Another Wednesday holiday so I'm posting this a day early so I don't have to interfere with my black-eyed pea eating to work on New Year's Day. Also, I figured it would give all you New Year's Eve stay-at-homer to read instead of watching Car 53 Where Are You? reruns.
My photos this week are San Antonio street views, from downtown and near downtown to the hills where I live, taken over the course of several years and several seasons. Included are my three most recent coffeehouses, the first the current, the others, may they rest in peace in coffee heaven.
I decide not to have my customary anthology this week. Instead I have selections from
Leaves of Grass. Although there were many other excellent poets around in his time,
Walt Whitman is to my mind the founder of a true American poetry, the de-colonizer who gave American poetry its own place in the global universe of the art.
What a brave and glorious poet it is who says this (from
Song of Myself):
Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Affirmation for us all that we are each unique, yet even in our uniqueness, part of the encompassing all.
And this week, in addition to Whitman, poems from my library, as well as two short poems from the fourth Baltimorean I promised last week but had to delay because of time issues. I also, as always, have my own stuff, new and old, most from 2010, but including one very old, written in 1969.
For the new year, here's me and them and everyone else:
Me
exile on Christmas Beach
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
Me
winter night
Christopher George
Beer and a Dog (with illustration)
Half Crown (with illustration)
Me
side-tracked
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
Me
the secret of our success
Ranier Maria Rilke
from First Part - XXV
Me
thinking right is good
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
Me
such life there is
James Richardson
Emergency Measures
Me
the big tree gets a pretty fence
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
Me
some day, but not today
Paul Muldoon
Whitethorns
An Old Pit Pony
Me
fast lane
Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
Me
so much more to it
Ron Slate
Lion of God
Me
Elizondo Road
Walt Whitman
from To Think of Time
Me
chickens and eggs
Anne Sexton
The Evil Seekers
Me
sailors on a fading sea
Me
notes from a grounded witchdoctor
It being the time of the year, I guess I should start with my Christmas poem, 2013. Not a big admirer of the holiday, any holiday, in fact, but I usually get dragged into it, sometimes kicking and screaming before it's over.
Then I begin to feel guilty and have to make up with everyone.
exile on Christmas Beach
exile!
Christmas morning
(sorry Holiday morning,
saying so just on the possibility
it might piss off
all the "War on Christmas"
crackpots)
as I was saying
Holiday morning, up
at my regular time with no place
to go, all my regular places
closed so that employees can gather
around their Holiday trees
and open their Holiday presents
and enjoy their Holiday
turkey (are they pissed
yet?)
so I'm stuck at an I-Hop
with a skinny crowded table
and bad coffee
and no WiFi, waiting for Dee
to join me for eggs and pancakes
and bacon and sausage
and whatever else might kill me
before my time
but when we leave
we discover that some
unknown diner bought our breakfast
for us and they've already
left and we don't know who it was
or why it was, and...
oh hell -
Merry Christmas

I begin my
Whitman this with some of his best known lines, second probably only to
Captain My Captain, his poem upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln which, at least in my time, every student read in Jr. High School. The poems are from America's greatest book of poetry,
Leaves of Grass.
The pictures you normally see of Whitman are of a bearded old man. I found this other photo to illustrate his poem this week, a younger Whitman when he was writing his poems and seeing all the people and things of his time that he brought to his work.
These lines the opening lines to
Song of Myself, the most proud and glorious affirmation of humanity and universality ever, in my opinion, written.
from
Song of Myself
I
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
Fore every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, ad their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
First oldie of the week, this one from December, 2010.
winter night
winter night,
in the last moment
before dusk falls
the sky is clear,
light blue,
like the "it's a boy" blankets
you get a the hospital
to warm
a new-born son
thin,
almost transparent blue
moon bright
in the soft sky,
not full,
flattened a little
on one side like a globe
flattened
at the South Pole
so it won't roll off your desk
Antarctica folded in on itself
a chill wind
blowing from the top of the hill,
raising a shower
of golden leaves from trees
along the creek
light winter-home taste
of chimney smoke in the air
ten degrees
cooler
than the numbers on the thermometer reads
very quiet
In my introduction to last week's post, I promised four poets from Baltimore. As it turned out, because of time problems, I ended up with only three.
Here's number four,
Christopher George, with two short poems, complete with his own illustrations.
Chris was born in Liverpool, England, in 1948. He and his wife Donna live in Baltimore, where he is editor of the poetry journal
Loch Raven Review.
Pike Brewing
art by Cheryl Leo Gwin and Charles Finkel
Beer and a Dog
Beer bubbles up your nose
the roll opens its mouth wide
swallows the dog whole
slathered with yellow mustard
ketchup and sweet sweet pickle
Penguin Modern Poets # 1
first published in 1962
Half Crown
As regal-treasured as "Queen Anne's Lace"
or vulgar-cheap as "Cow Parsley" - -
the '60s Penguin paperback I bought
back then - pages now yellowed
-- still promises three British poets
for half a crown or ten pence per poet
paid in coppers
with the profile of young Queen Liz
Here's another from last week, a couple of days before Christmas. It is not, as Ren and Stimpy might say, a "happy happy joy joy" season for me, making me melancholy if it makes me anything at all beyond irritated with the interruption in my life.
side-tracked
side-tracked
here and now
like a snail darter
I say
having no idea
what a snail darter
is like
except that it is I think
blind and the name
suggests a real hither
and thither little
fish like the guppies
I used to have in my
fish tank, except guppies
on meth, darting hither
and thither, living
in cold ponds
in dark caves and near
they say to
extinct
and that's why
I can't write a poem
this morning
because my brain is all
hither and thither
like a tiny snail darter
in a dark cave
bumping into unseen
walls
and struggling
against
extinction
Here's another from
Whitman, from a little further on in
Song of Myself. Every time I read him I am surprised at how much of my personal philosophies come from him.
from
Song of Myself
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning
and the end,
But I do not talk of beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Not any more youth or age that there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge an urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always sustance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd theel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entered,
braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my
soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they dis-
cuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean.
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less
familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied - I see, dance,laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house
with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which i
ahead?
Here's another from December, 2010.
the secret of our success
the flag
a neighborhood away
waves.
stretches south
in the north wind
the pasture
across the way
neither brown nor yellow
but some winter color
that is neither
but includes shades of both
there are several hundred
varieties of oak tree
most of them found
in the hills north of the city,
four kins in the oak grove
that bounds the pasture across
from evergreen green to
red and gold to bare for the
season...
I have oaks
in my yard,
one, the kin that sheds
it's leaves in spring
for new growth; one fast-
growing, broad-leafed,
beautiful in its colors
now, and two I transplanted
from my front yard, volunteers
from the large acorns
that fall in spring in the grass
and flowerbeds, pushing up
little oak-tree shoots that
you have to transplant quickly
before their roots get too long,
hard to get the whole tap root,
or at least enough of it to
allow continued growth elsewhere
two times successful so far,
out of many tries, moved
last year, beneficiary of a very wet
spring, grown from about
three inches to three feet,
the other transplanted late
this year, still barely three inches...
I worry about them in the cold,
like I worry about the dog
the the cats - nature having
a much larger margin of error
than I, can afford to lose 90 percent
of each year's seedlings
but I can't -
I must cherish all that I have...
and so must you,
for it is the secret of our success
First from my library this week is this poem by
Rainer Maria Rilke. The poem is from
The Sonnets to Orpheus, published by Simon and Schuster in 1985. It's a bilingual book, French with English translation by
Stephen Mitchell on the facing page.
from "First Part"
XXV
But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose
name
I didn't know, you who so early were taken away:
I will once more call up your image and show it to them,
beautiful companion of the unsubduable cry.
Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate,
pausing, as though your young flesh had been cast in
bronze;
grieving ad listening -. Then, from the high dominions,
unearthly music fell into your altered heart.
Already possessed by shadows, with illness near,
your blood flowed darkly; yet, though for a moment
suspicious,
it burst out into the natural pulses of spring.
Again and again interrupted by downfall and darkness,
earthly, it gleamed. Till after a terrible pounding
it entered the inconsolably open door.

This next thing, written last week after too mentions in my presence of those creepy duck creatures on TV.
It was meant as parody, but I don't think anybody who read it read it that way. (Which causes me to worry a little about my image.) It's supposed to mirror an experience I'm sure we've all had, speaking to someone who seems intelligent and good-natured until about fifteen minutes into the conversation the pleasant Dr. Jeckle when you begin to see Mr. Hyde emerging.
My own most vivid experience of that type was a long time ago when I picked up a hitchhiker who seemed a perfectly normal, rational, temporary down on his luck, fellow. It was less than five miles down the road before he began to tell me about his life on the run, the legitimate King of Denmark, being chased around the world by agents of the pretender to his throne.
And there, I've explained the poem, which I don't think a poet should ever do.
thinking right is good
the East
and much of the Midwest buried
under ice and snow
while here
the sun shines bright
above a clear blue sky
and the temperature wandering
about between 50 and 60
and it is a beautiful day
this morning before the night
before
and I'll try not to be
unnecessarily smug at my good
fortune because
I'm sure there will be a cloud
here some day
and in the meantime
it is a pleasure to be smug
because all those uppity Easterners
and cud-chewing Midwesterners
deserve a dose off humbling outsider
smug
now and then
after all the terrible things
they say about my home
state in the heart of which
I am now deep, hi ho hi ho...
such meanness demonstrate
here, hardly my normal
self for I find no pleasure
in the misfortune of others,
except when I can contrast
my good fortune to their
otherwise fortune
which
I am completely convinced
they so richly deserve
bunch of damn liberals
and dairy farmers
who claim Santa Clause
is not white and neither is Jesus
and how stupid is that
cause everyone knows God
is white and Jesus is his son
so he must be white too,
white dude Dad and Jew mother
but we'll forget about the mother
part since who wants a half-breed
Messiah and talking about that
would be for certain another front
in the War on Christmas which is about
white Christians and is definitely not about
Jew mothers...
how hard to understand is that
hi ho hi ho
no wonder they have ice and snow
and we don't because they think wrong
and deserve it while us thinking
right certainly
deserve
our bright sun and blue sky
and temperatures in the 50-60s
simple as that
hi ho hi
ho
Here, a scene as perfectly drawn by
Whitman - note how vivid and complete is every detail. Still from
Song of Myself. As I thumb through, I begin to feel I will not get out of "Song" in just one post.
from
Song of Myself
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has
fallen.
The blab of the pave, tires of carts, scuff of boot-soles,talk of the
promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crow,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and hurried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain'd by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptance, re-
jections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them - I come and I depart.
The obituaries - I read them every day, in part for the stories I can imagine.
such life there is
Baskin, Beale & Baulk
three old white men together,
pictures in a line
on the obit page like a defunct law firm
prospectus,
flanked on one side
by Millie Quintana, dead at 77, picture
from fifty years earlier, pretty
Millie
of the short brown hair
and sparkle-sparkle eyes,
and on the other side, Moses
Quesada. same age as the rest,
picture from his navy days, wild smile,
white teeth flashing, sailor
cap
on a jaunty-tilt to the front, dark hair
in a little spit-curl on
his forehead
such life there is
among
today's dead;
so many stories
never told
again
Next from my library, a poem by
James Richardson from his book,
By the Numbers - Poems and Aphorisms, a National Book Award Finalist published by Copper Canyon Press in 2010. Richardson is professor of creative writing at Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts.
Emergency Measures
I take Saturday's unpopulated trains,
sitting at uncontagious distances,
change at junctions of low body count, in off-hours,
and on national holidays especially, shun stadia
and other zones of efficient kill ratio,
since there is no safety anymore in numbers.
I wear the dull colors of nesting birds,
invest modestly in diverse futures,
views and moods undiscovered by tourists,
by nothing I can't carry or would need to sell,
and since I must rest, maintain at several addresses
hardened electronics and three months of water.
And it is thus I favor this unspecific cafe,
choose the bitterest roast, and only the first sip
of your story, sweet but so long, and poignantly limited
by appointments neither can be late for, and why now
I will swim through the crowd to the place it is flowing away from
my concerned look and
Excuse me excuse me suggesting
I am hurrying back for my umbrella or glasses
or some thrilling truth they have all completely missed.
This piece came out of story in the newspaper about a new fence going up around this tree in the Aransas Wildlife Refuge on the coast. I remember taking my son to see the tree many years ago. It's the same age as the redwoods. Though not as tall it is about the same size around the trunk, with massive limbs that, being an oak, seem to reach out forever, making it, unlike the redwoods, very climbable. That's part of the problem.
the big tree gets a pretty fence
all the oak trees
on the middle coast near
Rockport-Fulton
grow with their branches
spread west, having been pushed
that way by ever-blowing
gulf winds
since they were seedlings
(think Donald Trump and his hair
in an opposing wind)
it is a marvel to see them,
so strange in their
appearance, testament
to the persistence of life
in every environment
most marvelous to see,
most persistent in its grip on life
is the big tree near the marshlands
of the Aransas Wildlife Refuge,
estimated to be 1,500 to 2,000 years old,
reputed to be one of the oldest
trees in the United States,
grown not in some welcoming verdant forest
but in the unforgiving salt and sand
of the gulf coast, survivor of drought,
hurricanes, shipwrecked Spanish sailors
struggling to reach the shore, to survive
the cannibal Karankawa, pirates,
salt water tides, family
picnics on wide blankets under
the spread of its massive limbs,
dead-later lovers
carving their passion and promises of undying love,
children
climbing - lasting through it all,
growing
growing
growing
taller
taller
wider and wider
through century after century...
getting fragile now in its old age,
area firemen pump water to its roots,
years ago, a fence built by the CCC to protect it
from picnickers and children and vandals'
passions, a fence that fell down in time
while the tree held fast it's sandy grip,
the fallen fence replaced by chain link,
the tree then like a prisoner in protective custody
even as it hangs on
growing
taller
wider growing...
now a new fence,a pretty pine-wood fence,
the big tree's fallen brothers from the north
it's protector now, with observation decks
so that quick-living, fast-dying
humans can look and marvel at the slow pass of history
on this out-of-the-way spit of coastal sand
and marsh and wintering cranes and
misshapen trees...
how much longer will this trains survive
within its new and pretty fence,
longer than the fence, we hope, longer
than those who come today to see it,
longer than he who writes in this early
morning, longer than the Jesus
whose concurrent birth we so assiduously celebrate,
longer than the malls where the faithful become
the consumed, manipulate into wanting
everything, always...
how much longer will the big tree survive
wanting only the rainwater and sunshine and unpolluted air
that nourishes it,
all such necessary things
hostage to our endless wanting, the tree's past
our past, the tree's future
unfortunately ours
as well
This is a longer piece from
Song of Myself, showing
Whitman and his wonderful lists, as if he set out to itemize the universe.
But then, in Whitman's list, every item is a revelation of newly seen reality.
from
Song of Myself
15
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles
its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiv-
ing dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
the mate sands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are
ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the alter,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and
looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
bedroom;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his qauid of tobacco while his eyes blur with the manu-
script;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by
the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the
gate-keeper marks his pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon (I love him, though I do
not know him;)
the half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on
their rifles,some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman,takes his position, levels his
piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the wooly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them
from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners,
the dancers bow to each other,
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the
musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek the helps fill the Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth is offering moccasins
and bead-bags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along he exhibition-galley with half-shut eyes
bent sideways,
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for
the shore-going passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it
off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago born
her first child,
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in
the factory or mill,
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's lead
flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering
with blue and gold,
The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his
desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow
him,
The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions,
the regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white
sails sparkle!)
The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray,
The peddler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling
about the odd cent;)
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock
moves slowly,
the opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips,
the prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and
pimpled neck,
The crowd laughs at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to
each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great
Secretaries,
On the plaza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined
arms,
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the
hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the
jingling of loose change,
The floor-men are lying he floor, the tinners are tinning the roof,
the masons are calling for more mortar,
In a single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
the fourth of Seventh-month (what salutes of cannon and
small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows,
and the winter grain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the
frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick around the clearing, the squatter strikes deep
with his axe,
Flatboatmen make fast towards the dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-
trees,
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through
those drain'd by the Tennessee, or through those of the
Arkansas,
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattabooche or Altama-
haw,
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great grandsons
around them,
In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after
their day's sport,
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of thee on and all I weave the song of myself.
Another old poem about a foggy, misty day, the day today a lot like that kind of day then.
some day, but not today
i feel as old
as fog
on a winter morning
opaque
and adrift
and cold, like refrigerated
mist from a butcher's locker
someday
I will write a poem
about the many metaphoric misuses
off fog
- fog of confusion
- fog of denial
- fog of deceit
and so on and
how unfair it is to bestow
such negative allusions
to a part of nature's plan
for the collision of atmospheric tendencies
that can't play together nicely...
and then I will write a poem
about how I used to enjoy
foggy mornings on the coast,
driving across the narrow spit of road
across Oso Bay in a gray corridor, water
on either side, the slap of unseen fish
as they jump into the air and strike the water
with their tails when they fall, and the fog
at the harbor, on the T-heads and gulls
with their morning cries, a few feet away
but invisible in the mist, or driving
on a forested road in East Texas, roadway clear,
but fog drifting like long-dead soldiers
in their gray uniforms among the trees,
or walking on the streets downtown,
between tall buildings, across the river
on stone-arched bridges, listening
to the quiet off the city still sleeping
amid the mysteries of the morning murk...
someday
i'll do all that,
but not today,
for today i feel old
as fog
on a winter day
and only want to
sleep
in its gray embrace
Here from my library are two poems by Irish poet
Paul Muldoon, from his book
Moy Sand and Gravel published in 2002 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Muldoon has held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry since 1999 and has published over 30 collections of poetry.
Whitethorns
The paling posts we would tap into the ground with the flat of a spade
more than thirty years ago,
hammering them home then with a sledge
then stringing them with wire to keep our oats from Miller's barley,
are maxed out, multilayered whitethorns, affording us a broader, deeper
shade
than we ever decently hooped to know,
so far-fetched does it seem, so far-flung from the hedge
under which we now sit down to parley.
An Old Pit Pony
An old pit pony walks
its chalks
across a blasted hearth
Its coat is a cloud hung on a line.
It sighs
for the pit-poppered skies
of the world beneath.
Its coat is a cloud hung on a line.
This string poem from watching car lights pass on the interstate just before dawn cracked open the night.
fast lane
wet
road black
ivory
mirror
passing lights
little
bug
lights
scurrying
bright
eyes
in
dim
dark
to
little bug
duties
fast
lane
living
little
bugs
on a
wet
jungle
trail
passing
and
passing
and
passing
again
Having completed transcription of that long section from
Song of Myself, I reward myself with this shorter bit that comes a little later.
from
Song of Myself
17
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to
nothing.
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing,
f they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
The the common air that bathes the globe.
Another from December, 2010.
so much more to it
waiting
for the day to begin,
watching
the slow accumulation
of light,
like the way puddles form
in a slow, steady rain,
drinking coffee
watching commuters pass
on the interstate
thinking as they speed past
of the poem lying with Burger King wrappers in the back seat
of every car,
stories I don't know, will never
know, poems I will never write -
such is life, so much
more to it
than we'll ever see as we huddle in our little corner
try as we might to imagine it, to understand
and describe it all, our ambitions
far outpacing
our capacities to see beyond the dark
to see through our own dark
and the dark that surrounds all of us -
all of us sharing
the dark at the bottom of a well,
the only true sharing we will ever do...
it is a lonely business, alone
in the dark
reaching blindly for someone to hold on to,
anchoring
our life to another
for as long as the dark may last -
to be left alone again
in the end,
the greatest terror of all our fears
```
finally
I see the sun this morning
glowing orange behind winter-bare trees
one more time,
at
least
The next poet from my library is
Ron Slate. I have the next poem from his book,
The Great Wave, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2009.
Lion of God
Some remember me from those days
not by the name given to me,
but by the breach between name and boy.
At ten I pronounced the unspeakable
name of God, my teacher rose from his chair,
dragged me by the scruff, then shook me
in his teeth. Speaking the word to make
a pleasing sound, I neglected
to consider the significance,
committing a grave offense.
Thus I was transformed by terror,
my classmates looking on,
and in the space between name and child
arose fear, respect, contempt,
wonder, loss of faith, awe of the eternal.
I took my seat and read on, wary
of meaning but loving the lilt, relying now on rhythm
so the time may never be interrupted again.
I wrote this next piece, a fond remembrance of an acquaintance almost certainly long passed on, upon hearing news of him a couple of days before.
Elizondo Road
I just learned
that Freddy got himself
a road...
up near Bluetown,
a tiny town a couple of miles
from the small town where I grew up,
just a cotton field
from the Rio Grande River...
a little Mexican beer joint
there where I used to go to buy
beer when I was about sixteen,
no questions asked
until a new guy asked me
what year I was born
and I couldn't get the math
to work in my mind
so I turned around and walked
out
lucky for my drinking habits
the new guy didn't last
long, costing the owner too much
business, I'm guessing,
so things quickly returned to
normal...
```
(this is supposed to be about Fred,
not me, which I often forget when in the midst
of poeming...)
so,
as I was going to say
before I so rudely
interrupted
myself,
Fred was a very nice fellow...
a nice fellow, my co-worker
for a few years,
a farmer, a social worker
who helped farm workers and labor contractors
find each other for the annual
migration to harvest crops
in the north, a friend to all who might need
a friend, and, come election time,
a gatherer of Democratic voters, filling
his big farm truck with farm workers,
insuring they all knew
by the time they reached the polls
who the Democrat was and how to vote
for him...
a man with all the normal South Texas
prejudices, but like with most of that kind,
prejudices applying only to those he didn't know,
never to any he knew and made his friend,
in short, a very nice fellow and a good friend
to have in the best and worst
of times...
if I listed all the people I've known
who deserve a road, it would be a
very short list and right at the top
would be Fred from Bluetown, Texas,
a man I know would be
very proud
of his road, a man I knew
and liked many
years
ago
I wanted to do more with this week's look at
Walt Whitman and his great
Leaves of Grass than just his first and largest and greatest poem,
Song of Myself. Since this is my last poem from the book this week, it's time to do what I had set out to do.
This next piece if from late as the book is presented is also too long to use in it's entirety, so here's just a part, the poem's concluding verses.
from
To Think of Time
8
Slow moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
Northerner goes carried and Southerner goes carried, and they on the
Atlantic side and they on the Pacific,
And they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all
over the earth.
The great masters and kosmos are well as they go, the heroes and
good-doers are well,
The known leaders and inventors and the rich owners and pious and
distinguis'd may be well,
But there is more account than that, there is strict account of all.
The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they
go.
Of and in all these things,
I have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of
us changed,
I have dream'd that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present
and past law,
And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and
past law,
For I have dream'd that the law they are under now is enough.
And I have dream'd that the purpose and essence of the known life,
the transient,
Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent.
If all came but to ashes of dung,
If maggots and rats ended us, the Alarum! for we are betrayed,
Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death I should die now,
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihila-
tion?
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whiter I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
The whole universe indicates that it is good,
The past and the present indicated that it is good.
How beautiful and perfect are the animals!
How perfect the earth and the minutest thing upon it!
What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable
fluids perfect;
Slowly and surely they have pass'd on to this, and slowly and surely
they yet pass on.
I swear I think now that every thing without exception has an eternal
soul!
The trees have, rooted int he ground the weeds of the sea have! the
animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it,
and the cobering is for it!
And all the preparation is for it - and identity is for it - and life and
materials are altogether for it!
Here it is, the last 2010 poem.
chickens and eggs
I've never had anyone to
talk to about things
bothering me
except for myself,
sometimes
talking myself to sleep
at night, more recently
writing
the conversation down
like this
and calling it a poem
a result is
I don't remember
ever taking anyone's advice
on anything;
but maybe that's the cause,
not the result,
maybe I never had anyone
to talk to because
I knew,
and they knew as well, that
I wasn't going to pay any attention
to what they said
anyway
so what's the point
a real cause and effect
thing, the nexus of most big
questions,
who caused what
or what caused
who;
did some god or gods
cause us
or did we cause them
as I suspect
for I am of the school
that we are the creators
of everything from pigs' sty
to the all-powerful God on his throne
in heaven, none of it real,
illusions all, from pig stink to the glitter
of the pearly gates, dreams held together
by common belief, drawn from some immaterial
pre-blast memory of some immaterial
pre-blast
dimension where, unlike ours
everything is real
it is why we must always believe
all the things we all believe,
for if we did not
they would not be and neither
would
we
maybe
we could talk about this
some time
before
it's too late
Anne Sexton is the last poet from my library this week. Her poem is from her collection,
The Awful Rowing Toward God, published in 1975 by Houghton Mifflin.
I chose the picture on the left from among a very large number of photos on her Wikipedia page, including several nudes. Not that surprising considering her early career as a model, but still, being not what you expect to find in a normal poet bio, surprising enough.
The Evil Seekers
We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape,
as pure as a pond in Alaska,
as good as the stem of a green bean -
we are born and that ought to be enough,
we ought to be able to carry on from that
but one must learn about evil,
learn what is subhuman,
learn how the blood pops out like a scream,
one must see the night
before one can realize the day,
one must listen to the animal within,
one must walk like a sleepwalker
on the edge of the roof,
one must throw some part of her body
into the devil's mouth.
Odd stuff, you'd say.
But I'd say
you must die a little,
have a book of matches go off in your hand,
see your best friend copying your exam,
visit an Indian reservation and see
their plastic feathers,
the dead dream.
One must be a prisoner just once to hear
the lock twist into his gut.
After all that
one is free to grasp at the trees, stones,
the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.
But even in a telephone booth
evil can seep out of the receiver
and we must cover it with a mattress,
and tear it from its roots
and bury it,
bury it.
Here's my last new poem for the week, writing Sunday morning at the beginning of what would a beautiful cool and bright mid-winter day in South Texas.
sailors on a fading sea
in the misty
morning
streetlamps pool
light on dark parking lots
brown leaves blow across
the light
like tiny fish
swimming
in a glowing pond
winter night
finding its way
to day
taking me
with it, quiet
as the tiny fish
that swim
in their little fading
seas

I finish this week, not with a new poem, but a very old one from the late sixties, written under the influence of the times, of several San Francisco poets I particularly liked (though I cannot remember now who they were) and most of all, my first concentrated reading of Walt Whitman. I liked the free-flowing forms of the Beats and the immediacy and imagery of Whitman. No need to say anything about the times. I was content to be, especially, with Whitman, a learner and emulator. The idea that I would ever be more than that never occurred to me.
notes from a grounded witchdoctor
rosy glow
rosy glow
breaks the light
into silken clouds
of floating pink
drifting
drifting
into the expanding
corners of my pulsating room
rooms
fields
tiny
universe
growing
growing
too big
too
much
fallingbackfallingback
regrouping
afraid of reaching
give me room
control
control
control
sure
no longer afraid
jumping for the clouds
riding
riding
into the ever expanding
corners of my pulsating room
riding
clouds of taffy
sticking
sucking
pulling me to the floor
phosphorescent walls quake and tilt
throwing off slippery shadows
that pool at the floor
eat at the floor
and leap at me
with the deliberate
slowness
of an unconquerable tide
then turn golden
then red
at my feet
the angry lobster redness
the infectious angry redness
colors my feet
and crawls up my leg
chewing
chewing
chewing
reaching
crawling
pulling at my body
pulling me to a high place
I stand atop a hill
in the shade of a tree
a wide-spreading tree
birds sing from the tree
and I understand the song
and try to sing along
but the birds stop
and leave me singing
alone
alone
until a bird lunges from the tree
to stand on the ground
and becomes a shadow figure
a man in black
a man with no face
black space where a face should be
the thing
the shadow faceless thing
begins to cry
and birds come from the tree
and land on his shoulders
as crows
great black crows
evil
black crows
that sit on the phantasmal shoulders
and cry
the ground collapses beneath me
the hill flattens beneath me
and I am in a valley
and the hiss is behind me
and the figure
and the crows
stand on the hill and cry
so far above me
as the hill shimmers
through the heat of the valley
fades
and
disappears...
I'm alone in the valley
in the dust of the valley
in the hot hot dust of the valley
it grows hotter in the valley
and it grows hotter in the valley
and I'm lying naked
in the boiling mud
of the valley
people stand around me
men and women without faces
black spaces
where faces should be
men and women
in long black skirts that drag
in the mud
they laugh at me
great ghostly specters from a tribal past
they laugh at me
I press my cracked lips
into the mud and try to suck
for water and burn
my face
and my lips
and my tongue
mud
not mud
mud
mud
not mud
grass
wet grass
dew-wet grass
cool dew-wet grass
I run my tongue over the grass
bite into the grass
chew on its coolness
I lie on my back
under the cool fresh sky
and stretch out my arms
and pull handfuls of grass
and throw them at the sun
and let the grass
rain back on me
and catch it
with my body
I crawl beneath
the grass and meadow flowers
and roots and working earthworms
and look up to watch
the sun in in its interminable agony
of circling
circling
ever circling
I watch the sun
through the roots
and grass and crawling insects
from behind the petals
of meadow flowers
circling
circling
circling
f
a
l
l
i
n
g
c r a s h i n g
d
i
v
i
n
g
s w o o p i n g
clawing
at
my
eyes
burning
at
my
eyes
searing
my eyes and cheeks and lips and screaming tongue
I close my eyes
and I'm in a room
a small room
a dark room
a black room
a room without light
but for a dot
pulsing off and on
off and on
off and on
off and on
in one corner of the room
the dot grows
as it pulses off and on
larger
and larger
it crashes toward me
washes over me
leaves me in a lonely light
alone
alone
alone
alone now
lying now on my floor
linoleum cold against my cheek
I turn on my back
alone on the floor
and
sleep
Let's hear it for the end of this miserable year with wishes for something a whole lot different for 2014.
As usual, everything belongs to who made it. You're welcome to use my
stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and
me.
I mention it every week and it's still true, I'm Allen Itz owner and producer of
this blog, and diligent seller of books, specifically these and
specifically here:
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBookstore, Sony eBookstore, Copia, Garner's,
Baker & Taylor, eSentral, Scribd, eBookPie, and Kobo (and, through
Kobo,retail booksellers all across America and abroad)
Poetry
Places and Spaces
Always to the Light
Goes Around Comes Around
Pushing Clouds Against the Wind
And, for those print-bent, available at Amazon and select
coffeehouses in San Antonio
Seven Beats a Second
Short Stories
Sonyador - The Dreamer
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