I guess I'm a kind of a liberal, the kind of a liberal who believes that a better world is possible and that that better world is dependent on people like you and me to make it so.
This piece, from my second eBook,
Goes Around, Comes Around, a liberal's tongue in cheek admission that he really doesn't know what the hell to do to achieve that betterment.
poets on every street corner
I was going
to write a poem
about what I would do
if I could run the world
but
sitting here now
I realize
I don't know what to do either
except
I'd like to see rain
every Thursday
and sunshine and blue skies
the rest of the week
except
in the winter
when there should be snow
and blue skies
and children skating
on iced-over ponds
and cows in the field
blowing clouds
through their noses
and palm trees on beaches
for those who don't like shade
and big waves for the
surfers
and clear clean streams
slow moving
between tall green trees
for us who prefer to float
and people learning to shake off
bad times
like dogs shaking off wet
a big shake
beginning with flapping ears
passing down to big
shimmy-shakes
of their rears
butts like a Mixmaster
in overdrive
and no icky things
in dark corners
no snakes
and no spiders and no
poison lizards
or animals who like to eat people
and no fatherless children
or old people
rotting in isolation
ad inattention
and no one dying
of diseases they couldn't afford to cure
and no backaches or
migraines
or rashes
in hide-away places
and no people who eat too much
or people who never get to eat
as much as they need
and no drunkards of drug addicts
or gangsters
who shoot children from their cars
and no priests, preachers, ayatollahs,
rabbis, or other parasites on the human soul...
instead
poets on every street corner
proclaiming truth and love and silly songs
for all who will listen
and people who will listen to all the poets
on all the street corners
and return their love
and maybe throw money
and no Republicans -
that should be at the top of
my list
instead of here
at the
bottom
This week, a few new poems from me, even fewer poems from my library (all but one from a single anthology) and, as the past couple of posts, a bunch of poems from
Seven Beats a Second, my first book and my only print book., published in 2005.
The anthology is
Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry, published by the University Of Texas - Austin in 1996. It is a huge book, coffee table size, 390 pages of poetry in English and Spanish or Portuguese as appropriate.
The illustration that accompanies each of the "Seven Beats" poems is by artist
Vincent Martinez, my collaborator on the book. His art appears on every page of the book.
Me
poets on every street corner
Me
never was a tom
Brenda Morisse
postcards to the moon
you bring out the mouse in me
Me
drought buster
Jose Santos Chocano
A Manifesto
Me
a poem for the moment
Me
the pull of the moon
the moon rising
Me
warning label
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
In the Middle of the Road
Me
same old story
Me
anti-war poems are easy
Me
the shape of things that are
Homero Aridjis
Letter from Mexico
Me
dim morning memories
Me
by the light of the silvery moon
Me
why the boys go out on Saturday night
Raul Zurita
VI
Me
welcome
Me
flying a kite with Katie
Me
stories my father told me
Me
about lost balloons
Me
happy faces
New from two weeks ago.
never was a tom
never was a tom,
never could get the swagger down,
never had enough grizzly in me
to make it work...
just a scraggy old alley cat
looking for domestication, that was me,
and luck for me
I found it
oh,
I have my garbage can
and fish head memories
and they're fun to play with,
talk about,
write about,
the days and ways of
bristle-back
nights,
chasing mice
and birds
eating
the slow ones
waking in the morning
in hard-won corners,
the sour taste
of feathers hung up
in my whiskers
~~~~
but remembering those days
is all I want these
days
my soft pillow by the fire
that's what I want these days
the companionship
and soft back-stroking pleasure
that comes with my daily ration of
kibble
that's the extend of my ambition...
oh
I can still tell the stories
and make believe
I was the wild cat I never really
was
just an old alley cat, that's me,
rescued
from the yellow alley shadows
of nowhere afternoons,
and those
dark, lonely nights
understanding
at last
that the best stories
are better
when you're done living them
Here are poems by my poet-friend from the Bronx,
Brenda Morisse.
postcards to the moon
postcard 1
I'm your small pie glazed mango
You resuscitate my ache for midnight
from the window I am crazy
eyed and wrapped in a blush
I kneel at your hem light
postcard 2
I marry your ecstatic crescent,
sink into a basin of back
alley bliss. I'm your lowly flower pot
Fill m with moonvine and bawdy trumpets
postcard 3
Graze my greedy hours with an opera
of goosebumps, plump my belly and thighs
Your same-face-glow polishes my pleasant
feet. You fullness butters our unmade bed.
You bring out the mouse in me,
the furry little beast with the long naked tail in me. Swishing.
You bring out the long teeth in me.
The biting my nickle, gnawing through trees, snacking
on walls and insulation, in me.
How I love insulation. Want a nibble?
I'll make a fondue, too.
You bring out the stalker in me, the snuggle in your pocket
in me when I settle down in the linen closet,
better yet, nest in your mattress.
And we sill share my fleas as we pray
to the trap of the great Mighty.
You bring out the Minnie and her perky red polka dot bow in me.
Swooning over Mickey in me
and I want to birth your babies every three weeks, hear the pitter
patter of tiny feet scurrying left right left right and around
and around the kitchen linoleum at midnight in me, while I squeak
Oops, Oops.
You bring out the
Save me!
Save me! in me.
Here's a celebratory piece from
Seven Beats a Second, rain after a long hot and dry summer.
drought buster
dams near-by strain
close to bursting this morning,
and houses float down churning rivers
normally slow and serene
but here, my creek, though wider bank to bank,
flows again at ankle depth, its white limestone bottom
swept clean of accumulated sand and algae,
gleams in the sun through water clear as glass
last night
the rumble of its rushing water woke me
now, under the clear skis of this new day,
morning quiet is broken only by the call of doves
and croaking frogs awakened again
from the slumber of last week's drought
The first poem from the anthology is by one of the oldest poets in the book,
Jose Santos Chocano of Peru. Born in 1875, Chocano died in 1934. A political activist, he spent time in prison for his radical activities, as well as for the murder of a fellow poet, a crime for which he received a pardon. He admitted to being influenced the the American Walt Whitman.
The translator was
Andrew Rosing.
A Manifesto
I sing America, in its wild and autochthonous state;
my lyre his soul, and my son has an ideal.
My poem does no hang from a branch,
calmly swinging like tropical hammock...
When I feel Incan, I honor the king,
the Sun, who offers me the scepter of his royal power;
when I feel Spanish, I invoke the Empires
my strophes seem like crystal trumpets...
My imagination comes from ancient Moorish blood,
the Andes are of silver, but Leon is of gold.
I fuse both races with a noise like a thunder.
My blood is Spanish and Incan in its throbs;
if I were not poet, I might have had the job
of a white Adventurer, or Incan emperor!
Welcoming an extraordinary new day.
a poem for the moment
street lights
cast yellow pools of liquid light
rippling in the shadow tide of tree limbs blowing
the sun
not quite risen,
the day just a crack
on the east horizon
but the sky shows
the blue effects
of even that little light...
Sunday morning
rising up to meet
me
Two moon poems from
Seven Beats a Second.
the pull of the moon
half moon
cut precisely by earth's shadow
one part shining
in the clear October night
like a great yellow beacon in the sky
and the other, dark and mysterious,
though barely seen by the eyes
still a mover of tides
and midnight meditations
so it is with my love for you,
as the bright in you pulls me,
ever more the secrets
of your darker moods
the moon rising
ripples of wind
ruffle bay waters
like a lover's hand
soothing soft tangles
in her beloved's hair
gently winds
quiet waters
bright stars warm
in the cool
autumn dark
the moon
rising,
empress
of the night

I smoked my first cigarette, a Mexican brand with wrapping paper soaked in sugar cane water, when I was twelve years old. I smoked my last cigarette, a Kool, I think, when I was fifty-two. although I have not smoked for barely more than half the time I did, I'm convinced I'm still alive because I quit when I did.
So I wrote this poem, my suggestion for the next cigarette pack warning label, and included it in
Seven Beats a Second.
warning label
cigarette smoke
makes you smell like a bar in the morning
the stale stink of a butt-littered floor
and spilled beer
and piss from the overflowed urinal in the john
all overlaid by a reek of desperation
the desperation of limp cocks lost in lust-dreaming
losers lost in their own lies
redemption-dreams fading as the sun rises
to the squalor of crud-crusted eyes
and a lingering vomit-bile breath
The next poet from the anthology is
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, modernist poet and writer considered by many to be Brazil's greatest poet of all time. Born in 1902, he died in 1987, becoming long the way something of a national symbol.
Also a favorite of many mid-century American poets, his poem was translated by
John Nist.
In the Middle of the Road
In the middle of the road was a stone
was a stone in the middle of the road
was a stone
I shall never forget the event
in the life of my old so tired eyes.
I shall never forget that in the middle of the road
was a stone
was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road was stone.
From week before last.
same old story
Adam
&
Eve
&
Mr. Devil
the names are changed
but the story's always the same
a man a woman and a snake
in the grass
the story
that is the glue that lurks
in the guts of all
stories
Shakespeare
to Faulkner
to the latest paperback
pot boiler
reassurance
of our human continuity -
love
and its shadows
Thinking of things it's easy to be against that we do anyway, from
Seven Beats a Second.
anti-war poems are easy
the heart of the matter
is that
the heart of the matter
sometimes doesn't matter much
anti-war poems are easy
since, in our hearts,
we all know that the logic of war
that says I will kill strangers
until a stranger kills me
is insane
and who can deny that in our hearts
we all know a human fetus
no matter how small
and misshapen and incomplete
is a human-in-waiting,
holding within its tiny bounds
all the capacity for love
and laughter as any of us
and who,
even among the most aggrieved of us
could, without a tremor
of hand an heart, push the button
that drops the cyanide pellet
ending the life
of even the bloodiest
of our murdering kind
yet we kill strangers
who might someday
have been our friend
we erase from the future
the love and laughter of those
we decide will never be
and we murder the murderers
with appropriate
writ and ceremony
all these terrible things we do
because our hearts cannot guide us
in choosing the lesser of evils
it is our lizard brain we must turn to
when the heart of the matter
doesn't matter enough
A little physics and lost romance from
Seven Beats a Second.
the shape of things that are
all matter,
and that includes you and me
and the '49 Chrysler
upon whose soft cloth sat
I first held in my hand the tender breast
of Sophi Gallanti, all of it, in its base nature
is either a donut or a hole
everything, that is,
can be molded, without tearing any part
or joining together any part not already connected
into either a sphere or a donut
that with sphereness at its heart
cannot be made donut;
that whose base nature is donut
cannot into sphereness come
so spaghetti a sphere will always be,
while rigatoni
will always be the other
thus it was with Sophi and me,
despite our so propitious start
sphere she was,
rounded, certain, calm and complete,
while my donut nature struggled
to join our unconnected parts
Next from the anthology, Mexican poet
Homero Aridjis. Born in 1940, Aridjis studied journalism in Mexico City before setting out on his career as poet and novelist. He has been visiting professor at Columbia and New York Universities. He also served as Mexican ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland.
His poem was translated by
Eliot Weinberger.
Letter from Mexico
Invisible ancestors
walk with us
through these back streets
car-noises
the stares of children
young girls' bodies
cross through them
Weightless vague
we travel through them
at doorways that no longer are
on bridges that are empty
while with the sun on our faces
we too
move thorough transparency
Morning news and weather bring out a memory.
dim morning memories
dim morning,
gray clouds inert above
the roof line,
a single dissenter,
the topmost branches
of a pecan tree, insist their green
must be included in any portrait
of the day..
remembering
a day more than fifty years past,
working for a small newspaper
in a small town near Houston,
two weeks before Christmas, 1965,
my draft notice arrived
and I reported
to the induction center
in Houston,
then quickly returned to my small town
and convinced the Air Force recruiter
to help me dodge the draft
by enlisting for a four-year hitch
as a Airman...
the day came to report,
and I did, one of thirty recruits
bused to San Antonio,
where,
climbing off the bus
we were greeted with the
North Carolina drawl of our DI
the man who would run our lives
for the next six weeks...
it was not a gentle greeting...
I remember his voice, his accent, promising
in the roughest terms that we would never
again be the civilians we were
that day, that
moment...
that voice under a dark sky,
his voice calling from the dark clouds
that over cast the day
like God at his most fearsome...
bad weather
and hard days followed,
promises were kept,
and we were
changed
~~~~~~~~~~
I think of this
after seeing pictures yesterday
of pig-Trump and pig-Ted Nugent spreading
their smiling, feces-faces all over our Oval Office
being of generally the same age as I, they could have
been with me in the experience above,
but they ran away, their country called and they hid out
behind fake excuses, claiming now a patriotism
that makes me want to
vomit
and I can't help thinking that six weeks
with my North Carolina DI
would have been good for them,
and as it turned out,
for us as well...
Remembering the most exciting night of my life.
by the light of the silvery moon
I can see it clearly in the cloudless night,
the dark areas of its seas plainly visible,
not dried seabed, as some thought, but scars
from the early days when it and our own earth
were freshly born, fragile in the beginning,
when debris from creation's chaos
fell through airless skies, punched through
the crust of lunar surface, released its molten core
to blow black in the reflected light of the sun,
our sun, old in the scale of it's captive off-spring,
but still young in the cycle of its own kind,
the cycle of stars that light the night
into our own time, as even into our own time
the black scars remain, reminders of the time
when fire ruled and all of time and space
bubbled in the furnace of conception
and as this bright survivor rises, I think of the night
when Cronkite and Schirra wept
for all of us to see, when our finite realm
stretched to include one small piece of that battered
surface, the surface where our kind stirred dust
undisturbed since the turmoil that spread it,
the surface where our footsteps will outlast
all our grandest ambitions, footprints to say,
past even our own slow and certain slide
to extinction, we were, and while we were,
we were here, and I think of my youth, watching
the first Russian satellite pass overhead, a new moon,
man-made sister to the old, the tiny moving dot of it
reflecting sunlight from the other side of the world,
right back to us, lying on our backs in a South Texas field,
and beyond that tiny moving light, as always, the moon,
great light to our night, beacon to our dreams for as long
as we have been able to lift our heads and wonder
we were so naive then, believing we had reached
beyond our shallow nature, believing all was possible,
believing, with Armstrong, that one small step
could finally release the better angels of our nature,
better angels imprisoned so long by our history,
subjugated by the brutal demands of survival
but the wars went on and hate and cruelty one to the other
went on and we grow old and tired of believing, except
for nights like this when the great disc shines over us
undiminished and we remember when the universe seemed
spread before us, when time seemed on our side forever
then, for a while, we remember and believe again
This, a little biology lesson from
Seven Beats a Second.
why the boys go out on Saturday night
s
e
x
sells
especially when lit in
n
e
o
n
flashing
on
and
off
flashflash
on
and
off
sex flashes through the night
drawing us through the rushing current
up
stream
we
go
bashing our heads on sharp rocks
of deceit and desire, all for a chance to
fuck our fish brains out before we die
in the shallow pool of everyday life
My final poet from this week's anthology is Chilean
Raul Zurita. Born in 1950, Zurita studied Civil Engineering and Mathematics before settling into a literary career, that career interrupted by the overthrow by military cop of Chile's socialist government and his subsequent arrest and detention, along with thousands of others, in the hole of a ship. He supported himself and his family as a computer salesman before publication of his first poem in 1975. He later won the Chilean National Prize for Poetry in 2000.
His poem was translated by
Jack Schmitt.
VI
Chile's distant and it's a lie
it's not true we've ever exchanged vows
the fields are mirages
and public places are reduced to ash
But even though almost everything's a lie
I know that some day all Chile
will arise just to see you
and ever if nothing exists, my eyes will see you
A happy day from a happy week.
welcome
the morning
bright and dear
after a night of struggle
I
welcome
sun, welcome breeze
blowing softly from the northeast
welcome
trees so green,
welcome flowers as they push
through soft, verdant soil
with an arms-open embrace, and
a wide-stretching smile pulling at my ears
I
welcome day
welcome you
welcome me
welcome life
From
Seven Beats a Second, this product of a challenge I gave myself, to go all the way through the alphabet with poems incorporating women's names. I didn't make it, but I did pretty good before I got tired of the game.
flying a kite with Katie
swirls
and dives
and swoops
and loops the loop,
a blue and white kite
against a blue and white sky
Katie
beside me,
brown on brown,
with white teeth
flashing in laughter
at the glory of the day
she holds the string,
pulls as the kite begins to stall,
lets loose when a gust of summer wind
lifts the kite and takes it toward the clouds
and I hold her,
not so tight, she says,
this is hard to do, she says,
back off so I can concentrate, she says
and I back away
as a great flurry of wind comes
billows her dress against her back and legs
and she seems to fly like the kite away from me
Memories, from
Seven Beats a Second.
stories my father told me
I walk tonight under a sky
cool and dry for September,
with scattered clouds
lit a milky white by city lights,
soft on the edges,
like marshmallows half melted
in a cup of dark, hot chocolate
a plane passes overhead,
a jet whisper in the quiet night,
a military plane of some kind,
not unusual here between
several nearby military bases
with steady air traffic of all kinds
what a sight, the huge aircraft
coming in overhead, so big,
like an office building aloft,
and so slow and quiet, hanging
it seemed, right over me,
just out of reach of a good stretch
I wonder what my father
would have made of them...
he told me the story
of the day when he was a child
and one of the great zeppelins
flew over his little town
and how all the town people
left their shops and all the ranchers
put aside their pasture clearing
and fence building and tried to follow
the great balloon in it's slow journey,
a parade of model T's and wagons
across the Texas hill country, until
it left the road and went cross-country
on its way from San Antonio to Dallas
it seems strange today, but that sight,
that vision of lighter-than-air grace,
was the closest he ever came to flying...
so many things like that he never did
the sky begins to cloud
and I return home,
the marshmallow clumps melting,
the night closing in with me thinking
of my father again, as I do often now
at the age his life ended,
another life time for me since then,
making another me he never knew,
like all the lives he led I never knew,
except for the stories he told,
some true, some just in passing
And speaking of balloons, this piece, also from
Seven Beats a Second.
about lost balloons
what happens, do you suppose,
to balloons that get away?
you can see them in the sky
on clear days, sometimes
just a single balloon,soaring
on wings of summer breeze, slipped
from the hands of a little girl at the zoo,
or maybe several tied together,
a multicolored cluster of balloons flown free
from some backyard birthday party
but, when you see them, they're always
going away; you never see them coming back.
I think of a book I read when I was a child,
a Little Golden Book about a toy boat
set loose in a small stream by a little boy,
the boat getting away from the boy, glorying,
at first, in the excitement of freedom, then growing
frightened as the water grew deeper and wider,
turned into a fast moving creek, then a mighty flowing river
that led to a harbor with giant ships and then the ocean,
a vast and lonely ocean...a reassurance, this story,
a parable with a happy ending as the little boat is rescued
at the very last minute and returned to the safety of home,
family, the waiting child the familiar little stream
where adventures always end at dinner time.
but what about balloons?
once gone, they don't come back,
they aren't rescued by some kindly stranger and sent back
from some exotic place like Australia, China or Leola,
South Dakota, they're never folded and stuffed
into an envelope with a stamp and a postmark and a note
in a stranger's hand "for the little girl at the zoo."
so where do they go, these lost balloons?
is there some balloon graveyard, like with elephants, but high
in the stratosphere, somewhere between the vacuum of space
and the pressures of the confining earth? or, beyond that,
perhaps there's a saloon on an alien planet,
like in Star Wars, with balloon music and balloon beer,
where rogue balloons of many planets come together
to celebrate freedom and brag of their exploits
in the heavier-than-air world they left behind,
or, maybe there's a rest home for strayed balloons,
weary from their travels, worn from adventure,
where they can sit in balloon rockers on a long porch,
watching a red balloon sun rise over rolling balloon surf
as the last of their air slips slowly away with a gentle sigh
there is a lesson in the mystery of the lost balloons,
not so clear as those in the Little Golden Books, something
for the older child, afraid too long of the free, open sky
A great way to start the day.
happy faces
after days of angst,
I want to write a happy poem
and to get into the
mood
I think of all the happy-faced
people
I see in my daily doings,
people who look like not just that
they're really happy to see you,
but also like they have this really funny
joke in mind that they'd really
like to tell you
if you had the time,
people who smile with their
whole face, their lips, their eyes,
the way they present their face
forward toward you, like they're daring you
to have an unhappy thought,
to try to press a gloom on them,
won't work
their face says, the girl at the pharmacy,
for example, almost worth being sickly
just for a chance to see her, to luxuriate, like
in a pool of warm bubbling water,
in the healing power of her
happy face,
welcoming the afflicted
to bask in the power
of happy...
I like people like that...
of course there's the other kind,
I saw on just yesterday,
a young woman
all fancy dressed, who walked
into the coffeehouse
with a huge smile, looked around
to see anyone she knew for whom
pretense was required,
finding no such person, her smile,
like in the click of a switch, falls away
ad her true Witch Brunhilda face is exposed
to all of us, the "don't counts' who clutter up
her world...
I don't like that kind of person, and,
faced with one,
I remind myself of the happy face
at the pharmacy
and am content that there is hop
in the world for our
better angels
and that the next time I'm at the pharmacy
I'm going to slow down,
wait to hear
her joke
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stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and
to me
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I welcome your comments below on this issue and the poetry and photography featured in it.
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Poetry
New Days & New Ways
Places and Spaces
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
Fiction
Sonyador - The Dreamer
Peace in Our Time
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