HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
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Just completed a post yesterday, now starting a new one. It still bothers me, writing a post in plain view, seeing it posted live before I ever have a chance to review, edit, or proof it. I consider the possibility that I'm doing it wrong and will investigate as I work on this one. Readers, just remember, this is "under construction." Keep scrolling for the completed posts that follow. I In the meantime, here's a "story." lunatics - a short morning inventory ovoid moon behind a lacy curtain of thin, translucent clouds a lunatic bird sings all alone at the roundabout... a lone cowboy limps in through the door sharp-toed boots a hat with a silver band and a mustache thick and wild settles slowly in his chair, like a good cowboy takes off his hat and stores it under his chair like the bird he would prefer to be alone, howling at the night sky as it slips away to another day instead he welcomes the ovoid moon with a smile and a sip of morning sarsaparilla... hard-faced woman across the room, once a beauty, now a mask of cold indifference, glares at her eggs, has no interest in an ovoid moon even as it stirs the tide of her discontent... fella in the corner booth, fingers a-fly on his laptop keyboard as his coffee gets cold another solitary lunatic, obsessed with lunatics and ovoid moons Fairies flee a sequestered moon  regarding evil - in a few words people speak of defeating evil but evil is part of us and cannot be defeated, only constrained until it rises in all of its varied forms again a Pandora’s box opened from the inside... the Devil made us do it we say, but the Devil is our creation and cannot make us do anything that is not in our nature ~~~ we are the Creator, both prince and victim of all we create, the Evil Angel, forever lurking behind the smiles of our better twin...  Even as i worked on them, I had doubts that anyone was likely to be out there to buy a 4 to 5 foot, spray painted, 10 -to 12 inch wide boards. so I hung several of them on my own wall to test the effect, leaving me not entirely confident, but hopeful that there will be a few who wish to celebrate life with a painted piece of forest. Probably not this many in such a small room though. okay, not entirely promising, but probably better if they were hung evenly. However, not allowed to make new holes in the wall so can only hang were something else is taken down. But they do all come with titles, left to right "Chihuahua Sunset," "Alien Encounter," "Red Tide," " Mystery at the Bottom of the Devil's Blue Hole," and "The Big Lie" (I excel at titles). All my boards are priced at $200 to $250, except the two on the right, my statement makers, "Mystery"- $400, and "Big Lie" - $850, neither of which do I expect to ever sell. A PLAN voices from the sky the mysteries of faith… it’s not that I’m against it, it’s just that I don’t understand it the room behind me is full of two dozen older men, sharp-eyed men, and the old priest I see often here, skinny, like he doesn’t get to eat except for the free breakfasts he gets for showing up to provide a priestly presence to meetings of little old ladies with blue hair and bumpy legs, or, as in this case, a room-full of elder men, meeting, weekly it seems, for quiet religious purposes… I don’t know these particular men but I’ve known men like them most of my life, acts of piety an afterthought through the course of most of their days, sharp- penciled, green-eye-shade guys applying evidence and reason to all their affairs, unimpressed by flights of fancy, not subject to paranormal events or expectations, except… for that corner of their brain they keep separate from the part that functions daily, a place where the reason and evidence they normally count on are not allowed, a space they reserve for gods and angels and devils and ghosts and goblins and all sorts of fancy they would not allow to intrude in any portion of the rest of their lives… that’s the part I don’t understand, not faith itself, but these believers who turn their rational brains into mewling kittens, flat on their backs, legs spread high and wild, awaiting celestial visitation… what, I wonder, is it they miss in the rest of their lives that makes them so vulnerable to such mind-dulling darkness… I’m always made uncomfortable by leaders who profess such faith - I’d rather not hear about it, reminding me as it does of how my fate might be in the hands of a leader susceptible to the undependable quirks of faith in magic and magical beings pray for him, some say when a leader faces quandaries and difficult decisions, and I can only think how much more reassuring it would be to have a leader who wasn't dependent on my prayers, a leader unwilling to place my future in the hands of a voices from the sky and worst of all, how history shows us how these same honest, practical-minded honorable can be convinced by a voice from the sky to commit the most the most horrible, indecent, inhuman and cruel acts imaginable against their fellow man and woman it is not what they are that worries me about these men, it is what history shows us they can be… Jellyfish jamboree  A reason to always write it all down. This sounds like an interesting night at a favorite coffeehouse. But except for reading this story. I remember none of it. art show my mother took up art when my father died, a pretty good amateur before her eyes got too dim and her hands too shaky to control her brush... she sold her paintings at arts and crafts fairs and did well enough to cover expenses with enough left over for a Luann liver and onion special at Luby’s cafeteria she learned quickly that people who buy original art at arts and crafts fairs want two things: they want their art to be cheap and they want colors that match their drapes and sofa… the artist at last night’s art opening, a rock band drummer in another part of his life, was way better than a gifted amateur and his paintings sold for way more than Mother ever sold a painting for… his work is bright and sharp, with vivid colors that he explained to another artist, talking about mixing and overlaying acrylic, sometimes overlaying that with oils, nothing I understood, though I did nod as it seemed appropriate, but leaving the other artist impressed and listening intently… …impressed, she was, as were the visitors to the show, mostly other musicians and family, and his art, well, I liked most of it, but, except for a piece or two, none of it would match my drapes and sofa… ~~~ but then, my old-timers social security budget is much more in line with my mother’s prices than his so I wasn’t likely to buy anything anyway… mostly, I was there as the “house poet,” watching, remembering, preparing myself to write tomorrow’s poem - which would be this one unless a better idea falls my way a hole in time all these years later, there are moments when something, some sight, some sound, just something, triggers the past, a hole in time and in the instant of an eye-blink I am back in it… this morning, passing a hotel in the dark, a side door, light burning, and seen through the door a long hotel hallway, blue carpet, hotel wallpaper color walls, and I am standing outside such a door in early morning dark forty years ago, waiting for the mayor so I can take him into a meeting room and introduce him to assembled out-of-town VIPs… Luther Jones, such a lovely and beloved man who, after his political life was over, would stop by every couple of weeks to talk to the children at the elementary school named after him, known to everyone from his sparkling city by the sea, for me and many others, a mentor and champion over the years, passed on in his 80s in 2001… it was a funeral large and crowded full of friends and citizens, but simple, like the man… a hotel’s bright-lit side door, a beacon to memory this dark morning, and I am awash in remembering times and so many good men passed… sweet sadness begins my day... Watchers from afar First new story in a long time, so don't be harsh I AM I am where I’ve been going All of my life Now there’s a thought… Does that mean this is it, 4-bedroom house in the 800 block of Clearview Drive, In San Antonio in the near middle of the state of Texas, Not the intellectual capital of the country, But often pretends to be anyway 4-bedroom house With a backyard that tumbles down to a creek Like I appear to have tumbled through a life to this place, This time Is this thought supposed to offer me a consolation As the near end of the tumbling appears on the horizon, A life done, it suggests approaching an end not half bad, A life of modest adventure and occasional welcome surprise, A life with the blessing to have loved and been loved in return, An end with a roof to cover my head, protection from rain and cold, and vicious summer heat A bed to sleep on and wake from every day, Waking every day, a blessing often assumed, food on our table, Friends, family, a life of fellows of my kind to know if I wish, or not… All this, where I’ve been going all of my life, is it a denouement, Does this suggest a celebration, a graduation, Or a reminder A reminder of how little of where I have gone Has merited the going… A reminder perhaps that time remains to still find that Place and time where my nature was bent to find an end Perhaps this thought is saying that this place and time Is a resting moment, like a tree shaded park along a long And sometimes treacherous highway, A place to rest, Not a place To stop what we found in Grandma's attic memories, boxes of memories, trinkets and seashell treasures from county fairs and rodeos and neighborhood garage sales... a straw hat, a guitar with three broken strings and two missing frets, a cane pole, with lead sinkers and a red and white bobber, a catcher's mitt and a wooden bat, a tiny ring inscribed "Baby Charles" and none of us know who Baby Charles is or was, a train ticket, Laredo to Del Rio, never used, a sun bonnet, yellow with purple flowers, a collection of Comanche arrowheads, old maps with lines drawn in dark, soft pencil lead, tracing country roads long since abandoned, rebuilt for faster, sleeker cars than ever drove there before, an old wallet with two five dollar bills tucked away in a secret pocket, a bundle of letters written in a fine, feminine hand - we read the first and no more, for from the first it was clear the thin, jasmine scented letters, still smelling so sweet after so many years since sent and received, were saved for her to read again and not for us... and photographs, like memories, old, faded, torn, and blurred forget-me-nots mostly forgot, the only one who might remember now lying still beneath soft grass in an after-life park of the dead all left behind for us to try to understand, to try to know a person familiar to us all our life, but still at the end unknown... a last chance for her to speak... a last chance for us to listen Mystery at the bottom of the Devil's blue hole  I should quit and go home, but it's hot outside and cool and quiet and comfortable here in my Capej coffeehouse and I don't want to leave. So, another story. I’ll be watching for you I love to drive, even though I can do less of it now than before.. going places I’ve been before, finding new ways to get there seeing what there is to see, stopping to take-in a closer look at a tree, blazing in autumn colors, or grand vistas from crooked narrow mountain roads, or a tiny side road to get to something seen in the distance, like an iron railroad bridge somewhere in Arizona, bright red, about a quarter mile off the highway, nestled between hills, seen clearly from the road, but never found, settling for a jackrabbit in a field beside the road, standing tall on his haunches, ears like furred yardsticks, exposing the flag of his soft pink inner ear, posing for me while I find my camera... so much to see, forests, mountains cresting before a blue horizon, animals on hill sides, little farmhouses, a cemetery in Tennessee, white stone crosses climbing a hillside beside a tall-steepled church… ~~~ Dee wants to go someplace and do something; I want to go someplace and sit and watch the different world I’ve come to, the different people who live in that world, in the end, not so different as, from far away, you might imagine ~~~ four great places for sidewalk sitting and people seeing… Santa Fe, New Mexico Durango, Colorado Seattle, Washington San Antonio Riverwalk… I’ll be watching for you next time I’m there Before finishing this I am posting several examples of my other self-proclaimed artistry, photography. Have not been taking pictures, lately. I'm at a point where making it across a supermarket parking lot takes all I've got, so there is not much chance of stomping around in the hills or strolling through downtown or down the Riverwalk looking for pictures to take. Instead I'm limited to fruit and flower still lifes or nudes. Fruit and flower still lifes bore the hell out of me and I can't afford a model for a nude, so my camera is semi-retired, at best. This completes this post. Continue to scroll to view previous posts
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I published a book of travel poems several years ago, titled "Places and Spaces." The book is composed of five long poems pertaining to five trips I took, most often alone, except for my dog in the co-pilot seat, tales of my travel through about 30 states. The book, as I always remind people, is available, along with my other books, wherever eBooks are sold. In this post, I will write of other places I've been, far and nearby, or, in at least one case, a place where I'd just like to go, and in all cases, not included in the book. ALIEN ENCOUNTER  My academic foxhole a detachment of airmen studying Russian at the university, about forty of us, the closest thing to a bonafide military unit in the city, we were asked to take a prominent position in the Veterns' Day parade misfits in civilianlife, most of us saw no reason to change our stripes in the military so, forty of us, all eighty left feet of us, led the parade to a cadance set by our Colonel, he who tied flies in his office all day, while his First Sergeant hid out at the VFW downtown, hoping, I suppose, that if nobody knew he was involved with us, his, to that point sterling military reputation, might survive a crippled lizard weaving down the street, our contribution to the paradde, some of us, those of us not too hung over or high, might have been embarassed, but that probably wasn't more than a couple of us, at most ~~~~~ in the end, we did what we were supposed to do, learned enough Russian to be able to telll when the war was about to start, fighting the cold war, knowing that if it ever got hot we'd be the first to know as the bombs fell first on us... but a year of our militray serevice spent on a university campus, learning nothing that had anything to do with Vietnam... Starbright I've posted this many times before, but with what's about to happen in another land we have abandoned, I feell like I want to post it over and over again. history’s young victims walking beneath my second floor window, in their school uniforms, walking in a disciplined line lead by their teacher, I could hear them singing, their high light voices waking the thin mountain-air morning joyous morning then, a sweet and innocent moment in a strange and foreign place a morning and a moment I will not forget a memory struggling against the cruel beast of history a memory that cannot shield these children... --- remembering... trying not to think of what happened to these beautiful, singing children in the near 60 years since those children, victims of of the beasts who came through years and bloody seasons to devour their time and place, their life and the innocence of that morning (Kabul - 1969) Serving on the frontier, a single road connected the city tothe desert and the Hindu Kush, a shadow in the distance and the Kyber Pass to Afghanastan, the path Alexander and subsequent conquerers used in the millenia since. That same road cut between the two parts of our compound, supposedly a secret installation (the only American base I ever served on that didn't fly a flag). On one side of the road was our living quarters and on the other sided, the truly secret operations component of the facility. It was about half way through the year I served there that I woke up one morning, had breakfast at the mess hall, then came to this sight as I went to cross the road to go to work. I wrote the piece in 1967. It was my first published poem upon returning back to the States in 1969. The piece was published in ARX a small journal in Austin the survived long enough to publish two of my poems before going under I awoke one morninG and there was a camel camel camel camel camel camel camel camel camel camel caravan marching single-file across my back yard, they were brown & ugly brown & brown & ugly bown & ugly brown &... and all the trade goods piled on their backs made the clatter clang clatter that had awakened clang clang clang clang clang clang clang clang clatter then they went their way way and I went back to sleep Days when hanging on switchbacks down the side of the mountain, the town on one side of the road, sheer drop to the valley below on the other with an occasional shop or restaurant jilting out over the edge on stilts… an old mining town hanging on to the side of the mountain through boom and bust and back to tourist boom, attached to the mountain by a whisper and a prayer, out-of-towners like us grazing where intelligent mountain goats might hesitate to tread it is exhilarating, this high air, this human quest for destiny and wealth and life despite all obstacles, ridiculous, when you think about it, that nice, lush valley below inviting, a place to build a flat and friendly Utopia instead, those early arrivals decide to build a life in the high clouds of Olympus… --- Dee goes shopping in the little roadside shops Chris throws rocks at the valley still a smoker at the time, I sit on a rock and try to breathe (Jerome, Arizona, 1993) Casper goes to heaven  Peace Corps training in 1964 at the University of New Mexico training center, included confidence building exercises for the mostly academic trainees. This included repelling down the side of a sports auditorium, climbing about half way up the Sandia Mountains and a three day trek over the top of the Manzono Mountains outside Albuquerque in mid-December. The first experience in the Sandias, coming barely two weeks after coming from my very low sea-level home in South Texas, was very hard for me. Better conditioned to the altitude by the time we did the Manzono trek, it was an experience I often think back on as some of the best three days of my life. three days on the mountain after two days of climbing, we crossed from west to east in a heavy snowstorm, knee deep in half a winter’s accumulation between the trees it was about 2 in the afternoon when we crossed the crest, within two hours we found the clearing where we slept that night under a diamond strewn sky… a bright rising sun woke us under a cloudless blue sky broken only by the thin contrail of a jet flying higher, even, in the cold morning firmament than where we slept coffee over an open fire, and freeze-dried eggs scrambled, frying pan and coffee pot cleaned in the snow, breakfast eaten quickly before the last day’s trek down the mountain, an easy day, each of us, as we spread out along the trail, quiet in our own thoughts, remembering the past months, friends now who we knew, in just a few days, would be gone, unlikely to ever be seen again our last memories - the mountain and the three days we spent together on it (New Mexico, December, 1964) another passage one to the other bright full moon heading into the blue-black western sky orange tinge to the east, new day’s promise night and its creatures begin their daily retreat those of us who find life in both the dark and the light exult in another passage one to the other (Going east on I-10 from El Paso, any early morning antime in the past 30 years) moonscape mountains high and bare our small DC-3 struggles as highest peaks pass below within arm’s reach, it seems, from my window seat life below if there is such must be harsh and hard with hard people harsh and unforgiving to those who intrude without invitation... not to be messed with as centuries of armies and great generals have learned - from Alexander to even now ourselves ruing the lesson - if you decide you must fight here make sure first you have the merciless moonscape mountains on your side (Flying over the Hindu Kush, April, 1969) Seasons change around us according to chatter on the net winter night under a clear desert sky more stars than you ever knew were up there the Hindu Kush, the sun’s hinge as it begins its red glow behind their dry, ravaged peaks the guard camp outside our walls begins to stir, the shuffle of sleepy soldiers awakening as the over-nighters come weary to their beds I, a soldier too, but not in their army, walk to morning mess, then to work, day shift on Moscow time a Cold War warrior, I will listen to their chatter and write it all down… the day begins... an early flight for their highest commander, crossing the Afghan air gate, a roundabout destination, to Paris, his dour Russian wife left behind, it's said, who suspects, it’s said, the jolie fille who awaits him with bonbons au chocolat by her bed according to chatter on the net the war will not start today… (Peshawar, West Pakistan -1968) Black Orpheous  Day DAYTRIP TO OURAY no train for us today, for it goes only to Silverton, while our destination, Ouray, is twenty miles further up the road - ` but if you’re so inclined for a train ride through canyons and forests and up the side of a mountain, riding in the open observation car at the train’s tail, smelling the pine-scented forest, the fresh cold wind blowing in your hair, I surely recommend it… ` but our trip this day was by automobile beginning by following the train tracks past green fields, and, on the east side, aspen groves lining the Animas River, that same fast river I watch from my balcony at the hotel… ` the train follows the river back to its high mountain source, sometimes alongside the river, the river in view of the passengers and sometimes not, sometimes the train on a cliff-ledge barely more than the width of the train, with the river five hundred feet below … ` in the car we see the river intermittently as we climb our highway path up the mountain, at lower altitudes, driving through groves of aspen on either side, like driving through a cloud of golden creamery butter, then higher, where the leaves have already fallen, the bare white trunks like patches on the pine-greened mountain side, then, above us mountain crests covered by clouds flowing over the top like melted marshmallow, snow blown over the top and down to us, frozen to ice pin heads, hitting our windshield like river pebbles thrown against us by some wild mountain child resenting our intrusion… ` then higher, over Molas Pass, more than ten thousand feet now above the low lands where I grew up, four thousand feet above our hotel in Durango - all around mountains white in clouds of blown snow, and the road wet with ice and snow melt, the temperature dropping,… ` then down from Molas, skirting Silverton, and up again to Red MountaIn pass, even higher, eleven thousand feet, the temperature has fallen to thirty four degrees, half what it was when we started… ` then down and into Ouray, determined to cut our visit short, certain we didn’t want to tackle the two passes again, after dark when the wet might have started freezing… ` Ouray, an old silver town, a silver-rush survivor like Silverton, though slightly larger, almost all the buildings on main street (the only paved street we saw) dating from mid- to late nineteenth century, mostly brick and native stone, the thought of getting the bricks up the mountain to here suggesting of the determination of the people who made a life here, even after the silver was gone, the determination that kept the city alive for the hunters and skiers who are its lifeblood now ` the stubborn strength of mountain people never to be denied… ` a very fine lunch of beef stew and a visit to a bookstore, the proprietor pleased to sell me a book of poetry by a poet I never heard of, not much interested in buying a book from me, a poet he’d never heard of - ` truly the life of the poet in a nutshell, a buyer often, a seller rarely to ever be… ` and the way back - ` a reverse of the way we came under sunshine all the way, ups and downs and twists and turns and switchbacks and views of our road high above or far below that it takes ten minutes of maneuver to get to, uneventful ` but for the tumbleweed the size of VW bus blown by the wind in front of us as we approached Durango… ` the biggest tumbleweed I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few Trying a little something different for Here and Now, music. This is by a good 17 year-old singer, ukeleliest and barista at my current favorite coffeehouse. Sorry, I can't post the performance here, but the url goes directly to it. https://slaps.com/arialcorinne WANNA PUCK wanna puck? she asks a bar in San Angelo... pretty waitress, long blond hair, well-shaped ass tucked tight into cut-short jeans grabs the round metal puck from the bowling game I’m playing squeezes it into her back pocket wanna puck? she asks her boyfriend in the corner, watching big sumbitch… I switch to darts, drink my beer… alone Chihuahua sunset  the silence of a moment knowing again the first cool day of autumn, the first north wind that fiercely blows, the rain that came and came and came some more on a bright summer day turned dark and stormy, water rising in creeks long dry, deer leaping across a narrow mountain road, a mountain, your first, tall and rugged against a blue sky, storm gathering behind that same mountain a month later, snow clouds overflowing its crest like a melted marshmallow on a stick, dripping with a sizzle into the red embers of a low burning campfire, rocking, a baby in my arms, my baby sleeping on my shoulder, my father at my wedding when I thought he might not come, sitting by the aisle in a back pew, double thumbs up as my bride and I pass, married, officially together on the first of many days to come, so many memories, so many years, so much life to crowd one man's memory, so much to remember… random memories that come and go in the silence of a moment, flickers, flames that have so long burned, fires that, like all of lifeline's burning, will someday burst their last spark and be gone Watchers from afar First new story in a long time, so don't be harsh I AM I am where I’ve been going All of my life Now there’s a thought… Does that mean this is it, 4-bedroom house in the 800 block of Clearview Drive, In San Antonio in the near middle of the state of Texas, Not the intellectual capital of the country, But often pretends to be anyway 4-bedroom house With a backyard that tumbles down to a creek Like I appear to have tumbled through a life to this place, This time Is this thought supposed to offer me on a consolation As the near end of the tumbling appears on the horizon, A life done, it suggests approaching an end not half bad, A life of modest adventure and occasional welcome surprise, A life with the blessing to have loved and been loved in return, An end with a roof to cover my head, protection from rain and cold, and vicious summer heat A bed to sleep on and wake from every day, Waking every day, a blessing often assumed, food on our table, Friends, family, a life of fellows of my kind to know if I wish, or not… All this, where I’ve been going all of my life, is it a denouement, Does this suggest a celebration, a graduation, Or a reminder A reminder of how little of where I have gone Has merited the going… A reminder perhaps that time remains to still find that Place and time where my nature was bent to find an end Perhaps this thought is saying that this place and time Is a resting moment, like a tree shaded park along a long And sometimes treacherous highway, A place to rest, Not a place To stop This post ends here.
Continue forwared for previous posts. Most of my poetry over the years has been written in a succession of coffeehouses, large and small, commercial and non-profit, from religious outreach to one that doubled as a music academy. Now, I am in a new place, named Capej, that also serves as a small art gallery (which will later this year, show some of my art)The important thing for me is the people in the place and the inspiration they offer for a good story/poem. In my first reading, I try to explain the importance of coffeehouses as as a creative place for my writing. Basically, when I ran out of coffeehouses a year ago, the poetry stopped. The stories you hear ebony eyes at the coffeehouse it was her eyes beneath her fur hat I recognized… deep, dark, almost black eyes, and beneath the dusk of her eyes, shadows, dark smudges, eyes like wells of bottomless sorrow, like in the sad Russian song, Ochi chyornye (Ebony Eyes) Dark and burning eyes, Dark as midnight skies Full of passion flame, full of lovely game Oh how I'm in love with you, oh how afraid I am of you. Days when I met you made me sad and blue. a bruised angel despairing for the love she’s seen turn to ash in morning light… even beneath the furry hat set low over her flawless brow, I know her ebony eyes and am reminded how a single flame can light the dark I have no mouth and I must scream after Harlan Ellison  going for the gold working on a poem about something or other this morning, haven’t gotten far enough along in it to know about what, my thoughts interrupted by a young woman across the room with the most happy face I’ve ever seen can she really be this happy, I think... or does she seethe inside, behind the wholesome smile, remembering every day some true love lost, some deep injustice that so wounded her she can never forget, or is she a witch of a woman, vain, demanding, abusing her children, betraying her husband, cheating on her taxes, tearing off mattress tags and burying them in her backyard, behind the prickly pear cactus… does she fold, spindle and mutilate important correspondence from the government, does she steal candy from babies, or bones from dogs… has she ever cut three inches off one of the legs of an old woman’s walker? is it possible, I think, for her to be as giddy good happy as she appears or is she just fortunate to have her face configured in such a way that people can’t look at her without feeling like they’ve followed a rainbow to its long-hid pot of gold given a choice this morning I believe I’d prefer to go for the gold silence between the ticks and the tocks intended to read at my coffeehouse last night, open mike, which I don’t usually do, but the folks there are good to me so I felt like it was time to pay some dues intended to read from my next book, final edit complete, but not yet published looked forward to the music, guitar and piano and sad Mexican love ballads, sung in the glorious, expressive voice of our hostess Rachel Cruz, Maestra de Canciones and dispenser of fine coffees soft warmth of music in the cold night, an evening of retreat and the resurrection of better natures, lost, huddling somewhere dark from the cold… all that I intended… but I did not intend to sit down in my easy chair for a nap at 4 and not wake up till midnight… it’s about getting old, chances to bask in beauty and warmth diminishing as the life-clock continues its running down, the silence between the ticks and the tocks growing longer, chances lost to memory cracked and leaking like a rusty pail, or just plain, constant weariness stealing hours and life-affirming experience from every day Derfluckenflagetta slow day at the flapjack emporium just me and a couple of nurses and the tiny blond police officer with her partner outside the day shrouded in a dim curtain of premature light and I’m thinking - a busy week, sitting here eating my 387th biscuit with gravy, writing my 2,99-something poem of the day, finishing work later today on my 400 and something weekly literary blog, preparing for a reading late in the week, squeezing a few fair poems into 30 minutes of entertainment for family and friends, maybe selling a book, maybe selling a photograph, but probably not, payment, almost certainly, in fun or no payment at all thinking, what is it I am doing, what is my purpose, what is my meaning…. a slip of truth…. I’m not thinking any of that, quit thinking about that kind of stuff long ago, understanding that my life’s purpose is and will forever be, or at least until it’s too late to make a difference, unknown to anyone including and the meaning of what i'm doing is that what I’m doing all these same same days is filling a chest of me that will come to rest, dusty and forgotten, in an attic until someday more room is needed in its storage space and it is put out on the curb for trash collection day, until, by chance, it is rescued by an otherwise disinterested passer-by and taken home, all the scraps of me dumped in the recycle bin and the chest itself repainted pink or blue and plastered with decals of cartoon figures of the time, turned into a toy box for a child who will forever have to be reminded to put his or her toys in it instead of scattered on the floor room to room… and, at first, this saddens me, to think of all those slips of me scattered while the chest of me becomes a toy box for forgotten toys, and then I think, well, is that not so appropriate, this chest of me, always a toy box, filled daily by me with my toy of the day, so many by the time it’s over, things I played with and forgot, just as this toy also will also be soon forgot… All the prophets say  the strangeness of time and history squirrels and tourists roam the back grounds of the Alamo, tourists along the curved sidewalks that weave around and under the huge oak trees up and down which scurry the squirrels even though I’ve lived in the city for twenty years, it’s been at least fifty since I’ve visited the shrine to Texas Independence, the Spanish mission, one of five by the river that, for a hundred years before the battle that made a new republic, served the religious needs of Indians come down from the surrounding hard-scrabble hills for safety from more war-like marauders, come to this and the other missions where they learned masonry and farming and the sacred rites demanded by the one true God of the Spanish priests… being there to take pictures, I did not go into the shrine, stayed outside with the skittery squirrels and meandering visitors, finding again how beautiful was the lush green garden in the middle of the city… ~~~ ten blocks from my car, sitting on a stone bench among the trees when the storm came, soaking in the cool rain and the quiet atmosphere where heroes, Texian and Mexican, spilled their precious blood as history raged around them… they were here, died here, and now I am too and I am struck by the strangeness of time and history and the affairs of heroes, squirrels, and vacation-clad tourists Grease an excess of normal (or, the oppression of every day) the lights outside go off as the night fades to regular light, new sun reflected off cloud banks to the west cold outside, furnace blasting in here in here only three besides me this early, regulars all four of us, see each other almost every day, know only enough about each other to nod in passing, except that all the servers know my name and use it in greeting, so that the other three know my name, too, and use it as adjunct to their morning nod - demonstrating to me every morning their superior knowledge of me, though I think one of them might be a “Dave” - kinda looks like a “Dave”… directly in front of me, two booths up, is the accountant (the possible “Dave”) is reading the newspaper and eating his Greek frittata with great and orderly precision and one booth behind him the tiny, baby-faced man in his large cowboy hat, a two-gallon man in a ten-gallon hat - he’s working away on his computer - we were brothers-of-the-bald for a while but I notice he has broken down in the face of winter and has re-grown his hair, his gray fringe, truly, is not a lot less bald than when he was bald… and across the room, the heavy-set woman in what looks like a high school jacket, except that the back displays no school logo, just her name, as if maybe self-educated, having learned all on the streets from the school of herself, the “Lopez” school of hard knocks and hard ways and proud of it… ~~~ an interesting group of early morning diner characters, made more interesting, I suppose, because everything I know about them except how they look I made up… like, when I returned to finish my college degree in 1969 after completing my military duties, living in a 30-foot trailer in a small settlement of trailers on the Blanco River, our self-designated Harper’s Bazaar named after old man Harper, a drunk in a dry county with, always, a case of beer in the backseat of his car, sleeping many nights in his car outside my trailer, sometimes knocking on my door and inviting himself in at 3 am to sleep on my floor if it was too cold out in his car.. and my community brothers and sisters, the hippy couple, man and a woman I used to lust after when she walked by in her tiny bikini, and the fellow one trailer down, the baby of the group, taught himself first to be a really bad bass player, next, in the process of teaching himself to be a really bad sitar player, his k-thunkas and k-thankas, & k-thinkas, providing late night musical accompaniment to the life where nobody ever slept anyway, and the skinny guy who would spend afternoons running naked on the small island in the middle of the river, sometimes swimming in the river, the river full of water moccasins but he said he didn’t care, snakes were afraid of him he said and I guess they were because he survived at least my two years there, though he may have been left floating snake-bit and dead the day after I moved out… old man Harper long dead, and the little settlement gone the last time I drove by ten years ago, a normal house now, ranch style, split level, full of perfectly normal parents and children too I suppose, which is entirely too bad, there is so much normal in the world, too much normal in the world these days, and as one who once lived happily among the abnormal, I miss it, manufacture it now in my mind out of the perfectly normal people I see every morning at breakfast, little do they know the more interesting lives they lead in my imagination RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP  yesterday, two younger women yesterday, two friends, significantly younger women, referred to me as “dad” and not, I think, in the hipster sense, not like my son who calls me “Pops,” his reference to Louie, the inventor of all jazz, which is pretty hip, I think, being, in a way, a conjunction between me and the hippest man I could imagine in 1955, proposed by my jazz-lover son, which makes me feel like the cool cat I imagined I was or at least thought I could be if I ever I got old enough to finally get my driver’s license and so could, at least periodically, flee the suffocating bonds of parental disdain for cool of every sort except for watermelons cooling off in the bathtub before cutting… being called dad by two younger women on the same day, even though spoken with affection does not make me feel like a cool cat but more like an old neutered tom, which, let’s face it, is not too far off the mark, more like, it’s a fact, a bull’s eye and something I have long come to accept… but acceptance of it does not necessarily mean it’s something I welcome hearing from two younger women on the same day --- I mean I could have called them “babe,” certainly in both cases, a well earned appellation, but, being a sensitive, eminently cool cat of a certain age, I didn’t but, regardless of my own sensitivity, I suppose at my age the time has come to get used to this kind of thing… --- at least they didn’t call me “gramps” SO I STOP HERE AND SEND OUT NOTIFICATIONS THAT HIS ISSUE IS DONE AND BEGIN A NEW ISSUE TOMORROW
This old dog will have to learn some new tricks if he wants to do this new version of the old "Here and Now'." For the twelve years or so I put out a weekly "Here and Now" post, my process was to first write the post, then publish it all at once. Under the new process for "Here and Now (Again) it appears I'm going to have to write the post in full view of the world and readers, starting it, as I am starting this, then adding to weekly or daily, producing the blog, in effect, live. It means I will not send out an announcement when the complete product is finished. Readers will have to check in periodically if they want to see what's new. It is not what I prefer for several reasons, one of the biggest ones my concern about readership. The old blog was getting up to 12,000 page views a month. I don't expect to do that well here. I'm also concerned about the old readers who used to follow the old blog most every issue. I'm hoping I don't lose them. And finally the process. I'm having a problem controlling the size of my images, getting them both the right size and consistent, a problem I will have to work out in public rather than behind the scenes. In sum, this is turning out to be more of an experiment than I expected it to. I guess that's going to be part of the fun. So, here we go. So, here we go. Celebrate My Stupid Tree - My Stupid Poem this is the part where I lower my eyes and mumble a humble response like, well, thanks, it was nothing but of course, it was something, it was a poem, and good or bad it was an effort at creation, like the tree stump in my back yard that I cut witih my father's day chain saw, leaving big swoosh-like slashes in the tree trunk from top to bottom which I painted theprimary clolors, red, blue, and yellow. those colors to match the ceramic thing Dee made, a mirror framed in a mosaic of red, blue, and yellow stones that I propped up on the top of the stump in a slot i cut with my chain saw and I'm not done yet, I'm thinking of little mirrors all around the tree as soon as I figure out how to stick them on so that they will stay a truly atrocious thing to be stuck in the middle of one's back yeard., but I don't care how ugy it might be, or how unappreciated by the neighnors it might because I believe it is the creative instinct that should be always honored regardless of that which the instinct produces which may or my not be honored as a final creation the human creative passion I invested in my stupid tree is equal to any passion of Picasso, just as my stupid poem is equal in its creative passion to any poem ever written it is that passion that counts before all else it is what separates us from the animals in the field and the fish in the sea, and the birds that fly over it all  Electra Glide in Blue At one point several years ago, I did a series of poems playing with colors. Rainbow Riot Red flowers Over yellow flowers Among blue flowers Blue Blue eyes Under clear skies Ice On cut crystal Yellow Lemons Overflow a pewter bowl Rose across the floor Crying Caution…caution Lull Black man With a silver flute, Sing us soft A song to sleep Fresco on the other side of sunset A ridge of low clouds Pink As cotton candy Against billows of virgin white Above a Mediterranean sky Sunset Sun lies low Behind scrub branches Yellow jigsaw puzzles At end of day Red grill Red grill on a field Of brown leaves Autumn come And almost gone With summer Red grill begins The long weait to spring Red Blood on white paper, Bright red Like an apple On a bed of snow Winter postcard White horse On a white field Enclosed by a white fence And I am blinded by the light REMEMBER ME THE STORY OF IT she had wanted to see this most of her life imagining it from the backseat for fifteen hundred miles on our way there… but age brought great fear of heights wouldn’t get out of the car to see it afraid so afraid the solid earth would sink away from her would be gone the minute she put her foot on it wants me to describe it for her wants me to tell her the story of it… so I can remember having been here, she said, so I can remember it and what it was like (Grand Canyon, 1988) This old bed This poem is by iconic Chicana/Native American Lorna Dee Cervantes from her fifth major collection, Sueno. She has long been a leader in the Native American literary renissiance and a favorite of mine. People Talkikng In Their Sleep Who comes out of that dead end alive, untouched? The surface of glass, gasping with breath, the thick gauze touched up with sighs. Out the woodwork of dreaming comes freedom from the dance of life, comes the future in a wheel-barrel filled with the nickels of nitghtmare. Come up on the stoop, play the marbles in your head through the gritting teeth. All the truths of summer slumber here on a dime. All the wits of winter wake up to the grumble of games. All the leafigs of autumn cry out through the teeth of sleep - in the dream talking to its person. The big lie  Remembering the caves remembering the caves so it’s like this, we preserve memories in our brain and when our brain dies so die the memories but there are also memories that reside in our genes that do not die with us but are passed on to our offspring, memories encoded in genes that are part of the inheritance just as are the rest of the genetic mix that makes us generational memories, passed on and passed on so that some part of us remembers the cave, remembers the man-things, the almost-us Neanderthals who we remember as we remember so many other fantastical things beyond our experience, things we explain through tall tales and myths and fairy stories… and beyond that, it is said, all living things animal and plant have these genetic memories just as all living things have a consciousness, the whooping cranes in their winter marsh home, finding this refuge every year not though some trick of navigation, but because they remember it, generations of genetic memory remembering its comforts and where it is and how to get there and also the forests and the prairie grasses and the sunflower who turns its face to the sun before the sun rises, knowing from generations that it will rise and that it will rise in the east and generations of warm sun memory tell it when it is time to turn… science learning from myth, myth suggesting new science, and with each new thing we learn, new mysteries, all knowledge an accumulation of ignorance addressed,, universal consciousness, memories from all becoming part of all… where have we heard that before… ``` this the state of knowledge expanding today theory always questing to be challenged, questing to be debunked what does a poet know of this and what advice can such a dabbler provide not much only enough to consider one suggestion - maybe we should all talk to our petunias today though we know they will not talk back, science tells us there is a good chance they will hear and warm themselves in the genetic memory of kind words spoken by those who in the far past knew them better than we Grease come the resurrection the path down and back is steep and arduous, especially for older people, though benches along the way provide a place to stop and rest, a moment to breathe thin air and listen to the wind passing between the canyon walls, the stubby trees restless in response birds call along the way but go silent among the ruins, homage to the ghosts who patrol the bare adobe rooms, guarding the ancient walls until those who left return again, pull from storehouses the grain and seed they left behind for this very day of resurrection we are silent visitors, with the birds, waiting for the tread of soft footsteps so long absent from their home (Mesa Verde, 1979) Santa Fe afternoon  history’s young victims walking beneath my second floor window, in their school uniforms, walking in a disciplined line lead by their teacher, I could hear them singing, their high light voices waking the thin mountain-air morning joyous morning then, a sweet and innocent moment in a strange and foreign place a morning and a moment I will not forget a memory struggling against the cruel beast of history a memory that cannot shield these children... --- remembering... trying not to think of what happened to these beautiful, singing children in the near 60 years since those children, victims of of the beasts who came through years and bloody seasons to devour their time and place, their life and the innocence of that morning (Kabul - 1969) STOP HERE. NOTHING ELSE HERE, YET 
My Stupid Tree - My Stupid Poem this is the part where I lower my eyes and mumble a humble response like, well, thanks, it was nothing but of course, it was something, it was a poem, and good or bad it was an effort at creation, like the tree stump in my back yard that I cut witih my father's day chain saw, leaving big swoosh-like slashes in the tree trunk from top to bottom which I painted theprimary clolors, red, blue, and yellow. those colors to match the ceramic thing Dee made, a mirror framed in a mosaic of red, blue, and yellow stones that I propped up on the top of the stump in a slot i cut with my chain saw and I'm not done yet, I'm thinking of little mirrors all around the tree as soon as I figure out how to stick them on so that they will stay a truly atrocious thing to be stuck in the middle of one's back yeard., but I don't care how ugy it might be, or how unappreciated by the neighnors it might because I believe it is the creative instinct that should be always honored regardless of that which the instinct produces which may or my not be honored as a final creation the human creative passion I invested in my stupid tree is equal to any passion of Picasso, just as my stupid poem is equal in its creative passion to any poem ever written it is that passion that counts before all else it is what separates us from the animals in the field and the fish in the sea, and the birds that fly over it all  Lost Jigger Of Gin THIS OLD BED I did a series of “color” poems in “Pushing Clouds Against the Wind.” Here are some of them. Riot Red flowers Over yellow flowers Among blue flowers Rainbow riot Blue Blue eyes Under clear skies Ice On cut crystal Yellow Lemons Overflow a pewter bowl Rose across the floor Crying Caution…caution Lull Black man With a silver flute, Sing us soft A song to sleep Fresco on the other side of sunset A ridge of low clouds Pink As cotton candy Against billows of virgin white Above a Mediterranean sky Sunset Sun lies low Behind scrub branches Yellow jigsaw puzzles At end of day Red grill Red grill on a field Of brown leaves Autumn come And almost gone With summer Red grill begins The long weait to spring Red Blood on white paper, Bright red Like an apple On a bed of snow Winter postcard White horse On a white field Enclosed by a white fence And I am blinded by the light  Night Life (after Willie Nelson)
This poem is by Marsha Pomerant, taken from her book The Illustrated Edge. Tortoise Shell on a Windowsill Wellfleet, Cape Cod The inhabitant is out, apparently gourge. Now we can study pure s helter. Waxy chitan, regular ridges, brown and yellow fields pressing past their boundaries on a hillside. Arching horn inspired. Song ceramics and later eueglass frames looking like this hellmet for the heart and gut that a laggard engineered to sumount himself. Cobwebs and dust, spiders and mites squat here. Spine inside, vestigial or provisional, latered into a fragile bitten bone. In my hand, the undershell clacks against the hill's insides, like the cover on the plastic cup that housed my grandmother's teeth. Some housing intrinsic : you secrete a home and hope for space enough to turn in, for love to clack against your wall so you can say, Come in. I'll just slide my tectonic plate aside,, quaking. Myself, I'm renting here. Ain't what she used to be, she's better. The old "Here andNow" had basically three elements, poetry (mine and from my library) and photos. This new "Here andNow (again)" adds two elements, my art and my video readings. The poetry from my library remains, but my poetry changes. After writing a poem a day for nearly 15 years, I ran into a wall and am not now writing (except this). That's the bad news; the good news is that all those years writing a poem every day I have on file nearly 6,000 old poems, more than enough to last longer than I'm likely to. The art thing began when my poetry crashed. In order to keep my creative needs alive, I decide to try painting, my method, spray paint on wood (generally 10 inches by 5 feet). I overcame my lack of talent by going abstract, or as people sometimes say at galleries, "my 3-year-old could have done that." I stand in for 3-year-olds across the world. I have had one showing of my work so far. In a very informal setting, essentially just leaning my boards against the wall of a large room, as shown here. It didn't attract much interest. I have a show coming up later this year in a more formal setting at Capej, a small coffeehouse and gallery near downtown.  The video reading rose out of boredom and the need to try something new. It has become a habit, with a new reading every morning. I'll include several readings in this and subsequent posts. poets on every street corner mid-night meditation lying naked in the summer grass, pale shadow under the ful bright eye of the moon listening to the sounds of the creek, the water, the mating frogs, sounds of the trees and the wind, trying to imagine a time when these were the only sounds of night with the call of a lonely, hungry wolf from the hills far awar, the only sounds of life around us and we are otherwise alone ALIEN ENCOUNTER  This poem is by iconic Chicana/Native American Lorna Dee Cervantes from her fifth major collection, Sueno. She has long been a leader in the Native American literary renissiance and a favorite of mine. People Talkikng In Their Sleep Who comes out of that dad end alive, untouched? The surface of glass, gasping with breath, the thick gauze touched up with sighs. Out the woodwork of dreaming comes freedom from the dance of life, comes the future in a wheel-barrel filled with the nickels of nitghtmare. Come up on the stoop, play the marbles in your head through the gritting teeth. All the truths of summer slumber here on a dime. All the wits of winter wake up to the grumble of games. All the leafigs of autumn cry out through the teeth of sleep - in the dream talking to its person. ALL THE PROPHETS SAY  my story well, what can I say? it's another day and the day moves along, with me moving along with it, just a step or two behind it. just another day, a day like any other and you are there, but that's not correct, it's just my impression of Walter Conkite from the old days when he did that TV show that had you imagine you were there on the day of great historical events and, of course, you are not there, I am, except for me there is here at my morning restaurant writing what might be my morning poem or maybe just my computer's morning post-breakfast fart... we'll see as we get a little further along, and, speaking of that, I looked through the obituaries this morning, whichi I do every morning, reading up on all the old people who won't be geting further along, feelig sorry for them until I realize what all these old people who won't be gettng further along are only a couple of years older than me and begin feeling sorry for myself... but then I stop feeling sorry for myself when I read of the four high school boysvand one girl killed in a car wreck on their way home from band practice or basketball practice or something like that and I begin to feel sorry for the kids and the full and varied life they will not see, and the parents, left with nothing but the past and bittersweet memories as the get closer to their time of going no further along but their story is just a sad distraction, not my story, not about me, and thus easier to dismiss, as I consider more about what's important to me today, me, and my story about just another morning and I am there, not yet to my no further getting along, but getting closer every day getting too damn close for comfort... HABITS OF MERCY BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK  I try again. I still do stuff, just not adept at doing it. The one thing I'm still having to figure out is how to control the size of my images. Images are better in this post, but not yet as I want them. I don't intend to post this often in the future, but I still have much to learn. The only way to do that is try again and try again until it all comes out like I want. black and white and red all over  twit about town country roads driving country roads, blue plate specials in roadside cafes in little country towns where everybody comes in for lunch when the noon whistle blows, everybody knowing everybody, calling out to them, hey, Woodrow one might say, howdy, Mitch, would reply another, old men and old women coming in together, separate, women talking woman talk at one table, men making manly conversation at another, old men in straw hats, women in print dresses, hair done up for seeing people… little cafes with old gas pumps out front that haven’t worked since the main road moved 28 miles east 40 years ago, the rusted metal sign with the dinosaur, regular 17 cents; premium 21, hanging by the road, clanking in sweet county breezes blowing down from the hills… little cafes, with homemade apple pie and coconut pie and chocolate and lemon pies and a waitress called Phyllis and a cook named Milo rattling pans in the kitchen and singing Ernest Tubbs songs in a high and quavering voice just like Ernest did on the radio little country roads, winding up and down and around the hills, through tunnels of tree limbs hanging low over the road, crossing glass-clear creeks trickling over low-water bridges, frogs on lily pads croaking and flicking flies with Lash LaRue tongues, sheep in the meadow, cows in the corn, a donkey nibbling grass while a pair of horses watch the road passing, and me driving by yesterday, driving the country roads with my friend, making me feel like a country boy on the loose, driving the little roads, the closest I ever come to being a country boy again Chihuahua sunset And here's another poem from the third book, "Goes Around Comes Around" I'm thinking soft this morning I'm thinking soft this morning, soft autumn breeze on sun-warmed skin, like the soft middle of fresh-baked bread, crusted all around the soft fur behind a kitten's ear and under its chin, the fresh smell of soft sheets on a wedding bed, the soft squeeze of a woman, the velvet slide down her back to the rounded slope of her rear, the rise of her breasts breathing in and out, rising, falling, on the soft edge of sleep, the moist center of her calling, and the damp cheeks of my son at four, eyes wet from a bully's taunt as I held him close, "you are a good person," I tell him, my voice a soft whisper in his ear, and a strong,brave boy whose mom and dad love him," I say... ----- I'm thinking soft this morning, remembering the touch of days brighter and smoother than today I Cortez discovers Mexico  a 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 at the hospital to warm a new-born son, thin, almost transparent blue... moon is bright in the soft sky, not full, flattened a little on one side of the 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 thermonmeter read very quiet... derfluckenflegga It strikes me that this poem, by Sara Patton from her book, "The Joy of Old Horses." It is of kind I might write, and have, many times. Country Roads I spend my life on these country roads lost in uncut grass and sky, passing abandoned houses I half recognize, slanted light on a tin roof, my own face in a second story window, the broken maw of a doorway deepening into ceaseless longing. The hills stretch like a mountain lion unfolding honeyed limbs in sunlight and from far away cries of doves float as night approaches I grow to understand my ancestors: a handkerchief tucked into a sleeve, reading in a good light, every scrap of love hoarded - like string. The embrace me as night saddles my mare with moonlight but still I cannot stay. crossing the bridge together (a John Lewis tribute)  never been to Chile never been to C h i l e but would love to go some day so that s t r i n g b e a n country s t r e t c h i n g all the way d o w n the P a c i f i c coast of South America to near Ant arcti ca - down there to Tierra Del Fuego which means Land of the Fuego in Spanish and I'd surely like to go there someday co den of iniquity  bananafanafofanaa I had a passport picture taken today a good, double-duty deal - after the border agents take a look at the picture and arrest me as a tourist the very same picture can be used again when they book me into that Cuba place, Guacamole, or whatever, Dee took me down to Walmart and sat me down on the passport picture taking stool and I don't even know why I need a passsport but I guess she'll tell me when we get wherevere we're going and I don't really care as long as it's a civilized country with coffeehouses and internet and dependale WIFI so that being there won't interrupt my life too much, which I enjoy, by the way, too much to be running off to weird places like Upper Slobania or Botswanna or some bananafanafofana republic in South Amerca, and I don't care how tasty their banannas are cause I don't even like bananas except with Corn Flakes and I expect nobody in those banafanafofana countries has corn flakes except maybe the president and most of those guys would probably rather shoot you than share their corn flakes, so where would that leave me, well,with bananas and no corn flakes, that's where, and the dude just cannot abice such a tilt-a-wheel existence as that Gotta go now. |
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