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Color Splash
Thursday, November 17, 2011 All as usual,good poems and photos. I played with the photos this week, using a feature on Photobucket called "Color Splash" that allows you to change your color photos to black and white, then, using a little paintbrush thing, return the original colors to places on the photo that you choose. It makes an interesting effect, and is really striking if done on the right photos. Maybe I did; maybe I didn't, but I did it anyway. Here's this week's posse: Lamentation for Celine Lamentation for Jack Spicer Me another few moments in the prosaic saga of me Bobby Byrd Motel Room Traveling by Air Body of Christ, Texas Me all fuzz-brained Philip Larkin High Windows Forget What They Did Me deep thoughts to be thunk in 2009 From Poetry for the Earth Basho Year’s End Anna Akhmatova Tashkent Breaks into Blossoms Walt Whitman From Song of Myself Alice Walker On Sight Me just another artifact From the Kanginshu Six short songs Me time, liquid as a river, flows - as I wait William Matthews Night Driving Eternally Undismayed Are the Poolshooters Herd of Buffalo Crossing the Missouri on Ice Me boots, no saddle From Spillway Alex Richardson Vacation Bill Ransom Catechista Me discovery Federico Garcia Lorca The Guitar Riddle of the Guitar Farewell Gracela of the Bitter Root Me it is early, still, in our relationship Octavio Paz Night, Day, Night Me a real loss to poetry Shirley Kaufman Bread and Water Snow in Jerusalem "The World’s Longest Tramway" at Albuquerque Me spiders dancing James Hoggard Conception Getting Groceries By the Riverside Down Me thanks a bunch  First off this week,here a a couple of pieces by David Meltzer, from David's Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer, published in 2005 by Penguin Books. Meltzer, born in 1937, is a poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. He also a jazz guitarist, Cabalist scholar, and the author of more than 50 books of poetry and prose. Lamentation for Celine Dead the day Hemingway blew his brains out in Ketchum. Celine died of contagious poison crawled on hands & knee3s to our plate & puked it all out like Artaud, Rimbaudhe chucked up his gripes & barfed back at the dogs Mean Frog doc loved his kids had none, had icey blue eyes WW I shrapnel in his brain and electric sander hits a knothole every second Disorder prophet healer, wife-beater one with people who talk to themselves argue with history's phantoms confer with shadowy bomb-throwers in burgundy silk suits framed in cinema alleyways offering up gold for bridge or a boat or Paradise to slay the King murder the Leader Upstairs, a radio's too loud a man pounds his head against plaster a sniper loads up another man bangs his wife's head open with an iron fryingpan rushes her howling to the doctor's pigpen salon & Louis-Ferdinand swabs out the muck sews her up & out she goes, she & the old man hold to earth, stumble into Atlantis knock off a half-pint Celine was one with men whose hair grows out of the heart into the head & onto the chin Remplestiltsken wolf-man Like them he saw thru the world like a worm thru a tomato Died the day Hemingway blew his brains out in a hunting lodge in Ketchum, watching a mountain range disappear Lamentation for Jack Spicer Sir, I'm out of touch with stars. The bar's closed. We go stumbling down Grant to Columbus to the Park to somebody's parked car. Somebody says, Let's all go to Ebbe's. Says Ebbe, Sure, why not, let's all go. We're gone in the car, piled in the back seat, breathing wine on the windowpanes. This, seven years ago. Tonight. It is pain to realize you're dead, your last book on the shelf, your last words to a nation not indivisible but invisible; a nation that will never will its mystery to poets who even in Greece weren't poet enough to handle man nor touch the dark forms. Gone. Maybe that night it was Marco who fell back upon a park bush. We left him there to sleep. The Jew in me is the ghost of me hiding under a stairway or retuning home to a hovel to find table & a chair wrecked by Golem's fist bed broken, my black rags hanging from his teeth.  Yes, it's true, everyone has to find an aim in life. another few moments in the prosaic saga of me for the past several years I have eaten breakfast at the same restaurant, a pleasant place, food fair, waitresses who wait for me in the morning, concerned if I’m late, as if I might have fallen into the depths of the Mariana trench, or taken by the rapture, or abducted by inter-galactic aliens, then relieved and somewhat peeved when I finally walk through the doors all fine and dandy after oversleeping- there are great windows that I can sit by and imagine weather, usually better than the weather I can see, and the people zoom-zooming on I-10, some commuters, some far-travelers, all subject to my fantasy-extrapolations of their lives, the trees and the wind and the meadow across the way where the deer but no antelope roam - all this imaginary landscape and wifi and an electrical outlet in the last booth by the wall that they try to hold for me, and just enough other breakfasters come in to maintain the quiet buzz of humanity that I require to fire my creative impulses and whatever poem I’ll write for the day for the past couple of the several years I’ve been eating here, I set myself the goal of spending no more than $5 a day for breakfast, including coffee and my senior discount… I tend to do this kind of thing to myself, set myself up with some kind of ridiculous quest like this that I’m too stubborn to turn away from even when the foolish triviality of the quest becomes apparent to everyone, including me… except now, when I have become very tired of one toasted biscuit with sausage gravy every morning, $4.95, less senior discount, $4.71, not including $2 tip about which I made an executive decision early on not to apply to my $5.00 ceiling… so I have decided, just decided, in fact, that I will abandoned my every day $5.00 limit and set one day a week, Tuesday, probably, when I can raise my breakfast ceiling to $10 - enough for half a waffle or half an eggs benedict, or one egg, toast and bacon or sausage (no ham) or maybe even a whole bowl of oatmeal (no toast) and with this ever-so-slight adjustment I am certain my quest (though minutely altered) will continue undiminished or abandoned or left by the roadside of promises broken - a promise to myself, the worst kind of broken promise… I can hardly wait until next Tuesday... I'm thinking egg-benedict, $7.94 with coffee  I have three poems by Bobby Byrd, from his book White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits & Pieces of Love. The book was published by Cinco Puntos Press in 2006. Byrd, poet, essayist and publisher, grew up in Memphis. In 1963, he went to Tucson where he attended the university. In 1978, he and his family moved to El Paso and have made the city and border region home since. I would say, though, in defense of little Ozona that, small though it might be, they have a first class Dairy Queen and a very good Mexican restaurant run by a cook/artist proprietor. Motel Room Ozona,Texas. Empty. Empty As a wine bottle Traveling by Air The schizophrenic woman black curly hair square jaw smoked her cigarette and watched the full moon navigate the bright skies. I said: "It's a pretty night, huh?" She didn't answer my question. She knitted her thick eyebrows and puffed on her fag. Thinking is work. She was moving ideas around in her head like furniture. Furry clouds scattered like frightened dogs. She said she sees things printed in the sky. "The clouds tell me stories. Like a regular storybook. Look, there," she said, "there's an angel." I follow her finger toward a cloud swirling around the moon. The night got darker. The woman swallowed more smoke and blew it at the sky. the smoke was a shield to protect us. A weapon. She said: "I don't like angels. They can't be trusted." She smashed the cigarette into a dish and lit another. She took a drag and sucked up the smoke through her nose. She was an expert. The fresh cigarette was like a new idea. She relaxed. She lay back in her chair. She said: "My mom and dad, They're both dead. They just went away. I'm glad. But lots of times I see them in the sky. And today I saw an airplane big enough to pick me up and take me away. It had windows and a toilet and everything." Body of Christ, Texas September 1999 A motel room for 45 bucks a night. The American League Championship Series. Boston ahead 2-1, bottom of the 7th. Good. I hate the Yanks. I fix a martini. Life is okay thus far. But Knobloch doubles to left. Score tied 2-2. Fuck the Yanks. There's no hope for the world. There never was. Than comes the knock on the door. A skinny woman wants me to help her with her boat. The boat sits on a trailer and the trailer is hitched to a red Trans-Am. The car is old and beat-up. Yellow Mexican plates. The woman is taller than I am, wearing those black wedges on her feet. I like tall women. Silver toenails. Brown hair. Sunglasses. Leathery brown skin from too much sun. She lives near a Mexican beach on a street at the edge of middle age. She wants to die before she's 50. She has long leg, and she's so thin I could put my fist between the flesh of her thighs. the boat is a white speedboat. It has two huge Mercury outboard Motors perched on the stern. She uses the boat to smuggle prophecy and other contraband into the heart of the American Empire. I tell her that Mercury was the messenger for the gods. Also a thief and a capitalist. Like a good American citizen, she says. Like George Steinbrenner,I saay. Like the fucking Yankees. She says I have been selected. She says we will be going somewhere soon. My job is to be ready.  Sometimes the cure is worse than the diesease. all fuzz-brained walking around Alamo Heights, near the coffeehouse where I spend my morning, a chilled, over- cast day, walking, trying to clear my head, fuzz-brained this morning from the little atomic pill I took last night to get some sleep… and it’s nearly eleven o’clock and I’m trying to write a poem hours after I normally write my poem and it does seem poets have a daily shelf-life and mine has expired and I am due for the poetry barge that dumps expired poems into the Mariana Trency in the Atlantic, or maybe the surplus van where expired poems go to be distributed to the lyrically needy starving for the word, even old, used-up words from old used-up poets, overdue, past their sell-by-dates even for the Goodwill poetry store, a defunct-poetry contribution scornfully refused like a torn tee-shirt with obscene words screen-printed front and back, or a three-wheeled lawnmower or a two-legged bar stool, or a wobbly, bottom-rusted, one-wheeled wheelbarrow... and old, mis-used poets past distressed, no good even for the desperate… and I am desperate, standing on the corner of poetry avenue and inspiration highway, holding my little cardboard sign, hungry for the word “will work for a poem,” the sign says, “veteran poet,” the sign says… I’m fuzz-brained, the sign says, took a little atomic pill last night to sleep, and now I’m fuzz-brained and can’t find my little morning poem anywhere - not actually all said on the little cardboard sign, but implied by the capital letters and blood red ink of the sign... desperate… “help !” it says, “send me a poem…” “roses are red violets are blue…” “I’m all fuzz-brained, how about you?”  Next,I have two poems, including the title poem, by Philip Larkin, from his chapbook, High Windows. High Windows When I see a couple of kids And I guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise. Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives - Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought,That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He and his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. Forget What Did Stopping the diary Was a stun to memory, Was a blank starting, One no longer cicatrized By such words,such actions As bleakened waking. I wanted them over, Hurried to burial And looked back on Like the wars and winters Missing behind the windows Of an opaque childhood. And the empty pages? Should they ever be filled Let it be with observed Celestial recurrences, The day the flowers come, And when the birds go.  Here's a poem from 2009, complete with original dedication. Seems things never change. deep thoughts to be thunk in 2009 Dedicated to all the deep thinkers at "National Review," "Weekly Standard" and the like as well as all those deep thinkers formerly occupying high levels of government and currently seeking to hock their GWB magic decoder rings. as with many people I like to think deep thoughts about things i know nothing about an explanation, some might say, as to why all the world’s problems I solved last year are back on the table today balderdash, as we deep-thinkers like to say obviously the world wasn’t paying adequate attention meaning I’m just going to have to deep-think louder in 2009  I have several poets from the anthology, Poetry for the Earth, with the very long sub-title, "A collection of poems from around the world that celebrate nature. The book was published by Fawcett Columbine in 1991. The first poet from the book is the Chinese master, Basho Year's End Year's end, all corners of this floating world, swept. Next, something a little longer by Anna Akhmatova. The poem was translated by Richard McKane. Tashkent Breaks into Blossom 1 As if somebody ordered it the city suddenly became bright - every courtyard was visited by white, light apparitions. Their breathing is more understandable than words, but their likeness is doomed to lie at the bottom of the ditch under the burning blue sky. 2 I will remember the roof of stars and the radiance of eternal glory, and the little kids in the young arms of dark-haired mothers. And now, something by the father of modern American poetry, Walt Whitman. From Song of Myself I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the prismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of wren, And teh 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 I have stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced 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 heart 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 off the cliff. And last from the anthology, I have this by Alice Walker. On Sight I am so thankful I have seen The Desert And the creatures in The Desert and the desert itself. The Desert has its own moon Which I have seen With my own eye. There is no flag on it. Trees of the desert have arms All of which are always up That is because the moon is up The sun is up Also the sky The stars Clouds None with flags.  What a shock. I'm old. just another artifact in my coffeehouse in the afternoon listening to a couple of college students behind me talk about, prepare for, a history test… American history from the fifties, sixties and seventies, history I lived, prime-time me and how strange it is to hear my life from a college lesson plan, from a history book… the names are the same, Eisenhower, Kenedy, Johnson, Nixon,Agnew, John Foster Dulles, Nikita Kruschev, Charles DeGaulle, Mao, and the places are the same and the wars and their battles are the same, Suez, Berlin, VietNam, Chicago… but how remote and dry they all sound coming from the mouths of babes, so much simpler it seems when they talk about it than it was at the time, so different it all sounds without the passions of the time, such an artificial sense of order when the past is seen from the future… maybe not the first time this kind of chronological dissonance has happened in my life, maybe just the first time I heard it and how strange it is to hear it, to recognize how so much of my life has been relegated to freshman history, how bizarre it feels to be of the past when it’s the future I still look to I feel the dust settling on my grave, and, in the young voices of these students, new grass growing over it  I had saved this space for a young poet I met here in San Antonio last week. I read some of his stuff and liked it. Apparently he couldn't get his material to me in time for this post. Maybe next week. In the meantime, here are some pieces from the book Simmering Away, a collection of songs from the Kanginshu, published by White Prine Press in 2006. The Kanginsbu is a classic Japanese poetry collection which appeared in Japan in the early 16th century. The poems, translated by Yashuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins, are not titled. ^^^ Who is this (you naughty boy!) that hugs me tight and bites me, a married woman but it's fun we're in full bloom at seventeen we're in full bloom at seventeen but nibble gently - if your teeth leave marks, then he will know ^^^ My hair that I had just tied up has loosened, gently tumbling, as my heart has fallen for you ^^^ How I envy this my heart always with you night and day ^^^ with love in your eyes pour your wine into my cup pour your wine with love in your eyes ^^^ The plum blossoms are manhandled by the rain, the puffs of willow seed by the wind, and always, our world by lies ^^^ The scent of fine incense leaks through the reed screen cold wind in the trees on such an evening you can even sense the fragrance off the moon  I am a punctuality fanatic. Best to just say that some people in my circle of domesticity are not. time, liquid as a river, flows - as I wait I am married to a woman who sees time as a liquid, flowing like a river, subject to such diversions of speed and course as an individual’s needs and desires might direct… I on the other hand know that time is a product of another kind of motion, the moon circling the earth, the earth circling the sun, the sun intent in its own galactic revolutions, and the galaxy, itself, moving within a universe that takes its own path, motion, always constant, making time, also always constant, making her always late and me always early my wife believes time is a liquid flowing, like a river, easily distracted from its normal course and it so frustrates me, even as I write this, waiting, understanding the constancy of all but us, the need for us to adapt to the constancy of the universe and not the other way around I wait, as the moon circles and the earth circles and the sun circles and the galaxy circles and as the universe moves ever outward, not caring if we are late, like now, though I do, under the moon and the sun and the universal motions of galaxies and universal tides as I wait and wait and wait… another constant in my life  I have three poems by William Matthews, from his book, Search Party - Collected Poems. The book was published in 2004 by Houghton Mifflin. Matthews was born in Cincinnati in 1942, and educated at Yale University and the University of North Carolina. He taught and lectured all over the United States. At the time of his death in 1997, he was professor of English and director of the writing program at the City University of New York. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995, two years before his death. Night Driving You follow into their dark tips those two skewed tunnels of light. Ahead of you, they seem to meet. When you blink, it is the future. Eternally Undismayed Are the Poolshooters for Robert Preston A slow circular flail of fan not moving the still air. Shee-it. Slap of pool balls. Hot. Arms sag from sweat-stained sockets, drenched tendrils. "It's so hot at my place you can hear the paint crack." Everything's slick with a soft sweaty grit. In the parking lot a sponge-tongued beagle spurns a dirty puddle shaped like a woman's foot, crumples into the shade beneath a Buick, sleeps. She loved heat. On the beach for hours like a snake, then daintily to the water, foamtoes, one deep breast-heaving breath and in. "104 out there. Too hot to fuck. I once love a woman left me on a day like this." We woke marbled with sweat. "Those days I was working straight commission, I could sell a truss to a trout. I said, my love let's buy an airconditioner. She put my shirt on, then her slacks." Like a bride aiming her bouquet of a tubby friend, she tossed me her underpants and left. "I haven't seen her since." Each ball slides for no reason where it wants, glasses of beer warm up to room temperature (about 78 degrees) at the same pace the balls click quietly like tumblers in a lock. Freddie brings the paper in, hangs around, goes back out. Nothing from the poolshooters, faces of camels working their gums among the smoke rings. Herd of Buffalo Crossing rthe MIssouri on Ice If drangonflies can mate atop the surface tension of water, surely these tons of bison can mince across the river, their fur peeling in strips like old wallpaper, their huge eyes adjusting to how far they see when there's no big or little bluestem, no Indian grass nor prairie cord grass to plod through. Maybe it's because it's bright in the blown snow and swirling grit, their vast heads are lowered to the gray ice: nothing to eat, little to smell. They have their own currents. You could watch a herd of running pronghorn swerve like a river rounding a meander and see better what I mean. But bison are deeper, deliberate water, and there will never be enough water for any West but the one into which we watch these bison carefully disappear.  Don't wear boots anymore (as a diabetic, have to be more solicitous of my feet, but I wish I did. This is a poem from 2009. boots, no saddle never was a cowboy but did wear boots most of my adult life, always owned two pair of dress boots one black and one brown worn depending on the color suit i was wearing that day one pair of not-dress-up boots, that were the dress-up-pair last replaced and one pair of work-outside-in-the-rough boots, the-not-dress-up boots in their final incarnation - never paid more than $100 for a pair of boots, no fancy stitching, no alligator or lizard or emu or boa constrictor, just your basic plain old cow-wear, and all were beneficiaries of multiple visits to shoe repair elf as they made their way through their various lives from boardroom to muddy field - well-traveled were my boots when finally discarded - now i’ve been to run-of-the mill shopping mall boot stores with boots on their shelves with $3,000 to $4,000 price tags and have never figured out why people with that much money to spend on basic footwear would spend it on ready-made off-the-shelf boots when there are so many master-craftsmen in the business of custom boot-making in South Texas, cobblers to presidents and kings who would custom-create a one-of-a kind pair of boots fitted precisely to the buyer’s feet for half that price - has to be some kind of deviant mental or moral condition is the way i see it from my perch in the $100 boot section  Next, I have two poets from the Spring/Summer 1999 issue of Spillway. The first poem is by Alex Richardson. He received his master's degree in creative writing and Renaissance drama in 1991 from the University of South Carolina. At the time of publication, he lived in Mississippi. Vacation We rest cross-legged on the silver porch And talk about ourselves: You say you have a certain feeling For our future. That everything we say we want Will work its way into our lives. We fill in the last crosswords together: four letters for "Indian garment," Seven letters for "Indefinite time," And talk some more about what we'll do Tomorrow or the next day. Having said everything twice We look respectfully to the sea, Receding from where we sit Sipping tea and whiskey, Read tide charts and ocean almanacs, Occasionally lifting our heads Towards the perfect flight of gulls, The windy dives of pelicans Undulating green. The second poet from the journal is Bill Ransom, author of many books of poetry, short fiction and journalism and a nominee for a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry. Chatechista Guatemalan villagers-lay down a red and white bed of petals in Mayan design from the airport to the national cathedral. Tomorrow the Pope will kiss the grieving earth and crush the petals under his new bulletproof tires. Soldiers fidget at the ready while a giant cross tilts into place at the end of the fragrant path. Their gazes flick about the crowd, and their fingers click select to full auto on their rifles. Religion is a dangerous business here. The president preaches in tongues and offers real blood to the highlands. This woman beside me stinks. She walked barefoot three hundred miles for a glimpse of the car of the Pope. Her foot, black with gangrene, split like a ripe plum, oozes something thick and green onto these crisp, white petals. "Help me," she whispers, "in the name of God." She will die here, and soon, with or without God. But I spend a handful of Ceclor on my conscience and tell her the foot has to come off. She nods. Her lusterless eyes stare at the pills in her palm. I shift my aging sack of healthy flesh upwind.  Clarity, fading quickly, is the best I ever do. discovery the serenity of the moment before the micro-gnat of a second when the universe stops to inhale before breathing again with a gasp of stars shaken and stirred in their orbits the idea, the thought complete, all the pieces floating in confusion slide through the chaos to find their place together and you know you finally know how your life fits in the greater pulsing ocean of creatures like and unlike yourself the greater scheme is yours, now it is only to not forget again  Here are four short poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, from his book In Search of Duende. (Duende, as frequently used, refers to, in modern parlance, "soul" or authenticity.) This is a bilingual book, Spanish and English translation on facing pages. Lorca, born in 1898, was executed in 1936 by anti-communist death squads during the Spanish Civil War. A poet, dramatist and theatre director. he achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the "Generation of '27," an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927, essentially out of a shared desire to experience and work with avant-garde forms of art and poetry. The Guitar The guitar begins its weeping. The wineglasses of dawn are shattered. The guitar begins its weeping. It is useless to hush it. Impossible to hush it. It cries monotonously, as the water cries, as the wind cries over the snowfield. It is impossible to hush it. It cries for distant things. Sand from the hot South asking for white camellias. It cries, arrow with no target, evening with no morning, and the first bird dead on the branch. Oh guitar! Heart mortally wounded by five swords. (Translation by Christopher Maurer>) Riddle of the Guitar At the round crossroads, six maidens are dancing. Three of flesh, three of silver. Yesterday's dreams pursue them, but they are held fast by a golden Polyphemus. The guitar! (Translation by Christopher Maurer.) Farewell If I die, leave the balcony open. The little boy is eating oranges. (From my balcony I can see him.) The reaper is harvesting the wheat. (From my balcony I can hear him.) If I die, leave the balcony open! (Translated by W.S. Merwin Gracela of the Bitter Root There is a bitter root and the world has a thousand terraces. NOr can the smallest hand shatter the door of water. Where are you going, where, oh where? The sky has a thousand windows - battle of the livid bees - and there is a bitter root. Bitter. The ache in the sole of the foot is the ache inside the face, and it aches in the fresh trunk of night only just lopped off. Live, my enemy, bite our bitter root! (Translated by Edwin Honig.)  This is a poem from 2009. Mr. Potter is still there, along with her year-old son, George, so-named because of a resemblance to Boy George. Both accept my offering of food, daily, but not my offer of an ear-scratch. it is early, still, in our relationship smooth, soft fur, a banker-cat, slick, dressed in charcoal gray, yellow eyes, pink tongue, and white needle teeth ready to foreclose on any food that wanders her way, dead or soon-to-be dead if mouse or lizard or other scurrying thing a street cat, sly, shy, she has come to accept me as a reliable food source, comes to my front porch when she knows i’m around, sits and waits for a handful of kitty chow, appreciates my patronage but still won’t let me come too close - i sat with her, about a foot and a half away, for ten minutes this afternoon, the closest she’s let me, we talked, or rather i talked while she munched the cat food i brought out for her, she watched while i talked, watched and munched, listened? i don’t know, could be... it’s still early in our relationship, but i think we have begun to communicate... i think i'll call her Mr. Potter unless gender identity issues become a problem  Sticking to bi-lingual, Spanish/English books, here is a poem by Mexican poet, diplomat, and winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, Octavio Paz. He was born in 1914 and died in 1998. The poem is from the book The Collection Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987. It was published by New Directions in 1990. The poems were translated by the book's editor, Eliot Weinberger. Night, Day, Night 1 Stream of light: a bird singing on the terrace. In the valleys and mountains of your body it dawns. 2 Fire asleep in the night, water that wakes laughing. 3 Under the leafy canopy of your hair, your forehead: a bower, a clarity among the branches. I think about gardens: to be the wind that shakes your memory, to be the sun that clears through your thicket! 4 At the foot of the palm tree, tall as a savage, rippling green against rhe warrior sun, you rest. Your body a backwater in the shadows. Stillness. Vast noon barely throbs. Between your legs time, stubborn, flows. 5 A vein of sun,living gold, grooves, crosses, spirals, green constellations: the triangular insect moves through the grass at three of four millimeters an hous. For an instant you held it in the palm of your hand (where fate traces its arabesque secrets): it is a living jewel, a creature fallen, perhaps, from Titania, - and reverently you let it go, back to the Great All. 6 The day,ultimate flower, hour by hour it burns. Another flower, black sprouts. Imperceptibly you cross the shadows and enter, lady of night. Barely a wave, barely aroma, white, you stretch out on my bed. And become a woman again. 7 Plain of sheets and night of bodies, tide of desire and grotto of dreams. 8 an intangible village sleeps under your eyelids: avid whirlwinds, children of touch become flesh, drink blood, are the changing forms of desire and are always the same: face after face of the life that is death, of the death that is life.  I really had fun writing this poem; I hope you enjoy it almost as much as me. a real loss to poetry it was a golden night no moon stars buried behind thick low clouds reflecting back to the ground and streets and houses the golden light of the city never sleeping golden light filtering through the trees like spun gold orange shadows in the golden night and down at the creek water flowed in golden bubbles of light while the crickets cricked and the frogs farted and oh crap haven’t I done this before and who cares anyway poetry is a serious business and ought to be about serious things like how about that helium if I ate a ham and helium sandwich would I rise to the ceiling like those balloons they give to kids at the supermarket who let go of the balloon and the balloon rises to the ceiling which is lined with balloons given to kids who let the balloons go, red blue yellow green what a bunch of colors lining the supermarket ceiling and what about if I ate two ham and helium sandwiches or maybe three would I float away into the sky if outside where there is not super market ceiling to keep me safe would this be a new mode of green energy for air transportation great airplanes guided through the air by teams of pilots gorging on ham and helium sand wiches and what about the porpoise, Einstein of the sea, Aristotle with fins, Plato with a snout and a jolly smile what do you call more than one porpoise - is it porpiees, maybe, and what about a gathering of porpiees not a “school” cause that’s fish and porpiees are not fish and not a “herd” cause that’s cows and horses and sheep and porpiees are none of those and not a “swarm” cause that’s bees and not a “flock” cause that’s geese and chickens and not a pod because that’s whales (which I think is a silly name for something as vastly gargantuan as a congregation of whales - it would be much better if we called such a gathering a “tundra” or something else equally as vastly gargantuan, but that’s just me) and at least whales are mammals like porpiees and not fish even though like whales porpiees like the water and frolic all about in it a least the porpiees I saw at Seaworld like to frolic around in the water so maybe a group of porpiees who travel together might be called a “frolic” but that’s just a suggestion and anyway I could go on and on because there’s lots and lots of important things poetry should deal with instead of getting stuck in frou-frou poems about golden nights and cloudy skies and absent stars and vanished moons and crickets and frogs and what about those frogs and the way they mate in Amarillo has anyone ever written a poem about that well I did but no one else and that’s a real loss to poetry I’m telling you a real loss  Next, I have three poems by Shirley Kaufman, from her book, Rivers of Salt, published in 1993 by Copper Canyon Press. Kaufman, daughter of Polish immigrants, was born and grew up in Seattle. She graduated from James A. Garfield High School in 1940 and from University of California, Los Angeles in 1944, She and her husband immigrated to Jerusalem in 1973. I've used the first of the three poems before,but it is such a powerful expression of oppression and hope that I decided to use it again. Bread and Water After the Leningrad trials, after solitary confinement mot of eleven years in a Siberian Gulag, he told us this story. One slice of sour black bread a day. He trimmed off the crust and saved it for the last since it was the best part. Crunchy, even a little sweet. Then he crumbled the slice into tiny pieces. And ate them, one crumb at a time. So they lasted all day. Not the cup of hot water. First he warmed his hands around it. then he rubbed the cup up and down his chest to warm his body. And drank it fast. Whey, we asked him, why not like the bread? Sometimes, he said, there was more hot water in the jug the guard wheeled around to the prisoners. Sometimes a guard would ladle a second cup. It helped to believe in such kindness. Snow in Jerusalem After it stops the air is still whirling around our house and the pine trees shake out their iced wings the way dogs shed the sea from their bodies after a swim, a white curst slides like shingles down the backs of the branches, soft clumps loosen themselves from sills and ledges, fall past our window with the swoosh of small birds or of moths at night that beat themselves senseless against the lamp until we switch it off and reach for each other, warm and slightly unraveled under the worn nap,under the flannel of the snow sky, under the overhanging sorrow the city listening to the plop, plop, it's all coming clean now, starting to thaw a little from the inside. "The World's Longest Tramway" at Albuquerque Once on the Gornegrat I thought the wind would sweep me out of my body, all the immensity of light and the gates wide open. If I didn't look back I'd be lost. Looking back is the problem. Every chunk of the poor earth keeps us accountable, this scrub and the dwindling pines with their little white shelves, one hill sliced flat, and after that to the north stubble, the parceled land, Los Alamos on which the snow swirls soft and elegiac.  Here's a short piece I wrote in 2009. spiders dancing the tree, its bare wind-dancer limbs black against the new-day sun, like a spider on its back waving spindly legs at the rush of warming light it’s that kind of day, so fine spiders lie on their backs to bask today I, too, will do unexpected things  The last poems from my library this week are by James Hoggard, Texas poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist and translator. The poems are from his book Breaking an Indelicate Statue , published by Latitudes Press in 1986. This book, at $1.98, is one of those second-hand book store prizes I look for with ever visit. Hoggard, former poet laureate of TExas and past president of the Texas Institute of Letter was, at the time the book was published Perkins-Prothro Distinguished Professor of English at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Author of fifteen books and seven produced plays,he has won numerous awards for his work. Conception There was a man once upon a time there was this man sitting at a smoking hearth and he was silently shaking in his buttoned-up sweater and his fingers coiled a pipebowl for warmth then into the room came a woman wearing a brassiere and halfslip and she stood behind him calmly warmly still and he this was once upon a time said nothing to her kept shaking till the coals flew into fire Getting Groceries Passing by the produce I notice how terribly soft the avocados are Once in a car The cart's wheels sigh along the linoleum floor we lay beneath a stardrunk sky Clouds came, and rain The frost on the orange juice cans glues my hands to iceburned tin Your eyes and arms have sometimes been a flood upon me Marking my load the register snickers at me then gobbles my check and my fingers have disappeared in your hair I should've gone ahead and bought the damn avocados By the Riverside Down A woman remembered was my babysitter at twelve is the one who scratched her blue percale ass and sang me Down By the Riverside and told me while brushing her unbunned gray frazzle-hair that I was like a boy she knew when she was young who--stopped, asked me to check her singing heart when my brother was asleep, but it was soft and dry until she took me singing with her down by her riverside where the waves were weak and the feather-reeds long and the air was full of powderspice when I ws twelve and saved from dream-need by her river-rolling heart.  I finish this week with a, what else, holiday poem. Best wishes for the holidays to all who visited here. thanks a bunch will prepare today for my trip tomorrow, 300 miles to South Padre Island, where my brother-in-law and sister-in-law will be providing the traditional holiday feast of roast beast and all the requisite turkey goblish fixin’s at their beach-side condominium although, as it happens, I am not a big lover of holidays or of roast beast (unless it’s pig or bovine beast) nor am I a lover of beaches or sand or salt or waves kathumping on sandy, salty, beaches, especially when it’s winter and the chances of espying beach-clad honey-bunnies in tiny tops and tiny bottoms, is minimal, I am still pleased to have the opportunity to be thankful to my brother-in-law and sister- in-law for their fine feast and for the company of others at the fine feast and many other things not associated with the feast at all such as the fine Friday morning which will follow the holiday feast and upon the arrival of which, immediately post-breakfast waffle at Katie’s Waffle Deluxe, I will be hot on the highway hying home to my regular life, for which I am, above all else, thankful  And that's the whole deal for this week. As usual, all work included in this post remains the property of its creators. My stuff is free for the asking, and proper credit. I'm allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, and, by the way, let's not forget the following. "Always to the Light"  "Goes Around, Comes Around"  "Pushing Clouds Against the Wind"  And For those of a print-bent, available on Amazon "Seven Beats a Second"  The copies on Amazon are being sold, through prior agreement, by my publisher. Copies are available directly from me at my website, www.7beats.com. I can't compete with the Amazon price, but if purchased from me, I will include a copy of the CD chimeras, ideals, errors by the Ray-Guhn Show Choir  I haven't done any maintenance on that website in a couple of years but you used to be able to hear a cut from the CD. Maybe you still can. |
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