Here and Now: April 2018

from where I sit

from
where I sit
I can see past
a small grove of
winter-bare red oak
to Interstate 10, east & west routes,
the one to Houston and, through Houston,
to Louisiana and points est and north beyond

the other route,
follow westerly,
600 miles through hill country
and high desert to El Paso and 4 states beyond,
to the orange setting sun reflected on Pacific waters

most of
the people I see passing
are not going so far, most knowing
the further you travel in any direction
the closer you get to home, so why not just stay
there
untraveled, but satisfied, right there
where you and your life belong

for myself,
I don't know that I've ever been at home,
so I'm always pulled between leave and stay...

today,
under a cold, overcast sky
I think I want to stay

tomorrow...

that's why we have night and day,
night a curtain that comes down
between old and new, a sign to us
as the sun rises every morning
that new things are
possible...

after all
what use a curtain if nothing changes
between
acts

A few new poems, several from my library, and some from my first book, Seven Beats a Second, including for the first time on "Here and Now" the art that accompanied each poem. Just to be clear, the art accompanying each poem in the book are pieces from larger complete paintings which I clipped to use as illustration. the complete works are included in the book on separate pages.

The book is still available on Amazon, new, through print on demand, as well as used copies. I also have a very few copies myself. As a gift to "Here and Now" readers, I'll give a couple of the books away if you contact me.

Also, an editorial note: people tell me that people don't want to read more than 500 to 800 words when reading a blog. And, since I don't want to limit myself to that extent, Here and Now is no longer a blog, it is a "journal." I might ever change the name.

from where I sit

coffeehouse quartet

Gary Blankenship

Thread

well, there we go, dropping bombs again

Samuel Hazo

Tortoise Time

lotsa hots

Robert Hass

Our Lady of the Snows

show's over

cinnamon dreams

John Engels

Japtan and Long Point

lying in the sun with Susan

Wistawa Szymborska

Poetry Reading

the eyes of Sister Jude

the dark of our own doing

the secret of my art

dark lover

thinking about it

about sex

Me
unexpected spring

Me
caress

I start my days at a coffeehouse, and have for years, one after another as they open and I get comfortable and then they close. I seem to be the voodoo doll of coffeehouses.

And, day after day, coffeehouses are where I write my poems, usually very early in the morning before the day complicates my brain and usually inspired by the people I see there.

I'm a lurker, attuned to whatever I see and hear those early mornings. Some days the fishing is great; other days, like the past week or so, not so much.

Coffeehouse Quartet

1. a watcher spies a prize

a young Hispanic fella,

in his twenties. I'd say, dark,

well-oiled hair, thin, precisely trimmed mustache,

dressed for riverboat poker, dark pants, grey sports coat,

red handkerchief peeking from its pocket...

alone at his table. drinking coffee,

practicing card tricks, handling the cards

as if he had a psychic connection to them,

flipping cards, shuffling his hands, thin, well manicured,

moving with such grace and dexterity, like an artist

attending to the details of his canvas...

high on my list

of most interesting coffeehouse

characters, a people watcher's prize

acquisition...

2. it's hopeless

so,

today was lab's day

and I went to the doc and did my bloody thing,

then hied myself off to the coffeehouse for coffee and a poem

but

alas,

the place was devoid of poem-worth characters,

they all, I'm told,

have absconded right down the street to

Mee-maws Biscuits and Grits

and Chicory-Lite

special breakfast restaurant

on the corner of Piddle and Peek,

which I would go to

myself

except I left all my howdy-hos

at home and am,

according,

lacking Mee-maws very special

password...

meaning,

this morning

I'm stuck with this collection of middle-aged

squares

so diligently sipping their lattes

and tapping their little feet

to the sounds of Lawrence Welk

and his bubbly a-ones and a-twos

continuously playing in the way-back box

between their ears...

it's hopeless...

3.POW! POW! POW!

except

for the woman in blue

with very large feet,

the day is blank,

nothing for the observational poet

to observe

or perhaps the fault lies

with the poet,

not seeing this morning

all the twists and curls

behind the facade

of dull normality, the secrets

beyond the walls

of the Facebook souls,

all closed to me

today...

too bad

I can't rhyme

some good old

POW!

rhymes

could save the day

'bout now...

4. to study silence

I seek to study

the art and craft of quietude

in these

my declining days, these last days,

the last days not the product of time passed

but forever

in our lives

from the earliest day

as we feed at our mother's breast

to the day the reaper comes,

every day that comes and passes

is the last day we ever life that day...

so sad

those last days forever passed,

and how we would like to enjoy them

again in real time, not just in the sweet memories

that dominate

such quietude as I

rarely find...

and I envy the old man at the corner table,

flowing white pony tail anchoring

the bald pate above his equally elegant tidal swirl

of white beard...

such a calm and quiet man - what memories I wonder

sustain his peace?

This poem is by my poet friend, Gary Blankenship.

Thread

I sail upon a river empty

but for mists of silk

and webs of organdy

I do not see the needle

I do not hear the thread

I fell the pull of the seamstress

upon the patterns of tomorrow

Wrapped in your grandmother's quilt

stitched from her grandfather's blouse

old and yellowed

as the cracked mirror

where she saw her future

upon her wedding bed

Wrapped in flannel and wool

beneath pear and wild plum

we sail upon a river empty

but for your entree

and the hum of our dance

I feel the needle

I hear the bobbin

I feel the pull of this stitch

as he sews the future

on a bed of dandelion and thistle

A little nod to current events.

well, there we go, dropping bombs again

well,

there we go,

dropping bomb again...

now

please understand,

I have no pre-determined bias

against dropping bombs,

I just wish,

especially considering how expensive

are these high-tech things that go boom,

that when we dropped one

it would somehow sometime accomplish something

I have to honestly admit

that the current dumbass-in-charge

did not invent the idea of dropping useless bombs,

my own president (it's the real one I'm talking about now),

just a few years ago

did the very same stupid, fruitless

thing,

dropping bombs

to stop the murderous tyrant of Syria

from gassing his own people,

thus providing implicit permission to the tyrant

to commence killing a many of his people as he found convenient

as long as he didn't kill them with poison gas...

and

as it turned out,

the bombs didn't even stop him from killing his own people

with poison gas, along with all the other thousand ways

he managed to kill his own people...

so here we are, still on square one,

and, of course, having followed a failed policy

of bomb-dropping before, it's obvious

we need to drop more bombs, certain

that this time doing the same stupid thing

all over again

is sure to produce a better result...

look,

it seems simple to me,

if there is a guy that requires killing,

killing hundreds of thousands of people

to kill the one requiring killing, just doesn't

make sense..

that's what my president should have done,

instead of killing the gas, kill the son-of-a-bitch

responsible for the gas...

and, if under present circumstances, we don't want

to kill the responsible son-of-a-bitch because killing him

might also involve killing a bunch of Russians

as well,

then

maybe

we might want to forget the whole damn

thing, send all those bombs someplace

where they might be useful...

maybe explode them on the moon, make

a new crater, maybe name it "Stormy"

of some such relevant thing

honoring the small, but very busy, hands

of our current pig-in-chief...

I'm open to other suggestions

This poem is by Samuel Hazo, taken from his book, A Flight to Elsewhere published in 2005 by Autumn House Press.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Hazo is the author of books, including poetry, fiction, essays and plays. He was founder and director of the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh and is Professor of English Emeritus at Duquesne University. He has published seventeen books of poetry.

Tortoise Time

So small, so matched with turf
he can be taken for a stone
until he stirs.

Hunkered
in his hull like pain, he plods
on toes of slow motion feet.
Robins can flock to the tropics,
swallows return to Capistrano,
grizzlies snooze in the Yukon,
and wild rabbits hanker
for their holes

At peace in place
he comes from where he was
to where he'll be like afterthought's
caboose.

What's distance
or weather to one whose there
and here seem always the same?
While rabbits flee, he mimes
Diogenes beneath his hood
and sidles forward slower
than the time of day.

If home
is what he is, he's home
to start with since he never
goes away.

Aesop understood..

This poem is from Seven Beats a Second, published in 2005, my first book, my only book in a paper edition. It is a beginner's book laid out by myself, both text and art with all the problems in production that comes with a beginner learning the way as he went on. A book, nevertheless, of very good poems and excellent art (by my collaborator, Vincent Martinez, whose work graces ever page). And a book I'm proud of, even as I cringe at the typos and plain old screw-ups.

As my poet friend Alex Stolis says. books are to be read, not sold. Which is good for me since I'm not the greatest selling poet on the market anyway.

lotsa hots

I've worked in August
under the noon-day sun
digging post holes
in hard-packed caliche
on the Texas-Mexican border

that's one kind of hot

I've won six months pay
throwing dice in Reno

that's another kind of hot

I've seen pretty little whores
in Piedras Negras
hot enough to melt the silver tip
off a cowboy's dress-up boots

that's pretty hot too

but no kind of hot
is as hot
as thinking of you and me
in a big white bed
in a room with curtains whispering
to a low midnight breeze,
soft lights, satin shadows
shifting over pale skin

your dark eyes shining
liquid in their knowing

Next, this poem by Robert Hass. The poem is taken from his book, Sun Under Wood, published by The Ecco Press in 1996.

Born in 1941, Hass is one of America's most celebrated and well read writers. In addition to his own poetry he is a leading critic and translator, most notably of Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz and the Japanese Haiku masters Basho, Buson, and Issa. He served as U.S Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997. He won the National Book Award in 2007 and shared the Pulitzer in 2008.

Our Lady of the Snows

In white,
the unpainted statue of the young girl
on the side altar
made the quality of mercy seem scrupulous and calm.

When my mother was in a hospital drying out,
or drinking at a pace that would put her there soon,
I would slip in the side door,
light an aromatic candle,
and bargain for us both.
Or else I'd stare into the day-moon of that face
and, if I concentrated, fly.

Come down! Come down!
she'd call because I was so high.

through mostly when think of myself
at that age, I am standing at my older brother's closet
studying the shirts,
convinced that I could b absolutely transformed
by something I could borrow.
And the days churned by,
navigable sorrow.

A morning poem from a couple of weeks ago.

show's over

dinner-plate moon

rising,

gold a as Spanish doubloon

shrinking, fading

as it rises

until,

dead overhead,

reduced to the sun's

pitted reflection,

vast canyons and peaks,

dusty wrinkles

on her ancient

face

show's over for

tonight...

Here's another poem from my first book, Seven Beats a Second.

cinnamon dreams

in the dim light

at end of day,

I watch you sleep

still damp

from your shower

curled on your side

tangled

in white linen

pink

like the center

of a fresh-cut peach

floating

in a bowl of sweet cream

your foot moves

slowly,

brushes against mine

with a quiet rush

of warm air

you sigh,

the sweet breath

of cinnamon dreams

This poem is by John Engels, taken from his book, Sinking Creek. The book was published in 1998 by Lyon Press.

Engels, born in 1931 in 1931 in Indiana, received an MFA from the University of Iowa and published ten collections of poetry. He taught at a number of colleges and universities during is career. He died in 2007.

Japtan and Long Point

I waded the reef through a building surf,

wary of morays, trying to keep dry.

the ledger I'd used for a plant press stuffed

with pandanus laves, hibiscus blossoms,

some other flowers I hadn't got around

to figuring out just what they were. Now,

thirty-eight years later, this July day

on Long Point up in Maine, he sea beyond

the white oak ridge smells exactly the same

as on Japan that day in '54

when I'd quit my botanizing, waded

from the bombed-out Japanese half-track,

where I'd sat in the commander's cockpit

from which years before he'd faced the low

rise of the beach, the line of palms, and next

instant was nothing, just old blood bound up

in rust the color of old blood. I stare

back at the morning sun above Long Point

into which the sky's emptying itself.

One gull slides, swings, and sideslips overhead.

The sea's as warm with sunlight shot back from

the little chop, and the bird up there plays

the wind for all he can get out of it,

never, so far as I can see, glancing down,

though surely he is hunting

Another from Seven Beats a Second.

lying in the sun with Susan

quiet bay

no sound but for he light rustle

of marsh grass in the gulf breeze

she

lies on the deck, legs spread,

as if to thrust herself

at the summer sun

sweat glistens

on the inside of her thigh

and my tongue aches

for the taste of her

This poem is by Wistawa Szymborska. It is taken from Wistawa Szymborska - New and Collected, published in 1998 by Harcourt.

Szymborska was born in Poland in 1923. A poet, essayist, translator, and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, Szymborska died in 2012.

She also had a good sense of humor, as shown in this poem, which I especially enjoyed reading this day because I have a reading scheduled for tomorrow. My host will be there, of course, and my wife, guaranteeing me at minimum an audience of two.

Poetry Reading

To be a boxer or not to be there

at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?

Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare -

it's time to start this cultural affair.

Half came inside because it started raining,

the rest are relatives. O Muse.

The women here would love to rant and rave,

but that's for boxing. Here they must behave.

Dante's Inferno is ringside nowadays.

Likewise in Paradise, O Muse.

Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,

one sentence to hard shelleying for life,

for lack of muscles forced to show the world

the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists

with luck. O Muse,

O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.

In the first row, a sweet old man's soft snore:

the dreams his wife's alive again. What's more,

she's making him the tart she used to bake.

Aflame, but carefully - don't burn his cake -

we start to read. O Muse

Another from Seven Beats a Second.

the eyes of sister Jude

sharp eyes

like tempered blades

that cut clean through when angry

guarded eyes

that weigh and judge

and stand ever alert for betrayal

dark eyes, deep,

softened once for love,

then moistened by a long night's weeping

but only once,

and it was long ago

These are a couple of my morning poems from last month.

the dark of our own doing

driving

into a dark clouded sky,

like a black wall between me and downtown...

a few small areas of gauzy higher clouds,

like knotholes in the wall,

shine through,

patchwork

in the shades of night

I persist in my drive

toward new day for what else

can one do...

on the radio a woman

reports

that Trump's lawyers

are concerned about the possibility

of his testimony under oath

because he tends to be imprecise

in his language...

"LIES," I scream at the radio,

not imprecise dumbass, lies...

the dark begins to crowd

the areas of light in the sky,

and the black wall is complete again,

blocking again any hope

for truth's beleaguered

light...

we do it to ourselves

it seems...

the secret of my art

I am reminded by another poet

that lying is the secret

of my art -

truth,

reality,

honesty,

all the so-called

virtues have one simple thing in common...

the all suck

as entertainment

I don't read true-story books

and I don't watch true-story movies

because no true story will ever be

as interesting,

exciting,

apt

as the shit I make up...

I mean,

let's face it,

my art may be second-class

and my books may not make the bestseller list,

but if the artist in me fails,

I can still make a helluva

president

And another from Seven Beats a Second

dark lover

you are of a piece

with a universe

made mostly

of dark unknowns

an enigma

black energies

surging
behind bright facade

I have felt your force

dark elements
unseen
clandestine desires
untold

dark thoughts
dark looks
flickering behind your face,
fair as an open sky

I am drawn to the clouds
behind the morning sun
to the flashes of night
within you

I live in the shadows
of your mysteries,
searching
for the light

A poem on our 41st wedding anniversary.

thinking about it

forty-one years ago

in a tiny church

on the barrio side

of San Benito,

a small town in

way-south

Texas...

I said I do,

and she said

I'll think about it...

forty-one years

later

it seems to have

worked out,

though I get the feeling

some days

she's still thinking

about it

From Seven Beats a Second

about sex

sex
is about the heat
of rubbing parts together,
passion
a function of finely calibrated
friction

some will say
it makes a big difference
which parts do what to who

nonsense,
I say

it's a lot
like chicken nuggets

in the dark
parts is parts

you rub mine
and I'll rub yours
and we'll sort it out
in the morning

Another morning poem from last month

unexpected spring

soft breeze

from the northeast

like fresh-washed linen

caressing my face

the sun

so bright it makes my eyes

water...

unexpected spring

greening

my trees by the creek

I sleep late

letting

it all cuddle in

around me

Last from Seven Beats a Second, and last for the week.

caress

midnight

hot breath
and
whispers

soft
slow
slide
of skin
on skin
tongue
like the bite
of a velvet adder

secrets
unveiled

surrendered

to the touch

to the smoldering
touch

of midnight

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Poetry

New Days & New Ways