7-22-21 THE PRINCE OF REAL AND TRUE

Before moving on, I want to remind readers (I'm convinced, without evidence so far, there are some of you out there) that unlike the original "Here and Now," this version has a comment option. I would like comments, first to reassure me that I'm not just hollering down an empty well, but also because I think it would be great for this blog to become a place for critique as well as (and this is the exciting part), conversation.

So talk to me, you presumed but not yet confirmed, readers.

Now, reminded of an old friend.


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, 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 the 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 of 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

​

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

the prince of real and true in restless sleep
 
dense fog
time
outside of time
swirls
sucks my reality-brain
into realms
where the prince of real and true
lies huddled
in the tiniest corner of a very large room
done all up in shifting
white

he whimpers as he
sleeps
blinded by forgotten possibilities
he dares not open his eyes,
frightened that he might see again
all the lost
days
wandering rootless
waiting, hoping, for a clear day
to find their way
again

WHEN NIGHTHAWKS FLY IN MEMORIES DARK

(with a little unwelcome assist from my dog. my sixth attempt to record, frustration evident at at the beginning. not the recording I would have liked, but was determined there wasn't going to be a seventh attempt.)

This poem is by Devreaus Baker, from her book Red Willow People​, published by Wild Ocean Press in 2010.

The poem holds a special place for my becauses it expresses exactly my reaction upon my first visit to the state, almost from the time I stepped off an airplane for the first time in Albuquerque.



New Mexico Chant

Whistles in the dark alleys of my mind

Driving with the top down

So stars fall into my mouth

The desert is getting into my blook

Night is doing her Jaguar dance beside the road

Moon is leaving milky seeds in sagebrush hair

My seed

My love

You grow so big in my heart

I cannot eat you I have to devour you

My Arroyo Seco, Ranchos De Taos,

Paseo Del Pueblo Norte

High road of my heart.
​

diorama
 
morning

north wind
blows hard against me,
cold hand
on the nape of my neck,
trickles under my coat
down my back

clear blue sky
sharp as a diamond’s cutting edge

bright sun
like broken glass falling

long night’s sleep,
waking
to a five year old’s
diorama
world,
construction paper
city
construction paper
world
bright colors
sharp corners

Another of my practice boards.

There are many wonders for us to appreciate, on the earth and in the heavens

JOURNEY'S END

NEENA AT LENSCRAFTERS
​
a community college
student
getting the basics
before dental tech school
a little large
for the glamour magazines,
country girl large,
shapely
but substantial,
a woman to hold on to you
and be held
and,
the first impression,
not her size, but
her dark eyes
and a wide smile reaching
all the way to her eyes,
then her hands,
fingers long and strong
and capable, beautiful in their
dexterity as she maneuvers
the little screws
that hold my eyeglasses together
and we talk
as she works and I pose
for the various
measurements and adjustments…
thirty minutes,
enjoyable, conversational,
so different
from the drudge
that usually moves you through
such required processes…
thirty minutes
that seem like less than half so long…
her beautiful hands
and capable fingers, no ring, no sign of attachment -
somewhere out there in the world,
a lucky someone
who does not know yet the treasure
that will come

Lady Bird Johnson Botanical Gardens, Austin

gone forever
​
return
after 30 years
and discover you knew
the people many streets
are named for

and they’re mostly
dead

still,
you think,
had I stayed here
I might have a street
too

but you never think
you might be dead, too…

---

relief
near joyous,
discovering
one of your favorite old restaurants
still open

and the food is still good

---

45 degrees
at 5 a.m. - wind from the north
blowing 40 miles an hour

no sunny beach
today

---

eating breakfast
in front of wide, high windows,
waiting to watch the sun
rise, instead a gray, sullen sky,
daylight
easing over
a gray sullen bay,
water lapping
furious and frantic
at the seawall

but no sun
no shining disc
rising red over green waters

that was another day

---

crossing the Oso causeway
high over white-capped water,
the wind blowing
from high distant passes
like through a five-mountain
funnel

the car wants to fly
with the cold
wind

---

the ferry will not run today,
all the little bay-side
villages
will be bundled up against the cold
and closed…

no pictures anywhere,
even on the beach, just dim sky,
dull water, nothing on the horizon
but more dim and more dull,
sand from the dunes behind me
blowing against my neck,
the grit of it
stinging,
suggesting it’s time to go
home...

---

homeward
against the wind that fights me,
pushes me back, a longer
drive with it in my face than at my back

lunch at Oakville, half-way home,
bar-b-cue sandwich, potato
salad, and pinto beans with peach
cobbler chaser…

---

and the week-end’s over,
Dee still down with a cold, but the dog
happy to see me, thought I had left
forever

that’s the way dog’s think,
sometimes smarter than we are…

because that’s the message here
if there is one -

once a place is left, no matter
how dear, that place is gone
forever,
old home just old now,
never the place you remember

teaching you,
if you’re willing to learn,
that home has to be where you are today
or you will be forever
homeless

It's all about me. And why not, I'm the one doing all the work here.

naThis poem is by a poet friend of mine, Arlene Ang, excellent poet, known from her Facebook posts to be a yoga master, lucky companion of a beautiful dog, and, early on, a friend of my own -work. The poem is from her book, Banned for Life.



ANANOUNCED GUEST

The day we burind my sister, Mimi came. The rings on
her face dangled. Everyone watched her the way fish
observed a hook without the bait. She wanted to have the
cookbooks she had left my sister. I understood for the first
time the word "lover."

Mimi stood there and chewed gum. "You gotta admit,"
she said looking around, "there's something eerie about
all these people who never knew her and are here now."

It was April. Dead fish were washing up from the lake.
There are smells you bring home that write themselves
into a novel. In this scene, I was serving egg sandwiches.
I was thinking about the hour on Mimi's digital
wristwatch - 15:39 - and how it created a private
neighborhood peopled with silence

My siser's husband stood apart, holding their two 
children by the wrist. There was so much sun coming in
through the French windows that I finally understood the
concept behind alien abduction.

A SHY MEXICAN GIRL

I would get the call
to pick her up several times a week

always behind Chacho’s Bar
on Harrison Street

a beautiful ebony-eyed girl
all done up, didn’t look like a whore

at all, always a 75 cent fare
to the Valley Hi Motel where she worked

in small, one-room cottages
beneath high palm trees

blowing
in wet coastal winds

by a twisting, turning driveway
of circles and switchbacks

and small pebble gravel
crunching indiscreetly beneath my tires…


a 75-cent ride from Chacho’s with an dime for me
then a call back 45 minutes later, for pick-up

and the drive back to the alley behind the bar
where I picked her up, a shy Mexican girl

in a town not that large, protecting her reputation
even though I’m sure everyone

in the bar they knew
what she did for a living…

and so it went
until one night the alley behind the bar

wasn’t deserted as usual
but crowded with men, drive on, she said

as I slowed down,
but it was too later, all the men’s eyes

were on me and the cab, and especially her,
not looking like a whore at all

as she stepped out of the cab
and walked between them

as the crowd parted
to let her pass

knowing as she walked that what is known quietly
changes everything when it is known out loud…

---

the last I saw -
her walking through Chacho’s back door

hips swinging in her tight dress
like they never did before

looking like a whore
advertising

maybe she started doing tricks at the bar
with no longer a need to be discreet

maybe she went home and quit the business
found a job slinging hash at a local beanery

maybe one, maybe
the other, I don’t know -

she never called for me again

​

Another practice board. I've been too busy preparing existing boards for show to get time to do new ones.

A final reading to end the post.


LET'S GO SHOOT A BIG FAT CAPITALIST