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From a Place Far From Home
Saturday, February 18, 2012 I was fooling around on Facebook with this series of pictures a week or so ago and decided, since I know where they are (not always the case with my photo files), I ought to use them in a blog. The original versions of the photos were taken in and around Uvalde, Texas, on Highway 90 about 70 miles from San Antonio, a place not actually so far from home as it might look. So... Giving special attention this week to poems from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, details follow. Here's the whole package for the week. I didn’t want to do this… d.a. levy Reality Jew Me the pan dulce factor Jessica Helen Lopez Beauty Me I will take pictures today Bob Kaufman Jail Poems Me this being the 68th anniversary of my birth Bobby Byrd A Brief Description of What Goes On in Streater's Pub on Galveston Island This Poem I’ll Sell for $100 Me doodlebug dust Patti Smith Notebook Frank T. Rios Invocation George Tsongas The States Paul Landry Displaced Poet Me big dinner Dennis Cooper First Sex Ed Hong Me spoke to God last night - thought I should pass it on David Gollub As for Us Me is poetry necessary? Dilruba Ahmed Dhaka Dust Southern Ohio Fable Me Sunday breakfast at IHOP Jack Wiler It’s About the End of the World Stupid Klipschutz America Joe Brainard Art Hal Sirowitz Thursday Night in the Park Me tussling with "Tannhauser" Susana H. Case The Cost of Heat Me on reading "Cow" by Federico Garcia Lorca Walt Whitman Poets to Come Me green  This is the kind of poem I really don't like to write, but, once it gets in my head, I have to write through it to get to the other side. I was thinking about this last night and was hoping that by this morning I’d have something better to write about but here it is 6:37 a.m. and this is all I have it’s a poem about religion, which is very different from a religious poem, because I don’t write religious poems, being a practicing non-religionist myself, and I hate to write poems about religion because many people who have fallen into a religious state of mind consider anyone who hasn’t had such a revelation an affront to the higher powers of the universe, of whom they believe they have direct you might even say inside knowledge but I am a tolerant man and try to polite and non-dismissive of others’ beliefs, because, after all, a man is nothing more than a composite of his beliefs and the better nature one hopes ensue from a strong and secure belief system… the problem I have is not with belief, strongly held, buy mostly has to do with the limitations of my own virtue and intellect, a problem with belief when it is based solely on blind faith, such, being in my own opinion, a form of mental and spiritual castration and it seems no matter how hard I try that impolite dismissive opinion bleeds through whatever I say, especially when I might accidently, when caught up in the flow of thought, point out to all and sundry that all blind faith is equal and that blind faith is blind faith is blind faith and if one argues in discussion that belief in a god is provable as an article of such blind faith then I feel I, as a liberal and tolerant person must accept that opinion of belief through faith as valid even though I don’t feel a necessity to share the faith…. ideally the validity of blind faith as the basis for belief in a god being acceptable to me, I would hope others might understand that the standard of proof they have established for themselves must also be the standard of proof for all believers of all things and that faith being the only proof required, their belief in God must stand on equal footing with someone else’s belief in Peter Pan and Tinkerbill… it would be at about that point that I lose those who don’t appreciate it when their evidence for the existence of their God, true and real, as proven, by their own argument and standard of proof can equally be applied to establish the true and actual existence of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell or as Wendy educated us all you have to do is believe… of course this has nothing to do with anything except I read in the paper yesterday that some very large percentage of Americans believe in the Devil, which surprised me at first since almost none of the people I know believe in the Devil and neither do I, though I do believe in evil (though I am certain evil is a product of man and not some faith-based-being) but on reflection, if God and Peter Pan and Tinkerbell can exist, then surely there must also be a Devil for nature abhors imbalance and will insist on a good for every bad and a bad for every good and anyway, if you set aside belief and examine the question on an evidentiary basis it’s clear that there’s a lot more evil in the world than good, meaning there is a lot more evidence in the record supporting the existence of the Devil than there is for God or Peter Pan and Tinkerbell as well and that, certainly, is the tragedy of this whole thing - if there is a god, as some say, it is hard to believe he is winning  This week, I'm paying special attention to poets from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. It is huge anthology of over six hundred pages (in addition, the contributor list runs to 21 pages) published in 1999 by Thunder Mouth Press. The first of my poets from the antholody is d. a. levy, a champion of free-speech who endured much police harassment in Cleveland where he grew up and lived, was much better known abroad and to a hard core avant garde fan base than to the general poetry public at large when he committed suicide or was murdered (still undetermined) in 1968 at the age of 26. Reality Jew (1964) (or what it's really like to be the angel of death in Cleveland When i was a little kid my parents never told me i didn't find out until i for our of high school then when they asked me, I ASKED THEM, "Nationality or Religion?" When i was a little kid my parents brought me up as a christian that when i discovered, i was different i wasn't THAT sick! so at sixteen still being a virgin forest i decided i must be a buddhist monk, Then when people asked me I TOLD THEM, i told them "Not me, man, I don't belong to No-thing In the navy a swabby once asked me, if i wanted to go to the temple with him i told him "Not me, man, i'm the last of the full-blooded american indians." it became confusing so after a while when people inquired "Hey...ah...aren...are you?" I answered "with a name like levy, what the hell do you thing i am?" A Ritz Cracker? A flying bathtub? An arab etc. But now it's getting pretty hip to be a jew and some of my best friends are becoming converted to halavah, even the crones who suddenly became World War 2 catholics are now praising bagels and lox i still don't feel on ethnic things like "Ok, so we all niggers so lets hold hands." & "OK, we're all wops so lets support the mafia," & Ok, we're all jews so lets weep on each others shoulders." so now when people smile and say, "Hey, you're one of us," i smile and say, "Fuck you, man, i'm sitll alive."  Here's a poem I wrote early in 2008, after the election, but before Obama took office. Too bad, it seems I was too optimistic about the future. the pan dulce factor my normal breakfast is a kind of Mexican pan dulce called in Texas mojettes and in other places conchas whichever name you pick, they are the same thing, a round sweet bread with a red, yellow, white or brown sugary icing spread irregularly in a kind of waffle pattern on top, the various colors for display only, having no effect on taste I prefer the mojette because like most Mexican sweet breads it has less sugar than the standard gringo pastries, thus increasing the possibility that when the time comes I will die with my feet on with my mojette I read two newspapers, the local and the Times, and drink one medium latte, except, of course, if I’m at Starbucks, I don’t have a medium latte I have a grande latte which is what Starbucks calls a medium latte hoping to get you say to yourself, holy cow, I got a grande latte for the same price as a medium, I’m going to get all my lattes from Starbucks from now on just a trivial example of the reconstruction of language that’s part of our daily life now days, like Bush starting a preemptive war that only preempts the continued living of many Americans and many more Iraqis or the Texas governor’s fast-track plan to build many new coal power plants described as an anti-global warming initiative or the Republican candidates’ plan to get rid of all the Mexicans wherever they may hide labeled immigration reform we’ve had eight years to learn all these tricks and the good news is in less than a year we can forget all about their wordsquat since they’ll be gone the bad news is now we’re going to have to learn all the new democrat wordbarf and who knows what that’s going to be at least however the new brave new world turns out, they’ll still be a few Mexican bakeries left laying out on their shelves every day a 50 cent mojette breakfast available in your favorite of four colors  The next poem is by Jessica Helen Lopez. It's taken from her book, Always Messing with them Boys, published by West End Press in 2011. Lopez is a three-time member of the City of Albuquerque Slam Team and 2008 National Champion UNM Lobo Slam Team. I think this is her first book. Whether it is or not, this book is the first of her's I've seen. I like her work very much and will be looking for the next ones. Beauty Beauty,I can't promise you much but the hard kind of love made soft by my own pair of hands - the splitting of my thighs like the cleft of nectarine and the muted blood of motherhood the early morning of your birth colored the sky a certain shade of rose I will never see again and I labored the whole night away like a lone train in the dark the months you spent inside of me crafted a name - Mia, Mine you were a river that spilled from within born praising Spring you split the air with your cries my body bled announcing your arrival - a dark ribbon inside me, unfolding yielding to your soft coiled body, and my skin was alive with you your father shed his ego on the day you were born and I never saw him so naked and pure I should have known then we were a bit to possessive, calculative, mechanical things the way good parents can be, the way we change, the way the tendrils of our scars wrap around the ankles of our children Beauty, this was years before I became enamored with the fanfare of divorce, before we spoke through lawyers and angry-lipped phone calls before we lost track of you, our mangled voices seeping into the walls of your sleeping bedroom our bent voices brutal to your ears red sickle-shaped words we hurled at one another how we suffer our little children with our flint-rock tongues, how we split hairs over money, the cold bread of the dead I blame him for that knife in the back he brought to our bed, my shameless groveling the secret closet where he choked me while I was nine months swollen with you I blame me all those wrap-around thoughts only a manic depressive knows form my bitter tongue, my acidic love the dumb pretty poems I wrote in the shadow of this sadness I remember the small pale face of my mother and red threats my father's mouth made - their desperate and clumsy attempts towards happiness Beauty, forgive us we were rough-hearted, children-turned-parents young once and in love with the world, we became old so fast - ten shades of grey we fell tumbling and tangled You were conceived in the bluster of a winter desert sand in our eyes, we were two bull-headed lovers who groped for one another in the darkness we held you so we wouldn't have to hold onto our own shapeless loneliness but this is how we get by, right? on a morsel of regret and what we think we know of love - this is how we say we are sorry  A very nice morning unfolding - from last week. I will take pictures today as I was sitting here, day edged away night, light creeping onto the scene like an old dog easing tentatively around shadowed corners the wind blows hard from the north, picking up as light overcomes dark like the sunrise was sucking all the cold from the mountains, blowing against the back of my neck like icy spider toes pushing hard for a leap to the next anchor of their sky bridge to morning light the north wind will ease in an hour or so as the new cool air settles over the city and it will be a bright and lovely day, a bridge, like the spider’s silk construction, between past winter and advancing spring I think I will take pictures today  Next from "the outlaw bible" I have this longer piece by Bob Kaufman. One of thirteen children, Kaufman was born in New Orleans to a respected, high-achieving Black Catholic family. His mother was a school teacher and his father was a Pullman porter and was involved in the creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black union to successfully organize. In 1945, at age eighteen, Kaufman joined the Merchant Marine and became active in the organizing of several overlapping maritime unions. He became an orator for the militantly leftist Seaman's International Union, then was purged from the union in the 1950s when the AFL and the CIO merged in the middle of the time's anti-communists crusades. One of founding architects of the Beat Generation as a literary and historical phenomenon, he was overshadowed for years by white and college-educated contemporaries like Ginsberg and Kerouac. Jail Poems 1 I am sitting in a cell with a view of evil parallels, Waiting thunder to splinter me into a thousand me's. It is not enough to be in one cage with one self; I want to sit opposite every prisoner in every hole Doors roll and bang, every slam a finality, bang! The junkie disappeared into a red noise, stoning out his hell. The odored wino congratulates himself on not smoking. Fingerprints left lying on black inky gravestones, Noises of pain seeping through steel walls crashing Reach my own hurt. I become part of someone forever. Wild accents of criminals are sweeter to me than hum of cops, Bust battening down hatches of human souls; cargo Destined for ports of accusations, harbors of guilt. What do policemen eat, Socrates, still prisoner, old one? 2 Painter, paint me a crazy jail, mad water-color cells Poet, how old is suffering? Write it in yellow lead. To lead through this atmosphere of shrieks and private hells, Entrances and exits, in...out...up...down, the civic seesaw Here - me - now - hear - me - now - always here somehow. 3 In a universe of cells - who is not in jail? Jailers. In a world of hospitals - who is not sick? Doctors. A golden sardine is swimming in my head Oh we know some things, man, about some things LIke jazz and jails and God. Saturday is a good dayt to go to jail. 4 Now they give a new form, quivering jelly-like, That proves any boy can be president of Muscatel. They are mad at him because he's one of Them. Gray-speckled unplanned nakedness; stinking Fingers grasping toilet bowl. Mr. America wants to bathe. Look! On the floor, lying across America's face - A real movie star featured in a million newsreels. What am I doing - feeling compassion? When he comes out of it, he will help kill me. He probably hates living. 5 Nuts, skin bolts, clanking in his stomach, scrambled. His society's gone to pieces in his belly, bloated. See the great American windmill, tilting at itself. Good solid stock, the kind that made America drunk Success written all over his street-streaked ass. Successful-type success, forty home runs in one inning. Stop suffering. Jock, you can't fool us. We know. This is the greatest country in the world, ain't it? He didn't make it Wino in Cell 3. 6 There have been too many years in this shot span of time. My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god; Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing In this dark plastic jungle, land of long night, chilled. My navel is a button to push when I want inside out. Am I not more than a mass of entrails and rough tissue? Must I break my bones? Drink my wine-diluted blood? Should I dredge old sadness from my chest? Not again. All those ancient balls of fire, hotly swallowed, let them lie. Let me spit breath mists of introspection, bits of me, So that when I am gone, I shall be in the air. 7 Someone whom I am is no one. Something I have done is nothing. Someplace I have been in nowhere. I am not me. What of the answers I must find questions for? All these strange streets I must find cities for, Thank God for beatniks. 8 All night the stink of rotting people. Fumes rising from pyres of live men, Fill my nose with gassy disgust, Drown my exposed eyes in tears. 9 Traveling God salesmen, bursting my ear drum With the fullest part of a good sexy book, Impatient for MOnday and adding machines. 10 Yellow-eyed dogs whistling in evening. 11 The baby came to jail today. 12 One more day to hell, filled with floating glands. 13 The jail, a huge hollow metal cube Hanging from the moon b y a silver chain. Someday Johnny Appleseed is going to chop it down. 14 Three long strings of light Braided into a ray. 15 I am apprehensive about my future; My past has turned its back on me. 16 Shadows I see, forming on the wall, Pictures of desires protected from my own eyes. 17 After spending all night constructing a dream, Morning came and blinded me with light. Now I seek among mountains of crushed eggshells For the God damned dream I never wanted. 18 Sitting here writing things on paper, Instead of sticking the pencil into the air. 19 The Battle of Monumental Failures raging, Both hoping for a good clean loss. 20 Now I see the night, silently overwhelming day. 21 Caught in imaginary webs of conscience, I weep over my acts, yet believe. 22 Cities should be built on one side of the street. 23 People who can't cast shadows Never die of freckles. 24 The end always comes last. 25 We sat at a corner table, Devouring each other word by word. Until nothing was left, repulsive skeletons. 26 I sit here writing, not daring to stop, For fear of seeing what's outside my head. 27 There, Jesus, didn't hurt a bit, did it? 28 I am afraid to follow my flesh over those narrow Wide hard soft female beds, but I do. 29 Link by link, we forged the chain. Then, discovering the end around our necks, We bugged out. 30 I have never seen a wild poetic loaf of bread, But if I did, I would eat it, crust and all. 31 From how many years away does a baby come? 32 Universality, duality, totality....one 33 The defective on the floor mumbling, Was once a man who shouted across tables. 34 Come, help flatten a raindrop. Written in San Francisco City Prison Cell 3, 1959  Happy Birthday to me. this day, being 68th anniversary of my birth, I’m taking extra time to ponder over the perfect, appropriate, and not unnecessarily gloomy poem to mark the occasion paradoxical in a way, since taking time is the one most rapidly diminishing luxury that accompanies the being of 68 years of venerable or at least not too ill-reputable age time, that thing which flashes as it passes (never crawling no is it did through years of my lesser, school- going age) being the thing everyone wants more of, the thing that even bored- to-the-gills people want more of, even though it would seem bored-to-the-gills types might want less of it, but it seems there is no life so boring that the bored want less of it, it being the un-bored, lives filled with non-boring trial and tribulation, who seek to escape it’s daily, hourly, moment by moment bite, leading one, perhaps, to the conclusion that instead of suicide, we should council those so distressed to seek a higher grade of boredom to make their life seem more worth living, maybe daily consecutive hours of afternoon TV like hour after hour of "Wheel of Fortune" or Wolf Blitzer relating the latest celebrity news without break but I digress on this my 68th birthday I am not bored nor am I distressed, though disappointed maybe, that I am required to be such an age before I have completely finished being 16, which, though I have been working on it now for 52 years, is not quite done the way I’d like to see it done for there is that cheerleader, old as wizened as she now must be, who occupies the more interesting corners of my dream world, a project never completed in real life and not even now in my dreams I expect a new outbreak of pimples any minute, symptom now as then of my unrequited romantic ambitions nothing every really changes, I guess, no matter how many years you add to the tally  Here are two poems by Bobby Byrd, from his book On the Transmigration of Souls in El Paso, published by Cinco Puntos Press in 1992. Byrd, a poet, essayist and publisher, grew up in Memphis,Tennessee during the golden age of that city’s music. In 1963 he went to Tucson where he attended the University of Arizona. Since then he has lived in the American Southwest. In 1978 he and his wife, novelist Lee Merrill Byrd, moved to El Paso. The city and the border region has become their home. He is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the NEA, a D.H. Lawrence fellowship, and an international fellowship to study in Mexico. In addition to this book, he is the author of numerous books of poetry including Pomegranates, Get Some Fuses for the House, The Price of Doing Business in Mexico, and his most recent, White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits & Pieces of Love. He and his wife are publishers and owners of Cinco Puntos Press. In 2005 they received the Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom. A Brief Description of What Goes On in Streater's Pub on Galveston Island "Now we can live in hope." - the father of Anne Frank The Nazis banged on the door. They came to get Anne Frank, innocent girl, who, holding onto her boy friend and looking up to the sky, said "I think the world is going thru a phase It'll pass." but Beverly the Barkeep asked Henry, the one with the toothache, what about the red snapper that Al caught that afternoon? "He forgot to put it on ice until just an hour ago," she said. "Does it stink yet, you know, that sort of sweet smelling fishy stink?" Henry asked and winked at me. It was some kind of dirty joke. I sucked at my Lone Star Longneck and smiled at Henry like I knew exactly what he was talking about. Anne Frank had already disappeared. they didn't show the Nazis breaking in and muttering - filthy fucking jews dirty asshole kikes. Henry said that the best way to cook snapper is to lay it in a pan and cut a big X in its side, then stuff the cuts with hunks of garlic and butter, pepper it up real good, maybe some Louisiana Hot Sauce and bake it until it's good and done. "Oh, it's so good that way," he told Beverly who had an icepick in her hand. the the fat woman from Chicago a real goddess still fresh and damp from swimming in the warm ocean, wanted me to understand precisely about the synchronicity of Streaters Pub so she bummed two quarters and played Janis Joplin on the jukebox. This fat woman, suddenly the muse that she had become wore a blue beach towel for a skirt and a red halter in which her enormous breasts like globes hung. She looked at me and laughed. "Don't worry, Buddy, I'm not going to screw you," she said. rolling her giant hips while dead Janis burst out - Freedom is just another word for nothing else to lose. This Poem I'll Sell for $100 I went to a party last night. Carol the old lady anthropologist told me that she was heading for Brazil, the rain forests on the amazon before they're gone forever - in fact, before we're all gone forever - she wants to meet the perfect man, she wants to get laid, she wants the darkness of the jungle. Mosquitos and sweat she can live with as long as the natives don't steal her teeth. I poured her another glass of red wine. I poured myself one. My buddy Richard, meanwhile, was selling art to the highest bidder, some black and white monoprints of the dry desert world disappearing into the wilderness of pure rock, the stems and roots of mesquite trees, an apocalyptic wind blowing bitter cold into our collective faces. God hides out in such places. I wanted to cry out, but Richard had a smile on his face. He put his arm around my shoulders. He gave me a big Jewish kiss. He told me not to worry. He said, Money is okay if you know what to do with it. Work is okay if you know what to do with it. I went home at eleven o'clock, I wanted to get up early and write some poems, but Carol and Richard stayed drinking the red wine. The told me that after I left they were going to break out the expensive stuff.  This is another poem from 2008, this one from February. The drought we hope we have just broken was on the horizon, but we didn't know it yet. doodlebug dust we started the day with a promise of rain, squalls blown in off the gulf as tropic currents blew northwest, but west texas winds pushed back and rain that should have been ours hugged the coast, going northeast instead, soaking Corpus Christi Bay, Mustang Island and all the little shrimping towns, all the boats secured against the weather in little harbor coves, then swinging along the coastal arc past Port Lavaca to Galveston where the pirate Lafitte took his winter rest, spreading a few miles inland to clean rinse the stink of Houston smog and beyond, all the way to Louisiana and, finally, sometime tonight to dampen some fallow cotton field in Mississippi after a wet summer and fall that turned our brown hills green, letting us forget for a while the truth of where we live, there has been no rain beyond the early mists that soften some mornings, sometimes till mid-day with no real rain, the ground hardens like the caliche only inches below the surface, then breaks down into a fine dust, doodlebug dust, where you can see the inverted cones the little insects made in their burrowing, for what purpose I have never known for sure but suspect it has something to do with finding relief from heat in the arms of cool dark earth below the surface instead of rain, the sun was out this afternoon and warm and like the doodlebugs I've burrowed into my little air conditioned nest to wait it out  Next, I have several shorter poems from the outlaw anthology. The first of the poems is by poet, songwriter, singer Patti Smith Notebook I keep trying to figure out what it means to be american. When I look in myself I see arabia, venus, nineteenth-century french but I can't recognize what makes me american. I think about Robert Frank's photographs - broke down jukeboxes in gallup, new mexico... swaying hips and spurs...ponytails and syphilitic cowpokes. I thinking about a red, white and blue rag I wrap around my pillow. Maybe it's nothing material maybe it's just being free. Freedom is a waterfall, is pacing linoleum till dawn, is the right to write the wrong words. and I done plenty of that... This poem is by Frank T. Rios, author of seven books of poetry and recipient of the Joya C. Penobscot Award and the Tombstone Award for poetry in 1988. From the Bronx, he became a part of the beat scene in the 1950s. Invocation My muse burns a holy candle to the nite as she lies quiet in the other room the space between us a mystery like walking on air what I know fits in my closed hand the rest a vision & my muse guiding me The next poet is George Tsongas. All the book has to say about Tsongas is that he lives in San Francisco. The States It's an amazing place, where no one enjoys life but they all want to live forever And also from the anthology, Paul Landry, a North Beach poet who composed his poems by hand set letterpress. Displaced Poet I go to the country and while there I can't write about trees or turnips. Sunlight seems like a steel car falling off a hill. Trees? What names should I give to these girls in green dresses prom queens who will never know I exist at the edge of their gowns? I go nowhere going out of my mind. And the city arrives. And the city sits down and the city wants the country to serve tea and pork chops simple as that unconfused green light already shining on top of the hill.  A report on a happy occasion last week. big dinner last night, with family, eleven of us gathered around bar-b-que brisket - chicken - sausage, creamed corn, potato salad, Dee's special arroz y boracho beans, tortillas (flour and corn), wine for those that do that, ice tea for me and the youngest, my niece, 18, on the glide path from high school to the next step, trying to choose from among the several colleges that want to give her money to join them in educational adventure - the ocassion of the event, multiple, my birthday, my son's birthday (29) and our anniversary (35), all occuring within the space of a week, celebrating done all at once - a good time had by all, the dinner, boisterous family discussion over cake and three rounds of Scattagories, the game, with my son and my two nephews at the table, all about the same age and fierce competitors, gladiators for the cause of supremacy, a Roman Circus around the just cleared table... by far, the oldest at the table, i try, in the midst of the circus to pass on some of my age-earned wisdom about life and it's meaning, especially to the new generation of my son and his cousins and find that everyone at the table is more interested in the gathering up their own earned-wisdom than in listening to mine and I'm not telling it too well any way, so I let it pass, simplify it as best i can by telling to look around the table and see in the gathering a successful life assembled through patience and living not alone and apart, but in the folds of family, so that whatever the unwrapping of their life might bring, whatever thorny or sylvan path they follow, there will be always someone walking with them, always someone to pull the thorns, always someone to share the sunrises and meadow flowers, whichever comes as all will come in its time live not alone, is the simple message, face life with love as your constant and never under-valued companion  Here are two poems by Dennis Cooper. The poems are from his book Idols, published by Amethyst Press in 1989. Cooper, born in 1953 in Pasadena, California, is a novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is direct and explicit about his homosexuality in his poetry, to the point that I was very selective in which of his poems to use. It's not the homosexuality that concerns me, but his near pornographic, artful to be sure, use of sex as a motif. Concerned that I might offend many "Here and Now" readers, I have chosen to stay on the more bland side of his work. If you want more, check out the book. First Sex This isn't it. I thought it would be like having a boned pillow. I saw myself turning over and over in lust like sheets in a dryer. My style was reckless, wood dry. Other than mine there were little or no arms. I would whisper anything into an implied ear and praise would rise like a colorless, scentless gas. Then I would breathe to sleep. But my lover moves. And my lips grow numb as rubber before I capture half the ass that roselike Atlantis from my dreams. I try to get his shoulder blade between my teeth. He complains, pillow in his mouth. Doesn't mean it. Means it. He rolls onto his back, race raw and wet as fat, like it has been shaken from nightmares. I don't know how to please this face. Tomorrow when he has made breakfast and gone, I will sweep the mound of porno from my closet, put a match to its lies. I will wait in my bed as I did before, a thought ajar, and sex will slip into my room like a white tiger. Ed Hong When they snapped his picture he was on LSD and flunking everything. You would have said: "beautiful loser, good for a rape and an O.D." You would have jerked-off once and been done with him. His friends did. But you should have seen him when a Christian smile licked these lips. Four months after this photo his fists softened like swallowed pills. His harangue calmed to lectures, the Word, the Book tucked in an underarm. Hair fell to his shoulders and filled with hands, girls', friends', parents', God's. We let him blather about love, a world one thought beyond us, the day we would float. We didn't argue or contradict. His chin rose like the hour hand. We listened. We let him have whatever made him this way and this good.  Really need to be careful who I talk to. Lots of strange characters out there. I spoke to God last night and this is what he had to say: believe none who claim to speak to me, he said, for it is only my evil twin with whom they converse and he is devious and untrustworthy, a mighty tempter bringing not truth, but merely arrogance and false pride… holy men, ayatollahs of every stripe, priests, preachers, popes, politicians - I speak to none of them for they would exploit my word for power for they are not worthy of either power or my word… listen to the meadow, instead, said he who is empowered to create poetic cliché, listen to the rising setting sun, to the full moon high overhead, to the clouds and the wind that moves them, to the exploited, murdered to extinction animals that I created and that those who claim my power claim the right to destroy (they will feel the heat of true destruction some day, death and fire and brimstone they know not the least of but will someday be taught by my angels of retribution - those who in this world usurp my word and spirit will know someday the fact of my indignation and all it contains for I am the meanest toughest, most unforgiving sonuvabitch in the hood to those who mock me and demean me through false claims of intimacy with my intentions and interests and they will be so properly instructed) so don’t be standing too close to such poseurs and imposters, is all I’m saying, their time is coming stand apart listen instead to the truth that is all around you in the world I made (and, by the way, I made it for my own enjoyment, not for you, so don’t get too full of yourself, for I am after all, God, better even than the elephants that I also made at not forgetting)… that what he told me, anyway and though I’ll admit I was a little surprised to get the call, I thought I should pass it on  The next poem from the outlaw anthology is by David Gollub, editor of Bullhorn,described as "the official poetry broadside of the Barbarians." As for Us As night falls like a blade we are seated on benches again goggling at each other; lenses bend our eyes crutches of light Hair streams out of our heads like smoke of thoughts from brains on fire; our faces get stretched to caricature each in the other's mirror, finding each other sweating on the spot, forced to dot dark exclamations even before we speak. Rage stretches the rein we keep on our voices taut near to breaking, as if our very words were horses lacerated toward a stampede into chaos, desperate to shed their meanings, pulling the thunder of those empty wagons over badlands with even more panicked resentment. Whose symptom is it, that unrelenting spur? Look at the world, people starve, and receive from those with food in houses and hands in pockets warm smiles. Cruelty not even for pleasure, pleasure is punished. Look at us: drunk, furious, with a strong back suddenly broken, with a twisted leg, with muscles rotting on green bones, drug-sick, rule-sick, work-sick, 86'd, homeless, hungry,horny,choked in bed by the intolerable burden of another body's muscular love, choked in the dust of the blossoming acacia, longing for love and frightened of it, wheezing, sad, pissed off, broke. Delivering ourself the last wound with knife, spike,prick,sharp sorrow just to be on the side of the sharp sorrow that seems always to win. Look at us, each with the identification badge of a conspicuous personally tailored mortal wound held closed by enchantment.  A little bit of musing from the latter part of 2008. We do seek to justify ourselves, don't we. is poetry necessary? i wrote two poems yesterday which makes this poem unnecessary under my poem a day regimen but then is any poem necessary and i think at first well no you cannot eat a poem you cannot drink a poem you cannot hold a poem over your head as shelter from a storm you cannot from a poem make a club to beat back those who would do you harm and i think again poetry - for what purpose poetry? survival? lizards survive cockroaches survive so what is necessary for us to survive that goes beyond survival needs of lizards and cockroaches and i think of our first poets the shaman the witch doctor the monk the priest the rabbi the imam or whatever you choose to call those poets of the soul those poets of memory and history and myth these creators of humanity who made us more than the lizard or the cockroach or any of the lesser beasts who while they have their own spark have not the fire of humanity and decide that while this poem may be unnecessary poetry is not  Next, I have three poems by Dilruba Ahmed, from her book, Dhaka Dust, published in 2011 by Graywolf Press. Ahmed, with roots in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Bangladesh, holds degrees in Creative Writing and Instruction and Learning from the University of Pittsburgh and is a graduate of Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers. She is winner of a Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize for Poetry awarded by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. I begin with her book's title poem. Dhaka Dust Can't occupy the same space at the same time unless, of course, you land in Dhaka, rickshaws five or six abreast. They are all here: studded metal backboards ablaze with red flowers, Heineken boxes, a Bangladeshi star with blue eyes, peacocks, pink fans of filigree. The drivers sweat and strain in their plaid lungis, and each face seems to say Allah takes and Allah gives. A woman breathes into her green shawl against the dust on the road's median. A man with a plaid scarf (surplus from The Gap) slaps the rump of a passing gray car as thought it's a horse or a dog. You are there, too, you maroon sleeves begin to stick despite your deodorant. Under your orna, a laminated map and digital camera cradled in your lap. One strand of silver wiry by your ear. Bits of children's songs snag in your windpipe. Other words surface: sweatshop and abject poverty, and you let them. They mix with the low rumbling that began on the plane, ms and bs tumbling, amplified in the streets: the rickshaw bells' light metal, the nasal peal of horns. On this continent, the ocean's giant tongue has swept away miles of coastline, and bodies flood the water. Dust sifts into your longs and sinks - feline, black, to remain long after your leave. Southeastern Ohio In stuffy gyms that passed for mosques, my sisters and I parroted words without grace Allah hu akbar. Salaam alaikum. then the prayer-song broke and we mimicked instead lyrics thrumming from somebody's Walkman: I want your sex. The station wagon crawled from house to house where driveways spilled with brown kids, where a friend flashed herr thabees as though casting a hex. In another country we'd have fasted and fasted in a month of sunset meals,wearing gifts of new dresses. Instead, I took salt in my mouth with our neighbors, brothers from Egypt who passed the ball and dribbled and spit all month on the court, avoiding their own saliva. Fable Soon, I will arrive at a house aglow with lights and an endless meal, plate after steaming plate to feed all who enter. And if my feet are muddy, my hands cold; if I have stumbled, as I will tell you,now, I have stumbled - with my faith returned to me like a pouch of broken bones - I hound my face among the villagers. I haven't walked here alone. And now the night holds my name in the thicket, the sky the ribbed scales of a fish, phosphorescent, backlit. Behind the house, I'm told, there's a river full of minnows, now drawn together, now drawn apart. Beyond that is a woods dark enough for disappearing, and at each root, a dirt soft enough to knead.  Here's another of my pieces from 2008. Sunday breakfast at IHOP from the booth behind me a voice with youthful lilt and a full and jolly laugh that turns heads, including mine, to see an old man sharp-nosed with trembling fingers, and liver spots on his bald shining head, wearing a porky pig tie that matches his laugh, holding the pale, still hand a dead-faced woman in a wheel chair beside him  Next, I have two more short poems from the anthology. The first poem is by Jack Wiler. The book provides no information on Wiler beyond his poem. It's About the End of the World Stupid I always seen the hills of Persia as brown and fading. the processions winding through the streets of Moscow The crack of gunfire in Sarajevo The sound of Allen Ginsberg's voice in the cobbled rooks of Prague. I'm putting on the veil. I'm remembering my place. I'm thinking of jobs long neglected. I watching for signs. Fractals dancing in the hills. Whirling Sufis Singing all the praises to the lord Transfigured melting We've lit the last big Roman Candle It's late on the Fourth of July We're turning out the lights Come inside while you still can. The next poem is by Klipchutz, a San Francisco poet and songwriter. america I want all the women all the money and all the fun I want every rainbow all the marbles and a personalized introduction to God I want a death list transparent skin and a cat with no fur I want everything I have nothing I will negotiate Next, a little piece of fun by Joe Brainard, an artist born in 1942 in Arkansas and raised in Oklahoma. In 1961, after a few months of study at the Dayton Art Institute, he moved to New York and had his first solo exhibition of his work in 1965. From there he went on to many other successful shows, as well as designing sets and costumes for theater and covers for a number of poetry books and magazines. Also a writer, he published a number of books. He died in 1994. Art Looking through a book of drawings by Holbein I realized several moments of truth. A nose (a line) so nose-like. So line-like. And then I think to myself "so what?" It's not going to solve any of my problems. And then I realized that at that very moment of appreciation I had no problems. Then I decided that this is a pretty profound thought. And that I ought to write it down. This is what I have just done. But it doesn't sound so profound anymore. That's art for you. And here's another little piece of fun; this one by Hal Sirowitz. Thursday Night in the Park From this distance I couldn't tell whether he was kissing her or just taking a bite out of her pizza.  Radio brings back fond memories. tussling with "Tannhauser" tussling with “Tannhauser” driving to my coffee house yesterday afternoon, some very boring thing on NPR drove me to the classical music station in time for Wagner’s most sublime, his overture to “Tannhauser,” listening in the car, transfixed, the repeated refrain, the sweet cry of French horns, then passing around the orchestra, through the low brass and back around to French horns before slipping down the register to where the low brass arrives for the final say, huge and ponderous, like the earth turning slowly on its axis, the grandeur of the planet’s regal orbit, thunderous grieving as it seems to tear itself apart, where it splits atwain, its howling, fiery core released with a roar like the universal fundament breaking… slipping then again to the dark side of the moon… and I am transported to a time more than fifty years past when those of us in the bass section looked forward every year to the chance to play the piece again because it was one of the few times we were given official sanction to “blow our guts out” and we did and, by God, I wish I could have that much fun again today  Finally, from my library, I have the title poem by Susana H. Case, from her book, The Cost of Heat, published by Pecan Grove Press in 2010. Case was born in New York City and is a professor at the New York Institute of Technology. She has published widely in many poetry journals. The Cost of Heat What I'm surprised to miss: cramps, the fusty smell. Men who pull away in prissiness are not worth loving. Love draws gore. Despite the blood, the sweat, the tears - in their thick, you never pulled away. Leach of us a fountain. In the bathroom, you try to quell fierce bleeding from a cut on your thumb. A sharp widget on the radiator fiddled with because the room I work in is so cold. Not as chilly as the ground: we'll lay down together in the cold cold ground. Each leaking gap contains surprisingly good color for lips and nails and ambivalence at the inevitability of blood's drying.  Here's a last piece from 2008. on reading “ Cow” by Federico Garcia Lorca i am reminded of how often i worry about the meat i eat, not because i’m a vegetarian or because i think it is necessarily immoral to eat other creatures but because of the way these other creatures come to become an entree on my plate if you’ve ever been to a slaughter house, you know what i mean no respect for the life being taken and in the end no respect for the life being eaten so if i continue to eat meat which i almost certainly will continue to do i will endeavor to remind myself of the creature whose living essence sustains me no more hamburgers for me from now on when i go to McDonald’s it’ll be ground cow on a bun to go no more BLT instead lettuce and tomato on toast with mayo and crispy slices of pig chickens never got enough respect for us to disrespect them so we eat up our chicken breast without thinking much about it i haven’t decided yet how to deal with that possibly breast of feathered fowl or maybe leg of feathered fowl dusted with secret spices and fried crispy will have to think a bit more about chickens i think  And, finally, this final piece from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, the final poem in the book is by the outlaws' preeminent hero, Walt Whitman. It is the editors' end note, a final tribute to outlaws past and an entreaty to outlaws not yet known. Poets to Come Poets to come, orators, singers, musicians to come! Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for. But you, a new brood, native, athletic,continental,greater than before known. Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who saunters along without fully stopping, turns a casual look to you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.  Suburban angst - from last week. green looking at my back yard, thinking of last summer the drought, bare dirt everywhere now, a fair winter of rain, and weeds are mid-calf high, some kind of sticky vine in the flower beds, easy to pull up but even the smallest sprig left behind spreads again in a day or two like sin on a Saturday night but it’s all very green, hugely greenly green and if you squint your eyes all you see is the verdant expanse of green life is often like that, sometimes you just have to squint your eyes and take what you can get  The end, and the usual stuff - everything belongs to who made it; my stuff to, but you can have it if you properly credit "Here and Now" and me. I'm allen itz, owner of producer of this blog, and merchant of books fine and dandy. Like these: "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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