her! My last poem from the book this week was written by Zhang Keqiu, a poet of the Mongol Yuan dynasty who lived from about 1279 to 1368. He was a native of the Zhejiang province in southeast China. Sadness in Spring Awake from Morning dreams, Make-up still caked, I miss my Young man. Long absent, he brings To mind, blue Rivers, ripe Fruit, green grass.  I went for a drive in the hills, checking out some familiar territory, hoping for some good "fall leaves" pictures. But I was too late. What leaves had been left were blown off the trees by a strong north wind early in the morning. So, instead of autumn pictures, I got some winter pictures - some included among my photos this week. Grapecreek Road, December 1st winter snakes through the hills, dry creeks, bare trees, high pasture grass waving in ice-sharpened wind like golden surf breaking ~~~ the river cold and clear, rocky bottom rippling with the flow cypress line river’s edge great gray trunks like Roman columns, the river, Caesar’s legions marching in mind’s mist railroad trestles loom overhead, three rust-brown iron arcs across the river and the tree studded flood plain ~~~ small pond ringed by reeds and lily pods, in the center shadow reflections of trees and a small turtle, head above water, surveying its realm, gauging opportunities for a sun spot among the reeds at the opposite end a cottonmouth breaks the surface, long stealth body a wraith beneath the surface, head in the cold air, watching ~~~ between hanging oak limbs by the old railroad tunnel a patch of color red, yellow, gold, the only fall color today, all other blown off the trees by fierce north winds this early morning ~~~ heading home, bare trees, pastures, fences built from rocks cleared from pasture fields in years long ago, many crumbling now but still marking the bounds of pioneer claims crumbling past - the rocks, the hardened hands that carried them from the fields then laid them in long and precise quadrangle lines maintain their grip on the present, hang on from their time to ours  Next, I have a poem by Margaret Atwood from her book, Two -Headed Poems, published Simon and Schuster in 1978. It is a book full of wonderful poems, most of them, unfortunately, too long to use here. Atwood, born in 1939, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. While best known for her work as a novelist, she is also an award winning poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. She is among the most-honored authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. A Woman Makes Peace With Her Faulty Heart It wasn't your crippled rhythm I could not forgive, or your dark red skinless head of a vulture but the things you hid: five words and my lost gold ring, the fine blue cup you said was broken, the stack of faces, gray and folded, you claimed we'd both forgotten, the other hearts you ate, and all that discarded time you hid from me, saying it never happened. There was that, and the way you would not be captured, sly featherless bird, fat raptor singing your raucous punctured song with your talons and your greedy eye lurking high in the molten sunset sky behind my cloth breast to pounce on strangers. How many times have I told you: The civilized world is a zoo, not a jungle, stay in your cage. And then the shouts of blood, the rage as you threw yourself against my ribs. As for me, I would have strangled you gladly with both hands, squeezed you closed, also your yelps of joy. Life goes more smoothly without a heart, without that shiftless emblem, that flyblown lion, magpie, cannibal eagle, scorpion with its metallic tricks of hate, that vulgar magic, that organ the size and color of a scalded rat, that singed phoenix. But you've shoved me this far, old pump, and we've hooked together like conspirators, which we are, and just as distrustful. We know that, barring accidents, one of us will finally betray the other, when that happens, it's me for the urn, you for the jar. Until then, it's an uneasy truce, and honor between criminals.  Something about the holidays makes me cranky and morose. the end as we come to know it a dark and gloomy Sunday morning, coming down, as Kristopherson said, just enough rain, mixed with oil and dirt gathered on the road after a month of no rain, to make the streets slick as an ice sheet in the Yukon - sun barely rising as I make my way to breakfast, like it’s anchored in the east by the weight of the coming day… my best memories of Sundays from time spent at Indiana U. dragged into the morning, still puff-brained from drinking the night before, by mid-day sun shining through a window by my bed – a walk through the small forest on the edge of the campus, (did it have a name? – I can’t recall it) breakfast at a sidewalk café on 10th, coffee and the Sunday Times spread across the table… comfortable in my disregard of time,, this stretching of every day from dark to dark, that is a luxury of youth, surprised at each new sunset, the daily revelation that there was an end to the day, not thinking of ends of anything… now it seems I think in not much else but ends, each day ending a count against the future, a subtraction from an ever-shrinking sum – wishing to have again the youthful ignorance that made us all so brave  Next, here are three poems from Poetry for the Earth, described as "a collection of poems from around the world that celebrate nature." It was published Fawcett Columbine in 1991. The first poem is by Uvavnuk, identified as an Iglulik Eskimo woman. The poem was translated by Tom Lowenstein. Moved The great sea stirs me. The great sea sets me adrift, it sways me like the weed on river-stone. The sky's height stirs me. The strong wind blows through my mind. It carries me with it, so I shake with joy. Next, Song of Myself, one of America's great gifts to the world, Walt Whitman. I believe a leaf of grass is no less that the journey-work of the stars, And the prismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over, and have distance what is behind me for good reasons, But call any thing back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean setting in hollows and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. And last from the book, this poem by Frances Horovitz. Horowitz, who was born in 1938 and died in 1983, was an English actress, broadcaster and poet. She worked as a schoolteacher as well as on radio and on the stage. Walking in Autumn (for Diana Lodge We have overshot the wood. The track has led us beyond trees to the tarmac edge. Too late now at dusk to return a different way, hazarding barbed wire or an unknown bull. We turn back onto the darkening path. Pale under-leaves of whitebeam, alder gleam at our feet like stranded fish or Hansel's stones. A wren, unseen, churrs alarm: each tree drains to blackness. Halfway now, we know by the leaning crab-apple; feet crunching into mud the hard slippery yellow moons. We hurry without reason stumbling over roots and stones. A night creature lurches, cries out, crashes through brambles. Skin shrinks inside our clothes; almost we run falling through darkness to the wood's end, the gate into the sloping field. Home is lights and woodsmoke, voices - and, our breath caught, not trembling now, a strange reluctance to enter within doors.  I'm not a big holiday guy, mostly like regular days better. like a coastal morning sun sneaking up on a damp day - like a coastal morning, birds flying like pasted-on cut-outs against the wet sky, low fog, warm from a southerly breeze blown across the coastal plains from the rolling gulf, streets glistening with morning dew - a thousand thousand mornings like this from 50 years living on the coast, my escape 16 years ago to dry winter hills of cactus, oak and mesquite, yellow-blossomed huisache grown stubborn between granite rocks, bluebonnets, cardinals, jays woodpeckers and coyotes, cedar on the hillsides, and Indian paintbrush fields and clear-running creeks stymied by this pre-Thanksgiving blanket of coastal miasma, preparing me, maybe, to the trip back to the coast later in the week, a fast in-and-out, fade-away dodge’m drive, 5 hours down, kiss the babies, eat the turkey, 8 hours sleep, then 5 hours back pushing all the way against the arctic front that will meet me at the door - 30 degrees crisp and clear, ice in the birdbath, time to sleep under a warm blanket in a flickering orange fireplace glow, dog by my side, cat in my lap…  The next poem, by Deborah Digges, is from her book Rough Music, published by Knopf in 1996. Digges, born in Jefferson, Missouri in 1950, received degrees from the University of California and the University of Missouri, as well as an M.F.A from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. She taught in the graduate writing divisions of New York, Boston, and Columbia Universities. She lived in Massachusetts, where she was a professor of English at Tufts University. She died in 2009. The Way Into Stone I hate to think how long I must lie here face down, kissing myself into the stone, or into the wood becoming stone buried in water. I hate to think how long it's going to take for my dream silos to empty, wind inside the bright theaters, all that I am translating into stone - my love for the taste of semen and the smell of my hair - I for whom waiting does not come easily. Nothing in my experience will say what terrors last, which wear smoother than sea glass, which love, which bitterness survives the frieze. I have no gift for this waiting. And yet I would be stone. I would be stone by Philistia's gates regathered for another execution, stone which the builders refused become the headstone of the corner. I would learn to wait the better to be stone, the many fallen into one, cycloptic, deaf to the bells sounding that the soul has birthed the last of her three children. What do I know? I am loose matter, sense and approbation, the spirits of a house with six doors slamming, merely the imprint of the autumn and the dragonfly. But it seems to me, when called upon to sing, a stone is something to be listened to. And that the coming of its song sees all the words in books blackening against their origins, and the meanings rushing backwards as light climbing the eight octaves. And the roaring ceases in the ears of the drowned at a stone's first heralding, and cell by cell,the prisoners make love to themselves in the asylums. Oh yes, a stone's a mockingbird. And midway through the aria most of the angels flee the earth holding their ears, and the beloved weeds are envious, and the trees, summer or winter are longing to be stone, and the walls would crumble to be stone again, and the lilacs give up their color to be stone.  What a strange thing it is to be dropped back in time. the night not so encompassing I had lunch yesterday with a woman I hadn’t seen in 48, almost 49, years, not since our high school graduation on a sweltering South Texas night in May, 1962 – an all-American pretty girl at 18, a strong, handsome looking woman now, looking 25 years younger than her age, my age, as well - how I asked, did you do that? “clean living,” she jokes, and I’m thinking, jeez, wish I’d have thought of that - but it’s too late for me now and that’s all I’m going to say about my friend from long ago because when she agreed to lunch with me I’m sure she just wanted lunch, neither expecting nor desiring to become a part of the poetic legend that I sometimes imagine myself to sometime be… but our time talking and reminiscing reminded me of those days, olden days - and who knew my days of hot rods and rock and roll would become the new generations’ (generations, as in the plural of way more than one ) olden days, just like my parent’s days of Glen Miller and Benny Goodman and jitterbug, eight to the bar, skittering feet, flouncy skirt flying high, and war bonds and ration coupons and nylon stocking were olden days in my day, and sad to say, still are, my brain having jumped the maturation track sometime in the late sixties, early seventies, and I’m still 25, just a little bunged up from excessive joy and jubilation (T. Cornpone – Lil’ Abner, my days, day before yesterday, and Daisy Mae, now there was a woman to lust after, like Marilyn singing happy birthday Mr. President to the smiling Irish face soon to be blown out the back of Mr. President’s head and she dead soon too) and how it was before air conditioning, everyone sitting out in the yard evenings, under a mesquite tree, drinking ice tea and waiting for the sun to come down, lightning bugs lighting and mosquitoes biting and katydids singing the moon up from the trees, swaying in the evening’s brush of fresh gulf breeze, blowing back the heat of the day, damp but cool and worth the damp, days and nights and a life that seemed bound, unchanging, in plastic, but assassinations, jungle wars, Tricky Dick and Kent State, who could imagine such, drinking ice tea under mesquite trees, trapping lightning bugs in glass bottles and swatting mosquitoes, in a lost and never found little town on the precipice of future shock, on the dull blunt edge of change ~~ drinking Singapore slings in night clubs where young girls danced naked under red neon lights where children starved in alleys where beggars fought for pennies and toothless whores gave blowjobs 50 cents a pop - these our neighbors on the other side of an ankle-deep river and we found nothing strange in our lives and theirs so close, yet three worlds away, and we satisfied ourselves by seeing only what we wanted to see, trips to the market of glitter-glued sombreros and rawhide bullwhips and cow skulls to hang on our fences and called it all foreign aid… if we had among us in our little town the greatest writer of our day he would never imagine any of that, and if he did and he wrote it we wouldn’t have believed any of it because we thought the world was the way it was because the way it was was the way it was supposed to be and I think of how it was 48 years ago and what blind and happy fools we were and how we would be again if the light was less bright and the day was less long and the night not so encompassing  Next, I have several poems by Nila north-Sun, from her book a snake in her mouth - poem 1974-1996. The book was published by West End Press of Albuquerque in 1997. northSun is a Native American poet and tribal historian, one of the best-known figures in the Native American Renaissance. She was born in 1951 in Schurz, Nevada to a Shoshone mother and a Chippewa father, legendary Native American activist Adam Fortunate Eagle. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she is a graduate of the University of Montana-Missoula. In 2000 the "Friends of the Library" group at the University of Nevada, Reno honored her with the Silver Pen Award for outstanding literary achievement. That same year, she was appointed her to the Nevada State Arts Council. In 2004, she received the "Indigenous Heritage Award in Literature" from ATAYL, an international agency. She now lives on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Reservation in Fallon, Nevada and works as a grantswriter for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. they just fade away old man dead in the alley leaning against trashcans ruby port dripping from pocketed bottle ruby dripping from cracked lips his crumbled body remaining like a crumbled leaf in somebody's wind like a forgotten shopping list in somebody's pocket stories from the res. getting a loan from the bank they ask do you have collateral? old mose says what's that? they say do you own a car? no a home you own? no furniture yea yea got a whole houseful tables chairs bookcases nightstands dressers everything they say very fine old mose gets loan defaults they come to get furniture houseful of fish crates somebody broke into his house one night they took his t.v. radio rifle & scope they even took his mouthwash? laughter on the res. barrel-racer cowboy-chaser small farm town girl never left nevada reads "glamour" magazine so she won't get bypassed when it comes to the latest style trouble is she only sees the old one left in the laundermat she thinks the heavy black eyeliner & bleached hair makes her look best it probably does thick pancake makeup tries to hide her acne & scars looks like a guy in drag no offense to guys in drag cruises the strip her mother's pickup truck bumper sticker says cowgirls are kiss-a-bull whistles & shouts to the same old gang a baby at 14 years 3 miscarriages since reads "true confessions" & can identify with every story 19 years old she'll never wiggle her hot pants for anybody but the local cowboys something about cows in the night if you hit one with your car they make a big dent & they might not even fall over if you're going fairly fast in a big old beat-up truck & hit one the dent blends with the others & you might have fresh meat that's slightly tenderized hunter he shoots things he's a hunter he's proud of it he says he eats whatever he shoots & he does unfortunately he'll eat anything  There's a time and place in life for nonsense, I think, as I usually about the time when nonsense is all I have. 5 birds 5 birds on a wire tire and fall kerplunk to the ground and I know this is a dream because never in my life have ever heard anything at all go kerplunk and somewhat disappointed to find it is a dream because I thought for a minute I had my first ker plunk and that’s actually the way it should be written ker plunk on descending lines ker the sound as the bird approaches the ground and the countervailing gravities of the falling bird and the earth and the moon and the sun and the galaxy and the tiny piece of microscopic debris that will someday be our sun and our moon and the bird and even the creatures called you&me floating in black space 14 seconds after creation create the grating sound we call “ker” then plunk on a separate line as the bird hits the ground with a thud sometimes called a plunk and the elasticity of the eternal strings snap back readjusting the gravitational disharmony previously described as “ker” and that’s the story of 5 birds on a wire as I heard it 2 falling separately and 3 falling in harmonic precision making one think of a high school dance team at football halftime except there’d be maybe 25 of the dance team while it’s only 3 birds possibly better described as a dance team at football half-time from a very small school but still 3 birds falling at the same time triples the gravitational effects leading not to just a small ker plunk as would be the case of 1 falling bird but a major KER PLUNK that might shake nearby trees and possibly even create a herd of milkshakes if cows are in a nearby field and it’s cold enough when the KER PLUNK !!PLUNKS!! and it would be that kind of plunk for sure big and bold with exclamatories front and back all reminding me of Bristol Palin dancing with the stars cause that’s just the way I think  Here are two poems by David Meltzer, from the collection David's Copy - The Selected Poems of David Meltzer, published Penguin Books in 2005. Born in 1937, Meltzer is a poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Notes for Asaph Asaph (or Asaf or Asof) was David's chief musician. A cymbal player. Play the symbols, David. each breath a chance, a pulse-born change. "There are no closed systems in nature." wrote Bleibtrau, no sure thing in music, the poem, constantly shifts. We intone notes, black dots on paper guide throat open. "I am making you a spirit," sings a Chippewa on earth in harmony with chance the changes, chants. Asaph fronts the Jerusalem Percussion Band his brass cymbal clash in desert air light off rims flash code to devout who transcribe it from tower to tower relay dance across the plains. "Praise HIM upon well-tuneed cymbals" praise HER upon the harp. Glide down Nile in green harps brushing bamboo fiddles counterpoint of outstretched ibis wings Mo's basket snagged in bracken, braked by weeds. Black Queen hears a nest of birds cooing for mamma and with her ladies alert to signals goes to music's source. Clothe him as we close systems. Play cymbals, sign time, mark lines with dots, do service with devotion. Struggle as cricket against cricket hind a music made, let through. We need only open our ears our throats. It passes through like light as song. 17:11:82 Thelonius Monk dies my 45th birthday years ago a Seattle dj told me this story: Thelonius was playing here with the Giants of Jazz group dodged all requests for interviews but I got through somehow & found him in his hotel room lying down his silence unhinged me but I kept talking & after a while he'd say something nothing really a grunt & I asked him what it was that he did I mean what he thought when he played some dumb thing like that like what he thought his music did Monk didn't answer he kept looking at the second-hand circle in the electric clockface on the dresser looked at me & said "I put it down. You got to pick it up."  Next, here, by popular demand, are poems by this week's feature poet, Teresa White, my friend and friend of many in the poetry-reading biz. Teresa is a poet I would read even if she sent me nothing but a grocery list, because, as I said elsewhere, I know it'd be the best damn grocery list ever written. One of the poems, The Price was previously published in The Muse Apprentice Guild, which, several years ago, used a number of my poems. Grocery Shopping With Anita She came on Saturdays. I’d watch her mince up the walk in ridiculous shoes. Right away she’d start talking to my cats while I pulled on my coat. A Green Card husband married her long enough for the authorities to let him stay. She told me she still spent nights at his apartment but I didn’t believe her. She bought her clothes in teen departments, bragged how young she looked for her age; poor woman, homely as a new-hatched duck, I always told her she was beautiful. Fifty going on sixteen, there was never anything I could say to keep her from falling for younger men. Her heart was always broken, Kleenex underlined on her shopping list. Joy Ride Breasts and hips, she looked old for her age. Her boyfriends had tattoos before every fourteen year-old girl had a fleur-de-lis above the crack of her ass. Their arms wore anchors, their muscles bulged in tight T-shirts. Always, a pack of Lucky’s folded into the short shirtsleeve. She loved their cars, Chevys and Pontiacs and tail fins galore, more than them, I swear. I was slim as a bolt of calico and as plain. Sitting in the background of her life asking myself “Is this the way it is?” Preening and mating mother called it and looked the other way. I envied her easy way of tumbling with men. Was it ever red as a Valentine? Did any of them love her? Did they really kiss like at the movies between popcorn and gum on your shoe? I didn’t know for decades how often they tried to kill her. Why is it the pretty ones suffer so? Five, she said. And when they were done the car door opened and she went flying off over the crumbling shoulder, stopped by a barbed-wire fence. Not just anyone, but my sister. The Price Death, take me unaware as light's first hand upon the dumb mountains. Do not tower me with my imagination in some bleak house, ticking off days with match stubs on the broken floor. I am not saying 'Do not come'. I am not saying 'I don't expect you' but how high the cost of sentience? how cruel the knowing. Dead Zone His flashlight illuminated the crawl spaces. Everyone wanted something killed. Before the termites, or after the carpenter ants, he’d make his discoveries: blue bottle glass embossed with Owl Pharmacy, stood next to amber jars forecasting skull and crossbones. Windowsills overflowed, tabletops an audience of beakers and jars. Now he collects English bone china dancing with roses and lilies to help him forget that daily burial, his back pinned to the wall his face wrapped with the gauze of spiders. History Lesson at 2 a.m. Now I know why Hadrian built his wall, rugged stones set in place from the River Tyne to the shore of Solway Firth. Those Picts gave the Romans a reason to fall and what nasty fighters they were: wearing blue-painted faces they lunged into the tightly knit forces, accustomed to win in their heavy armor. I can almost see those logs big as telephone poles hurl through the air massacring men left, right, and center. But now I tire of learning war in all its permutations. It is past my bedtime. Give me one good story without the resolution spilled in blood— without bodies strewn over the green fields.  Next, I have a poem by Michael Van Walleghen from his book Blue Tango, published in 1989 by the University of Illinois Press. Van Walleghen, born 1938, has published six books of poetry; his second, More Trouble With the Obvious, published in 1981, was the winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets. He has also received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, first prize in the Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, a Pushcart Prize, and several grants from the Illinois Arts Council. Before retirement he was a Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first director of the MFA in Creative Writing program created there in 2003. Fishing with Children Beyond the few clear stumps and furry sticks, the bottom drops off quickly, quickly... But it's easy enough to guess the broken glass and junk down there, the lost shoes the stolen bike. Easier to imagine trash like this in the gray municipal lagoon than fish, in fact. The four and five year olds however keep seeing Northern Pike - monster catfish. Even the worms excite them. What acrobats they are especially cut in half! Urged to bait their own hooks they stand around staring at the life in their hands like so many self-involved dumbstruck fortune-tellers. They they stab themselves or tangle in the bushes... the whole chaotic business looking fairly Dionysian - a manic kind of dance almost or magic-stone age ritual demanding blood. But later cast out upon the dark water our fateful bobbers drift as over the face of the void like stars. So we study them of course, astrologers now hoping for the smallest sign or signal of good fortune - a bluegill, or anything at all from the deep dead calm where stars and even children disappear. None of them for the moment disappearing though some look tremulous and on the brink...  So this is my Thanksgiving, pretty much like the ones before. and a happy Thanksgiving to you as well sunshine morning Thanksgiving day breakfast at a place down the road cause the place down the road is the only place open no WIFI, so writing to myself this morning, killing time before medicating the critters at home, a pill for Reba and potassium jell for the cat, then heading out, 300 miles south to mother-in-law’s, plastic Christmas tree in the front seat, Reba in the back, sleeping, planned arrival about 3 p.m. just in time for the turkey carving and the pecan pie and pumpkin pie and a cigar in the backyard, while everyone else watches the Cowboys lose, I hope, quietly, very quietly, in the company of Cowboy fanatics, in-laws large and small… will eat too much this afternoon, sleep not enough tonight because of eating too much this afternoon - up early Friday morning, drive home 300 miles north, Dora in the front, Reba in the back, home in time to cover the plants before the freeze tomorrow night, and what's there to say at this point of the poem but a happy Thanksgiving to you, as well… ~~~~ Christmas next and all I want is some peace and quiet, but I’ll get none of that today or tomorrow  I picked up a couple of books at the used book store over the weekend. One is actually a double book of poems by two poets, the books of each poet upside down in relation to the other. A lot of pocket book used to be published like this, back in the day of 35 cent pocket books. The good old days, as we oldsters might say. The book, titled restless serpents, was published in 1976 by Disenos Literarios of Menlo Park, California. The book is a first edition of 2,000 copies. The one poet's poems are mostly in Spanish, so I'm turning this week to the other poet, Bernice Zamora. Zamora is from south central Colorado at the foot of the East Spanish Peak, volcanic conduits she refers to in her poetry. Zamora attended primarily parochial schools in Denver and Pueblo, Colorado. She spoke Spanish with grandparents and older relatives, but the language at home and school was English. At the age of 28, with a husband and two children to care for, Zamora made the decision to enroll in college studying English at Southern Colorado State College. After earning a B.A. in three years, Zamora began her graduate studies at Stanford while simultaneously writing literary criticisms, poems and stories for an assortment of Chicano journals and teaching part-time at the University of California, Berkley. It wasn't until the publication of Restless Serpents, published jointly with José Antonio Burciaga, that her writing began to "arouse widespread interest. " Since then, Zamora has been the guest editor of the Chicano literary journal El Fuego de Aztlán, editor of the Chicano journal De Colores, and co-editor of an anthology of short stories, oral histories and poetry from the 1970s Chicano Flor y Canto literature festivals. In 1986, Zamora received her PhD from Stanford University and began her position in the English Department of Santa Clara University in 1990, where she remains today. I have several of short poems this week, beginning with the books title poem. Restless Serpents The duty of a cobra's master is fraught with fettered chores. Spite strikes the humbling stroke of neglect - coiling, recoiling, pricking the master's veins of lapse, draining a bounded resurrection to numb the drumming pain. Lyrics, lyrics alone soothe restless serpents. From all corners precision humming and rhythmic sounds fill the mindful master who laps about the droppings of disregard. Lyrics, lyrics alone soother restless serpents, strokes more devastating than devastation arrived. Denizens at the crossroads a guitarist winks to the sun through trees then asks a squatted beggar what colors ae morning reflections? aside each calls the other fool El Burrito Cafe Through the swinging doors That lead to your kitchen I watch you taste The menudo you Prepare for drunks. Somehow, Augustina Godinea, the title Chef does not suit Your position. Situation I accept your proposal And it doesn't matter That you are an undertaker. Do you mind that I am A midwife? State Street It is morning that cradles the waning Mexican and his black young bride; opium and age gauze his vision from twisted legs and fallen arches of her stumped feet. Tottering arm-in-arm the mortalovers move toward Mitzey's Bar. 41 Trinkets The Navajo Indian knows our god; he sells giant pine cones painted silver, turquois- studded rocks and bright synthetic feathers. The silent river near his shop carves such a bend the Navajo relocates after each rainfall. You insult me When you say I'm Schizophrenic. My divisions are Infinite. Pueblo Winter Sparrows in Pueblo perch on empty elm branches cocking their heads at each other or at each shadow under the warming winter sun. They watch each other watch each other and seem, at times, more passive than their shadows under the warming winter sun until a robin flights by to break their bobbing trance. Another robin joins the first. Both alight on a chokeberry bush scattering the flapping sparrows to the pole lines above. From the lines they watch the robins on the cherry bush. One robin pecks at a drying cherry while the silent other lays witness to the act;so,too,the sparrows under the warming sun  The weather changes to winter, and even though I like, it's still a little shock to the system at six a.m. deprived of both sleep and coffee. a norther blows in a norther blows in right before dawn, throwing ice knives at the sun, cold, cutting, aching for the warm I walk Reba, face burning from the wind a quick walk and a hurry-pee on the grass in front of the hotel haven’t had my coffee want to go home  Next I have a poem by Paul Guest from his book, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, published in 2008 by HarperCollins. Guest is a poet and memoirist. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a quadriplegic as the result of a bicycle accident when he was 12 years old. I'm not sure why that's relevant to his poetry, but it's included in his Google entry, so apparently someone though so. He graduated from University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and from Southern Illinois University with an M.F.A. Recently, he taught at the University of West Georgia and will teach creative writing part-time at Agnes Scott College in the fall of 2010. His poems appear in The Paris Review, Tin House,The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Slate and elsewhere. Elegiac Forecast May God bless and keep the last man struggling with galoshes, which means French shoes in old French and who knew the French had ever been fond of their feet sheathed in onomatopoeic footwear or that their tongues had in the dead past divagated and dithered whole ages and dialects and Europes away. The thought is enough to wave away the generic sorrow of rain and set fire to the umbrellas of passing strangers and be soaked past bone's last cell. A good thought, made of sadness easily found in the body, residue of one disaster or another - sex collapsed like an old shed and weariness pled and tomorrow night maybe the pulmonary half apologies caught in the mouth of sleep. Her gone in time or you gone, your eyes gone, your feet on and endless carpet of old razors. Something lost somewhere inside you, untraceable, sinking and even at her heart's request you'd never pluck a single shining coin from behind her ear, the warm shell of sound, in which you heard the ocean rolling away in bracing violence. In which more of you began to sink and be lost. In which and in which and this was enough to put your lips to the door and not know why. Not really. Not while rain hled its court in the world and even in the noon darkness the day gleamed wit water on its face.  Tired of hearing about the weather. Me too. There are more important things to think about. Twit About Town 30 degrees bright sun squirrels shivering in the trees and that’s the weather report for this morning… but I have more important things on my mind – the whole naming thing, my insistence on assigning naming rights to creators so for example I drive a RAV4, so-named by the Toyota automobile company, so-named, I’m guessing by the creator of the company, Charlie Toyota… this principle is the source of my right to name these little things I write “poems” and I don’t care what anyone else thinks or wants to call them just like Charlie Toyota doesn’t care that many others think he should have named his company Oldsmobile or Tinkerpot or Bristlebull or Upyourass or anything else I drive a Toyota cause Charlie says so I write poems cause I say so… and it raises the question of how a lion came to be called a lion and a snail a snail and a jackrabbit a jackrabbit and me a man and you a woman if you are and if you’re not I’m not saying anything about the depths of your masculinity just saying that for example if you’re a woman how did you come to be called that – assuming I’m correct in my insistence that the creator gets to name his creation then God the creator must of named me Man and you Woman, if you.. etcetera etcetera, but, no! wait, Genesis says God delegated naming rights to Adam, who he, presumably, named himself, and, face it, Adam doesn’t seem to have been the smartest dude in the garden even though, presumable, he was, disregarding Eve’s sometimes bossy tendencies, the only dude in the garden… he’s basically dumb as the thing he sits on and later called “rock” which is probably a good thing, since if Adam had any brains he might also have had a sense of humor, a frequent affliction of those with brains, and the whole naming thing could have turned into a big joke like the Abbott and Costello who’s on first bit and who knows, I might now be known as the Twit of the Hour, the Twit about Town, or, in some cases, da Twit and who knows, my gosh, what you would be today it Adam had had a sense of humor  Now, a poem by Thomas Crofts,from his book, Omnibus Horribilis - Poems 1987-2007. The book was published in 2007, by, possibly, the Poet since no publisher is credit. I also can't find anything reliable about the poet. Google says there are 10 Thomas Crofts in their data base, three look possible as the poet, but nothing I could find is definite. I think he might be the editor of the three, so it might be that some “Here and Now” readers know him or, at least, of him. The Workplace a Cruel Taskmaster Though I agree that the lowest form of humanity is the disgruntled worker, that spiteful worm, I am doing nothing at the office today. At my desk, I am reading the poems of Gunter Grass - and fine poems they are. I am eating organic peanut butter; it is chunky, oily and stale-tasting, but I smear it on a cracker and devour it expressively. No one dares speak to me, my chewing is so repulsive. The clock's hands, terrified for my sake, are waving at me; my timecard trembles in its slot. They should relax. Am I not merely a smudge? An already- fading impression on this gummy-surfaced editorial desk? I refuse to watch my back! This worthless poem? I'll drag it out to an epic length at the slightest nudge of inspiration - however dubious.  There are several plagues associated with this time of the year. This is about one of them, possibly the worst of them. I don't care what Perry Como sways, I don't want no damn figgy pudding the good news is that my breakfast hangout didn’t start with the Christmas carols until the day after Thanksgiving the bad news is that my breakfast hangout started with the Christmas Carols the day after Thanksgiving which means I’ll be having Christmas carols with my biscuit and gravy from now to nearly month from now – it’s enough to curdle my gravy… considering there are only five Christmas carols that aren’t a hostile act against ears, true sentiment and benevolent spirits, how was it decided we ought to listen to this stuff beginning the day after Halloween – and who decided it – someone relocated, I’m just guessing, by some federal protection agency, hidden in a little cabin behind the only two trees on the Kansas plains – guarded on every side by very large, armed- to-the-teeth federal agents, ever alert against the likelihood of a mass crazed attack by some pour souls like me, pounding on the door tearing at the shutters with our bare hands, zombified by the fourteenth consecutive in a row rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by previously-on-tv but otherwise forgotten grossly toupeed over-the-hill singers… ~~~ but wait, all thee who cringe with cotton-stuffed ears for the entire month of December, there is hope in the form of a young female singer I heard on an interview program on the radio yesterday, singing two Christmas songs, making them, with her voice and her interpretation, truly beautiful music – I was entranced… now if I only knew her name I could put figgy pudding behind me and never think of it, whatever it is, forever again  For the last of my library poems this week, I have these few by Bobby Byrd, from his book White Panties, Dead Friends, published in 2006 by Cinco Puntos Press. The poems are from a section in the book titled The Hospice Poems, written in memory of the poet's friend, Steve Sprague. Byrd, a poet, essayist and publisher, grew up in Memphis, the moved in 1963 to Tuscon where he attended the university. Since then he has lived in the Southwest, including El Paso on the Texas/Mexican border, where he and his family moved in 1978. Steve, It's nice to watch all these women dancing around you, taking care of you like lovers at a Dionysian feast. You are the King, the summer is hot. I don't know if you understand what is happening at you house. We are all there to wait for your death. Steve, I'm in El Paso and I can't sleep. Since December sleep is all you do. You are not in paradise. You are not inside Plato's cave. At least you are at home again, No more machines blinking and beeping - Beelzebub's electric angels sweeping away our stories and myths like so much garbage. I want to cry but I can't cry. I want to find the Buddha on the road and kill him. Likewise Jesus Christ. That can be my gift to you in your dying, a pile of dead and rotting gods littering the Albuquerque morning like so much white noise. Outside my window the blue dawn is training the black sky. Soon the moon will disappear into the daylight. I will go to work and forget all about you for a while. I pray that Jane has slept a good night's sleep. Steve, Outside your window is sunshine, humming birds, a family of roadrunners going back and forth, house sparrows and finche3s.I also spotted some kind of yellow bellied warbler in the tree. Tomorrow the caregivers quit feeding you. Jane has said it's time to say goodbye. Steve Your body is a bag of bones. Your flesh is not warmed by desire. These damn biofeedback devices record the last few days of your life, an oxygen tube leads to the hole some nameless doctor sliced into you trachea, a feeding hose sticks out of your belly so the caregivers can pour water and liquid food directly into your intestines. The food never has to pass GO. You are GO,Steve, you are IT. I pray everyday that you are somewhere inside riding the raft of your body into the sea of formlessness and some complete moment of enlightenment. Are you there, Steve? Steve, are you there? Seve, I bought a bottle of delicious red wine, but it's been untouched. Your dying is our drunkenness. Steve, The bearded guy who replenished your supply of oxygen had the radio in his big truck tuned to the Rush Limbaugh Show. That fat asshole was bitching about white guy romantic liberals like me and you.But other than that the bearded guy seemed okay - a wife and three kids at home, he did his job professionally, and he wore and old style Pittsburg Pirates baseball cap. Steve, Your mother stands by your bed. Ninety-three years old, she looks at you her youngest son and weeps. She is an ancient white crane standing deep in the cold river that rushes by toward the sea. The white crane that your mother has become no longer fishes. She is not hungry for food. Nor is she thirsty. Her true desire is to flap her wings one last time - she wants your and her to soar away to another shore.  Sundays can be slow and tedious days for those without engaging hobbies. naked rolling, parts-rubbing a slow Sunday afternoon and we were trying to decide what to do and I suggested we get naked and roll around on the grass in the backyard, rubbing body parts together fiercely but there’s a bit of a chill in the air, probably to much chill to be rolling around outside naked no matter how fiercely we rubbed together so I was thinking well we could go down to the art museum and take a look at the impressionist exhibition, settle down naked in front of the Monet and give him an impression - rolling around on the carpet rubbing body parts together impressionistically - that might make the old guy forget all about water lilies... but they have these guards down there, that follow us around from room to room and I don’t know why except maybe they can read minds and don’t abide with people rubbing naked parts together in front of the Monet - maybe if we moved over in front of the Duchamp, he did a lot of his own naked parts-rubbing, as I understand it, and what’s that nude going to do after descending the staircase but some parts-rubbing, cause why else go downstairs naked as a jaybird if there weren’t some parts- rubbing intentions… but the guards are so guardedly attentive the museum is out and I was thinking we might take a drive in the hill country - the way the leaves are changing in our backyard, there must be piles of red and orange and yellow and gold leaves laying on the ground under some of those big hill country oak trees, ripe for some good old rustic naked parts- rubbing rolling around, but it is even colder in the hills than it is here so there’s the chill factor to consider, plus all those rattlesnakes who love to hid in leaf piles on these chilly days, or maybe up in the trees - they do like to climb oak trees to sleep through the winter - and I think they might not welcome people waking them up, rolling around naked in the leaves, rubbing parts together with sylvan abandon, despite the fact it was a snake in a tree that started all this naked rolling about and parts-rubbing in the first place… or, we might just do what we always do on lazy Sunday afternoons, could just take a Sunday afternoon nap you in the easy chair and me on the couch just like we always do  The End. All the usual stuff. The creators of the work own the work, including mine. But mine is free to borrow for publication elsewhere if proper credit is included. I am allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, this issue following a one week break in posting, only the second time in five years of such a break. |
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