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Places and Spaces, a Preview
Thursday, February 02, 2012 Not much opportunity for picture taking lately (as if that wasn't obvious from the past couple of posts) so once again using this week, in no particular order, old pics from a trip a in 2009 to Denver. I traveled to and from alone, but for my good friend Reba (shown above), then met my wife in Denver where we stayed a couple of days before she flew back to San Antonio. Really lousy weather, late heavy snowstorm, on the day we both arrived, but beautiful weather while in Denver and for my drive home. I have poems this month, my own, new minted, as well as selections from my next book, Places and Spaces, which will be available later this year. I also have some work by my friend Alex Stolis. The rest of the poems this week are by Wistava Szymborska, the Nobel Prize winning Polish poet who died last week at the age of 88. The poems are from her collection Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997. Here are the specifics. I hate it Wistava Szymborska Hermitage Me From To the Rockies (“Places and Spaces” preview) Wistava Szymborska Atlantis Me From Sleeping with Andy Devine ("Places and Spaces” preview) Wistava Szymborska Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition Me about those Pletamanians Wistava Szymborska Nothing Twice Me From On the Cusp of Confederate Winter (“Places and Spaces” preview) Wistlava Szymborska The Joy of Writing Me I have a secret Wistlava Szymborska Returning Birds Me weathering the storm Wistlava Szykmborska In Praise of Dreams Me two women, observed Wistlava Szymborska To My Friends Me From Silver City and Beyond (“Places and Spaces” preview) Alex Stolis New Year’s Day Dear _____ Untitled (During a layover after crossing two time zones) Holiday Stationstore #209 (January 12th 3:45 PM) the memory of skin Un titled (Window table) Night bleeds all colors Everything you believe is true; green is the color of sincerity, shyness is a refuge, desolation a virtue would you still love me if I never wrote another poem New Year’s Resolution Upon discovering that Kim Addonizio is not in love with me Me From Ruidoso (“Places and Spaces" preview)  I read a really good poem the morning I wrote this. I hate it when that happens. I hate it I hate it when I read a really good poet who makes clear by her example what a sloppy, slapdash gurgitating of words I do and call it poetry I have no shame, except in moments like this when my own incapacity is held, squirming, beneath the light of actual craft and sensitivity my stuff? well this is what I did today and this what I think of this or that, safely espoused on paper, but if I tried to corner a stranger on the street and so emote I would be whisked away in a nonce (now there’s a poet word for you) to some highly-fenced facility where white-coated guardians guard their charges from the attack of killer carrots or whatever I’m just lucky I write this stuff and never say it out loud I flatter myself and say I am of the ancient Chinese poetry convention, art, maybe or maybe not, but precious surely for persons interested the lives and times of ancient lives and times so while you may read this and say crap!!! what a waste of time that was, I am assured than in millennia hence the Pletamanians freshly arrived from the Pletamania galaxy will discover my trove of daily musings and say what a bunch of crap, but how very interesting were these ancient peoples before their inevitable reduction through kaboom and kabash to the bone and ash of those lost and forgotten and by the way as an un-serious wordsmith I insist upon the right to use words like gurgitate instead of regurgitate because it is not possible to re-anything until one has done the thing referenced first this kind of logical approach will greatly impress the Pletamanians I am assured which is another way of saying I don’t care what critical thinkers might think because my time in the Pletamanic sun will someday come  Wistava Szymborska died last week. A Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, she was 88 years old. I have enjoyed her poetry, simple, elegant, straight-forward and often slyly funny, and have used it here a number of times. I took the poems from the only collection of hers I have, Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997.. The book was published by Harcourt in 1998. Though the only book of hers I have, she appears in a number of anthologies in my library. All the poems in this book were translated from Polish by Stanislaw Barazniczak and Clare Cavanagh. I pull from the book this week for all of my library poems, beginning with this one. Hermitage You expect a hermit to live in the wilderness, but he has a little house and a garden, surrounded by cheerful birch groves, ten minutes from the highway. Just follow the signs. You don't have to gaze at him through binoculars from afar. You can see him and hear him right up close, while he patiently explaining to a tour group from Wieliczka why he's chosen strict isolation. He wears a grayish habit, and he has a long white beard, cheeks pink as a baby's, and bright-blue eyes. He'll gladly pose before the rosebush for color photographs. His picture is being taken by one Stanley Kowalik of Chicago who promises prints once they're developed. Meanwhile a tight-lipped old lady from Bydgoszcz whom no one visits but the meter reader is writing in the guestbook: "God be praised for letting me see a genuine hermit before I die." Teenagers write, too, using knives on a tree: "The Spirituals of'75 - meeting down below." But what's Spot up to, where has Spot gone? He's underneath the bench pretending he's a wolf.  I have a book of "road poems" I expect to have out sometime this year. The book, Places and Spaces, essentially done, is now in the process of edit and proof. The book consists of seven poems, five very long poems, each recounting a single trip, bookended front and back with two very short introductory poems. The next piece is excerpted from the third of the long poems, which is about the same trip to Denver as this week's pictures. From To the Rockies ...little twisters cross a quiet Sunday morning just like in the movies another 500 miles to do today and I’m getting started a little later than I’d like but there’s plenty of time after about 40 miles I look behind, a long straight road, gradually rising the wind is blowing hard again today and like most of yesterday it’s blowing hard against me little twisters cross brown fields on both sides of the highway, most throwing up clouds of dust that move with the wind, but one, a smaller one, forms a perfect funnel, about five feet across, keeping it’s shape up to a hundred or more above the ground a tumbleweed the size of a beach ball blows in front of me, seems to pace the car for several seconds then crosses the road green fields, perfect circles, planted to fit path of the irrigation sprinklers that circle circle, circle, spraying their water around and around like a merry-go-round whose horses spit as they past the perfect circles of irrigated green laid across the landscape of dry and dusty brown, the part that lives or dies depending on the rain ...  Here's my second poem this week by Wistava Szymborksa, Polish Nobel Prize Laureate deceased last week at 88. It is from her collection, Poems, New and Collected,1957-1997. Atlantis They were or they weren't. On an island or not. an ocean or not an ocean swallowed them up or it didn't. Was there anyone to love anyone? Did anybody have someone to fight? Everything happened or it didn't there or someplace else. Seven cities stood there. So we think. They were meant to stand forever. We suppose. They weren't up to much, no. They were up to something, yes. Hypothetical. Dubious. Uncommemorated. Never extracted from air, fire, water,or earth. Not contained within a stone or drop of rain. Not suitable for straight-faced use as a story's moral. A meteor fell. Not a meteor. A volcano exploded. Not a volcano. Someone summoned something. Nothing was called. On this more-or-less Atlantis.  The next excerpt from my pending book, Places and Spaces, is from a long poem about a trip to Lake Tahoe. From Sleeping with Andy Devine ...lunch in Flagstaff light snow then, moving on through the national forest and between the mountains the snow gets much worse, blowing hard across the road, the sky closes in, and the temperature drops to near freezing finally after ten miles of steep decline, I'm back near desert level the clouds clear, the temperature goes back up, and fat driving snowflakes hitting my windshield turn to fat splashing raindrops as the weather clears, Reba, returns to her bed in the back after, sensing my sub-tropic native tension on this freezing icy highway, she had moved up to lay at my elbow relieved as well as the weather clears, I begin to think of coffee as the little town of Winslow approaches and on a roadside sign, “Mojo’s Gourmet Coffee” just in time I find Mojo’s and a skinny barista with more tattoos than lots of folks have skin, and in the corner a little group of old cowboys sitting a round table, some just listening, two singing and picking their guitars - country ballads, Marty Robbins and the like, and some of their own composing “I once loved a girl in Albuquerque,” sang one “I wanted to be a cowboy,” sang the other as i was leaving, “but I was always afraid of cows”...  Remembering Wistava Szymborska, number three for the week. Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition So these are the Himalayas. Mountains racing to the moon. The moment of their start recorded on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky. Holes punched in a desert of clouds. Thrust into nothing. Echo - a white mute. Quiet. Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday, bread and alphabets. Two times two is four. Roses are red there, and violets are blue. Yet, crime is not all we're up to down there. Yet, not ever sentence there means death. We've inherited hope - the gift of forgetting. You'll see how we give birth among the ruins. Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there. Yeti,we play solitaire and violin. At nightfall, we turn lights on, Yeti. Up here it's neither moon nor earth. Tears freeze. Oh Yeti, semi-moonman, turn back, think again! I called this to Yeti inside four walls of avalanche, stomping my feet for warmth on the everlasting snow.  Interesting folk, those Pletamanians. about those Pletamanians early scouting reports from the Pletamania Galaxy indicate a highly advanced civilization recently recovered from the deprecations occasioned by adherence to a political system much like our own such system being divided into two primary parties and various outlying third, fourth,fifth and sixth parties that never amount to much because their leaders and most followers are of very poor taste the principal parties, the Dimginches and the Mittens battle fiercely for dominance and the right to name the Great Overlord of all Things Material or Not-for-Life, such life ending when they are skinned, parboiled and eaten to celebrate their party's victory this occurs promptly and precisely every afternoon at 5 pm, Central Pletamania Time (CPT) over a period of several thousand pruncyclical doodlebuggels (about 1,047 years as measured by our calendric system) this elaborate electoral system began to severely limit the number of Pletamanians willing to stand for election as either a Dimgintch or a Mitten, leaving the two major parties in such difficulty in their daily vying for the august office of Great Overlord of all Things Material or Not-for-Life that both the Dimginthces and the Mittens began to raid the third, fourth, fifth and sixth parties, despite their being of poor taste, in order find volunteers willing to accept the honor ropes and chains and various caged conveyances were eventually required to get the victorious Great Overlord of all Things Material or Not-for-Life to his victory dinner until there were no more third, fourth, fifth, or sixth party nominees to elect, moving the two major parties, to develop a new political system based upon thumb-wrestling, but since the issue of which of their twenty eight digits were thumbs, though long and laboriously debated, was never settled, a state of anarchy described in their language as squiqual, squack, and 5-cent cigars (sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll in standard American English) enused and there was no longer need for victory celebration dinners, except at weddings where mother-in-law were the most frequently selected guest of honor a political compromise that, though inadvertant and unforeseen was satisfactory to all  Another poem by Wistava Szmborska. Nothing Twice Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, if you're the planet's biggest dunce, you can't repeat the class in summer, this course is only offered once. No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses. One day, perhaps, some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent. The next day, though you're here with me, I can't help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock? Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to stay: today is always gone tomorrow. With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we're different (we concur) just as two drops of water are.  Now, from my next book, Places and Spaces, I have a section of the first long poem in the book, On the Cusp of Confederate Winter, about a round-about trip through the south to the Blueridge Parkway and back. From On the Cusp of Confederate Winter ...I wanted to write about the forest, the colors, gold and yellow and the red-brown color the Crayola people used to call Indian red or Indian brown or something like that and in the middle of all that gold and yellow and red-brown Indian whatever, some low bush that’s flaming bright red scattered among the trees like little fires burning in the woods and I wanted to write about the flock of ducks that flew over in perfect V formation, near enough to the ground so that each duck could be seen and counted as an individual, close enough to the ground that I could hear the flapping of their wings and the mutter-quacks among the ranks and i wanted to write about the hills, reminding me of the hill country of home, but soft hills, none of the hard face of caliche and cactus and mesquite, just soft soft forest-hills, trunks climbing close together I wanted to write about the sun this morning and how it lit the colors of the trees and the covered the sky from mid-afternoon, bringing shadow and mystery and darker colors of the night I wanted to write about those things but...  In further remembrance of Wistava Szymborska. The Joy of Writing Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; doe she hear something? Perched on flour slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have spouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I wish dividing into tiny eternities, full of bullets stopped in mid-flight. Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so. Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall, not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop. Is there then a world where I rule absolutely on fate? A time I bind with chains of signs? An existence become endless at my bidding? The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.  Enough hilarity with the Pletamanians. Let's talk about death. I have a secret I mentioned Ma and Pa Kettle in a crowded room yesterday and no one knew what I was talking about this, as in a couple of weeks I complete my 68th and begin begin my 69th year on this earth, a reminder of the things I know that those still struggling with the challenges of youth do not important things not restricted to Ma and Pa Kettle and The Bowery Boys and Boston Blackie important things, like, I can see, for better or worse, the string of my life fraying and know the string which frays will someday break an epiphany denied to the young of 28 or 38 or 48 or even 58 who never notice the string of life they traverse in the humdrum of their daily day until the day its sorry state is made clear to them until then, death is an unfortunate event, affecting others, never them in all their glorious immortality not that they ever think in those terms mortality and immortality, issues, like the price of potatoes in Cambodia, that just don’t apply to them no matter how many they see laid out cold and still in a box, no matter how many they follow with their eyes as the unfortunate are lowered into the earth, no matter how many losses of those they know and those they love they experience in their lives - the idea of one day it might be them lost, them cold and still, their physical essence beneath a mound fresh-turned earth an abstract like the collision of galaxies in a faraway star system the relevance of death to all living creatures, the inevitability of decay's deconstruction, is the shock that comes unbidden on a birthday like the one I have coming, the unwelcome candle that flutters and dies this flesh and blood recognition of the fate of our own flesh and blood comes only with the fatigue of age, it cannot be imagined before the dues are paid - innocence must be lost before the loss of innocence can be known this is when some, like me, begin to face the all we still want to do and the uncertain time we have to do it  Another by Wistavba Szymborska Returning Birds This spring the birds came back again too early. Rejoice,O reason: instinct can err, too. It gathers wool, it dozes off - and down they fall into the snow, into a foolish fate, a death that doesn't suit their well-wrought throats and splendid claws, their honest cartilage and conscientious webbing, the heart's sensible sluice, the entrails' maze, the nave of ribs, the vertebrae in stunning enfilades, feathers deserving their own wing in any crafts museum, the Benedictine patience of the beak. It is not a dirge - no,it's only indignation. And angel made of earthbound protein, a living kite with glands straight from the Song of Songs, singular in air, without number in the hand, its tissues tied into a common knot of place and time, as in an Aristotelian drama unfolding to the wings' applause, falls down and lies beside a stone, which in its own archaic, simpleminded way sees life as a chain of failed attempts.  Big storm last night. weathering the storm the night thunder shakes the roof simultaneous with the strike of blue-white flash down the street, all around, rain pounds the ground like marble hammers, ice in the form of pressure pitted hail slaps the roof and the window by my bed the creek rises, almost to my fence, 15 feet above its normal trickle flow the morning rain still falling hard, streets, aflow to the curbs, but no thunder no lightning no hail, a wet but quiet interlude I wear my old raincoat, given to me free, no immediate charge, 46 years ago, January 11, 1966, second day of basic training, still as good as the day I got it, stronger than this storm, stronger than any storm for 46 years I hate it when my clothes wear better than I do  And again, Wistava Szymborska. Our dreams are remarkable similar. In Praise of Dreams In my dreams I paint like Vermeer van Delft. I speak fluent Greek and not just with the living. I drive a car that does what I want it to do. I am gifted and write mighty epics. I hear voices as clearly as any venerable saint. My brilliance as a pianist would stun you. I fly the way we ought to, i.e. on our own. Falling from the roof I tumble gently to the grass. I've got no problem breathing under water. I can't complain: I've been able to locate Atlantis. It's gratifying that I can always wake up before dying. As soon as war breaks out, I roll over on my other side. I'm a child of my age, but I don't have to be. A few years ago I saw two suns. And the night before last a penguin, clear as day.  The difference a couple of hours makes, this picture about 9 a.m., the picture before about 3 p.m. same day. Practicing my seeing, a little observational. two women observed the first, a student, maybe 20, 21, no older tall lean long blond hair, straight, healthy, but unpampered, uncuddled an athlete, dressed loose and casual, sweater over quiet blouse, loose trousers or shorts, scrapped knees, scabs on one knee, then the other effusive when friends join her, exuding solitude when alone, a ferocious frown, little furrows alongside her nose from squinting her eyes, studying her laptop screen, disdaining glasses, vanity? I don’t think so, the athlete impatient with the bother of sweaty glasses slipping down her nose as she plays whatever it is she plays that skins her knees a light pleasant wafting voice like a breeze through silent trees responding when I say hello… the other, a police officer, older than the student, but not yet or only shortly past 30, dark hair tied back, dark eyes, tiny freckles bridging her nose, a wedding ring, short nails, a tough, competent woman, formidable, but not forbidding, sitting with her fellow officers as an equal, laughing (low, husky) with her fellow officers as an equal, shares with her fellows a short religious message on her I-Pod, a preacher blessing the day on her I-Pod, her gun, her baton, handcuffs a radio, and other tools of her trade on her heavy belt cinched tight and still looks trim and beautiful… two women ready for the world and all it might bring, two competent women, each beautiful in her own way two women, pride of their fathers  Now, my last for the week of Wistava Szymborska To My Friends Well-versed in the expanses that stretch from earth to stars, we get lost in the space from earth up to our skull. Intergalactic reaches divide sorrow from tears. En route from valse to true you wither and grow dull. We are amused by jets, those crevices of silence wedged between flight and sound: "World record!" the world cheers. But we've seen faster takeoffs: their long-belated echo still wrenches us from sleep after so many years. Outside a stream of voices: "We're innocent," they cry. We rush to open windows, lean out to catch their call. But then the voices break off. We watch the falling stars just as after a salvo plaster drops from the wall.  This Places and Spaces preview is from the last of the book's five long poems. From Silver City and Beyond ...thoughts of mudslides intrude for a moment, until I decide that I’m high enough to slide down the mountain on top of the mud and not under it, which doesn’t seem so bad I choose to think of it as skiing in mud season setting aside mudslides and all other hesitations - it is now considerably further back than forward anyway - I come to a break in the trees and stop and look out and see that I am on a high ridge, above the clouds, churning white and billowy below unwilling to stop earlier in the heavy rain, I had unfinished and too long delayed business which I took care of peeing on the clouds, the moist essences of me joining the moist essences of the clouds, becoming a part of someone’s next rain storm the grass will grow greener, I know, and the flowers more colorful because I have made their cause my own and I am pleased going down now, still on the dirt-rocky-rough road, but believing an end was in sight and a herd of deer cross the road in front of me a very large buck and 25 to 30 doe and fawns, fluffy white and brown stub-tails flicking in the wind, all together as a group, coming down the mountain in great bounds, over the road, then back up on the other side winged creatures who, through fate or folly, lost their wings but still they try to fly, almost succeeding with each great leap passing through a burned out portion of forest, pine and aspen tall and limb-less, black as the coal they have become while still they reach for the sky, I stop and listen to the wind, all around deep-forest quiet but for the wind passing through these poor standing-dead ghost whispers…  Usually, I get poems from my friend Alex Stolis in chapbook chunks. Not this time. He named the file he sent me "Disposable Words" (because nothing is forever, he says). Instead, he says,just a few poems. New Year’s Day Had a dream last night. You were there. It had been raining. Streets running water. I was barefoot in faded jeans and white tee. There was music, Interpol maybe. Haven’t listened to them in quite a while. You have a daughter, no sons. Your hair is darker. You walk towards me. I smile. The girl, who looks a lot like you, takes your hand. You don’t know me. I am in front of an elevator. No idea what button to press. I am misplaced, motionless. None of this really means anything. It’s just something I remember. Dear _____ It’s January and snow melts. You are in town somewhere, on a block, in a neighborhood, in a house; yard garage one too many bedrooms. There is no real future for us, and anywhere I am and wherever I may go will always be another place without you in it. I whisper your name to no one and nothing to make it real; watch the sky turn five shades of blue. Think in clichés: of moons and suns and loss and love and grief of your hands of your mouth, eyes and voice; I remember wrong, it suits the weather. Untitled [During a layover after crossing two time zones] My phone goes off while I am in the airport x-ray machine; the one that does the whole body scan. My arms are up in the air. For a moment I believe it is you. For a moment it changes my life and for a moment I believe it is you. For the entire time I never think about death. Instead, there are clouds looped into rings into chains, there is bliss in the face of certain immobility. The next moment is Radiohead coming out of the PA; a conversation in an unidentifiable Eastern European language, a young boy tying his shoes. And the sky becomes a brilliant heavy blue. No, more like ice. No; it is the crush of impermanence. Holiday Stationstore #209 [January 12th 3:45 PM] Pumping gas it starts to snow. Three flakes, then half a dozen. I stop counting after twenty. I am always counting; counting firsts and lasts. First kiss/last fuck, first bloom of spring /last message. The last time your eyes cut a blue arc through a room/the first accidental brush of hand against hand. There’s a flicker of dim gray dollars, cents and gallons; I count on the crows to change white to black. the memory of skin crescent moon hangs from a tree; we watch twilight colors fall like leaves Untitled [Window table] You’ve repaid your debt. Call the waitress over. I’ll reinvent suicide, leave you with a slender heart to dream this world complete. We split the check, careful not to under tip. The last time we touched, it was in that dim bedroom, the light clinging to your skin; me, thinking much too loudly. Right now the snow looks like rain, little blades ready to cut my story to ribbons. Night bleeds all the colors to the ground and we’re halfway; absolved. You've moon-lines, apple pathways, breasts that fit perfectly in my hand. Please, don’t leave my mind when beauty has hardly begun. Ask about clouds, grasp at the rain. Hips curve into mine. You are the sea; forever, vast and open, a sanctuary. It’s December, snow melts into rivers. It’s sundown, it’s a desperate goodnight. We are gravity, complete and deliberate. I thought I knew you. What we feel we know is a scarcely heard rumble. There is a touch of hand to hip. How cold it is now. It’s gone. We are gone. We drag ourselves into the barely dawn, into the barest of blues and naked pinks. Everything you believe is true; green is the color of sincerity, shyness is a refuge, desolation a virtue December twenty-two. No news. No sun. No birds. No words. I picture summer: blonde fields, a young woman in a sundress waiting for the bus, brown suitcase against a telephone pole. It begins to snow. Count one, unplanned destinations; count two, unmapped roads; count three, the impatient shuffle of clouds as they shift through the sky. Would you still love me if I never wrote another poem Would it make a difference in what you wear to bed. Would you take another route to work just to see if it might change the color of the sky, spark some sort of flame of an idea. Would you decipher the lines and angles scratched in frost on the window and find our names. Do you think birds would notice, or the wind or rain. Would you paint in oils instead of watercolor, try pastels; a self-portrait in charcoal. Would you read that book by Pasternak, take the dog for extra long walks. Would you resist the urge to sleep in, watch for the mailman, hold your breath as he rifles through the bag, see him smile in hopes you may have developed a crush on him. Would you stop feeling emptiness, grief; tell your kids they have to start making their own breakfast, that they are now old enough to take responsibility. Would you take out that red dress, the one your husband once said made you look like a slut. Would you remember the last time we made love, how you ran your fingers over me and laughed at the thought of us never being together. Would you buy that new car, fill the CD player with the ‘Mats, Husker Du, Pixies and a little Dylan or Waits to roughen up the edges. Would you skip lunch, buy a cup of coffee instead, take a couple sips then let it get cold as you wait for me to walk through the door. Would you still love me. New Year’s Resolution Whatever lies I tell will be for my own good: You are being held back, found out against your will and have lost your way. One after another the untruths will tumble. So many wheels going around until one more story comes undone. I won’t be here. Won’t be a part of the left behind, the unwashed, arms stabbing the air ready to fight. Oh, but I will remember the weightlessness of you; revel in the shabbiness of knowing. Upon discovering that Kim Addonizio is not in love with me First: cancel the train tickets and any plans to fuck my way to that Pushcart; stow away pen/paper/red dress/thesaurus/ notebook. Words are no longer mine, my voice is unfamiliar as I try to prepare a speech. It will be a poem, a narrative: We are down by the river, after the flood. We are gravity; complete, deliberate. As I play with the buttons on her coat, she bites my lip. The sky turns a deep and failing blue; my hands become rough and cold from trying to make it rain.  The last piece this week from my soon-to-be book, Places and Spaces, is from the second of the long poems that make up almost all of the book. The title of the poem is Ruidoso, chronicle of short trip I made to Ruidoso, New Mexico. I knew someone from there a long time ago, a fellow Peace Corps recruit, and had never been there. I thought it might be interesting to go there. Not so much. Ruidoso ...passing Mescalero - across the road from the Tribal Center 2 Apache boys play King of the Hill, rolling over and over each other in the rose-colored dust on concrete abutments along the highway tell the tribe’s story which of the stories do the boys reenact? the down slope from Mescalero to Tularosa opens up between wooded mountain sides to the desert below, desert grasses so dry they are white in the morning sun, like beach sand, like a wide ribbon of white sand between the mountains I had thought to do a mountain drive, but a third of the morning is spent crossing the white grass desert from Tularosa to Carrizozo, a desert so unremarkable I have to stop three times before Reba finds something interesting enough to pee on Reba my quiet travel companion is bored, sleeping in the back, head between her paws a spike of interest as I pass the Oscuro Bombing Range but nothing blows up oscuro, the Spanish word for dark or dim maybe something did blow up and I just didn’t notice entering Carrizozo, I skirt the Valley of Fire...  Photo by barista/poet whose name lost in the fog of time Another week done, my sixteen tons loaded. As explained before, everything here belongs to those who created it, including my stuff which I'll give away for a little proper credit. I'm allen itz, owner and producer of this blog, still selling books, noticing recently that Amazon has raised the price on one of my books by a little, a sign, I'm intent on telling myself, (having not other information, sales reports being about six months behind) that overpowering demand has resulted in the classical economists supply and demand formulation. Or maybe not. As mentioned before,in case you forgot: my note last week that the eBooks are also available on Kobo and Copia, even though I still don't know what they are. The rest is as per always. "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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