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A Random Selection of Moments Lost
Thursday, September 22, 2011 VI.9.4. Excellent stuff this week, starting right from the top with my friend and "Blueline House of 30" housemate, Lana Wiltshire Campbell, and a whole bunch of her cinquains. Random photos, as usual, and all these great poems: 22 Cinquains Me arguments in the night R.S.Thomas The Hearth Ruins The Island Me one day it’s like this From Borderlines - Texas Poetry Review Erika Meitner Treatise on Nostalgia Yvonne C. Murphy Near Uvalde, Texas Me the blond started it all Larissa Szporluk Occupant of the House Under the Bridge Me now, at 2,000 plus Jonathan Holden Dancing School El Paso Me re-purposing Frank Pool At Barton Springs Home and the Trail Me creating perfection From One Hundred Poems from the Japanese Six poems Me a slim reed Sharan Strange The Crazy Girl Jimmy’s First Cigarette Me the weight of a butterfly, multiplied intelligent design how to lose a lover in 15 words or less summer light the girl with the small mouth and the long brown hair fat men hugging shadows if a tree fell in the forest Robinson Jeffers To the Stone-Cutters Shine, Perishing Republic Me the climb From Good Poems for Hard Times Louis Jenkins The State of the Economy Naomi Lazard In Answer to Your Query Anonymous Carnation Milk John Donne Sonnet XII: Why are we by all creatures waited on? Me so what am I to do now? Rita Dove Singsong Best Western Motor Lodge, AAA Approved Rosa Me it’s all about me Richard Wilbur Two Voices in a Meadow Advice to a Prophet Me old man on an autopsy table  I start this week with a series of short poems by Lana Wiltshire Campbell. Lana lives in Northern California and believes her Celtic and Native American heritages have led her toward poetry and storytelling. She enjoys experimenting with all kinds of poetry and frequently focuses on one poetry form for several days or even weeks, trying delve deeper into the form. She also loves to sit down to write mornings and just see what comes. Lana is also a housemate of mine at Blueline's House of 30. For nearly a month now, she has been writing a daily cinquain. As with country vanilla ice cream, if I like something I want a lot of it, which is why I'm using most of those daily cinquains right up front here. I really like these. This form is not as easy to do as it might look, and Lana is very good at it. after the storm rain-rinsed sky breathes sunshine softly through puffy white clouds… we awake in light this new-washed morning familiar looking at you outside gardening, I somehow suddenly seem to be staring at me departure she walks deep in shadows face turned from the daylight counting all the times she has run away aftermath summer escapes softly, like the sigh after hot sex, with that same urge to cuddle sleepy after so long I dance with her spirit… someone I used to be who may be returning to me again. at first light coffee roasted manna doctored with Muscle Milk… rich, filling sunrise substitute breakfast restorative a call from two old friends rings in my head, brings hope… these months will seem like a bad dream back home nightfall cobalt creeps toward us fingers outstretched, grasping green sea, golden sand, concealing sunset El Duende brilliant flashing fire pursued by deep darkness yearning for an ascent to fresh madness each morning writing the same poem yet again, I wonder whether someday I’ll somehow get it right abused fragile and soft-spoken until you search her eyes… where furious hatred glitters like glass last night I felt you beside me… I know it was a dream but this morning I can still feel your touch this life we’re here searching seeking blindly reaching for love, peering through thickening dark glass briefly immigration in line clutching papers filled-in forms with one hand his brand new wife with the other he prays scorching summer drones toward fall… wasps abandon mud nests and one final golden lemon molders at the job fair beaten cuffed and chided by the long snaking line, breathing through the pain in my leg, I break the memory of salt air inhale the bitter sharp green taste – this massive sea, alive with death, exhales such sweet perfume astir humming under sadness even as I wander distracted, nerves dancing with fear… new songs first step trusting whatever comes, you allow your fingers to remember first – to speak your truth perspective without philosophy or design, no bright flame illuminates the dark places within And here's a three-cinquain poem. in the end you stop hearing, talking, become angry, remote, and then you come to me one night… and start slowly my breath catches, becomes a soft flutter, until, with a shuddering moan, I rise and say, you have been gone so long, even when here, and now you want to start again… no thanks This, the last and, I think, my favorite. through the ages stories told to the air, images drawn on stone walls, bones strewn through halls, all become poems  Early peace interrupted by yesterday's business. arguments in the night on my patio at 4 a.m. early morning sleep under nature’s umbrella of whispering trees and breeze-tinkled chimes... in one of the townhouses down the hill and across the creek a loud argument begins - domestic , loud, Indian, or a related language, I judge by the lilt and rhythm of their voices she is outside, in the little courtyard between their back door and the fence, her voice clear in the thin night air, angry, demanding something, in the way of wives that men never understand until crockery hits the wall or the door is slammed closed one last time his voice coming from inside, muffled, sleepy-sounding, a plaintive plea, I imagine, to come back in and go back to bed and apparently she does for after a moment nothing else is heard reclining again under the soft cover of very early morning, slipping back to sleep to the whispers of trees and tinkling chimes, wondering, as I drift off, as one can’t help but wonder at loud arguments in the night  Next, I have three short poems by R.S. Thomas, from the book Poems by R.S.Thomas, published in 1985 by The University of Arkansas Press. Thomas, born in 1913, died in 2000. He was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman, noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. Wonderful poet, but not what I'd call a laugh-a-minute type of guy. The Hearth In front of the fire With you, the folk song Of the wind in the chimney and the sparks' Embroidery of the soot - eternity Is here in this small room, In intervals that our love Widens; and outside Us is time and the victims Of time, travelers To az new Bethlehem, statesmen And scientist with their hands full Of the gifts that destroy. Ruins And this was a civilization That came to nothing - he spurned with his toe The slave-colored dust. We breathed it in Thankfully,oxygen to our culture. Somebody found a curved bone In the ruins. A king's probably, He said, Impertinent courtiers we eyed it, the dropped kerchief of time. The Island And God said, I will build a church here And cause this people to worship me, And afflict them with poverty and sickness In return for centuries of hard work And patience. And its walls shall be hard as Their hearts, and its windows let in the light Grudgingly, as their minds do, the the priest's words be drowned By the wind's caterwauling. All this I willdo, Said God, and watch the bitterness in their eyes Grow, and their lips suppurate with Their prayers. And their women shall bring forth On my altars, and I will choose the best Of them to be thrown back into the sea. And that was only on one island.  I don't look back often on my poems from 2004 to 2006 because most of them, if they weren't included in my 2005 book, Seven Beats a Second, are in not very well organized paper files and not easily assessable. This one if from 2005. one day it's like this it seems you never recognize a turn in the road until you're past it one day it's like this and the next it's like that and for a while it seems like nothing's changed but then you begin to notice things sighs that come like a quick wind among the trees here then gone, unpredicted by the quiet still before and after or a drifting of attention when you talk, a cheek poised for a kiss good-bye instead of lips then the moment she says I want to talk and you say about what and she says about us and you say what about us and she says never mind and you know the moment's past the turn is made one day it was like this but now it's like that and not like this at all  Here two poets from the Fall 2004 issue of Borderlands - Texas Poetry Review. The first poet is Erika Meitner, at the time of publication, a visiting professor of creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Treatise on Nostalgia Whatever turns my head on and revs it up tonight won't rest; old lovers as fodder for fantasies on insomniac nights, a shard of something sharp and dirty lodged in my foot,deeper than skin. Tonight it's drinking cold gin in bed, smoking with Nils while it rains, going out together later to watch the worms scrawl question marks of their bodies all over the sidewalk. Nostalgia is just selective memory: a teenage girl's night on the boardwalk, stolen beach party kiss in the dark without the bad breath, without the contagious cold sore, without someone else's illegible phone number penned on his chest in eye-liner above the five hairs surrounding his left nipple. What's Happening to Me? - the title of the book my mother handed over without a word to explain adolescent changes; a step-by-step guide to hormones, body hair, anatomical sketches of boys becoming men, was liberating, was too late, confirmed what I already knew: we all grew slowly ugly, the way Stefan, the ancient bartender at the Holiday Lounge on St. Mark's Place always got drunker as the night progressed, claimed to have known Auden. By nine, he was singing in Russian, lecturing us on love's uselessness. Just twenty-one, what did we know then of people that were broken? The worst story we heard was from out college physics professor, whose wartime job was testing blast force on windows - the impact portion of the Manhattan Project, though at the time he didn't know it. Imagine him surrounded by empty panes, diamonds of shattered glass, diligently making precise measurements, oblivious to their uses. Back in real life (before I tripped into Poetryland), I had several offices in small cities west of San Antonio, including Uvalde, famous to some as the birth and final resting place of Vice-President John Nance Garner (who said the office was not worth a "pitcher of warm piss" and who might have been president had FDR not dumped him for Harry Truman in his final,uncompleted term). It's a nice little city, county seat of a county whose name I cannot remember now, an old town, with beautiful old stone buildings downtown (flying dragon weathervane atop one, I remember) and beautiful Christmas lighting in season. When visiting offices in the western portion of my region, I usually planned the visits so as to spend the nights in Uvalde. All this has next to nothing to do with the next poem, but I thought I'd mention it. That next poem is by Yvonne C.Murphy, who held a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University and received a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Houston. Near Uvalde, Texas Cattle stand at the side of the road and stare at me, clumps of cacti and short tough trees. Oil derricks bend over as I pass (the idea of it) orange dust and a song about loneliness. Nothing to be inspired by the road, and this promise: keep going. At the rest stop two kids set up shop in a cadillac - steam from a steel bucket in the front seat, the human smell of tomatoes. Quieres tamales? they ask, tuned-in to my hunger. I tell them no,an ice-cream truck passes - the air is both flat and prickly.  Not such a quiet breakfast this morning. the blonde started it all the blonde started it, telling a story, loud, not a funny story but very loud like loud a substitute for wit and, of course, since she’s loud, the two businessmen sitting in the next booth have to loud-up to hear each other, third quarter sales, the one fellow saying he deserves a raise, the other fellow, the boss, I’m thinking, pointing to sales, explaining the wonders of profit-based bonuses should there ever been a profit, not so far evident in the subordinate striver’s quarterly sales and that’s pretty damn boring at seven in the morning unless you happen to be the guy trying to get a raise, but, for the rest of us, in the same boring galaxy as the three women across the room, the fat woman, the tall woman, and the oriental woman, talking about the baby shower for another woman who is not there, a perfect mess at the shower, they say, gossip, gossip, gossip, and who’s supposed to be the father, does anybody know, does she even know - pretty nasty stuff, stuff best whispered in little conspiratorial huddles, not spoken out so loudly, necessary though loudly might be to be heard over the businessmen’s talking about third quarter sales and profits and bonuses, they also speaking very loudly in order to be heard over the guffawing-blond witless-story teller and now I can hear the cook in the kitchen yelling at the waitress and the volume rises all around, everyone trying to be heard over everyone else trying to be heard and it’s like a damn hen house at sunset, all the fat feathery-bottomed brooder hens settling in, cackle cackle cackle, bragging about their latest ovoid accomplishment, look at my egg, no, look at mine, no look at…. and the damn blonde started it all  My next two poems are by Larissa Szporluk and were taken from her book Dark Sky Question, published in 1998 by Beacon Press. At the time of publication Szporluk taught at Bowling Green State Universty. Occupant of the House Someday the phoebe bird will sing. The sword grass will rise like corn. I will be free and not know from what. Like a pure wild race captured by science, too wronged to go back, too strange to be damaged, my fierceness has disappeared. If it doesn't end soon, the pail will dilute the sin turn to sheen in the garden, your routing genial rain. And I would get up from my special chair and swim through the soundproof ceiling, its material soft and blue, a threshold to mobile worlds. I wouldn't know about my body. If it were winter, winter would tingle, summer would burn, like the lamp in my ear bristles like fire when you imagine the drum - is it hot? I don't know. A shell malnourished by darkness, a great fish charmed into injury, I swallow the wires, the hours, the shock. You knew what the sky would mean to me. Under the Bridge You never know when somebody will stick a little knife in you heart and walk a way - and the handle that smells of his hand vibrates by your breast as he ducks through the trees and minutes later blows like a shirt pin across the frozen lake. And you're all wet, and he's in love with what he's done. And because of the cut, the distance of your life pours out, and because of the clouds like fat that surround you, you don't hear for a long time the tom-tom beating in the sky,letting shadows too heavy to be birds, and yelling with a message to forgive him like the others did their father under the bridge there where ropes still linger in remembrance of their necks, where a flute in its case lies cold - forgive him. Say his name. It was only power that he had to have, and look what that one thrust gave him.  I also wrote this next poem in 2005, at the time our casualties from Iraq exceeded the 2000 mark. Some might, and some probably did, find this poem disrespectful to our dead. My intent was opposite, our soldiers were dying in what seemed a public vacuum (remember, this was the time when, for political reasons, no photographs of returning soldier's coffins was allowed.) Such refusal by the draft dodgers in the Bush administration to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice being made by our soldiers seemed, and still seems, despicable to me. And so,this poem. now, at 2,000 plus let's just call them bunnies laid our alongside the road smashed mashed squished squashed pulverized nobody's fault they're a red smear on black asphalt little white bones shinning in the sun little fuzzy tail fur waving in the wind they just got in the way just got in the way of history's steamroller - crashing on down the road bouncing little bunnies right and left... history's built on piles of dead bunnies - Genghis had them, Napoleon, he had them, Pol Pot had bunches of them and so did Adolph, by the beejillions... and now we have our bunnies those brown little sad eyes jellied in the march for the good and the right and the geopolitical ambitions forward thinking men but let's just call them dead bunnies OK? not that other thing  The next two poems are by Jonathan Holden, from the anthology The Devin's Award Poetry Anthology published by the University of Missouri Press in 1998. At the time of publication, Holden was University Distinguished Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Kansas State University. Dancing School Marcia Thompane was light and compact, her silk sides slick a s fish scales. Doing the box step with me, she stared into space, waiting for somebody else. Vernell Peterson was tense, rickety. I had to crane up to speak to her face. My fingers hung to the rungs of her spine. Trying to lead Vernell in the swing step was like leading a dogwood tree. Poor Liddy Morrison was always the last to get picked. She was dense, moist. An inner tube was tied to her waist. Her gauze dresses rasped like dry grass. As I neared her,she'd stare with a dog's expectant look. I'd try to be nice, to smile as though I were glad it was her I was stuck with; but Liddy outdid me: she'd pretend to be grateful. Holden's next piece is an excellent rendering of El Paso/Juarez, one city divided by a muddy river that serves an international border. Coming upon it from the desert is like all the dusty western towns you've ever seen in a cowboy movie, multiplied by hundreds of thousands. El Paso The ragged graph of spiring crags is chopped, and there you are littered in the valley below a quarry, your offices rubbing elbows, Juarez, like refuse, beyond. It's too bright. The land is gripping you in the gritty palm of its hand, the sun on its fingers. The road from the north was a guitar string, a streak in a dust-parched ocean of swimming mountains. It brought us to nothing. And the river said to flow here is no consolation. The only river is up in a sky the color of gin. The only ocean is dust, the wash of its waves a lisp of breeze through the heads of the cottonwood trees and the tremor of jets from Briggs. Except for the night, when your halcyon baubles come on, when your valley arrays itself like the coals of a hearth and your hotel lights are as lonely as blue stratosphere, you have one horizon. it is the slice, the saw-toothed snarl and scorch of the F-104'a  A Saturday morning poem... re-purposing esperanzas are a bank of yellow flame against the back fence, dancing in the breezy morning light and unlike the rose and other beauties, hardy in our harsh environment and easy to tend, their beauty easily won, requiring only casual glances and appreciation… my backyard is a garden of primitive, homemade art, to my eyes, at least, to others it might seem more like an elephant’s graveyard for, instead of behemoth bones, re-purposed junk… but I persist, finding art where I find it, making art of what I’ve found as I can make it, all of it lit in summer by crayon-yellow esperanzas that line the fence and gather in bunches wherever my art and flat places co-abide… my poetry, it occurs to me, so much like my back yard - primitive and homely made, scatterings of re-purposed words and re-purposed thoughts, all laid-out in the wild of unkempt seasons, lacking only the brilliance of my backyard esperanzas to light the recurring day  Here are two poems by Frank Pool. The poems are from his book Depth of Field by Plain View Press of Austin in 2001. Pool, born in Wyoming, grew up in Longview, Texas. He graduated from Stephen F. Austin University in 1975, then went on to earn a master's degree in philosophy in 1982. He currently teaches International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement English in Austin. At Barton Springs He sits in the sunlight, on a stone worn by floods And the bathing towels of generations. Flowed by, The boisterous children, flirting girls, boys' cigarettes Enigmatic and dangerous, harmonizing with Tattoos. But he only sits, object of occasional light Mockery from the youths, with his pectorals sagging From glory, his entire body some kind of oxymoron, Trim yet vaguely flaccid. He does not read novels, Not popular psychologies, nor even poetry, but stays On his eroded stone, not yet staring, not even glancing With attention or interest, but gazing outward, counter- Point of what inward inspection? The tattooed boys Smirk, but their elders know, have some idea of the cost To the aged to keep a body thus, the effort and tending He shows off so silently, signing labors of seven decades And more, sited so unavoidably in the juvenile flood, Impassive, exciting casual scorn, yet sometimes, He might hope, wry silent salutes of admiration for a body Gone from hardness, bucking the flood with mere endurance. Home and the Trail Gray and overcast, drizzle and leaves shining in brownness floating in the pool, or sunken like last summer when it's not summer and then I go into the night the blue light, the water so cold, but I must clean. Inside, old backpack loaded, clothes, socks, oatmeal and Spam and Aldous Huxley, perennially setting out for Big Bend. Leaves, crisp or soggy, or dog-eared, leavings to attend, poem to a friend never met,never mind, the leaves take their course, fall and forty all will pass; trail beckons - much still to be done before and even after the fall.  Now another piece from 2005, this one just a short little observation on the aesthetics of beauty. creating perfection a small mole at the base of her spine calls to me as she walks away this tiny imperfection on taut, tanned skin creating perfection like a god who laughs at the absurdity of his creations  Here is a selection of short poems from One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, selected and translated by Kenneth Rexroth and first published in a paperback by New Directions in 1964. It is a bilingual book, Japanese and English. Each poem is signed with the poets name in Japanese characters. The first poem is by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, about whom is little known, except that he flourished during the reign of the Emperor Mommu (6967-707) and may have been a personal attendant to the Emperor. I sit at home In our room By our bed Gazing at your pillow. The Monk Noin, whose secular name was Tachibana no Nagayasu lived in the eleventh century. As I approach The mountain village Through the spring twilight I hear the sunset bell Rising through drifting petals. Harumichi no Tsuraki was a provincial governor who lived early in the tenth century. The wind has stopped The current of the mountain stream With only a window Of red maple leaves. The next poem is by Otomo no Yakamochi who lived from 718 to 785. Born of a highly ranked and powerful family, he served as a Senior Councillor of State after a career as a General, courtier and Provincial Governor. His family was broken up after his death because of a crime committed by a family member. Mist floats on the Spring meadow. My heart is lonely. A nightingale sings in the dusk. The Emperor Yozei, reigned from 877 to 884. All persons of high status and position were expected to, among other arts, write poetry. Trying to imagine a poem by Rick Perry... Falling from the ridge Of high Tsukuba, The Minano River At last gathers itself, Like my love, into A deep still pool. The Prime Minister Kintsune held office in the early part of the 13th century. Later he became a monk and founded a temple. The flowers whirl away In the wind like snow. The thing that falls away Is myself.  Seems I can't write a dark poem without giving in to my usual more sunny nature before poem's end. a slim reed back in the real world of yesterdays, my greatest strength as a leader of people and process was an ability to see consequences hidden from others, to see the chain of re-actions certain to follow every action my greatest worry now, from here on the sidelines, is that I see no good consequence coming to us, all of us, the world, the country, myself, heading into choppy and dangerous waters… for myself, a hot fire, smoke, and ash to be scattered across the hills, a natural consequence of a natural and ordinary life… for all the rest, a world of increasing peril, a world of increasing insanity, a world where the just will not prevail; where the unjust will carry the day, a world where misery and chaos will lead to it’s own natural consequence of fire and smoke and scattered pain ascending the consequences I see today make me fear for the life and future of my son and for all the other sons and daughters of all the world the old order crumbles and I am old myself and fear the new ~~~ but then , I remind myself I grew up in a world where the doomsday clock hung always a minute from midnight, where the ultimate consequence of final atomic devastation overshadowed all and it mostly worked out and I am still here and you are still here and the trees and hills and oceans and flowers and plains are still here so perhaps there is a instinctual human capacity to forever slip and stumble but never to fall a slim reed, but I hold tight to it anyway  My next poet is Sharan Strange, with two poems from her book, Ash, winner of the 2000 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, published by Beacon Press. The Crazy Girl She was given to fits. So was her brother. There was a catagory for him. Retarded, they said. Something nearer to sin named her. Oh, the family claimed its share of deviance - meanness, generation after generation of drunks, rootworkders, fools, feuds carried on with the extravagant viciousness of kin. But hers was an unpredictable violence - more disturbing because she wasn't a man, besides being a child. So they settled on puberty - the mysterious workings of female hormones - until she outgrew it and the moniker stuck. It accounted for the rage worn on her face, tight as a fist, fear restlessness in eyes like July 4th's slaughtered pig. Rebellious, wooly hair only partly tamed by braids, she often inflicted pain during play. Boys her favorite victims, she tore clothes, skin, marked virgin expanses of face, neck, arms with scars like filigreed monograms. Her notoriety was assured when, at 16, she disappeared, leaving rumor to satisfy the family's need to understand, given context to her uncle's slow slide into madness, her sullen body bruised by constant scratching, as if she could somehow remove his touch. Jimmy's First Cigarette The tobacco sweetness filled your head with a gentle wooziness, a lightness that rocked you off-center, numbing you to the possibility of pain or cruelty in the world. From your grandmama's porch you surveyed a lush green countryside murmuring with the traffic of laughing birds, wild animals and ghosts. You felt alive, aglow with sensation as, at her urging, you inhaled the slim token of freedom. Pleasure short-lived, gave way to confusion, betrayal, as a torrent of blows from your daddy's belt broke your childish reverie - he and Grandmama conducting your abrupt trip back to reality.  Here are several more short pieces from 2005. the weight of a butterfly, multiplied all gossamer wings and sweet intentions, a single butterfly lands on a limb in the light-dappled green of a Mexican rainforest and another lands and another and another and another until the limb breaks and falls to the forest floor in a melee of sunshine and monarch color such is the weight of a butterfly, multiplied, like the small passing lies of lovers intelligent design death designs the future eliminating the failed and all of failure's brood death judges us now, deciding if there is a place for us in its evolving patterns how to lose a lover in 15 words or less say little listen less assume surety in a universe of constant flux summer light sun streams all around through floor to ceiling windows a black man in a chalk white hat passes shadow and searing flash glide through the room of bright the girl with the small mouth and long brown hair threw back her hair with a flip of her head and smiled little mouth a bow drawn tight like a know on qa pink and white tie or a kitten that curls like a ball when you tickle her belly fat men hugging two fat men hug, friends parting, reaching, with great delicacy over their expansive bellies to reaffirm histories not forgotten, futures not foresaken shadows a woman in red stands quiet and still before a red wall becomes like a shadow on the wall while, I standing as it passes, become a shadow on life's short parade if a tree fell in the forest a worse thing than having no thought is to have a thought that falls soundlessly in a void of indifference a fallen pebble sinking in a pond of discourse without a ripple  Next, I have poems by Robinson Jeffers. Though a tiny book, Selected Poems, filled with Jeffers long, dense poems, which I love, but against which my transcriptionist fingers rebel. So, without meaning to disrespect a great poet of the twentieth century, here are two of his short, not so dense, poems. The book was published by Random House in 1965. To the Stone-Cutters Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind and blacken to the heart; Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found The honey of peace in old poems. Shine, Perishing Republic While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother. You making haste baste on decay; not blameworthy; life life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor; meteors are not needed less than mountains; shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their dis- tance from the thickening center;corruption Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught - they say - God, when he walked on earth.  Another poet's poem this morning led to this, a memory from nearly fifty years ago. the climb the climb over the crest was done under a curtain of heavy snow, flakes falling white in the near-dusk shadow of mountain twilight once over the ridge it was a short hike to the circular clearing among the pines the guide had set for our last night’s camp we pitched our tents under falling snow and climbed into our bed rolls, ready for sleep after a long, steep climb on the second day of our three-day trek, quickly slipping off on our pine needle cushions, content to sleep now, eat in the morning… all awake with the first sun of a brilliant day, air crisp and dry, sky clear, coffee with water drawn from boiled snow, freeze-dried scrambled eggs, baby-blue sky broken by the contrail of a jet passing overhead, high overhead, but within reach, it seemed, from our high perch we all sat back against our bed roll, drank more coffee, smoked, none wanting to get back on the trail, all knowing it was the last day, no one wanting it to end… but, even in the high mountain air, clocks and calendars prevail as we gather our packs and begin the downward hike, spreading out on the trail the closer to the end we get, each of us widening the space between us , finding, each of us, a mountain morning bubble to gather within us, to take with us, to remind us forever of the world beyond the everyday world we live in, the world where clarity is in the air and in the blue mountain sky, and in the effort and reward of completing a difficult climb, the world where life is a joy and not a daily suffocation of spirit and heart and our better human nature Just because I don't usually illustrate my poems, doesn't mean I can't if I want to. This a moment from the morning after the last night's camp.  December,1964  Next, I have poems from Garrison Keillor's anthology, Good Poems for Hard Times, published by Penguin Books in 2005. The first poem is by Louis Jenkins, born in Oklahoma, living, at the time of publication, in Minnesota. The State of the Economy There might be some change on top of the dresser at the back, and we should check the washer and dryer. Check under the floor mats of the car. The couch Cushions, I have some books and CDs I could sell, and there are a couple of big bags of aluminum cans in the basement, only trouble is there isn't enough gas in the car to get around the block. I'm expecting a check sometime next week, which, if we are careful, will get us through to payday. In the meantime, with your one-dollar rebate check and a few coins we have enough to walk to the store and buy a quart of milk and a newspaper. On second though, forget the newspaper. Here's a poem for our times by Naomi Lazard, a playwright and cofounder of the Hamptons International Film Festival. In Answer to Your Query we are sorry to inform you the item you ordered is no longer being produced. It has not gone out of style nor have people lost interest in it. In fact,it has become one of our most desired products. Its popularity is still growing. Orders for it come in at an ever increasing rate. However, a top-level decision has caused this product to be discontinued forever. Instead of the item you ordered we are sending you something else. It is not the same thing, nor is it a reasonable facsimile. It is what we have in stock, the very best we can offer. If you are not happy with this substitution let us know as soon as possible. As you can imagine we already have quite an accumulation of letters such as the one you may or may hot write. To be totally fair we respond to these complaints as they come in. Yours will be filed accordingly, answered in its turn. Next is an anonymous poem, probably by a dairy farmer would be my guess. Carnation Milk Carnation Milk is the best in the land, Here I sit with a can in my hand - No tits to pull, no hay to pitch, You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch. And finally, a poem from the classics by John Donne. Sonnet XII: Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simple, and further from corruption? Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection? Why dost thou bull, and boar so sillily Dissemble weakness, and by'one man's stroke die, Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon? Weaker I am, woe is me, and worse than you. You have not sinned,nor need be timorous. But wonder at a greater wonder, for to us Created nature doth these things subdue, But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature tied, For us, his creatures and his foes, had died.  The short horrible poem is consigned to the darkest reach of too-easily attained disaster. The longer, less horrible poem (trust me) follows, both the seen and the unseen a warning to those who consider a poem-a-day that there will be days like this,days when necessity overcomes invention. so what am I to do now? I have written a horrible poem today - a fine example of what happens when I try to follow someone else’s form, leaving my helter-skelter hither-and-yon piling on of words by the road- side and I want desperately to write something better before the time’s-up bell rings and the horrible poem becomes my poem of the day and I don’t care what kind of poem it is just something with a little pulse of life to it evidence of blood behind the sterility of words gone astray as they dump here and there and here and now on the page (right here, I’m talking about) I suppose I could write about the rain last night that didn’t rain like it was supposed to or the car this morning that started just like it’s supposed to or the biscuits and gravy breakfast that was tasty and fulfilling just like it’s supposed to be or the sun that came up, in the west again just like it’s supposed to or the brimstonehail&fierychariots that didn’t come roaring from the heavens with the electric bill just like it’s not supposed to or the giant cockadodo that jumped from the tree to eat the giant worm that emerged wiggling from the rain deprived ground (that’s kind of unusual, but it was over so fast I don’t think I can write a poem about it like I’m supposed to) and I don’t know, but this poem is just as horrible as the horrible poem I don’t want to have anything to do with but at least it’s a little bit longer and that’s something so I guess this is my poem of the day and not the shorter horrible one, taking a chance here that when it comes to horrible more horrible is better than less horrible but wait that’s counter-intuitive if I ever heard counter-intuivitiousness I mean this is not WalMart where volume is the purported secret to it’s rise as the retailkingoftheworld, big boxosity at it most gargantuanually over- powering, proving more crap is better than less crap so holy crap what am I to do now ----- maybe just admit it, a fog of anti-poetry bletch covers the land and I am lost in its swirling smurgalence and can only await my return to clear poetic light anon or maybe the anon after anon  I have three poems now by Rita Dove, from her book On the Bus with Rosa Parks, published by W.W. Norton in 1999. Singsong When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy waiting for my owner to pick me up. When I was young, I ran the day to its knees. there were trees to swing on, crickets to capture. I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel, tongued in honey and coddled in milk, sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt. And the world was already old. And I was older than I am today. Best Western Motor Lodge, AAA Approved Where can I find Moon Avenue, just off Princess Lane? I wandered the length of the Boulevard of the Spirits, squandered a wad on Copper Queen Drive; stood for a while at the public drinking fountain, where a dog curled into his own hair and a boy knelt, cursing his dirtied tennis shoes. I tell you, if you feel strange, strange things will happen to you: Fallen peacocks on the library shelves and all those maple trees, plastering the sidewalks with leaves, bloody palm prints everywhere. Rosa How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready. That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat. Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash. How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.  This piece, another from 2005, is about the false humility of creationists who claim their literal view of the creation story is about honoring an all-powerful god, when in fact what it is really about is their own glory. After all, what could bring greater glory than to be the favored creation of such an all-powerful god, the apple of their creator's eye. it's all about me there is this view of creation that says it's all about me that God with a capital "G" said, let there be everything so that I might come to a life in a place made for me that the flowers were made for my delight and the birds to teach me the secret of song that the animals of the pasture were made to give me food and the animals of the forest the thrill of the stalk and the kill that the sun were made to warm my day and the planets to light my night and the moon to ease me to sleep to the rumble of an incoming tide all this for me so that I might worship Him and thank Him for His bounty and vote Republican in even-numbered years  Last from my library this week, these two poems by Richard Wilbur. The Poems are from his book Collected Poem, 1943-2004. The book was published in 2004 by Harcourt. Wilbur, poet and translator, served as poet laureate of the United States and winner of the National Book Award, the Bolllingen Translation Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize (twice). Two Voices in a Meadow A Milkweed Anonymous as cherubs Over the crib of God, White seeds are floating Our of my burst pod. What power had I Before I learned to yield? Shatter me, great wind: I shall possess the field. A Stone As casual as cow-dung Under the crib of God, I lie where chance would have me, Up to the ears in sod. Why should I move? To move Befits a light desire. The sill of Heaven would founder, Did such as I aspire. Advice to a Prophet When you come, as soon you must, to the streets of our city, Mad-eyed from stating the obvious, Not proclaiming our fall but begging us In God's name to have self-pity, Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range, The long numbers that rocket the mind; Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind, Unable to fear what is too strange. Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race. How should we dream of this place without us? The mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us, A stone look on the stone's face? Speak of the world's own change. Through we cannot conceive Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost, How the view alters. We could believe, If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy, The lark avoid the reaches of our eye, The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn As Xanthus once, its gliding trout Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without The dolphin's arc, the dove's return, These things n which we have seen ourselves and spoken? Ask us,prophet, how we shall call Our natures forth when that live tongue is all Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean Horse of our courage, in which beheld The singing locust of the soul unshelled, And all we mean or wish to mean. As us, ask us whether with the wordless rose Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding Whether there shall be lofty or long standing When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.  An memory, so old, i don't know where it came from. old man on an autopsy table an old man, long white hair, large white handlebar mustache, a cadaver lying naked on a table in a human anatomy class where did I hear of this old man, did someone tell me a story of their own experience; did I read of him in a book… I don’t remember, but I remember his long white hair, his large handlebar mustache, and imagine him, naked on a slab, dead for many years yet standing as a monument to the power of story and character for I remember him now, have remembered him almost for as long as I remember anything, remembered him so long I don’t remember where the memory comes from… though I don’t know the name the students of his body gave him, I imagine his voice - in my time, he might say, I was a cowboy, or a soldier, or a clerk or a builder of great ships and tall buildings, or a passer-by on a slow-traveling train, long hair, mustaches blowing in the passing wind, a poet, poems passing in the blowing wind… but, whoever or whatever he was there is magic in his useful corpse, magic in the air of this sterile room where blood and bones and flaccid organs are catalogued, the intricacy of their functions noted, the secrets of the spirit’s vessel marked magic in the benevolence in his purposeful death, his physical presence most respectfully rendered into it’s constituent parts  That's it. All the stuff contained herein remains the property it its creators. My stuff is available with proper credit. I'm allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, such information included so that the next check from the government can be properly routed. |
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The person to whom you mistakenly refer as "Pat Califa" is actually "Patrick CalifIa" and has been so since the mid-90's when he transitioned to become a male. The feminine pronoun is not in order here, and the name, as you have it, is misspelled.
thanks for the spelling correction. The poet who wrote the book I borrowed from is credited as Pat Califia, so I'll leave it that way, with the above comment as an amendment. In the meantime, my best wishes for the poet and my appreciation for the poetry. Pat or Patrick, he's a damn fine poet.
allen itz
Does anyone have the poem of Homero Aridjis "Ballad of friends now gone"
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