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Odds & Ends in Black & White
Monday, February 13, 2012 I'm giving special attention to William Carlos Williams this week, presenting a number of his poems, both late and early. Photos this week are as described in the title, odds and ends in black and white. Here are my poets The Sunbathers Poem Nantucket This is Just to Say Me yea for spandex Alberto Rios Teodoro Luna’s Two Kisses Marvella, for Borrowing Me mama kitty William Carlos Williams At the Faucet of June Me more about skin From Voices of Light Sappho Eros Sisupacala Sisupacala Speaks with Mara Govindasvamin Holy sixth day Anonymous Sanskrit songs When he comes back My husband He who stole my virginity Praxilla Light and Earth Me the world turned upside-down William Carlos Williams The Arrival Blueflags Me a sullen sun raulsalinas (Autumn Sun) Cedar Woman Poem Song of a Sad Lover Me I’m gonna make it to the big time William Carlos Williams Dedication for a Plot of Ground Me thinking Walt Whitman From Song of the Broad-Ax Me green pastures William Carlos Williams Apology Pastoral Me alive, alive-o Michael Earl Craig Poem Notes to Self Peace Advice for the Poet Me license to carry Debbie Kirk Don’t Read This Poem Iris Berry Ode to Sammy Glick Cynthia Ruth Lewis The Makings of a Serial Killer Misty Rainwater-Lites Gone Me before her fifteen minutes William Carlos Williams The Bare Tree The Manoeuvre Hard Times Song The Horse Sonnet in Search of an Author Me worn and worn out  I start this week with William Carlos Williams, and will return to him several times through the post. The poems I will use are from the collection, Selected Poems, published 1985 by New Directions. Williams, with Whitman, are the two foundational pillars of modern American poetry, with influence beyond their own shores. Whitman, is the poet of the long view, of forever times, past, present, and future; Williams, the poet of the moment, the immediate right now and the immediate right here. The Sun Bathers A tramp thawing out on a doorstep against an east wall Nov. 1, 1933: a young man begrimed and in an old army coat wiggling and scratching while a fat negress in a yellow-house window nearby leans out and yawns into the fine weather Poem As the cat climbed over the top of the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the pit of the empty flowerpot Nantucket flowers through the window lavender and yellow changed by white curtains - Smell of cleanliness - Sunshine of late afternoon - On the glass tray a glass pitcher, the tumbler turned down, by which a key is lying - And the Immaculate white bed And this, probably his second most well-known poem This Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold  Written last week, a shout out for modern chemistry. yea for spandex I’m sorry ladies, but being a lover of beauty I say let’s hear it for spandex when properly applied to nether parts a dream walking that takes me away with the artful pleasure of a human body in its unencumbered beauty well-bundled buttocks with knee-high boots a sign of natural beauty living and of winter’s onset in these parts and those parts properly showcased in a cloth like skin (and I really do like skin - all skin, even my own skin, because it seems such a natural all-weather covering and, youthfully smooth or aged like fine whiskey in a oaken barrel, beautiful as well) so don’t be offended cause I’d surely like your skin too and by gosh if you want to wear boots and stretch pants I’ll pull out one of my old muscle shirts and say yea you and yea me and neither of us need inquire as to further de- tails for the live, moving body of any creature, feathered, furred, or thin-skinned like you and me is the beauty from which all art is born, and, by the way, yea also for the fact that male underwear models are now allowed to have something in their briefs that Ken can only wish for (poor Barbie)  Next, I have two poems by Alberto Rios from his book, Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses, published in 1990 by W.W. Norton. Ríos, born 1952 in Nogales, Arizona, is author of nine books and chapbooks of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. He is a Regents' professor of English at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. His work is regularly taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance to both classical and popular music. I start with the title poem to his book. Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses Mr. Teodoro Luna in his later years had taken to kissing Hi wife Not so much with his lips as with his brows. This is not to say he put his forehead Against her mouth - Rather, he would lift his eyebrows, once, quickly: Not so vigorously he might be confused with the villain Famous in the theaters, but not so little as to be thought A slight movement, one of accident. This way He kissed her Often and quietly, across tables and through doorways, Sometimes in photographs, and so through the years themselves. This was his passion, that only she might see. The chance He might feel some movement on her lips Toward laughter. Marvella, for Borrowing 1. Lately in her full arms I had felt the things That would not go, the hands: She had gathered to herself Some part of all the fingers Of all of the men who had Touched here there, Florencio, His road fingers like past winter gloves, Caetano who was matches, Cesar, who could only see By his fingers, and how hard He had looked,all the many hours For a finger to be an eye, And then the sadness. 2. Lately in her arms The fullness was everything, All those fingers All over me, at first Feeling like desire. But it was with those vast arms As well that she flew, the way the fingers of a man Cannot stop, and so they suspended her Better than the new engines. I have seen her hovering with those monstrous arms at the window, I have seen her Though I have tried To shield my eyes: Too quickly I made the gesture In the old way As if I myself still had hands. 3. And this is just one thing, Because the men touched her with everything. And their eyes, those wee the heaviest Of all she was made to carry. The eyes and what those eyes Desired to see on her. So that under her clothes Through the years she grew Half-wings, the small tail with feathers, Breasts as big as elephant buttocks. 4. And the men grew thinner Because they looked so hard, and each long whistle they made Rudely was one inch too much of the rooster soul. Those noises became indentations under clothes, Spaces in place of protrusions; Marvella in her turn Became with so many appendages A hundred men. I watched in the window suspended and then flying, with her fat and old arms And her half-wings, Taking me with her as well, everything Save the kindness of having left In memory of a particular morning These eyes and this mouth.  I like cats, enjoy their independence and arrogance, hard to win over (the process not for the impatient), but once won, true and affectionate friends. I'm still working on the cat below. mama kitty mama kitty does not believe in humans touching cats in fact does not believe that perfect felines like her should be touched at all without written invitation still she sits on my front porch every morning, watching the door, perfect black paws primly placed together on the floor, lined up like GI Joe’s shoes along the edge of his bed, desert combat boots, jungle combat boots, mountain combat boots, swamp combat boots, fluffy bunny houseshoe boots all aligned for immediate use as appropriate she (back to the cat now) waits outside my front door every morning to be fed, waiting, a space away, for me to deposit the food and withdraw, always, like in a church school boy-girl dance, the required eleven inch distance between my hand and her nose, the separation of species in which she firmly believes as both a natural law and an expression of appropriate etiquette between lower and higher orders of beings, she the queen, me the faithful serf, bringing the day’s harvest for her persnicketious inspection and consumption… but I endure the serfdom, the denigration of my status as bread-winner of the relationship, laboring daily to bring home the kibble while she lounges in the sun, so beautifully regal, sipping mineral water, stretching a shapely paw occasionally to reach her box of chocolate-covered-mousie- bonbons… I’ve loved women like this (none of whom shall be named here) intensely devoted cat lovers, each and every one, teacher and pupil, never too far each from the other  Here's more from the good Doctor Williams. At the Faucet of June The sunlight in a yellow plaque upon the varnished floor is full of a song inflated to fifty pounds pressure at the faucet of June that rings the triangle of the air pulling at the anemones in Persephone's cow pasture - When from among the steel rocks leaps J.P.M. who enjoyed extraordinary privileges among virginity to solve the core of whirling fly wheels by cutting the Gordian knot with a Veronese or perhaps a Rubens - whose cars are about the finest on the market today - And so it comes to motor cars which is the son leaving off the g of sunlight and grass - Impossible to say, impossible to underestimate - wind, earthquakes in Manchuria, a partridge from dry leaves.  The subject came up in an earlier poem. more about skin it’s not just the bag you carry yourself around in - it is an essential organ, the wrap that holds together all the requisite parts in all their proper places, gatherer and processor of the natural sun-baked nutrients every body needs - it is a sociological and cultural mark of genetic geography, dark or light, a mark of long-dust ancestral origin, less so now in the modern world of connectivity in all things, a melding of skin to the universal tone of coconut butter-swirl; it is a tactile and visual affirmation of the essential elements of art and pleasure that affirm us, the soft slide of skin on skin in moments of passion, the round curve of a woman’s breasts and ass, the probe of a nipple aroused in a moment of anticipation, the impatient skyward thrust of an erect penis, the tender pleasure as your fingers caress a baby’s cheek, the rough hard calluses of a cowboy’s hand, the soft tickle of pasture grass on bare feet, the pain sometimes of parts abused or inflicted, such pain as important to the pleasure of skin as all the softer sensations - many things is skin, soft and smooth or hard and rough, the most human of all beauty, much more than the bag we carry ourselves around in  Now I have poets from the anthology Voices of Light, with the very long subtitle, "Spiritual and Visionary Poems by Women Around the World from Ancient Sumeria to Now." I'm sticking to the ancients this week, beginning with Sappho. Eros Now in my heart I see clearly a beautiful face shining, etched by love Translated by Willis Barnstone Next a poem by Sisupacala. Living some time during the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE, she was one o four children of a brahman. She converted to Buddhism and wrote poems. Like her sister nuns,she wrote, or her songs wsere recorded, in Pali, a northern version of Sanskrit. Sisupacala Speaks with Mara Mara interrupts: Don't forget where you've been before,those other lives you led in bittersweet realm - animals, demons, pretas your friends , companions - Think about it, long for it (he whispers in her ear) Yearn again for the Kamaloka and the seductive beauty of of the dark gods who rule in shadow and the blissed-out gods who rule the day They'll take you, caress your naked body... She: Stop, Mara Don't you know those gods go from birth to death to birth to death again again, become this, become that You know the Kamaloka stinks with lust I tell you the world is blazing, blazing the whole world's in flames I tell you it's flared up the world is shaken your words are shaken the whole world's ablaze! Translated by Andrew Schelling and Anne Waldman Now here's this by Govindasvamin. Nothing is know about her except that she lived sometime between 500 BCE and 1000 CE (maybe). It's hard to judge 2,000 year old humor, but I think this is funny and also think it was meant to be. Holy sixth day Holy sixth day in the woods they worship the trees then then my heart beat hard at how far I was going into the woods a snake appeared in front of me and I fell down I started writhing and rolling this way and that way my dress fell off my hair burned along my back thorns scratched me everywhere suddenly who am I who was I how I love these celebrations (Translated by W.S. Merwin and Moussaieff Masson Here are some anonymous sanskrit songs, from about the same period as the preceding poet. When he comes back When he comes back to my arms I'll make him feel what nobody ever felt everywhere me vanishing into him like water into the clay of a new jar My husband My husband before leaving on a journey is still in the house speaking to the gods and already separation is climbing like bad monkeys to the window He who stole my virginity He who stole my virginity is the same man I am married to and these are the same spring nights and this is the same moment the jasmine's opening with winds just coming of age carrying the scent of its flowers mingled with pollen from Kadamba trees to wake desire in its nakedness I am no different yet I long with my heart for the delicate love-making back there under the dense cane-trees by the bank of the river Namanda in the Vindhya mountains (Translated by W.S. Merwin and Moussaieff Masson And, finally, from the anthology, this short piece by Praxilla from Argolid circa 5th century BCE. The few fragments of her work that survived the ages did so because hostile critics cited them to show "the nonsense" in her poetry, or, as Zenobios fumed, "only a simpleton would put cucumbers and the like on a par with the sun and the moon." He who laughs last, etc.... Light and Earth Most beautiful of things I have left is sunlight. Then come glazing stars and the moon's face. then ripe cucumbers and apples and pears. Translated by Willis Barnstone)  A little musing as the rain falls outside my breakfast window. the world turned upside-down the world turned upside-down on the wet parking lot payment amid flattened flashes of passing trucks and buses and twelve-year-old Buicks belching carbon particulates oh dinosaur friend of mine oh ancient tree and brush and flower of mine how good it is to see you again returned to this world you left behind so many millions of years ago, returned now you are revenge on your mind meanwhile in the non-ancient world of right-this-minute the mousey guy with grey hair and grey Thomas Dewey moustache and shirt and tie and Mr. Rogers sweater has taken his regular place which is standing at the hostess station waiting to be directed to his regular place by the window - never goes there without being directed, always waits every morning to be directed to his booth like the Great Grand Duke Fitzwillie being announced at the Royal Ball - so unsure I suppose that he dare not move without direction - that’s not me, if I know where I want to go I go and everyone else can either let me go on alone, lead me from behind or just fuck off begging for permission or asking for forgiveness I’d rather have something in my life worthy of forgiveness because the world’s upside-down out there with flat-streaming buses and trucks and 12-year-old Buicks belching dinosaur dust and if I don’t do something about it who should I be waiting for to stand up to the task the Great Grand Duke Fitzwillie I don’t think so so lead follow or etcetera etcetera (instead of that impolite word again) I’ve got places to go things to do  Williams, again. Arrival And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom - feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...! Blueflags I stopped the car to let the children down where the streets end in the sun at the marsh edge and the reeds begin and there are small houses facing the reeds and the blue mist in the distance with grapevine trellises with grape clusters small as strawberries on the vines and ditches running springwater that continue the gutters with willows over them. The reeds begin like water at a shore their pointed petals waving dark green and light. But blueflags are blossoming in the reeds which the children pluck chattering in the reeds high over their heads which they part with bare arms to appear with fists of flowers till in the air there comes the smell of calamus from wet, gummy stalks.  I wrote this one last week, on a really ugly nasty Saturday morning. a sullen sun a sullen sun rises through urine-yellow mist fog slithering through high grasses, winding around wet-hanging trees like a snake in the garden the morning long and darkly sour a morning another one to add to all the ones before a morning victory over dark conclusions one more time  Now, two poems by raulsalinas (Autumn Sun), from his book Indio Trails, published in 2007 by Wings Press, and subtitled "A Xicano Odyssey Through Indian Country." The poet was born in San Antonio on St. Patrick's Day in 1934 and grew up in an eastside barrio of Austin. In 1952, he dropped out of school and headed west to work in California fruit orchards and see what there was to see. After a 15-year rollercoaster ride through the American correctional system, he emerged as a well-read, highly-committed activist poet and, as he put it, "a whole lot better hombre than the youth who first entered the joint." After ten years working closely with the American Indian Movement, he ran a bookstore and a small press in Austin until he died in 2008 at the age of 73. Cedar Woman Poem Walking on our way to confront wicked B.I.A. cutting slack to the go-down at Oglala yellow was the shawl that somewhat wrapt your dancing/prancing nipples creating sensuous ripples in my soul. Late summer in Suquamish Chief Seattle days clam digging with "the boys' family again. Trail of Self-Determination morning in Nebraska Black Dog runs the sweat as we sing b ear songs changtingbto Chichayo Indio/Mejicano political prisoners Dennis & Chacobn. Meanwhile making love in vintage command car turned communication van, bedroom on wheels. Camping out in Pittsburgh a pretty poet comes to call placing poems all over me and you swear she had her boobs up in my face. Then came the season of the "roaring guns" shattering peaceful retreat where we rad poems on the banks of Skookukm Creek. Years later I pass old & familiar spots headed towards another fishing battle on Hupa lands. Hupa Reservatioh Humboldt county, Ca. 1979 Song of a Sad Lover After you left folks on the rez couldn't understand my pain as you suffered with me. People also thought it strange that we could talk and share our hurts revealing open wounds of love no longer there. Sharing each others energies and love intense with one and all in other moments more serene. We loved hard amid jazz sounds and drums from tribal mounds. Holidays in the city get somewhat rough down moments/thoughts depressed clam digging comes to mind then off to hustle urban dollar bills. And even now sunday morning rides up Beacon Hill Jazz ballads somehow remind me of you. Seattle, Washington 1979  Got to go back all the way to the middle of 2007 when I wrote this, a piece about a time even further back than that. i’m gonna make it to the big time i saw Bob Dylan on the old Steve Allen Tonight Show sometime in the 50s, maybe early 60s, when Dylan was still a scrawny kid come to New York to be a folk singer eating when he could sleeping on any available sofa and Allen introduced him as the next big thing among New York folksingers and he came out hair all long and sticking up and out and everywhicha way- and this was the flattop era you have to remember - and he came out all looking weird with an old guitar and he pounded on that some and a harmonica on a stand around his neck and he blew on that with an occasional sense of plan and purpose and sang with this god-awful nasal squeely voice some indecipherable melody with indecipherable words - I though it was a joke at first, cause Allen played a lot of jokes and had really funny guys like Don Knotts and Tom Posten and a couple others - but pretty soon I figured out at is wasn’t a joke and this hairricane-head squeely-voice guy really was supposed to be the next coming thing in New York folk music and i thought well hell no this guy ain’t going nowhere but back to wherever he came from just goes to showya what i know but that’s okay because i’m figuring if that guy on the Steve Allen show can make it to the big-time there's still a chance for me  As you go back in time to his earlier poems, you find a William Carlos Williams unlike the one you think you know if you read only his later work. Dedication for a Plot of Ground This plot of ground facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Dickinson Wellcome who was born in England, married, lost her husband and with her five year old son sailed for New York in a two-master, was driven to the Azores; ran adrift on Fire Island shoal, met her second husband in a Brooklyn boarding house, went with him to Puerto Rico bore three more children, lost her second husband, lived hard for eight years in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed the oldest son to New York, lost her daughter, lost her "baby", seized the two boys of the oldest son by the second marriage mothered them - they being motherless - fought for them against the other grandmother and the aunts, brought them here summer after summer, defended herself against thieves, storms, sun, fire, against flies against girls that came smelling about, against drought, against weeds, storm-tides, neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens, against the weakness of her own hands, against the growing strength of the boys, against wind, against the stones, against trespassers, against rents, against her own mind. She grubbed this earth with her own hands, domineered over this grass plot, blackguarded her oldest son into buying it, lived here fifteen years, attained a final loneliness and - If you bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out.  This little ditty is from last week. Birthdays approach; the mind wanders into the past. (Actually, mine does that a lot.) thinking thinking of someone who could have been fifty years ago thinking how foolish it is to be thinking of someone who could have been fifty years ago thinking time has no time for could-have-beens; deals only with was and is - thinking it’s only baseball that allows more than one swing at life… thinking there is nothing more to say  William Carlos Williams and Walt Whitman, together again. The poetry gods must be smiling. Section 5, Whitman defining a great city, maybe should be required reading in the field of urban planning. From Song of the Broad-Axe 1 Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head form the mother's bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, Resting the grass amid and upon, to be lean'd and to lean on. Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds, Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music, Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ 4 Muscle and pluck forever! What invigorates life invigorates death, And the dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man, And nothing endures but personal qualities. What do you think endures? Do you think a great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution, or the best built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments? Away! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them, The show passes, all does well enough of course, All does very well till one flash of defiance. A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, It it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city of the whole world. 5 The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely, Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of the departing, Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest, Nor the place of the most numerous population. Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards, Where the city stands that is belov'd by these and loves them in return and understands them, Where no monuments exist to heros but in the common words and deeds, Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place, Where the men and women think lightly of the laws, Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases, Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons, Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves, Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority, Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay, Where children are taught to e laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves, Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs, Where speculations on the soul are encouraged, Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men, Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men; Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands, Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, There the great city stands. Once again, as always, I start with Whitman and find it very hard to stop.  Here's another little thing from 2007. cat wants out dog wants in rooster wants the day off on Thursday isn’t anyone ever satisfied?  WCW, not always all play. Apology Why do I write today? The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentities stirs me to it: colored women day workers - old and experienced - returning home at dusk in cast off clothing faces life old Florentine oak. Also the set pieces of your faces stir me - leading citizens - but not in the same way. Pastoral The little sparrows hop ingenuously about the pavement quarreling with sharp voices over those things that interest them. But we who are wiser shut ourselves in on either hand and no one knows whether we think good or evil. Meanwhile, the old man who goes about gathering dog-lime walks in the gutter without looking up and his tread is more majestic than that of the Episcopal minister approaching the pulpit of a Sunday. These things astonish me beyond words.  Another dog story. alive, alive-o I was walking my dog yesterday (this being another dog poem so all you cat people and snake people and gerbil people and lizard people and bird people and cricket people and centipiggler people can just accept that it is not, except maybe indirectly, about you and your choice of furred, finned, scaled, or feathered creature-pet) so this is a dog poem about Saint Reba about whom I have sprake before and our walk yesterday down by the creek, still high from several days of rain, scrubbed by fast-running water all the way to its pale, flat limestone bottom, the water clear as freshly Windexed glass and I was walking across a little dam that holds the water form passing too fast further down the creek bed, a tiny little dam about a foot and a half across and instead of doggishly following me, Miss Reba decided to go around me which ended her up asplash in the creek white-eyed panic at first as she dog-paddled furiously, then a gradual relaxation of her eyes as she found sufficient purchase on the bank to allow a sloshy clamber out of the creek concurrent with the realization that hey, this splash-splash thing even at 40 degrees is fun and she climbs up the bank jumping and running and leaping about, let’s-do-it-again, let’s-do-it-again as clear in her leaps as if she were yelling at me over her shoulder, let’s-do-it-again and when I finally got her home and dried off, she, this old lady who can hardly get out of her bed in the morning because of all her aching bones, was running in circles in the back yard, alive, alive, alive-o like she was six months old again busting with vim and vinegar and life, a-live-o nothing like a good morning swim to get the old blood a-pumping  Next, poems by Michael Earl Craig from his collection Thin Kimono, published in 2010 by Wave Books. Craig was born in Ohio in 1970. He earned degrees from the University of Montana and the University of Massachusetts. Author of three collections of poetry, he is a certified journeyman farrier and lives in Montana where he shoes horses for a living. The book, a very fun read. Poem A book about a monk who took care of encephalitic kittens, a best seller. I am standing here in the kitchen, alone. It's 11 a.m. and I have my credit card in my left hand. I've just bought 160 dollars' worth of steak from a traveling salesman named Don. Things have changed for me. I no longer think it's fair that retarded people can take the word and have it all to themselves. I turn the pages, looking at the pictures. Obscenities are postulates,, it's what I've always said. Packets of energy, discrete and separate, things that come to me as a kind of croissant pride. The kittens, it seems weren't making it. I turn the pages. The monk stood and - fatuous! you would hiss - let the Baltic Sea lap gently at his feet. Notes to Self In the red-hot coals of the campfire I see the gently shifting face of a benevolent gorilla. * When you reach Enlightenment you just laugh. Right? * The somber way that motorcyclists wave to one another on the free- way * Carol is on the porch. She lights a small cigar. It is dead calm out. * As I approached the spatula, everything Mom ever told me about them came rushing back. * Went to the park at 3 a.m. to look at the tennis courts. They were wet. * The old dog softly whines on his cushion. * When shirtless, men with long hair walk a certain way. They have to. * The last thing I remember was getting down on my hands and knees to watch the gumball go spiraling round and round on its way down the machine's clear plastic column. * Little puffs of air let loose from a campaign balloon. * flyspecks on my eyeglasses keep me constantly paranoid. * Ataxia amid the daffodils. * Something mysterious and powerful about a tennis court at night. * The dead fly comes back to life on the quilt (begins wiggling legs). * Wet Ones, bear spray, Bible, rain hat. Beer, saw, Milk Duds, matches. * The withdrawn sound of the Wiffle gat as it moves through the air. * Officers nap. The afternoon is bronze. * Use a conventional tone when talking to the mailman. * Never listen to Wagner while undressing. * Eat lunch like you mean it. Peace A man has had surgery, has splurged on some calf implants. It is spring. The bluebirds are back. Doctors put a white paper beak on the man's nose. It will help him heal properly, they say. People will stare at this beak instead of his calves, they say. This will let him golf in peace, they say. And peace is what he needs, they say. Advice for the Poet Never aim your bicycle at a chicken. Never set your glasses on an anvil.  One more, this week from 2007. With the Republican dilly-dong primaries dominating the news, it was inevitable that we would get back to this. I mean, listen to these guys - do you really trust them to be running around with guns in their pockets? How 'bout tanks and nuclear weapons? license to carry license to carry that’s what we have where I live that means your normal everyday psychotic whack’o can carry a gun as long as they keep it concealed and as long as they can pass a test developed by the NRA to insure that every normal everyday psychotic whack’o who wants to carry his own personal six shooter can by god! buy one at the weapons and murder store of their choice and I think that’s plain stupid since it seems clear to me that if you’re going to let your normal everyday psychotic whack’o carry a gun you don’t want that sucker concealed instead you oughta wanta be fuckin’ sure they’re required to carry it right out in plain sight maybe with a big red arrow pointing right at it with flashing neon lights saying “whack’o whack’o whack’o” so us regular people can get out of the way when we see them moseying murderously in our direction  My next poems are from the anthology Sirens, subtitled "Five Femme Fatale Poets." The book was published by Sisyphus Press in 2008. The first of the poets who would give you mother a stroke the minute they met at the front door is Debbie Kirk, who has four of her own chapbooks published and who founded her own PinkAnarckittyPress which has published three collections of poetry since she started it in 2000. Don't Read This Poem If you are reading this You are expecting to be entertained I ain't no entertainer Though I've been known to dance On slimy laps for some dead presidents To be slid in my panties I have this feeling that if I were in a wheelchair Or had Dwarfism Or was a boy Nobody would ever read A goddamn thing that I write I use that I use and use I'm using you right now Cause you want to stop reading This anti-poem But based on my rep YOu are expecting me to drop a grenade Any time now. Having recently realized how much I detest poetry I pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it in the toilet. I watched the whole thing form the bathroom window That's a place where I feel comfortable So, I'd like to inform you That you have wasted a few minutes Of your life that you can never have back I stole 'em. You just rad the ramblings of a nobody It makes me smile It brings me great pleasure To imagine that maybe In some small way I have helped contribute to your ultimate demise. Fucker. The next poem is by lifetime Los Angeles resident, Iris Berry, known as one of the progenitors of the L.A. punk scene (called by one reviewer "A punk rock James Ellroy in fishnets"). Cofounder of the Los angeles rock-n-roll spoken word troupe, The Ringling Sisters, she and her group are well known for their benefit shows for which Berry was honored as a writer and for her charity work and large scale good-cause fund-raising events. In addition to her writing and performing, she has appeared in showgirl feathers in a Mexican wrestling ring, authored her own sex column, and starred in independent films, including "Mexican Radio" and "Killhouse." Ode to Sammy Glick I see you sitting sitting in the glow of your computer burnt spoon and needle at one side and a loaded guy at the other side there's only one bullet in the chamber and it's reserved for you you're attempting to write the next great American novel and I believe you will providing you don't kill yourself before its finished It's a race Isn't it? your conscience and your ego are at a dead heat while your phone is ringing off the hook with calls from your agent in London and New York all wanting to buy the movie rights you were the first guy to ever buy me diamonds I'm just wondering where the hell you got the money was it an insurance scam? phony credit cards? or your usual selling phony stocks to old people for their life savings well all I can say is it's only a matter of time for you sweetheart but if it's true that nice guys and gals finish last then you can bet I'll be sitting in the last seat in the last row of the house that I more than likely bought at 100% mark-up trapped between my noisy bathroom and a rank alleyway but at least while I'm sitting on the lap of time checking my watch I know you'll be mixing another shot of liquid comfort while running from that god awful mirror called your conscience there aren't enough opiates In the city of LA to make that reflection go away but I know you you're not a quitter you'll die trying. Cynthia Ruth Lewis wrote the next poem. Born in Chicago, Lewis is 42 years old. According to her bio in the book, "She finds great comfort in her bitterness and rage and doesn't hesitate to let it out." Apparently that bitterness and rage extends to clothing, since she has none on in her author's photo for the book. The Makings of a Serial Killer I read somewhere that the majority of cold-blooded killers tend to come from dysfunctional families; the ignored or beaten ones, the quiet, friendless kids who end up being the joke of the neighborhood, awkward children who never fit in - they grow up with all that rage buried inside of them, just waiting to be released, looking for an outlet I am not trying to fall back on any excuses here, but a psychiatrist once ventured a guess where all my sudden violent fits of anger might possibly stem from - I can't remember much from my childhood, I obviously blocked a lot of stuff out, but it must have been pretty bad to warrant fury like mine... all I know is this switch inside my head that gets flipped, where all of a sudden white-hot rage engulfs me, uncontrollable fury surges, rising up from nowhere like a hot flash, consuming me to the point where the only think I can mentally grasp is destruction and blood-red murder but what scares me most is not the fear that I might actually take a life; the joy, the anonymity of slicing flesh, stopping a heart, erasing a body from the face of the earth, but the fear of eventually being caught and discovered, my reign of mayhem finally being corralled into a cubicle of maximum security, where the echoes of other madmen would ricochet off my brain, sparking the hot wires in my head to a dangerous flame, and all I would have to absorb the brunt of my red-hot anger would be a pillow to shred, a notepad of insufficient pages, and a pencil too dull to embody the clarity of my dark and intricate thoughts on the other hand, if I was never caught... The last poem from the anthology for this week is by Misti Rainwater-Lites, whose poems have been published extensively online and in print. For a year she published and edited a print poetry zine called "Instant Pussy" and now has a blog called "Instant Pussy & Various." She is also poetry editor for "decomP," an online poetry zine. Gone the magic has exited stage left the moon is on the wane there is no more radio only static between us a yawning canyon I can hear the echoes the aching lament of my wolfish heart I wanted to devour him the wild spirit in my gut wanted to leap out and spark fires in his turtle eyes I wanted to weave silk around him drag him down into the depths of my sea I wanted to drown him I wanted to save hm I wanted to baptize him with my kisses cast him into hell with my menstrual blood be the flood he couldn't escape the light he had to reach from the depths of a tangled forest my throat aches my uterus aches my head aches from the effort trying to engrave my initials in a tree that doesn't want to be messed with the tree is really a monster the branches are his arms he is slapping me away I'm too dramatic too neurotic too psychotic too erotic I want to pour honey all over my body and invite him to tea I want to be lazy and stay in bed with him until someone breaks down the door I want to be with him on a small, unnamed island for twelve tasteless hours I want to be his cheerleader in a short skirt with no bloomers underneath his illiterate groupie gifted in the language of unconditional lust I want to be the mystery he is determined to solve tonight I have smoked cigarettes by candle light with George Michael crooning vanilla angst on a bland station tonight I have touched myself despite the killer cramps thinking of him despite our ambivalent phone conversation tonight I am a woman looking over shoulder and biting her lip...  A little bit of reministical almost-fiction I wrote last week. before her fifteen minutes some many years ago me and a couple of friends, ex-military all of us, stopped for a beer at honky-tonk place in this little town in a mostly rural county in a particular state also mostly rural it was the late sixties, very early seventies, don’t remember exactly and we, out of uniform each of us for six months or so, having welcomed the chance to grow some hair, head and facial, were subject to some less then hospitable looks from some of our fellow drinkers, but, like I said, though well out of uniform, we each had on our military fatigue coats there being a bit of a chill outside, (the coats, olive drab with a hood against the rain, being the one thing almost every troop left with at the end of their time of service, you could see them at almost every peace march, some even dutifully earned) the coats, each showing darker patches on the sleeves where our rank insignias had been previously sewn, raised some questions and when it was determined that our fatigue coats were of the earned variety the atmosphere in the bar warmed up and by the time we made it out the door not too drunk we had been invited to a stag party at the county barn the next night, a fund raising event for the local county sheriff’s re-election campaign - free passes given to us in recognition of our veterans’ status so we hung around another day and drove out to the county barn the next night and presented our passes at the door and went on into a huge room, a barn-sized room, sub-divided according to your choice of vice, booze, gambling, sixteen millimeter porn clips on the wall, and some actual real women available, for an extra service fee not covered by our free passes, in some rooms in the back, basically every kind of illegal activity available in the county except drugs - the drug of choice at this time in this place - whiskey, and plenty of it, flowing through all the sub-divided parts of the barn like water in a bar ditch after a heavy rain until the sheriff came in, gave a little speech about how everyone should have fun that night and vote for him next week cause he knew about law enforcement and how to keep the criminals and malcontents and niggers and such in their place and drinks are on the house, he said, you just got to remember whose house so I drifted around the room, no money to gamble, certainly no money for the ladies in the back, having spent all I had already on this little journey of southern exposure, and a beer drinker by preference, ending up passing through the porn corner where people were doing things to each other and others you wouldn’t want you mother to ever know you had any association with or saw or even ever knew about the possibility of and a peculiar thing I saw and remember to this day was a scene In one of the porn strips with a young and very skinny woman trying very hard, using every skill and maneuver known to her at the time, to get a young man on a big fluffy bed to become interested in a brief (10 minutes, at most on these little film strips) romantic encounter (to be as polite about it as I can) but he just never got up to the task, drugged out I suppose, the the very skinny young woman getting so frustrated it was almost as funny as watching Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny around and around a tree but the funniest thing, I was sure at the time and am sure today that the oh so skinny, young woman was Squeaky Fromme, recently famous at the time for trying to spring her murderous whack-job leader Charlie Manson from prison by shooting President Ford, a task at which she had no greater luck than she had with the semi-comatose young man there is no particular point to this story except that, in the kind of strange, second hand way that some stuff happens, the event was one of my first brushes with the celebrity culture, a fascination with all things famous no matter what the fame is for, that brings such pleasure, relief, I don’t know, a shadow life of watching bad boys and girls do self-destructive things for the amusement of the slavering masses of the unsubscribed to meaningful life, and for some reason I thought about it tonight while I was trying to get to sleep, thinking what a sensation little old Squeaky would be today, a permanent corner of People Magazine enshrined for her use the whole pile of tawdry memory presenting two questions still don’t know the answer to after all these years was it really Squeaky Fromme in the porn strip? and, did the sheriff get re-elected? some things I’m resigned to supposing we are meant to never know  For the last of Williams this week, several shorter poems. The Bare Tree The bare cherry tree higher than the roof last year produced abundant fruit. But how speak of fruit confronted by that skeleton? Though live it may be there is no fruit on it. Therefore chop it down and use the wood against this biting cold. The Manoeuvre I saw the two starlings coming in toward the wires. But at the last, just before alighting, they turned in the air together and landed backwards! that's what got me - to face into the wind's teeth. Hard Times Stone steps, a solid block too tough to be pried out, from which the house, rather, has been avulsed leaving a pedestal, on which a fat boy in an old overcoat, a butt between his thick lips, the coat pushed back, stands kidding, Parking Space! three steps up from his less lucky fellows. Song beauty is a shell from the sea where she rules triumphant till love has had its way with her scallops and lion's paws sculptured to the tune of retreating waves undying accents repeated till the ear and the eye lie down together in the same bed The Horse The horse moves independently without reference to his load He has eyes like a woman and turns them about, throws back his ears and is generally conscious of the world. Yet he pulls when he must and pulls well, blowing fog from his nostrils like fumes from the twin exhausts of a car. Sonnet in Search of an Author Nude bodies like peeled logs sometimes give off a sweetest odor, man and woman under the trees in full excess matching the cushion of aromatic pine-drift fallen threaded with trailing woodbine a sonnet might be made of it Might be made of it! odor of excess odor of pine needles, odor of peeled logs, odor of no odor other than trailing woodbine that has no odor, odor of a nude woman sometime, odor of a man.  Here's my last piece for this week. It was written last week. worn and worn out there’s a difference between worn and worn out worn is a history not yet complete; worn out is the end of history worn is the Kikapoo woman I saw at the tribal center, a short woman, old and round, wrinkles upon wrinkles, hands rough, fingers stubby and twisted, nails yellowed like talons, eagle talons, fierce talons, fierce hands, fiercely old and round and short, teaching Kikapoo chants to day care toddlers in the morning, Spanish and English to older kids in the afternoon a woman well worn by hardship and sorrow and loss and long nights and days too hot and bright picking cotton in West Texas sun; a woman worn also by determination and joy and a birth for every death and passion and a love for every disappointment and the daily drive to a future she will never forsake worn out is the boy I saw walking along a narrow reservation road, sniffing glue from the red shine of a coca cola can, one of life’s casual deaths pending final notice, walking nowhere worn out from a relentless, unforgiving history ending any day now worn is me, now, with every risen sun and every darkening night worn out is not me yet  Once again we reach the end of our weekly poetry trail. Nothing's changed - everything still belongs to those who made it and I'm still allen itz, owner and producer of this blog. And I'm still selling books, these books to be specific. "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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