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Freeze-Dried Fantasies
Thursday, December 08, 2011 The big news this week is a new chapbook from my friend Alex Stolis. Actually that's double good news, but more about that when you get there. Photos this week fibbled with to make them more interesting,or, at least, different, from the last seven or eight times you saw them. My posse for the week, even now heading them off at the pass. Who is the posse and who is being headed off at the pass still subject to interpretation. A Search Old People Embarrassing To Sing Gods and Heroes Tropics A Warning Beyond My Strength Me jabber jockey Ada Limon Overjoyed Hardworking Agreement with a Wednesday Me Anthropocene Walt Whitman From Song of Myself Me shadow box From The Unswept Path Haiku by John Brandi Margaret Chula Cid Cormen Diane di Prima Me the river flows James Welch The Day the Children Took Over Two for the Festival Me I think it might be almost Christmas Scott Inguito Main Street Papa George Me squirrel for sale, cheap Naomi Ayala Thus Gtiot Horses Me freeze-dried fantasies From Earth Songs John Haines The Oregon Coast Michael Woodward Ice Man Me skin and bones Alex Stolis Savage Beauty Savage Beauty (Alternate) Me so who's the poet now (December, 2007) so who's the poet now (Alternate take, December 2011)  I start this week the book, Road-Side Dog, a collection of poems and mini-essays by Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1978 Neustadt International Prize in Literature and the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. A Polish poet born in 1911, he died in 2004. He taught at the University of California, Bereeley, beginning in 1962, The book was published in 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, with translation from Polish by the poet and Robert Hass. A Search A feeling that there must be a set of words in which the essence, so to speak, of the horror discovered in this century could be captured. Readings in memoirs, reminiscences, reports, novels, poems, always with hope and always with the same result: "Not quite." Only timidly did the thought emerge that the truth about the fate of man on earth is different from the one we were taught. Yet we recoil from giving it a name. Old People The view of old and ugly men and women, especially of those crones shuffling along with their canes. They were betrayed by their bodies, once beautiful and ready to dance. Yet in every one a lamp of consciousness is burning, hence their wonder: "Is this me? But it can't be so." Embarrassing Poetry is an embarrassing affair; it is born too near to the functions we call intimate. Poetry cannot be separated from awareness of our body. It soars above it, immaterial and at the same time captive, and is a reason for out uneasiness, for it pretends to belong to a separate zone, of spirit. I was ashamed of being a poet, as if, undressed, I would display in public my physical defects. I envied people who do not write poems and whom for that reason I ranged among the normal. And in this I was wrong: few of them deserve to be called that. To Sing Gods and Heroes The difference between the kind of poetry in which an "I" tells about itself and a poetry which "sings gods and heroes" is not great, since in both cases the object of description is mythologized. And yet... Tropics A parrot screeches. Ventilators turn. An iguana walks vertically up a palm trunk, a shining ocean wave puts foam on a beach. When I was young, I was driven to despair during vacations by the boredom of obvious things. In my old age,finding myself in the tropics, I already knew that I had always searched for medicine against this horror, which lasts because it means nothing. To give a meaning, any, only to get out of this bovine, perfectly indifferent, inert reality, without aims, striving affirmation, negation, like an incarnated nothingness. Religions! Ideologies! Desires! Hatreds! Come to cover with your multi-colored fabric this blind thing, deprived even of a name. A Warning Little animals from cartoons, talking rabbits, doggies, squirrels, as well as ladybugs, bees, grasshoppers. They have as much in common with real animals as our notions of the world have with the real world. Think of this and tremble. Beyond My Strength To recognize the world as ordinary is beyond my strength. For me it is magnificent and horrible, impossible to bear. Everything indicates that either it was crated by the devil or, as it is now, the result of primordial catastrophe. In the second case, the death on the cross of a divine Redeemer acquires full meaning. Our tearing away from the ordinariness of the world is like the efforts of a fly whose leg is stuck in glue. No logic in this unwillingness to accept. We must concede, however, that the logic offered by the Book of Genesis is no better. Our first parents sinned, were expelled from Paradise, and we continue to live in the state of fallen creatures. But what happened to those animals in the Garden of Eden? Did the sin of man change First Nature, as the cabalists maintain, into a deteriorated Second Nature, which has been longing ever since for a return to the moment when again the lion would lie down with the lamb?  I think I must belong to the jabber-poet school of poetry - in fact I may be the founder of that school. jabber jockey I jabber on cause it’s what I do best mind like a box of Mexican jumping beans bouncing here bouncing there clackity clack against the sides of the box like what a beautiful day it’s going to be today sky already blue with early morning clouds little puffs of clouds like melted marshmallows on a cup of blue chocolate little puffs melted away by 10 a.m. leaving the blue chocolate cold across the sky like what a beautiful day but I feel lousy so who gives a crap about beautiful days when your nose is either dripping or stuffed and sneezy beautiful days a taunt like ads on TV for beautiful things you know you’ll never own or wouldn't even want that much if you didn’t know you couldn’t have them a beautiful day today - who cares and about that guy at the restaurant this morning, talking talking talking, a man filled with the shallow wisdom of talking so much no one can interrupt to question him like the crackerpots on Fox News who own the microphone like Ronald Reagan who said about the microphone at the debate with George the 1st it’s mine, I paid for it which reminds me of LBJ arriving at Randolph Air Force Base to get a helicopter to take him to the Ranch, heading toward a helicopter, stopped by a fearless airman, who tells him he’s headed for the wrong helicopter, that’s not your helicopter, sir he tells the President and LBJ replies they’re all my helicopters, son which reminds me of the wife of a former mayor of the city who likes to refer to the time when her husband was mayor as “our administration” which reminds me of the fellows at the table next to mine here in the coffeehouse, the one guy, tall thin, semi-black, sharp-dresser, something to do with the city I think, listening man, and the other guy talking about plans for the new downtown arts center and listening to him I can hardly wait to go there which reminds me this is supposed to be a poem about my jabber-poetry but I really can’t think of anything to say on that subject this morning so maybe I’ll come back to it tomorrow we’ll see  Next I have two poems by Ada Limon, a poet new to me, from her book, Sharks in the Rivers, that I just bought yesterday. The book was published just last year by Milkweed Editions. Limon was born in Sonoma, California, in 1976 and is the author of three full-length poetry collections, and two chapbooks. She received her MFA from New York University in 2001. She received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, Pleiades, and Barrow Street. I like the freshness and easy now-ness of her poems. Overjoyed What's the drunk waxwing supposed to do when all day's been an orgy of red buds on the winery's archway off Gehricke road and it's too far to make it home, too long to fly, even as the sober crow goes. What's the point of passion when the pyracantha berries keep the blood turned toward obsess,obsess. Don't you know those birds are going to toss themselves to the streets for some minor song of happiness? And who can blame them? This life is hard. And let me be the first to admit, when I come across some jewel of pleasure, I too want to squeeze that thing until even its seedy heart evaporates like ethanol, want to throw my bird-bones into the brush-fire until, half=-blind, all I can hear is the sound of wings in the relentlessly delighted air. Hardworking Agreement with a Wednesday I have an agreement with the day: I won't talk too much. I won't be the most complicated minute in its configuration of hours. Come to the office with me. Stay awhile. The woman in the elevator (who's in sales) is so nice, but she says my name over, and over, and over. (Even when I don't say hers.) She says, Good morning,Ada. How was your evening, Ada? Have a good day,Ada. So my name becomes an advertisement,ora product to be bought and sold. I want to take it back from her mouth. I cannot stop looking at the bird out the window. We've name him Stanley. He's half-angry, half-slow, half-bird. One-and-a-half figurine. I want him to live somewhere else, but it's not my decision. He likes the rooftop of the high-rise, the hot soft tar grasped in his claws. He likes the danger. He likes the dirt on his beak. He likes it rough. I want his flight to be my own, as if wings themselves could be willed. Let's fly south to Monterey, to water, to ether, to air. Everything is off-limits. Everything is unreal. Everything is lament and let go. Dear Today, I have said too much, yet give me this - I want to be a physical doll, just for now, a stupid, splendid thing, tumbled into the touchable day.  A few thoughts from minor headlines. anthropocene that's what they are now calling ”the age of man” meaning, I’m not sure, either the time humans begin to occupy the earth as masters or the period beginning earlier when man existed primarily as small, scampering jungle prey... but I’m pretty sure “the age of man” however defined, came after the “age of dinosaurs” about which I’m not sure, were they reptiles or mammalian cousins of man that just happened to lay eggs or as I’ve begun to hear somehow related to chickens and I’m not sure if chickens are reptiles or mammals with wings or something else entirely different along with turkeys and hawks and eagles and red red robins and even carrion eating vultures but I am delighted that there is a chance that the “age of man” followed “the age of chickens" and considering how stupid chickens are whether “the age of man” would have ever come about had we been completing for an age of our own with something smarter, a dog or a pig maybe, maybe leaving us, had it been thus, sleeping in a slop pen in “the age of pig” and putting all that ancient history aside one can’t help but wonder whose age the next will be considering our record so far during my particular part in the "age of man" the “the age of ash and cinder’ might seem a fair prospect for th next age, or maybe a better case scenario, “the age of cockroach” think of that next time you squash a cockroach with your pointy-toed cowboy boot - it might be your heirs you squashing, and, heaven forbid that they have a long memory plan for the future - that’s what you have to do when you’re responsible for a whole age ^^^ meanwhile, across the way, a herd of deer graze across a broad pasture, except not bunched like a herd, but scattered individually across the field, as if each deer walking its own way decided on it own to stop for a bite at the pasture across the way, solitary deer , each at its own meal, not Texas deer, too much alone, New York deer maybe commuters at a quick-stop pasture, adapting to the “age of man” and my cockroach-mean mood is lifted, maybe there’s a chance for an “age of deer” instead, a return to golden fields and forests, a return to the “age of first nature” before the jealous god split time and brought the misery of ages to human and all the other creatures alike or maybe if I believe that hard enough it will make, at least, a better day  Next, to Walt Whitman, sage and speaker for all that is blood and flesh and fiber and life, intimate historian of his time, and inventor of modern American poetry. There is no greater pleasure in poetry for me than reading Whitman aloud. Try it and you'll see how difficult it is to stop. From Song of Myself 15 The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner, The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm, The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready, The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of big wheel, The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye, The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case, (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;) The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon'stable, What is removed drops horribly in a pail; The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, The machinist rolls up his sleeves,the policemen travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass, The young fellow drives the express wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him;) The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race, The western turkey-shootiing draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, As the whooly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle, the bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain, the Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron, The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale, The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-galley with half-shut eyes bent sideways, As the deckhand makes fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers, The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots, The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago born her first child, The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing- machine or in the factory or mill, The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold, The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread, The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions. The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!) the dover watching his dove sings out to them that would stray, The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent;) The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly, The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just- open'd lips, The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, The crowd laughs at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other. (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;) The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries, On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms, The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold, The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle, As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change, The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar, In single file, each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers; Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather'd, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms) Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the the mower mows, the winter grain falls in the ground, Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface, The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his ax, Floatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton- wood or pecan-trees, Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drain'd by the Tennessee, or through those of Arkansas, Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw, Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them. In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport, The city sleeps and the country sleeps, The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, And of these one and all I weave the song of myself. 17 These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and water is, This is the common air that bathers the globe. 24 Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and the index. I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpoint of on the same terms........  This is from 2003. I think I was more into people-watching than I have been lately. Or maybe I'm just not seeing so many interesting people. shadow box she sobs, once, then looks away damp-eyed he sits beside her frozen still at first then leans back and looks at her, watches her like a bystander, like he doesn't know how he got there, why he got there he says something moves closer to her seems to say it again she nods looks down to her hand lying flat on the table inches from his, trembling his hand lifts, fingers barely off the table and it appears he might take her hand, but he draws back, speaks softly to her again, rises from his chair and starts toward the door she follows, wiping her sunglasses and the sun through the open door is like a flash of fire  Next, I have several poets from An Unswept Path, a collection of contemporary American haiku. the book was published by White Pines Press in 2005. The first poet is John Brandi, who seems to draw much of his inspiration from his home in the American southwest. all night listening to the mountain become water one man one fire snow falling all day now that fallen leaves have buried the path the trail is clear Margaret Chula and her husband lived in Japan for many years. end of summer the rust on my scissors smells of chrysanthemums late into the night we talk of revelations moon through pines waking this morning from troubled dreams foxprints on new snow Cid Corman, says he has written every day for over sixty years, from December 21, 1941 to the moment he wrote these poems. (He's a few years ahead of me on the poem-a-day front) In the mirror for a moment it almost all seems possible. In the shadow of the mountain the shadow of any bird is lost You'll never get to the end of me - I doubt if I'll get there either Diane di Prima wrote this haiku triptych. Dream Poems in April 1 even the Buddha lay down to breathe his last. why am I struggling? 2 easy to disappear into this fog 3 pour this water and ash on the roots of some old tree  I had plans for the day. Maybe it will work out this afternoon. the river flows I was going downtown today to walk the river, flick some pics, but it’s cold out, and overcast and damp as well which makes it even colder, the wind chill thing that turns a regular cold day into a bone-cracker it’s the time of year when the Riverwalk shines, literally, lights strung from the trees, hanging over the river, re- flected in the river, lights on the boats, lights from all the restaurants and shops, a festival, preparation for the lighted river parade complete, waiting, sidewalks along the river, restaurants along the river packed, an always moving scrum of people and languages from all over the world, elbows bumping (and no one falls into the river, a miracle that always astounds me), chatter mingling, swirling around the river like water in a bathtub drain, normal crowds multiplied by a holiday factor of ten, and fish, crowded against the river’s edge like the people on the sidewalk, wrestling for position for the next piece of tortilla or bread or popcorn tossed into the river for them by some fat four-year-old from Des Moines, fat fish of the Riverwalk, again, like so many of the well-fed Riverwalk strollers, and the diversity, a barista at Starbucks, in my hearing, taking orders in four languages, a United Nations of caffeine and green water flowing, spring fed from Lamar Park, three miles as the crow flies, twisting and turning between downtown streets, downtown office buildings, banks, hotels, a water source for ten thousand years of travelers and temporary or permanent settlers, restless wanders or weary passers-by resting, not in grand Riverwalk hotels or crowded riverside restaurants, but along grassy banks under the broad shade of pecan and centuries-old oak, a center of life for all those years, illuminated now over masses of people celebrating whatever in their life merits celebration, or, in quiet times, like early morning, my favourite time, when the crowds are still asleep, and the restaurants are closed, and the sidewalks and river have been cleaned by men and women on barges who pick up the debris of crowded nights, when the river flows as it has always flowed, quietly, unsung, on a narrow, nature-carved track to the wetlands of the Gulf of Mexico, joining the convergence of rivers that provide the seed beds for marsh grasses, and crab, and shrimp, tiny fish and grandly standing one-legged whooping cranes that feed on them, threatened everywhere, home for the peace of a warm wintering, home for the holidays... I was going dowtown this morning, to walk the river, join its quiet morning flow, but it’s too cold - I am reminded though that the river also flows, though less quietly, in the afternoon as well… perhaps the sun will shine this afternoon, bless us both with its smile  I have two poems by novelist and poet James Welch. The poems are from his book, Riding the Earthboy -40-, published in 1971 by Confluence Press of Lewiston,Idaho. Welch was born in Browning, Montana in 1940. His father was a member of the Blackfeet tribe and his mother a member of the Gros Ventre tribe; both also had Irish ancestry. As a child, Welch attended schools on the Blackfoot and Fort Belknap reservations. Welch went to the University of Montana and taught at the University of Washington and at Cornell, as well as serving on the Parole Board of the Montana Prisons Systems. He died in 2003. The Day the Children Took Over And though the sky was bright, snow fell down. Children ran out. Mothers read letters that said the world would end in fire. Snow fell on driveways, on trestles and trees. It fell on lovers locked together in bedrooms and back seats of new Buicks out of sight in green wild fields. And yes, it fell with a vengeance on statesmen who predicted peace in our time. Priests who left the pulpit for a fine new wife walked about, pure and heavy beneath a wet sun. All around town, children ran out, rolled their sow, stuck buttons, carrots, old hats and bits of coal on shapeless lumps to create life, in their own image. Two for the Festival No sun but awkward rhymes the sun arrested in it curve. A boy lit up the night, his coattails flying in electric flame. In town the usual customer, one drink and home, stone figure in the weeds, looked up and saw his future falling. I know tis boy, a weak chinned Greek drowning cats in clouds. One drink, the customer and town drove bleeding strangers sane. A boy lit up the road, falling. Two dancers passed, one young, the other awkward in his rhyme. He carried in his hand a blind toad, a fox and thirteen lumpy stones. Money listened; all wars stood still till they arc of a customer's past reflected in his face. The rest is real: black-faced the boy fell smiling through the weeds. A toad glistened in the sky. Fox, the awkward dancer, hugged his stones. One drink, then home.  It's the spirit. Beginning to move me. I think it might be almost Christmas I think it might be almost Christmas because the weather’s lousy and all the people are wearing heavy coats and fuzzy hats and that’s how you know it’s Christmas in the movies except I don’t hear any tra-la-las or any bells jingling and no one I’ve seen have has come out with even one single ho, so I’m not expecting to hear so many as three in a row any time soon so maybe that part in the movies is just make-believe but I did see a reindeer or maybe that was just a large dog with wild, unkempt hair that looked a little like horns on his head or maybe a deer, just not a rein-type, just a regular Texas deer, and I can’s see a Texas deer pulling a sleigh cause Texas deer are not nearly as big and burly as the reindeers in the movies, big mothers, except for the runt with the red nose, but maybe that was make-believe as well and look the weather’s clearing up and people are taking off their coats and fuzzy hats which is nothing like what happens in the movies except maybe when it’s a Miami Vice Christmas movie which I haven’t actually seen but can imaging, the Santa in palm and fish embossed blue and purple shirt and a little white stubble instead of the long white beard he has when he’s in the land of people- in-coats- and-fuzzy-hats and I’m entirely confused because how can it be one kind of Christmas in one movie and another kind of Christmas in another movie and I’m thinking it might be all make-believe, just manifestations of the cinematic arts, and even though I like movies it does leave me a little disappointed in a critical sense cause what kind of lousy movie is it without boobs and bombs and bullets flying just lousy weather and people in coats and fuzzy hats and dogs with unruly hair or tiny Texas deer with regular noses  Next, a poem by Scott Inguito, from The Wind Shifts - New Latino Poetry, published in 2007 by the University of Arizona Press. The book is a recent purchase and includes a large collection of poets that I think I'll be coming back to again and again. Inguito was born and lives in California. He has a BA in English from San Francisco State University and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has one published chapbook and has appeared in numerous journals. He teaches at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont,California. Main Street The air collects itself. Dunes. The tilled fields. Strawberries. Plump and salt air sweet. It's said that the French like Santa Maria Valley's berries. Boxes stacked high on muddy trucks rattle across roads. Bonita, Furukawa, and Miami Farms. converted buses haul workers to the fields. Manure wind. Stings the throat. Ocean wind and muddy thigh-highs. Hands from Mexico make money and pass it to hands to build a better roof in Morelia. The trucks, flatted to the brim, pull the twin Porta-Johns into the next field. Lo Mejor de Jalisco. That's where the laborers eat. Campechana plato y refrescos y cervezas. Cuarto de Caminos. Deepbend. Backbend. Cracks in the curl between the thumb and forefinger bleeding. White and dry. The dog's name is Chicken. Been swatted on the rear too many times. Laps up the coffee that's been thrown on the ground. Fields are corduroy. The telephone wires are bowed with black birds. The hawk circles and wobbles. Celery wind. blade. Thigh-highs. Roofs are built. Papa George Roosters. Fights on Saturday nights In the direction of the water tower. Masatani's market. They got the egg noodles that Bud Wong's uses. Chili colorado at Guadalupe Cafe. the flour tortillas are fresh. Pats of butter. Sting. Muy picoso. Morning's mud. Lettuce, celery broccoli. Knives are romantic to a child. A blunter. For broccoli. They got special ones for celery. Chub blue handle. The blade is triangular. Short and oyster colored. Hairnets have yet to be improved at the packing plant. Both Grandmas work there. Forklift operators are god-like. Booby. Filipino/Mexican biker. Two thick black braids down his back. Shaped like an apple. His pants always hanging down. Didn't have an ass. Batman calling Robin. Come in Robin. Dad goofing on the intercom at the refrigeration plant. Union. Good work. The ground is rich and the irrigation is plentiful. Sea air gets in the strawberries. You can raise two kids on a lift driver's pay. Coors. Leroy Park. 25 cents a can to the "Uncles." My hand aches from the ice. Strawberry wind. Celery wind. Broccoli wind. Hooded Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese. Mud walk. Dust walk. and some like me Mixed. Chickens over grills the size of a truck bed. And garlic bread.  Mid-winter crisis, 2007. squirrel for sale, cheap there is a squirrel in my kitchen cabinet I saw him/her/it huddled in a corner of the cabinet shivering in fear I don’t know how he/she/it got there but there he/she/it is I also don’t know how I’m going to get the creature out remembering Jimmy Carter’s killer rabbit I’m hesitant to try to do it myself but I can’t find squirrel removal services in the yellow pages anywhere  I so enjoyed my last poet from the anthology, The Wind Shifts, that I decided to do another. Naomi Ayala is an assistant professor in the Bilingual Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is an extensively published poet and translator of poetry, with an MFA in creative writing from Brown University and a Ph.D. in english from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Thus At six the glass roses would be watered. At six the tomatoes and lima beans. At seven the machete would be sharpened. At the forcible hour, the groan of the moon swelling in women's bellies. At that hour in which the crow would kneel on the shoulders of the ripened breadfruit. At nine the return to coffee, the tip of the chin seating its scent. At nine the noontime sun would be lying. At twelve, nine perishing. At one Eve's rib would suffer the weight of the man it held up. From the body, wheat ears sprouting. the viand loosening from the iron pot, the cassava would fight the yautia, the sweet banana make a scene. At two love was a mirror, watching the cane fields from the corner of its eye, hurling the bait of its breath, forgiving mornings predictable as catch. At four, four would become a gag. At five, five would explode. At six, the bread would bless itself and the dishes wash themselves alone. At seven, the porch and the hammock, the night a country without borders, without muddled languages. Mute as the rooftops the spirits guarding their turn. Gtiot Saturday adrift on the wings of a strange bird shrieking Spanish. Blue smoke in the cold air beneath helicopters, real cliff-hangers. He spins bodega loves come and gone, low-down addictions, who got turned back from the not so pearly gates only to suffer more. He could graffiti a poem back of the only bus here if only it would come to him, if only he could make it through the muttering wind. Horses I don't know shit about horses. I only see them in some of the dogs that walk around here. See them in the bears I've seen at the zoo. Dark is all these things that remind me of horses. Dark like the wind against the street with its lightbulb eyes. Dark like you own the ground and your own running. This is the year of my horses. They leap from my skin and let loose on the block. Bare back. this is the year. I speak horse with my skin and own the language of hoofs hitting the ground. My wind and my way out I came with horses into this dark of no wind. Prepared and unprepared.  Every Christmas needs at least one good bite of bah! humbugery! Here's mine. freeze-dried fantasies I am not frail or weak but I am diminished in body and thought, especially this time of year when it’s cold and I begin to wish for heat, when all my life I’ve loved the cold and dreaded the heat; a time of long nights and dark days when I sleep and sleep because I can’t think of anything else to do; and this time of year when the world around me is overtaken by freeze-dried fantasies of peace and goodwill to men, self-abuse in momentary pursuit of relief from the human condition, darkness temporarily pushed aside by multi-colored lights and images of wise men and sheep and velvet-saddled camels and a tiny baby in a holy mother’s arms, tiny baby whose grand ambitions and expectations end in death, just like the rest of us, oh little town of silent nights, I do not wish to argue with you about any of this, but I am old and tired and diminished of body and thought and I have been fooled before by your silken lies and really all I want is to believe in Santa Claus with all the other children, safe in my belief, not hijacked by your pagan causes leading always to death  Next, I have two poets from Earth Songs, which describes itself as "ananthology of contemporary eco-poetry." The book was published by Green Books, in association with Resurgence magazine,in 2002. As is often the case with these journal based anthologies, no biographical information is provided about the poets they feature. (Which pisses me off; a few extra pages for bios wouldn't have broken the bank.) The first poet, about whom I know and am told nothing, is John Haines. The Oregon Coast I This half-ruined porch of giants, rough men of granite and basalt grown hairy with hemlock and fur. They are looking down through storms, forming some dark, volcanic thought, their only speech the sound of waves crashing against their knees. The green pillars of their temple toppled behind them; sunlight leans on the sprawled columns, and sheep crop the gutted floors. II The centuries unroll in free-falling loops of stone. Now and then a giant pitches from his loosened chair, the ocean grows heavy with evening, night closes the small white look of alders among the ferns. Long after, in the leveled wreck of California, I remembered the inward sweep of a granite forehead, the drenched magnificence not yet destroyed. The second poet, also a mystery to me is Michael Woodward. But I know him now. Ice Man You seem tenuous and brittle as a dry Stick insect But even after five thousand years Your sinews hold you obstinately together. So much you have to teach us. Just Being there You turn our arrogant nomenclature Of time Upside down. You can't be clutching your Copper axe; But,foolishly, we see you are. You humble us with you grasp And use Of eighteen different kinds of wood; The way You took grass, sinew, feather, flint And bark, Threading them into your confident life. You teas us: Lying down where our borders disappear; So both Austria and Italy argued you their own. They nearly rent you down the middle to be fair. We sift Your every crevice, sieve your secrets; Finding even What you had for your final meal; where You lived; What your nails had lately worked upon. You are Our countryman and brother, come to ask Why we In five thousand years between, and despite The lives Of prophets, sages, Gautama and Christ, Have learned To love less ourselves, our world and each other. We muster Information, detailed information In answer. But we cannot penetrate your silence. You tell us We are tiny in the immensity of ice.  Mid-winter victory, 2007. skin and bones 229.5 at seven this morning, down from the peak 280 a couple of years ago that’s a whole big lotta Moonpies released unharmed to run free in the wild  For my last library piece this week, I'm doing something different. The poet is my friend Alex Solis, who is always no end of different ideas. I'll have him explain what he did, as he explained it to me in the email he sent: "I wrote a chapbook, Savage Beauty, …the third in a trilogy…Girl who lived in the tree, Le Dame Bleue were the first two. I did something different this time. I wrote two chapbooks at the same time. I had been listening to a lot of “bootleg” Dylan lately and I think, in part, that is where the idea came from; all those alternate takes and versions All poems can be read a number of ways, different interpretations, feelings, resolutions etc. It is not uncommon for me to read a poem and take something completely different from it after each read. So I took the poems I had, revised some though some are exactly the same in both chapbooks. Also, I changed many of the titles, though many of the titles remain essentially the same. The poems were also reordered. The idea was to tell two different stories from two perspectives but at the same time to evoke many of the same feelings. I have no fucking idea how it turned out, if it worked or not. It was an interesting experiment though. I have attached them both, the original and the alternate take." So here they are, the original and, as in music, the alternate take. Savage Beauty for J Table of Contents Theology Karma tells me I am the only one Genesis Nothing ever really happened here in excelsis Deo Karma takes flight As the crow flies Karma takes to the sea Karma drops a dime on the Devil Blackouts and Epiphanies Karma falls ill Karma burns an affirmation on CD Savage Beauty The Book of the Dead Karma wants to bring bees back to life Stations of the Cross Revelations Theology What loves the stones. For they seem to exist. Karma can’t put a name on silence. Figures it must be God. He knows the nouns and verbs that spell despair. She asks, for no one: What loves the sky. What loves the hawk circling the field. What loves the field the hawk circles. What loves a well wrought story. There is nothing left but incompleteness, loss. Gone is the quiet balance of morning. She grasps a stone. Holds it to her cheek; feels the cool grass of Eden beneath her feet. Karma tells me I am the only one She is tired of stars, the sun, the boring moon. Prefers sand, silt and mountains; cool streams for bathing. Wishes for a wayward breeze to dry her hair; dyes it brown then blonde then back again. Her body feels a shimmer of light, she can feel the shape of my heart in every beat of her own. Genesis She sits at the left hand of God when he decides to take the serpent’s side. Takes his voice and calls it her own. Calls Eve her sister even as she steals Adam away the moment he bites into the apple. Winds her way down the crowded streets of Nod. She builds a hinge for the sky, swings it open and closed, names it the beginning; names it love. Nothing ever really happened here She falters, doesn’t take sides never wanted a title, a mark, never asked for a name, a label; but there it lays, bought and paid for. She becomes still, as if made of glass, everything turns black and white and blue, a pure blue of patience, the untainted blue of immortality. in excelsis Deo She is determined to find God, figures it’s easy to recognize a peddler when you hear one: a teller of tales, raconteur, that serpent in man’s clothing. She wonders if it is enough to fly into the highest cloud but all she finds is a nest built from high hopes and thin air. Karma takes flight She likes the colors. Likes that they’re with clouds. And come from rain. Hears a rustle of cars, feels reckless. The wind is pure of eye and graceful. Thunder arrives on schedule. The earth is illuminated and hungry. She feels a chill; wonders if she is real. As the crow flies We have an opportunity to modify ourselves. We sleep with no thought of harm or tomorrow. Once she says I love you it will be all over. A small brown bird sits on the sill, next to geraniums. Believing is art. An unfinished painting leans against the wall. Her hand rests on my chest. The wind passes over us in a trance. We have barely begun we are unfinished, unready. She tells me it is cruel to capture fireflies, steal their light. We are unrepentant. Her lips are dry, her nipples small raspberries. There is no saving time only spending moments. Moments soon forgotten or traded for a vision of truth. An orange leaf flutters against the window. It falls to the ground; I say fuck it but never out loud Karma takes to the sea There is space. So much space. It is suffocating. Not the stifling wall of drowning in a shallow pool. But a light pressure that does not let up. The sky bleeds: from the clouds from the wind the rain a crimson curtain. The sun is a bright white shark in a tar black sea. The moon remains simply the moon. Sinking upward, a cliché whose value has been spent. Karma drops a dime on the Devil She remembers her mother. Lights a match, rubs the ash between her fingers. Realizes she has said too much already. There is so much that remains to be said It’s difficult to resist the feeling of weightlessness that comes from longing. Her dog hunts sand dunes, cool as snow. Chases bird and stick and stone. Chases ball and bird and tail. The sea cowers. She believes. If she were strong enough, she would worship it Blackouts and Epiphanies A piece of the sky falls to earth. It’s picked up by a bird. She feels what a warm breeze might feel like if she were outside. if she were in her sundress, if it were a day in June. A child pulls a red wagon across the street. Desire is a memory. The horizon is a crooked line. The child’s mother runs into the street. She watches this and remembers her own mother. Mother takes the child’s hand, leads them back to the house. How her hair had gone brittle, bones stretched, body tired. Remembers her smile but the quiet is all that lives with her now. The wagon tips. The child begins to cry. There is a flash of silver in the bird’s beak as she lands in her nest. Karma falls ill There is always the sea. The last place to worship. It is primitive, the future. It is the altar for heaven. The sky is awestruck, feels feeble and helpless, runs through possibilities: roiling tumultuous uncontrolled tempestuous settles on tranquil. It is sunlight scattered amongst the leaves. It is his rough hand on her face. It is within reach; limb by limb she begins. Karma burns an affirmation on CD The White Stripes follow Charlie Parr, followed by Cowboy Junkies. (I’m so lonesome I just died.) Johnny Cash and endless possibilities only dreamed on an open road. Haley Bonar and Nick Cave sing of a religious experience. The self same one I wrote about in that letter; never got around to sending it, Sealed it and put it in back of the desk drawer, it’s there right now, waiting. Inside is a poem a confession a planned conversion a one way ticket and an excuse. Savage Beauty The door between what was and what is left becomes unhinged. She feels incidental, refuses to unshine the past to appease an old testament God stranded in a new testament world. This street is unknown but the sights, the smells remain still, uncertain; like her. A young girl rides by on a pink princess bicycle, legs pumping, braids a-jangle; the wind shudders quietly, a death rattle disguised as a sigh. The Book of the Dead There is a dead bee on the sill. I want to believe it died of old age. Want to believe a breeze will blow in the room that will have power to heal my wounds. I am her sculpture with chipped mouth, glazed eyes, ready to listen, ready to have the bits of my life swept under her bare feet. Karma wants to bring bees back to life She watches an orchid, white and purple; yellow at its lip, as a bee drawn by its scent, drinks deeply. Watches as limbs, painted yellow, float into an abandoned sky; speeds up time to match the flutter and flash of wings. Stations of the Cross The sun, tethered to a power line divides north from south night from despair morning from rapture. She favors midday, the scorch and burn of silence, the possibility to catch God with his guard down. Make him stumble, stammer the wrong answer like that time in the garden; not Eden but Gethsemane. She tilts her head at the sound of the earth as it spins, she’s a bookmark in the middle of an unfinished story; unafraid as the line curves into the horizon, heavy with the voice of God. Revelations There is the anticipation of road trips mixed with the leftovers from last night: albums gone sleeveless, bra and pants, loose change and dishes in the sink Curtains shimmy to the pop and hiss of Exile on Main Street. The skyline breaks at the same time side one skip-bumps to a stop. The open window is a promise, the asphalt simmers. Everything but sin burns at the right temperature. Savage Beauty (Alternate) for J Table of Contents Kate Moss tires of the runway Genesis Babyshambles Pete Dougherty reads to Kate Moss from The Book of the Dead Kate Moss wants to bring bees back to life Kate Moss flies first class to Paris Kate Moss takes to the sea Blackouts and Epiphanies The Geometry of Size One Kate Moss drops a dime on the devil Kate Moss burns an affirmation on CD Kate Moss practices meditation Kate Moss plans her getaway Siren Savage Beauty in excelsis Deo The Gospel According to Kate Moss tires of the runway She is tired of stars, the sun, the boring moon. Prefers sand, silt and mountains; cool streams for bathing. Wishes for a wayward breeze to dry her hair; dyes it brown then blonde then back again. Her body feels a shimmer of light, she can feel the shape of his heart in every beat of her own. Genesis She sits at the left hand of God when he decides to take the serpent’s side. Takes his voice and calls it her own. Calls Eve her sister even as she steals Adam away the moment he bites into the apple. Winds her way down the crowded streets of Nod; jeans slung low, hips a swagger, ready to start a revolution. She builds a hinge for the sky, swings it open and closed, names it the beginning; names it love. Babyshambles There is the anticipation of road trips mixed with the leftovers from last night: albums gone sleeveless, bra and pants, loose change and dishes in the sink Curtains shimmy to the pop and hiss of Exile on Main Street. The skyline breaks at the same time side one skip-bumps to a stop. The open window is a promise, the asphalt simmers. Everything but sin burns at the right temperature. Pete Dougherty reads to Kate Moss from The Book of the Dead There is a dead bee on the sill. I want to believe it died of old age. Want to believe a breeze will blow in the room that will have power to heal my wounds. I am your sculpture with chipped mouth, glazed eyes, ready to listen, ready to have the bits of my life swept under your bare feet. Kate Moss wants to bring bees back to life She watches an orchid, white and purple; yellow at its lip, as a bee drawn by its scent, drinks deeply. Watches as limbs, painted yellow, float into an abandoned sky; speeds up time to match the flutter and flash of wings. Kate Moss flies first class to Paris She likes the colors. Likes that they’re with clouds. And come from rain. The wind is pure of eye and graceful. Thunder arrives on schedule. The earth is illuminated and hungry. She feels a chill; wonders if she is real. Kate Moss takes to the sea There is space. So much space. It is suffocating. Light pressure, not the stifling wall of drowning in a shallow pool. The sky bleeds: from the clouds from the wind the rain a crimson curtain. The sun is a bright white shark in a tar black sea. The moon remains simply the moon. Sinking upward, a cliché whose value has been spent. Blackouts and Epiphanies She watches a piece of the sky fall to earth. It’s picked up by a bird. She feels what a warm breeze might feel like if she were outside. if she were in her sundress, if it were a day in June. A child pulls a red wagon across the street. Desire is a memory. The horizon is a crooked line. The child’s mother runs into the street takes the child’s hand, leads them back to the house. There is a flash of silver in the bird’s beak as she lands in the nest. The wagon tips. The child begins to cry. The Geometry of Size One What loves the stones. For they seem to exist. She can’t put a name on silence. Figures it must be God. He knows the nouns and verbs that spell despair. She asks, for no one: What loves the sky. What loves the hawk circling the field. What loves the field the hawk circles. What loves a well wrought story. There is nothing left but completeness, the quiet balance of morning. Kate Moss drops a dime on the devil She lights a match, rubs the ash between her fingers. Realizes how much remains to be unsaid It’s difficult to resist the feeling of weightlessness that comes from longing. The sea cowers. If she were strong enough, she would worship it. Kate Moss burns an affirmation on CD The White Stripes follow Charlie Parr, followed by Cowboy Junkies. (I’m so lonesome I just died.) Johnny Cash and endless possibilities only dreamed on an open road. Haley Bonar and Nick Cave sing of a religious experience. The self same one written about in that letter; never sent, inside was a poem a confession a planned conversion a one way ticket and an excuse. Sealed it and put it in back of the desk drawer, it’s there right now, waiting. Kate Moss practices meditation Once she opens her eyes it will be all over. A small brown bird sits on the sill, next to geraniums. Believing is art. An unfinished painting leans against the wall. She folds her hands together. The wind passes over in a trance. She says it is cruel to capture fireflies, steal their light. Her lips are dry, a leaf flutters then falls; she says fuck it, but never out loud. She is unrepentant. Kate Moss plans her getaway There is always the sea. The last place to worship. It is primitive, the future. It is the altar for heaven. The sky is awestruck, feels feeble and helpless, runs through possibilities: roiling tumultuous serene tempestuous settles on tranquil. It is sunlight scattered amongst the leaves. It is within reach; limb by limb she begins. Siren The sun, tethered to a power line divides north from south night from despair morning from rapture. She favors midday, the scorch and burn of silence, the possibility to catch God with his guard down. Make him stumble, stammer the wrong answer like that time in the garden; not Eden but Gethsemane. She tilts her head at the sound of the earth as it spins, unafraid as the line curves into the horizon, heavy with the voice of God. Savage Beauty She falters, doesn’t take sides never wanted a title, a mark, never asked for a name, a label; but there it lays, bought and paid for. She becomes still, as if made of glass, everything turns black and white and blue, a pure blue of patience, the untainted blue of immortality. in excelsis Deo She is determined to find God, figures it’s easy to recognize a peddler when you hear one: a teller of tales, raconteur, that serpent in man’s clothing. She wonders if it is enough to fly into the highest cloud but all she finds is a nest built from high hopes and thin air. The Gospel According to A young girl rides by on a pink princess bicycle, legs pumping, braids a-jangle; the wind shudders quietly, a death rattle disguised as a sigh. The door between what was and what is left becomes unhinged. She feels incidental, refuses to unshine the past to appease an old testament God stranded in a new testament world. This street is unknown but the sights, the smells remain still, certain; like her.  Inspired by Alex Stolis' experiment above and by my own belief that no poet ever tell the final truth, but only the truth of the moment as he or she knows it, I decided to follow his example, take the truth of one poem and play it forward, see how the truth changes. Alex did a whole chapbook simultaneously. I'm trying to reinterpret one poem, four years later. Seems I got the easy part, as such things go. so who’s the poet now (December, 2007) given that the origins of poetry lie around campfires in preliterate societies it’s not possible to argue that poetry as performance art is not a revival of the truest and most ancient of poetic tradition but why, then, do I so miss the architecture of words arranged on a page when I hear a poem performed by a master of that art and why do I feel the integrity of my words debased when performance exploits them for sound and mood rather than image and meaning could it be that what I do in managing lines and breaks and shapes and forms is not poetry at all, just manifestation of industrial-age bondage to the tyranny of movable type so who’s the poet now (alternate take - December, 2011) say that a poem is not the word spoken or the word printed or written in some orderly form designated as poetic by the fashion of the time; go instead to the image the words, however presented, are meant to provoke and find the poetry direct in the vision, images in the air of real space and time, transmitted through your senses to that part of you mind that dwells among the visual cues and clues of the world, the de-randomized pieces that combine to form a picture that means an emotion, visions that fire chemical reactions that push electronic jabs to our frontal cortex to create context within which emotions form, think of poetry as transcending work, internal vision of the poet going directly to an external vision to be seen and shared (the most beautiful poem I’ve ever experienced, a French short film of horses, a herd of horses, running through fields of high grass, the beauty of their flesh, and their muscled bodies, and the sweat blown from their nostrils, and the steam, too, from their mouths and nostrils, the internal heat of their great bodies under great exertion blown into cold air, and the colors of their coats, and the grace of their great running leaps over high grasses and shallow waterways - the most beautiful poem I’ve ever experienced and not a word was seen, not a word was spoken -no words, written or spoken could match the image direct) think of poetry as visions transmitted through some visual media like the screen of your local cinema, of think of a future poetry transmitted directly into your dreams think of the day when dreams are the ultimate poetry and poets the ultimate dream makers so who will be the poets then  Another week, may skip next week, haven't decided it yet. As usual, all here remains the property of its creators. My stuff belongs to me but you can use if you properly credit. I'm allen itz, owner and producer of this blog...continuing, yet still, to try to promote my way into literary lionship through massive sales (or even even just a few)of my books as proudly displayed below. "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"  |
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