HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
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This is an extra-long post, unlike the previous quickies. In Facebook jail for seven days for suggesting that traditional 18th and 19th punishment for treason (perhaps stated too explicitly for Facebook's gentle souls) should suffice for our current crop of traitor, whether in or out of office.) That left me with lots of time to kill. So here you have it. Usually completing one of these blog posts doesn't bring a lot of satisfaction to me, nothing at all like completing a good poem. They are, after all, nothing but a yard sale with artistic pretension, a collection of old pieces, mine and other's. But this post which I took longer to complete does provide a bit of that satisfaction, a true poetry, art, and photography collection. The only thing missing is music and that I am working on. Just need to find out how to transfer CD's to digital media. Coming soon, maybe. And I remind you again, comments are easy and I like them. Beginning with this piece is from my book Always to the Light. It was my last poetry book before two fiction books and a final poetry book.  tiny little girl drinks her juice little girl sits, waits for mom to finish her morning phone call to friend? lover? spouse? hairdresser? who knows mysteries and stories abound in our every day world tiny girl drinks from her juice box, straw never leaving her mouth eyes above the straw like small blue diamonds, blue ice beneath bright blond curls surveys the room eyes like blue flame flicker, watchinig every thing, every body mysteries and stories abound in her everyday world phon While I'm in Always to the Light, here's another. pants on fire I'm always doing stupid things, the stupidist being that I know the things I'm doing are stupid even as I do them anyway - but then I'm an accomplished liar, never better at it than when lying to myself, easily convincing myself, for example, that I will absolutely, certainly, for sure, make up for not walking my mile yesterday by walking two miles tomorrow instead, or that it is most definitely true that there is a certain chemical in pecan pie filling that is highly beneficial to diabetics or that Dee will surely understand and believe me when I tell her that I just forgot her birthday and will make it up next year with a three-week vacation on the coast of Spain it is so easy to be talked into stupid things when a person as gullible as I am comes under the influence of a liar as convincing as me And here's another one deep thoughts to be thunk in 2009 like many people I like to think deep thoughts about things I know nothing about, an explanation, some might say, as to why all the world's problems I solved last year are back on the table today balderdash, as we deep thinkers like to say obviously the world wasn't paying adequate attention last year meaning I'm just going to have to deep think louder in 2009 Leaving that book behind for a while, here's a board I may not have posted before. Jellyfish Jamboree  This poem is by Sidney Wade, taken from her book Stroke. The Vulgate of Experience In this tatterdemalion sandwich of Life, it pays to pay attention to the light, not the oligarchic spread of heavy principles, or to four-week traditions. There are multitudes caught in the glare and just as many stuck in a radiant head-book. The book says even though we might reflect the bruised glory of all the suns that ever shone down on the earth, mostly everyone's dreaming in a savage room or searching for the beloved in the desert I admit I, for one, am clouded by experience, though I'm feeling my way into a weird pre-waking from the old parabola of darkness. Some nights I sleep in wild weather where the names of God change furiously. Sometimes I wander in the available light. the wind is always a perilous distraction. On rare, sweet days I hear a brown, nut-like sound. Inside thie sound you can hear the imagination fluttering Here joy whiskers through the main arteries. Here is where, if you hold out your hands, they will be filled. Another practice board.  This Could Be Your Final Warning I'm going to shamelessly self-indulge by quoting the entire critique of my book Seven Beats a Second from Amazon. The critique is old, written by the publisher/editor of Tryst, an on-line poetry journal, but the book is still available in both new print-on-demand and old, second-hand copies.  5.0 out of 5 stars Seven Beats a Second: A Collector's Edition Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2011 There aren't many poetry books out there with big, wild, splashy colorful illustrations and that's too bad. You see, there's just not enough imagination in poetry books these days. Besides the generic titles, boring book covers and pages and pages of self-absorbed ink, it's a rare moment to come across a book that entertains as much as it sustains. Too many poetry books try to be dead serious and just end up...dead. Some poetry books just want to be published, never mind that the poetry reads like a laundry list of sundry garments that had to be aired. Some poetry books try to be too clever or profound and punish the reader with all kinds of cerebral gymnastics in scholastics. These books are for avid fans of the author, or poets studying other poets of which I am guilty of being both. That's fine and all. There's a poetry book for every kind of taste and every die-hard poetry lover out there. Thank goodness because the shelf life of any poetry book is regrettably short--I think the life expectancy of a fly might be longer. So how do you make a book stand out and more importantly, memorable? You write a poetry book that competes with the best of recipe books: You write, SEVEN BEATS A SECOND and illustrate it with wonderful images that happen to coincide with the words and bingo, you "gotta dance" ______________________ shirt off chest glistening sweat-wet hair long swinging as he dances atop the amp rack twenty feet in the air arms pumping feet pumping .... it's the music he says can't you hear it gotta dance man ______________________ That poem lands on page 55 and it's illustrated with a rabbit in blue overalls, (all paintings by Vincent Martinez), and for some reason the poem and illustration tickle me every time I read that poem because I'm envisioning this rabbit thumping madly, gyrating and dancing away because he's so happy. Memory works best with word-imagery associations. But if illustrations were all that there was to making poetry books successful then any poet could hire or befriend an artist in the same manner a poet might solicit another colleague to write up a blurb or an endorsement. The illustrations merely help much in the same way photos of an exotic dish help to associate "delicious" with a recipe. Ultimately, the poems made up of words have to click with the reader and the firmer those words lodge into our collective senses, the fiercer a book imprints itself unto our emotions and paves the way for the reader to become attached to a book for sentimental reasons. SEVEN BEATS A SECOND rewards the reader with down-to-earth, folksy narrative poems that are at once rambling and laconic, reflective and somber, humorous and wise as in the poem, "rethinking the probabilities of god" ______________________ it's not the fox holes that persuade us we were all immortal then and dumb as the dirt that grew wet with the surprise of our blood it's driving past the old folk's home knowing, they're making a bed up for you ______________________ But what is most admirable is that the poems are so unapologetic and unpretentious. Allen Itz's poems are skillful negotiations with words that connect the reader to the call of poetry that is life. They make me feel right at home. To balance out this review, I have one complaint about Allen Itz: He's too damn humble about his poetry. He should have had fifteen books or better published by now. {As to the last part of the review, I followed this first book with five more eBooks of poetry and two fiction. Poets don't read eBooks I learned to my disappointment.)  star bright imagine the stars on cold desert nights, spread across the wide black sky, beyond the desert and high mesas, past prairies where trickster coyote calls, past the land of mortal men to the place where no man goes, the place where spirits hunt ghosts of buffalo imagine sleeping with this blaze of night around you, black night bright with cold unchallenged light imagine how you must fear the starless night, when clouds close the sky around you and bind you prisoner to the dark Dawn's early light  Who will be the poet then? say that a poem is not the word spoken or the word printed or written in some orderly form designated as poetic by the fashion of the time; go instead to the image the words, however presented, are meant to provoke and find the poetry direct in the vision, images in the air of real space and time, transmitted through your senses to that part of your mind that dwells among the visual cues and clues of the world, the derandomized pieces that combine to form a picture that means an emotion, visions that fire chemical reactions that push electronic jabs to our frontal cortex to create context within which emotions form, think of poety as transending word, internal vision of the poet going directly to an external vision to be seen and shared... (the most beautiful poem I've ever experienced, a French short film of horses, a herd of horses running through fields of high grass, the beauty of their flesh and their muscled bodies, and the sweat blown from their nostrils, and the steam from their mouths and nostrils, the internal heat of their great bodies under great exertion blown into cold air, and the colors of their coats and the grace of their great running leaps over high grasses and shallow waterways - the most beautiful poem I've ever experienced and not a word was spoken - no words, written or spoken could match the image direct.. I saw this film nearly 60 years ago and it remains as fresh in my mind as if I saw it today) think of poetry as visions transmitted through some visual media like the screen in your local cinema, or think of a future poetry transmitted diretly into your dreams... think of the day when dreams are the ultimate poetry and poets the ultimate dream makers - so who will be the poets then? ...While I'm in New Days New Ways, here are a couple more pieces from it. a mid-winter poem I have the feeling of a string running out, a slackness in my lifeline, all that I am reduced to loose ends... I've done many things in my life, good and worthwhile things, though none lasted longer than it took for my shadow to fade around the corner - my proudest legacies remembered only by me, like clouds blown apart by the wind, so much more fragile than I had imagined and now the line that anchoed me to the future has gone slack and I feel just another of the world's forgettable loose ends the best there is on offer dark morning rain light but steady the street an ebony mirror streaked red like a lipstick message from a disappointed lover a no-promises day... take it as you find it... it's the best there is on offer I don't talk much about my first eBook, Pushing Clouds Against the Wind, because, as a result of my own stupidity, it is unmarkatable. It was my first eBook and I didn't know what I was doing. As with all my eBooks but one, the cover photo is one of my own. I had a photo for Pushing Clouds I liked a lot. But, in a real "hold my beer moment" I decided that it coudn't be that hard and I could save a couple hundred dollars and do the cover myself. The result of that decision, I published a book with no title on the cover and no author name. But. the poems aren't bad. Here are several short ones. riot red flowers over yellow flowers among blue flowers rainbow riot blue blue eyes under clear skies ice on cut crystal post-it note i love you in little yellow flashes of sticky note passion yellow lemons overflow a pewter bowl roll across the floor crying CAUTION...CAUTION! tiny bites sea roars at a shell-white beach takes tiny bites spit them back with every wave 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 wait for 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 I am blinded by the light The eBook I haven't mentioned yet in this post is Goes Around Comes Around. It is the only one of my eBook with a cover from not my own photo. The photographer was a baristra from Borders, an insomniac who took great photos at night and who I would love to credit for his great pic but have completely lost track of his name. In addition to this and the rest of my poetry books, I also have the travel book, which is a hybrid poetry/prose experiment (which didn't do nearly as well as I thought it should) and two fiction, Sonyador the Dreamer, critiqued as overly sentimental, and Peace In Our Time, which it seems no one liked. A very harsh SciFi "end of humanity" mystery/war story, not the thing poetry readers are likely to turn to. It also has a strong enviornmental message that tree-huggers would like, but you have to get to the end of the book to discover that message. It's one of my favorite books, whether or not anyone else likes it. The point of the above is, here are a couple of poems from Goes Around Comes Around.  habits of mercy I was thinking this morning of what I want to do with the rest of my life and decided it's the same thing I want to do with the rest of my day kiss my wife at least once or twice eat some good food write some good poems sleep a nice nap communicate with my better nature & forgive myself for all recent sins, known, as well as secret, even to me easier for some than for others, those with no true love to kiss - no food to eat - no bed to sleep in - no poetry in their soul - those with no key to unlock the door to self, their true self as unknown to them as a stranger passing on the street in a dark night - and most difficult of all those who can't find within themselves forgiveness of themselves poor miserable ego-obsessed creatures that we are, sinners almost from our first thoughts, if we cannot forgive ourselves how will they ever learn to forgive others and if we cannot forgive others how can we ever live in this world that needs cleansed hearts as much as it needs clean air and water habits of mercy are what will save this world; human sins forgiven by human sinners somewhere out there this is serious business, somewhere out there innerstellar star systems are colliding somewhere out there and alien race of whoozidoozits is going extinct as their methane atmosphere is slowly replaced by megaterlagon oxygen farts somewhere out there a spaceship full of Baptists is approaching the water planet Aboxion XII for full immersion baptism somewhere out there Pat Boone is thinking about a comeback tour somewhere out there a Republican is suffering from delusions of competency somewhere out there a bunch of foreigners who don't even speak English are bouncing balls off their heads and calling it football I mean this is no damn time for jokes and silly faces if New board, just finished it this morning. Paddling Upstream in a Downstream World  a nearly 78 year-old fat man so I’m a 77 going on 78 year old fat man …but wait, poetry is about truth and beauty and while there is no beauty in an old fat man, truth is still important and the truth is, though I am already a fat man, I’m not as fat a man as I used to be and I just turned nearly 78 a few weeks ago… so abiding by the poetic requirement for truth it should be more correctly said that I am a nearly 78 year old, not-as-fat-as-he-used-to-be man and the further truth is like so many in my contingent I hate change and mostly I hate change (affirming that being the primary purpose of this rant) because change means I’m going to have to learn new stuff and I believe, fervently, even, that at the age of nearly 78, fat, skinny, or perfectly formed, such a man should already know what he needs to know to live a full 77-plus year-old life… I mean, I like many in my regiment, I always like to read new stuff about stars and galaxies and dinosaurs and ancient tribes of ancient peoples, and various other oddities and monstrosities of life unknown before my time, but I only like to learn such stuff as long as I don’t have to learn too much about it, in fact, I prefer to know just a little bit, just enough to know enough to set my imagination churning, because, it is a fact, my imagination churning produces much more interesting stuff to know than anything I would know by actually knowing real stuff… and that works great for me, since I read such science news and other such stuff just looking for stuff to fill me up like an over-ripe melon with pseudo-science and interesting fantasy that I might expound upon here and at other venues where actually knowing stuff is not strictly required… but other than that kind of stuff, the stuff I don’t want to learn is the stuff most sixteen year olds already know and I figure if a sixteen year old already knows it why in the world should a nearly 78 year old, not-as- fat-as-before man bother with knowing it too because it just seems to me that such a man ought to know just about everything he actually needs to know to make it though his day… as to the rest, well, take my computer, so old it’s almost steam-powered, but old as it is, it is my faithful friend and like any of the other friends I’ve buried or except to bury within the next few years, I dread the time when its time is up and I have to go looking for a new computer friend, it is just like I hate the idea of going out and finding new regular friends when the old ones bite the dust… it’s oh so much more complicated… learning a whole new set of demands and expectations and idiosyncrasies and all the other stuff that goes with maintaining a healthy and productive relationship… like my phone and my wife’s new car - I’ve been talking on a phone and driving for over on 60 years and none of what I learned now seems irrelevant to making a phone call or driving over to the corner store for a Baby Ruth, except that the complications now on both the phone and the car almost make me hesitant to go out in the world without a tag-along second grader to keep me legal and in the technical loop… and, ah, Baby Ruth, now there’s a constant in my life but I’m finding them harder to find in the candy aisle is that the next indignity, Baby Ruths becoming another historical oddity confined to glass display cases in museums of the latest antiquities, leaving me to learn all the particular rules and wherefores and whereupon of a Snickers or Mars Bar? wouldn’t surprise me… but then with nearly 78 years upon this twirleybird planet, not much does… Interstate 10 San Antonio - West
Chapter 34 ....We are climbing the steep rock face of a bald dome mountain, rising alone, some kind of geologic aberration, in the middle of very thick, snake infested brush for miles around, cactus and thorn trees, making assage difficult and bloody. It is my decision to go over the dome, rather than through the brush. Boy doesn't like it and I have come to agree with him. The climb is harder than I thought it would be and the two of us on this bare rocky face are like flies waiting to be swatted. After years of hiding in deep forest, beneath trees and anything else that could shield us from patrolling Floaters overhead, it is gut-twisting to be so exposed. But once started, I don't want to go back, no matter how bad the idea to begin. It was the snakes over-running the brush what I most didn't want to face. But halfway up the dome, we have seen no evdence of Floaters on the horizon - it could be they consider the clearing of rhis region complete and no longer think there is a need to patrol We are beginning to feel safe. Chapter 35 We are on he last downward leg of the granire dome, when we hear the familiar keening as a Floater begins to edge over the dome's crest. Boy and I jump into a nearby crevice in the rock. With our heads down, we stand on a narrow ledge beneath the surface, barely wide enough for our feet to catch hold. Boy's grip is secure, but the ledge I am on crumbles and I slip the rest of the way down the crevice into a cave, a winter den for snakes of all kinds, draped around the cave on small outcroppings, snakes tangled l ike twisted rope in piles on the floor. The edge of my foot touches one, and I hear the quiet button whisper of a simnolent rattlesnake...  ith I believe Walt Whitman is the father of American poetry. He and other great minds of his time like Thoreau and Emerson pushed aside pale colonial versons of British canon and created a true American idiom. My only problem with Whitman is, once I start reading him it is very hard to stop. Usually start reading from the first version of Leaves of Grass with the magnificant, mighty and beautiful Song of Myself and, after reading and reading, have not gotten very far into the greatness of it all. This time, reading from Leaves of Grass, First and Death Bed editions, I turn randomly to a page from the death bed section of the book to poems I have never read before. -42- A call in the midst of the crowd. My own voice, orotund sweeping and final. Come my children, Come my boys and girls, my women, houehold and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has passed his prelude on the reeds within. Easily written loose finger'd chords - I feel the strum of your climax and close. My head slues around on my neck, Music rolls, but not from the organ, Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine. Ever the hard unsunk ground, Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever thee air and the ceasless tides, Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real, Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn'd thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts. Ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the fly one hides and bring him forth, Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life, Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death. Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, To feed the greed of the belly the brains literally swooning, Tickets buying, taking, selling, but into the feast never once going,, Many sweating, ploughing,thrashing, and then the chaff for paynment received, A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming. This is the city and I am one of the citizens, Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, The mayor and the councils, banks tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate. The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collas and tail'd coats, I am aware who they are, (they are postively not worms or fleas,) I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, What I do and say the same waits for adthem, Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them. I know perfectly well my own egotism, Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. No words of routine this song of mine,Th black But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearing bring; This printed and bound book - but the printer and the printing- office boy? The well-taken photographs - but your wife or firend closd and solid in youSersr arms? The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets - but the pluck of the captain and engineers? In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture - but the host and the hostess, and the look out of their eyes? The sky up there - yet here or next door, or across the way? The saints and sages in history - but you yourself? Sermons, creeds, theology - but the fathomless human brain, And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life? -43- I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years, Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, Making a fetich of the least rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis, Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, Dancing through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods of the gymnosophist, Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran, Waiting the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skinned drum, Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine, To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting patiently in the pew, Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me, Looking forth on pavement andland, or outside of pavementr and land, Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits. One of that centipetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey. Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded, Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affeced, dishearten'd, atheistical, I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. How the flukes splash! How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms land spouts of blood! Be at peace bloody flukes of doubtres and sullen mopers, I take my place among you as much as among any, The past is the push of you, me, all precisely the same, And what is yet untried and afterwards is for you, me, all, precisely the same. I do not know what is untried and aferward, But I know it will in its time prove sufficient, and cannot fail. Each who passes is considere'd, each who stops is consider'd, not a single one can it fail. It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried, Nor the young woman you died and was put by his side, Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again, Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall. Nor him in the poorhouse tubercled by rum and bad disorder, Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd , nor the brutish koboo call'd the ordure of humanity, Nor the sacs merely floating witih open mouths for food to slip in, Nor anything in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, Nor the present, nor the last wisp that is known. -44- It is time to explain myself - let us stand up. What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. The clock indicates the moment - what does eternity indicate? We have thus far ehausted millons of winters and summers, There are millions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, And other births will bring us richness and variety. I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which fills its period and place is equal to any. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation, (What have I to do with lamentation?) I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an enclouser of things to be. My fee strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Long I was hugg'd close - long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me. Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing, like cheerful boatmen. For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings. They sent influence to look after what was to hold me. Before I was born out of my mother's generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strate piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in themouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. The Whitman transcription above took me a day and a half because my template declared war on me and was deleting text almost as fast as I typed it, leaving me now at the end in an evil mood, the exact opposite of the way Whitman usually leaves me. This leading me to consider how does a wannabe abstract artist depict evil. My attempt at such show below, a piece suggested by stories of the the children's birthday party clown and serial killer, John Wayne Gacy. Clown For Hire 
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 EXPLAINING IT ALL TO MY DOG REBA  THE DAY AFTER the day after Independence Day, July fifth, the day after the seasonal peak in sales of fireworks and plastic flag pins, the day after sanctimonious right-wing politicians profess their deep love for the very same country they continue to undermine for political purpose, the day after left-wing dingbats join their radical-right counterparts in finding government conspiracies behind everything from post office closings to the traffic ticket they got after they were caught on camera running a red light, to the intrusive government ban against copulating naked on main street, to the provision of polio immunization to the children of the Taliban controlled backwaters of Afghanistan, I mean, you name it, from male menopause to hairy moles on women’s noses, all due, according to these people, to the machinations of the fascist/socialist government and their coterie of bureaucrats, lawyers, sociologists, sex advice counselors, and Fox/MSNBC liars, commentators and scoundrels exerting mind control over the ignorant American mainstream who would rather get their news from supermarket tabloids who at least understand the important things like who’s getting divorced because they refuse to engage in sex play involving diapers and feathery paddles, and the latest on Lindsey’s alien encounters etc. etc. etc. and who can blame them, when everyone lies and nothing can be believed, why not believe the most scandalous and interesting options available let’s face it, I got my periodic rash of virulent ravings from that right-wing, fascist fellow this morning, the most anti-American of all the people I know who hide behind the American flag, the flake who takes it upon himself to berate me for my sanity and I have to admit it does shake me to know that this fellow who used to be a pretty good poet could descend into such determined madness making me want to just rant and rant like I was as crazy as he is This poem is by Mexican Nobel Prize winning poet, anthropologist, philosopher and art and literature critic Octavio Paz. It is from his book, Configerations, the first of his major collections to be published in the United States. It is a dual language book, with Spanish and English translations on facing pages. The poem I selected for this post was translated by Charles Tomlinson. Ustica The successsive suns of summer, The succession of teh sun and of its summers, All the suns, The sole, the sol of sols, Now become Obstinate and tawny bone, Darkness-before-the-storm Of matter cooled. First of stone, Pine-cone of lava, Ossuary, Not earth Nor island either, Rock off a rock-face, Hard peach, Sun-drop petrified. Through the night one hears The breathing of cisterns, The panting of fresh water Troubled by the sea. The hour is late and the light, greening. The obscure body of the wine Asleep in jars Is a darker and cooler sun. Here the roses of the depths Is a candelabrum of pinkish veins Kindled on teh sea-bed. Ashore, the sun extinguishes it, Pale, chalky lace As if desire were worked by death. Cliffs the color of sulpur, High austere stones. You are beside me. Your thoughts are black and golden. To extend a hand Is to gather a cluster of truths intact. Below, between sparkling rocks Goes and comes A sea full of arms. Vertigoes. The light hurls itself headlong I looked you in the face, I saw into the abyss: Mortality is transparency. Ossuary: paradise: Our roots, knoted In sex, in the undone mouth Of the buried mother. Incestuous trees Tha mantain A garden on the dead's domain. I continue to push my art, even though my first formal showing won't be until early next year. But, as a long time self-promoter, I believe it's never too early to flack your jams and jellies.  From Seven Beats a Second, my first book. STORM WARNING gray and white gulls swirl overhead, thick, like a cloud, blown in the wind like smoke from a cane field fire the shipyard acoss the bay is hidden by black clouds of rain lying across the water like crepe on a coffin lightning arcs between the clouds and thunder echoes against the bluff I hear you in the driveway, slamming the car door with a crack like a rifle in the dark This a public health warning from someone who smoked for 40 years and who has now not smoked for the last 25, a fact to which I owe my continued life in my 78 year. WARNING LABEL GODDAMN CRITICS EVERYWHERE she has watched me for several days now as I sit at my table and type finally she speaks “I’ve been watching you,” she said, “and I’ve been wondering what you do.” “I’m a writer,” I said. “oh,” she said, “what kind of writer,” she asked. “a poet,” I said. “Oh,” she said, “what’s your name?” I told her and she asked, “Are you a good poet?” “I’m okay,” I said. “I was wondering,” she said, “cause I never heard of you.” “I never said I was a world-famous poet,” I said. “Well, that’s true,” she said, “and I guess you’re not.” “not what?” I asked. “`World-renown,” she said, as she turned her attention to whatever trivial, unimportant, non-world-renown thing she was doing before and I was thinking if one of the two of us ever turns out to be world- renown, it’s sure as hell going to be me (with my seven published books, purchased by literally dozens of readers who are neither family nor friend) before anyone knows her name from either Adam or Eve, and satisfied that I have put her in her place I return to my computer to continue my daily chase for truth and beauty and by-god show her how this world-renown thing works ANOTHER PRACTICE BOARD  This poem is by Adrienne Rich, taken from her book, Dark Field of the Republic. AND NOW And now as you read these poems - you whose eyes and hands I love - you whose mouth and eves I love - you whose words and minds I love - don't think I was trying to state a case or construct a scenery: I tried to listen to the public voice of our time tried to survey our public space as best I could - tried to remember and stay faithful to details, how precisely how the air moved and where the clock's hands stood and who was in charge of definitions and who stood by receiving them when the name of compassion was changed to the name of guilt when to feel with a human stranger was declared obsolete. JUST A LITTLE POLITICS Right-wingers have long been persistent crybabies, complaining constantly that it's not 1955 again as they make their way to their gated neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the left is becoming more and more the same with their endless and never changing compilation of "oh mes and mys" that they load on you at the slightest instance of your demonstration clear-headedness. Stop it!  Photos from a mid-October visit to the Blueridge Parkway, Strong cold winds of early winter pushing against our back. FINDING MY BOOK IN A SECOND-HAND BOOK STORE so I found my book in a second-hand book store in a city far from home do I think: oh, wonderful, someone read my book and brought it here so that it might be purchased and enjoyed by a second reader… or: oh, woe, this book, this labor of love, discarded, done, old news, no leaves pressed between the pages, no carefully preservation for poetry-minded progeny, a remembrance forgot, not to be cherished and saved for another generation or maybe for a current lover who will hold it dear as they hold you, oh wonderful and sensitive people who sleep every night with a book of fine poetry tucked beneath their pillow never to sleep over mine… or, simply, oh, look, someone bought my book, money in my pocket, easy-earned cash from a few small scribbles on the road to riches now, let's go out for dinner… --- taking in the sights in a new city, finding the familiar where never expected RECONSIDERING THE PROBABILITIES OF GOD SIBERIA ANXIETY it’s like a damn Siberian winter out there… well, not really… but it feels that way, after a week of cold, damp, dark days… vampire weather that sucks the blood-life right out of me weather that slows down to a turbid slug the synapses that might in better days come up with a new idea, some spark of creativity, some little flash of a phrase that might link lives one to another, conjoin hearts one to another, something to spark an idea that leaps the gaps of time and space, a spark that might open minds bound tight one from another, minds closed in distrust and confrontation, each against the other… that’s what this weather takes from me for I am a clear sky bright moon warm sun type of person, sometimes a rain person too, not rain that hangs frigid in the air, but rain that I can watch fall, rain that i can hear come flooding off the roof, rain that causes the creek rise and roar… instead a week of dark days and I can feel that same dark rising in me  EVERY POET SHOULD FIND THEIR GROUPIE there was a beat poet, dead now as are most of the early days beats (and considering how they lived, the wonder that so many lived so long) this now-dead poet never wrote his poems down, performed them extemporaneously at the clubs where dark-eyed poets hung out drinking thick coffee and existential dread, his poetry known now only because of friends who went to listen to his poems and transcribed them as he made them up… now consider Homer by fire light, telling his epic stories of heroes and monsters, while in the flickering shadows acolytes wrote them down for us to read today --- how fortunate for Homer and for us to read him now only because of his sharp-eared, quick-writing groupies… perhaps, for the sake of immortality I should recruit a groupie of my own WHAT'S NEW a big Ford F-350 is idlying noisly next to me at a stop light, on its back bumper, a bumper sticker prodly proclaims, "my daughter is a U.S. Marine" and I think back to my military service, four years, 1965-1969, and recall not seeing a single female soldier until, at the end, the Captain who processed my discharge... it is one of the few benefits of being old, every day a new unthinkable beomes common place and it's one of the very good reasons we all want to stay alive, cause only god knows what's coming next and what sentient being dosn't want to be here to see it A last photo for this post cause it seems kind of droopy not to do something with color in it. FAIRIES FLEE A SEQUESTERED MOON  One more, since my proofer is on holiday.
But, yea, she's back. PECHEUW, PECHEUW I figure there are at least 75,000 Mexican restaurants in San Antonio, and only about 5 or 6 them distinguish themselves from all the others and it takes eating a lot of lousy Mexican food to find them catching up with them are Chinese, Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese, numbering about 50,000 but I only go to one of them, the one with the great pad Thai meanwhile I’ve only found three German restaurants, two closed recently and the survivor is downtown where parking cost as much as a meal… one of the ones that closed was source of my favorite bratwurst with red cabbage and the best oven fries in the western hemisphere it was owned and run by a woman who always sat up front smoking cigarette after cigarette, a GI bride I always assumed because it was just the way I always saw her nice woman always said hello, killed by the cigarettes is my guess because she always had that look of a cigarette-smoking-person, gaunt and shrouded in smoke, death always looking over her shoulder… --- which reminds me the booth in front of me, a kid, maybe 4, maybe 5, going pecheuw, pecheuw, as he points his fingers like a gun at his big sister the question, how do boys seem to know at birth that finger guns go pecheuw, pecheuw is it perhaps genetic? born to finger-shoot big sisters and other interlopers into the joys of boy-morning? --- and why such a deep philosophical and mystical query in the middle a Sunday morning breakfast… because the kid is now pointing his finger and going pecheuw, pecheuw at me and I haven’t done a damn thing to deserve it, nothing, at least, as bad as his big sister does every day 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  concrete gardens with age, we come to accept the limited future of our own corporal self harder to accept, no matter how long our life, that all the works of our kind are equally limited to their own moments in time, longer moments than our own, but still all passing fancies, like us, that begin and end on a schedule unknown to us, inevitabilities unknown to us until their moment of denoument, the whens and the whys, the mystery lying before us, clues aplenty all around us, the how-we-will-end surely a final play like those of all who ended before us, most all, some version of suicide, a product of an aggressive, explosive nature or just the weariness of existence overtaking the will to continue, unrecognized until the final of the kind lifted its head and realized it was the last and that no more would follow… it might be there are no examples for us to study, maybe all kinds find their own way to kill themselves, all inevitable ends reflecting the truth that we are all part of a universe of both births and deaths, both equal and appropriate to the machinery that keeps all the universal wheels turning  I'VE BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE, I THINK I’ve been this way before I think and it did not end so well if it is you who follow so close behind me be warned, there are secrets on this path, furtive forms that flash and slither, all of them, shadows and forms and in the dim and hidden, clandestine whispers, dark mouth to sharpened ear all on this path patrolled by silent trees that shield the sun and guard untold stories of the dark I sense it, half-remembered from days I fear not passed.. secrets… do not ask, or it may not turn out well for I’ve been this way before, I think, and it did not turn out well  About 2015 or so, I published a book of travel poems. The book is titled Places and Spaces, an eBook, available, I am required to say, wherever eBooks are sold. The book includes the extended stories of five trips. The bulk of the stories are written in a more prose form, with interludes of poetry to record some of the more interesting sights along the way. For purposes of this blog issue, I'm going to select some of those more poetic pieces from the trip we made in the autumn, early winter, through the South to a passage along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The title of that poem/story is On the Cusp of Confederate Winter. For half of this journey I traveled alone, just me and my dog, Reba, who, before she died traveled 35 states with me. We picked up my wife, Dee, in Columbus, Ohio. We have traveled this way for years. I like to drive and don't like to fly; Dee just wants to get there so she flies, then we meet halfway. These little bits and pieces I'm posting are just that, bits and pieces, moments that struck me and were remembered in a poetic form later on. Don't expect them to advance the narrative.  tHIso Texas to Arkansas a pick-up pulling a horse trailer, alone in the back, one horse, a palomino, golden mane and tail and eyelashes flaring the wind, brown eyes watching as I pass .......... a hawk slips slowly from the sky to land on a fence post, watches, sees all with yellow eyes that view all that moves as prey .......... orange sky like mist through a forest of orange leaves .......... lakes and ponds and waterfowl, a crane passes over the road, low, long neck outstretched, wings spread, a dark shadow against a nearly dark sky .......... red sky in my rearview the road like a tunnel through the dark, tall, green forest on either side Little Rock to Nashville I wanted to write about the forests, the colors, gold and yellow and the red-brown color the Crayola people used to call Indian Red or Indian Brown, and in the middle of all that gold and yellow and red brown Indian whatever, some low bush that's flaming bright red scattered among the trees like little fires burning in the woods, and I wanted to write about the flock of ducks that flew over in perfect V formation, near enough to the ground that each duck could be seen and counted as an individual, close enough to the ground that I could hear the flapping of their wings and the mutter-quacks among the ranks, and I wanted to write about the hills, reminding me of the hill country at home, but soft hills here, none of the hard face of caliche and cactus and mesquite, just soft, soft forest-hills, trunks climbing close together, I wanted to write about the sun this morning and how it lit the colors of the trees and covered the sky from mid-afternoon, bringing shadow and mystery and darker colors of the night... Charleston, West Virginia The forest colors have changed, the yellows gone as we have journeyed further north, and the gold is starting to fall as well, a shower of golden leaves around me as I stand by a river a little further along, Huddle In, with friendly servers, dark thick coffee and pie, not homemade, I'm sure, but good, without the usual taste of something made by robots and child slave labor in East Berserkistan, all before 10 a.m. continuing north, the colors now are mostly shades of red and brown, on a hill surrounded on four sides by forest, a horse enjoys a pasture all his own in a dell, green as spring, a small church, white clapboard with a white wooden steeple rising twice the church's height, on a hill behind the church, rows of tombstones in rank and file, climbing the hillside like steps to an afterlife that, if we are lucky, woud look exactly like this little green dell and this little white church I stop just across the state line so Reba can walk and pee, just across the highway, three cows line a ridge, dark cut-outs against the sky the road rises in front of me, bordered, as always, by red and brown forests, at the top, a silver-dollar moon on a pale blue sky Charleston to Columbus lost, then finally straightened out, I follow the road, a narrow two lane that twists with the path of a river going north, on the river side, shacks, square little homes with junk cars and several hundred dollars worth of scrap metal in front, and on the other side of the road, great brick houses with wide green lawns and barns and horse stables Columbus another dark day, gray and overcast again, rain hanging back like the word that gets caught on the tip of your tongue, there, but not there, waiting in the wings, waiting for its cue to bring on the storm Dee prowls the shops of Old Dublin while I enjoy the luxury of a latte and a Times at Starbucks, this assumed as an entitlement a week ago, now joins my list of things to be thankful for finally, and by accident, we find ourselves on High Street, right in the middle of Short North, the arts district, but the galleries all seem to be closed, so we settle for lunch at Betty's Food & Spirits, named, it might be, after Betty Page, whose photos, along with other mid-century pin-up girls, paper the walls, the most vivid dreams of my 14-year-old days and nights revisit me as I enjoy a bowl of beef vegetable soup, a bit thin of broth for my taste, but full of vegetables, with thick chewy bread To Roanoke When I passed this way two days ago, it was dead-black dark and I couldn't see anything but the moving island my headlights threw ahead of me - today I appreciate the tree-covered hills and vistas as we curve around the mountain side, though the rain has stopped, most of the color on the hills is gone and what remains is draped in drab by the overcast sky a smaller, slower road with dips and turns and twists that take us across a river, then alongside it for twenty miles - people here are different from people in Texas who post the name of every river and creek whether flowing water or dry, that every road, paved, caliche, or blowing dust crosses - we value water for its scarcity and want a name everywhere it might be found, even if only a couple of days a year - here, even rivers have no posted name this river, wide with white-water rapids deserves a name we thought, even if only the name we give it "man with no name" river we have named it "El Rio Sin Nombre" a white house on a hill surrounded by leaf-bare trees, and behind them, mountains showing in bits and pieces through the fog on the road, short, thick-foliaged pines stand, crowded side by side, like spectators standing shoulder-to-shoulder, watching a passing parade, or, I think of the hundreds of clay soldiers lined in rank after rank, buried with a Chinese emperor - fog drifts around them and in that shifting fog, the soldiers seem to move, coming alive while their emperor still lies in dust In Roanoke A fellow at the produce market suggest Ernie's, right around the corner, a tiny little place, long and narrow, just wide enough to set up a line of booths from front to back and a couple of stools backed up against the grill - it is crowded, only one booth left when we slip in the door, with noisy, downtown people, hardhats to neckties, and all fashioned in between. - Ernie the proprietor is also Ernie, the cook, prepares the best breakfast in months - two eggs over easy, sausage patties, dry wheat toast and thick dark coffee Not much to impress us at the museum, except for the homeless man sleeping in the corner of one of the galleries, not real, of course, but a representation of reality, and essay on invisibility as museum visitor afrer museum visitor, myself included, walked past without seeming to see him, stipping and looking at paintings hanging over the space where he "slept" and not seeing, as if the homeless lived in an alternate universe, unseen and unknown to us until they panhandle us, or scream and rant on a street corner Jefferson's other plantation From his grand veranda, Jefferson could look out on the nearest of his 4,000 acres, large poplar trees, yellow leaves still holding on despite the lateness of the season, a gentle slope of close-cut grass; a creek running fast; another pasture, tobacco fields - in Jefferson's time, a crop he despised but planted anyway because he needed the cash; a forest of poplar trees broken by a winding crushed-shell drive - around the side and in the back, slave quarters, not for the cultivated eyes of the gentlemen and ladies of the Commonwealth of Virginia To Asherville and into North Carolina It will take all day, through the curves and thick forests of poplar and pine, leaves falling lik golden snow, we begin the climb a half-dozen wild turkery along the roadside, undisturbed by our passing, a fat deer I see ahead leaps across the road and through the trees bad weather gets worse, we are enfolded by the rain and the fog and the forest all around us grand vistas across green and gold hills around us, cleared pastures, little villages with little white houses and broken-down barns, and church steeples, and yellow school buses parked behind schools closed for the weekend the temperature at 3,700 feet is 37 degrees, a fierce cold wind blows through the wooded valleys and across the high crests, so strong it billows my Levi jacket out from my back like blue wings, almost lifting me over the edge - the chill factor is in the teens To Birmingham, Alabama heavy snow during the night has dusted white across the lower elevation - higher, thick dark clouds wrap aroiund the mountains, covering them like a dirty white blanket - our waitress at the Waffle House suggests we avoid the higher passes and stick to I-40 the soft, slow slur of a southern accent can make a Southerner sound stupid to many ears, especially when it comes from the mouth of a Southern woman, pity those who believe it true I expected cotton fields but found forests instead, still with all the colors of fall, turning more and more green as pines begin to infiltrate, the dominate, tall thin giants straight as fence posts with a bushy crown at the top To Lafayette, Louisiana lunch at a little truck stop in Pearl River County, Mississippi, three county deputy sheriffs at the table next to us, all black, making me think of my first trip through the south on a bus in the Spring of 1966, white and colored waiting rooms, white and colored restrooms, white and colored water fountains, all illegal since passage of the Civil Rights Act of a year earlier, all unmarked, but lifelong habits break hard, people still segregating themselves because that's the way they knew, but habits change and what could not be imagined, in time, becomes routine To San Antonio I am often told of the beauty of Louisiana, I see that, but I see the ugliness as well, the seediness behind the facade, like a middle-aged beauty queen showing the sag of body and spirit that comes from too many nights closing too many bars with too many men - I love the food and the music of the accent but it is not a place I could ever live crossing the Mississippi, a beautiful, broad river, like the Grand Canyon, a tale that lives up to its telling Back in Texas the passage of Ike and Rita and Katrina still visible in broken and fallen trees, blue plastic tarps over rooftops, piles of debris in fields and on the sides of the road, and a travel trailer graveyard, hundreds of travel trailer in a field, relics of FEMA and the storms Trails End Home! 3,986 miles 11 days 9 states Home Reba pees on her favorite tree Peanut pees on herself as she usually does when excited and Cat fusses - wants us all to go to bed so she can sleep on my lap again And in the end, well done there is pleasure in travel but comfort in routine and the everyday, so I'm back, second table from the rear, by the window, back to the river, looking out on the corner of Martin and Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, life in the slow lane, looking for a poem in all the old familiar places The next piece is by Audre Lorde, self-described "Black Lesbian, warrior, mother, poet." The poem is from her book, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance. East Berlin It feels dangerous now to be Black in Berlin sad suicides that never got reported Neukilin Kruezberg the neon Zoo a new siege along the Under den Linden with Paris accents New York hustle many tattered visions intersecting. Already my blood shrieks through East Berlin streets misplaced hatreds volcanic tallies rung upon cement Afro-German woman stomped to death byn skinheads in Alexanderplatz two=year-old girls half=cooked in their camcots who pays the price for their disillusion? Hand-held the candles wink in Berlin's scant November light hitting the wall at 30 miles an hour vision first is still hitting a wall and on the other side the rank chasm Next, another of my early practice boards  Stories My Father Told Me A final poem before closing this post down. Piggly Wiggly promenade walking across the parking lot in high heels and black capri pants that draw attention to hips going a little broad and ass on the way to droop and a white cotton blouse tucked tight into her pants small breasts, nipples round and hard as marbles, nodding with every step she struts as she passes me and smiles, and you know she's having the time of her life, giving all the little bagboys mid-afternoon hard-ons, free in this parking lot for at least a while, free at least until the groceries are safely loaded into her Volvo and she's on her way to pick up little Brittany at ballet THIS POST IS COMPLETE
CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN FOR PREVIOUS POSTS Main Plaza, San Fernando Cathedral, San Antonio, Texas A place to rest under plaza oaks, meet and greet, play, and pray A Introduction to my book of fiction, "Peace In Our Time."  In the Early Days of the War In the early days of the war, back when most had shoes and my baby sister was a virgin and I was in love and we did not yet know the taste of horse or pigeon. We had so much to learn. the story of our times so, I heard of this fella down where I grew up who bought a restaurant in the country... the restaurant had three very tall palms in front, so naturally, he named his new restaurant "Three Palms" - that was right before he cut down all three palms to expand his parking lot... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself, but am suspecting it might be a story of our times --- sleet on the northside snow predicted for this evening I'll stay up late to watch it maybe 8:30 or 9:00 o'clock anything that happens after that is not part of my universe... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting it might be another story of our times --- ducks on the river huddle in the cold not smart enough to get out of the river and go someplace dry - the comfort of the known trumps good sense every time... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting it might be even another story of our time --- I write poems even when I don't have anything to say but work very diligently to not say it poorly... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting it might be just one more story of our times --- so many stories of our time, you would think at least one would make sense... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting that the story of our time is that none of the stories of our time make any sense at all Quilting Bee Smackdown  A few words of simple advice from a Texan to those who are not. how to make friends in Texas if it’s a man, admire his dog if he doesn’t have a dog congratulate him on his choice of firearm if it’s a woman, tell her you like what she did to her hair if she has no hair, tell her you think she has great boots and you’re thinking of getting a pair for your wife (being careful to enunciate clearly, especially if her husband is nearby) ---- possibly this advice is pertinent elsewhere, but Texas is where I have the most direct experience and it is with that stipulation I offer it One of a number of early practice boards that will not be seen anywhere but here. I originaly included phrases on my boards. but decided after a while that it demonstated lack of confidence in my art and and fear of leaving my words behind and relying entirely on images.  Next, I have this piece from one of my favorites, Polish Nobel Prize winner, Wislawa Szymborska. I love her very domestic poems like this one from her book Monologue of a Dog. published by Harcourt in 2002, with translation from Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Barancza. A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth She's been in this world for over a year, and in this world not everything's been examined and taken in hand. The subject of today's investigation is things that don't move by themselves. They need to be helped along, shoved, shifted, taken from their place and relocated. They don't all want to go, e.g., the bookshelf, the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table. But the tablecloth on the stubborn table - when well-seized by its hems - manifests a willingness to travel. And the glasses, plates, creamer, spoons, bowl, are fairly shaking with desire. BB eastern sky the eastern sky red like an angry rose by any other hue would it sweet so smell end of days of 2012 approaching a new year’s ending beginning in two days and I have no reflex for an old year a new year an inbetween year a sky red as an angry rose the hue so sweet no reflex to measure the new number the old just a day you know like any other day no reflex for seeing new what I’ve seen before or new days or old days or roses angry red no matter how sweet hue the smell it’s just another damn day in another damn year just another damn moment just another damn angry hue and I have no reflex to understand or to teach it must another momentary rose angry then gone like me hasta la vista huesome rose  chill out chill outside more than expected from inside dark sky, moon in abeyance, stars like diamonds cold and distant. white clouds soft on the hard black sky, lit from below by city lights, puff and fluff passing low the night smells of three days of soaking rain, earth saturated, creek bubbling over rocks glistening in diamond sharp light cat stays home, doesn’t join our morning walk too cold, too damn wet for little cat feet I picked this up from a friend as part of discussion on facebook. It's a song by Woody Guthrie. I had never seen or heard it before. Jesus Christ was a man that traveled through the land Hard working man and brave He said to the rich, "Give your goods to the poor" So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave Yes, Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand His followers true and brave One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot Laid poor Jesus in His grave He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff Told them all the same "Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor" So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around Believed what he did say The bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave And the working people followed him around Singing and shouting gay But the cops and soldiers nailed him in the air And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave Well the people held their breath when they heard about his death Everybody wondered why It was the landlord and the soldiers that they hired To nail Jesus Christ in the sky This song was made in New York City Of rich man and preachers, and slaves If Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galillee They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave Yes, Jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand His followers true and brave One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot As laid poor Jesus in His grave JACOB'S LADDER  mountains and towns early morning… dog walk… poem write at Starbucks… breakfast at La Fonda… routine settled in, a morning begun like the previous two days then, off to the mountains, through Espanola, then Los Alamos, through the national lab where they make things that go BOOM! (the road we need can only be accessed by driving through the lab, determined check point guard, picture ID from me and from Dee, or I can vouch for her and she doesn’t need to present an ID - “So do you vouch for your wife, the gate attendant asks?” “She’s been okay so far,” I reply... no hint of a smile in response just hand wave, passing us through) the bad news.. previous years’ fires leave their scar over slopes all around, great groves of aspen I was looking forward to, the brilliant yellow leaves that make their own light under the sun, the leaves wavering in the breeze, a hallucinatory trip driving through them on either side of the road, but not today, gone, burned, only white toothpicks reaching for the sun… the narrow road twists and turns as it takes us up the mountain, then down again, no wildlife except by a tree when we stop for Bella to do her duty, a black squirrel, small, not at all like the squirrels Bella is used to, but no squirrel disguise fools her as she almost pulls Dee over a fence trying to chase… and that the total wild life experience for the day…. except we stop at the broad crater left by a volcano eons upon eons ago, a great soft pasture, yellow grass, an elk crossing, a woman with binoculars says she just counted 150, with just as many as she didn’t count, way across the crater-pasture, lying in the grass she says along the tree line too far for us to see, a second-hand wild life observation to add to the experience of the disguised squirrel… we stop at the Jimez waterfall, sulfur-laced creek rushing down the mountain, the sight of it beautiful, the smell awful… a stop at Jimez Springs, tiny town, the three of us, lunch in the sun and mountain air on the patio, best part of the day so far… approaching the end of our crossing I am disappointed, the sights less then I remember from 40 years ago then I remember, that long-ago visit was my first mountain and forest experience, had not yet driven through the great forests and mountain roads and majestic vistas of the Rockies… easier to be impressed back then, still, the memory has held all these years… but the day saved by a side trip, a little note on the map, Garret Tunnels, and a quick decision to take a look, a tiny one and a half lane road, mile one then mile two and on to mile four, no tunnels and we consider turning back, but, one more mile, Dee says and then there they were, tunnels through rocky outcrops, built for trains, we read, now a road that essentially goes no where but here, and we are impressed, then seized not at the tunnels, but the sight no one told us to expect, the deep gorge alongside the narrow road, a stream bouncing from rock to rock at the very bottom, how many million years for that stream to make this deep passage… the day is made, a trip is saved, another Grand Canyon in the making, we're just several ages too early… back to Santa Fe, all tired, Bella grouchy, so I take her for a walk and an observation, 8 p.m. and the sidewalks are almost deserted, just me and Bella walking down dark and vacant streets, and I think of San Antonio, going to a bar ten years ago. downtown, to hear The Alloys, my son’s band, a midnight gig, the music loud, feet-stomping, jump-and-shout music, 2 a.m. when the music stops and, walking back to my car at that early hour, the streets are alive, crowds on the sidewalk as if it was mid-afternoon… different towns, different tourists here, like me, ready for bed by the time the sun goes down… Our black Manx, Kaitlyn, joined our household about a year ago when she was only about a month old. She quickly adapted to home-life living and over the course of the past year established her own place in the family. So well settled in she is that I suspect that she has even come to accept me as possibly an equal. We are considering adopting another kitten and are wondering how a new little sister for Katy will change the relationship dynamics.  OTHER TRAILS, OTHER TIMES AND PLACES there is a science fiction fancy that our life is just one of many in alternate universes so that that for the me that is here there are hundreds, thousands, even, of me in those other times and other places, a different me for each of the thousands of intersections in life where one decision, large or small, was made over another (even the smallest have consequences unforeseen and often later unrecognized) one of those other me’s might be happily married to that high school sweetheart, the romance that in this life fell through the first time we were not together daily… and in other lives I might have spoken my mind and heart to the girl in Baltimore before our separate planes returned us to separate places - in those lives I would not have stayed mum as she walked away, would have called her back… I suspect there are a lot of lives where I am a military man, that choice, in this life was a close one… or I might be a thief, a clumsy cat burglar, spending my years mostly behind the bars of bad choices on a rocky path… or a bum, drunk and homeless, sleeping under a cardboard tent on mean city streets - I can see that life easily as plausible as the one I have today, victim of ill-serving chance and my own dim-witted choices in many lives, it is likely I was never a husband, and in many of those, even though it most defines me in this life, never a father… all those other lives in places I have never been, will never visit including many lives where I am long dead, other lives where I will die tomorrow, and even others where I was never born, blank lines in the alternate universes of me… life is a path through a dense forest, the only path between the trees that surround us, passing all the other paths that branch out along the way, trails not taken in this life, but, in this science fiction fancy, as real as the one I walk today From my first book, "Seven Beats a Secod" Art by Vincent Martinez, my stories  church folk jump the fence sky light light blue thin layer of clouds moon still high in the sky Sunday morning, still quiet, noisy church people not out the gate yet noisy church people, piling in soon, many even more aged than me, assumed Catholic since they almost always have at least one priest tagging along, usually the older one, small, thin, skin stretched over his sharp-boned face like onion paper, St. Francis, prim, starched, crisply ironed in all aspects, still eats animals but doesn’t step on bugs or sometimes an even older priest, half-blind, pear-shaped, a tottering plop of frail humanity, doesn’t eat meat but probably steps on bugs just to reassert God’s natural order of things… both quiet islands, rarely speaking, in a crowd of obiescent codgers and codgetts, noisy people, trying to talk to each other and the priests, on their best behavior, hoping a good impression here will polish their key to heaven’s gate, doing their best to earn their place among the heavenly hosts, but willing to jump the fence if necessary… must be the worst part of being a priest, having to put up with such people just for the sake of a free meal… I could be a priest I guess, but only in the Church of Smiling Saints, with congregations of fun people, where priests are allowed to laugh at the absurdities of life, a church of whoopee cushions in every pew, clown shoes required to walk the gold-paved streets for weekly meetings of the heavenly choir, Weird Al conducting… but then there’s the whole GOD!! thing - all that flooding and smiting and divine jealousies and retributions, and pillars of salting and tossing good people like me and my best friends into the pits of hell, not much in the way of good humor there not enough for me anyway… city of slow water and beautiful women San Antonio women, long legs like liquid cinnamon flowing, muscles flexing as they stroll the Riverwalk, languid like the soft-shell turtles resting mid-stream, triangular heads breaking the mirror surface of dark green water placid afternoon on the river’s Museum Reach, great pecan trees a’ twitch with squirrels playing frantic games of chase up and down wide trunks, across, tree to tree, full-leafed branches that overhang the river’s flow, blanketing the rumble of cars and VIA buses crossing the St. Mary’s Street Bridge, the summer heat of the city above near-forgotten to the river-walkers like me and Bella and those San Antonio women, long legs under short summer dresses, like liquid cinnamon flowing, muscles flexing as they walk beside the quietly moving water... ``` this city of cinnamon women, city of multiple revolutions and many flags, city where history like its green river flows slowly through it, this city, already old when the first July cannons sounded half a continent away, celebrates again on this early July afternoon with those who came late to it The Magnetosphere is Running Down  a poem reminds me… a poem reminds me of a day nearly fifty years ago, walking through a forested park on the wet edge of late autumn, a narrow path in the shadows of tall trees on either side, great, wide trunks reaching high in the sharp sky the path, straight between the trees, to a small biergarten nestled deep within the woods a brisk day, but not so cold we can’t enjoy the outside tables, each of us with a liter of Runnels beer, the tall bottles, corks popping, like woodpeckers on an old tree, the beer, cellar temperature, thick and dark, the best beer drinking under the trees in the forest that afternoon, before or since, and, best of all, on an enlisted man’s pay, one mark, in those days about a quarter, per liter bottle… we did not go to the GI bars where the beer was watered and the women tough as any hammer in the tool shed and twice as lethal… our preference the bars where the locals met to drink, to talk, to play some kind of card game I never figured out, one in particular, a streetcar ride to the center of the city, with an old man we called parrot for reasons I don’t remember and an older woman - for us that meant about 35 - with an enormous bosom barely covered under a low cut peasant blouse… we drank there just about every night we weren’t working the swing or mid shifts, Runnels, our beer, made in Frankfurt, this a Runnels bar, like most German restaurants at the time, serving only a single house beer… quiet nights if somewhat hazy in the morning, the way of thick German beer - consequences unaccustomed to those brought up on the thin American kind… a good year, a taste of good life before the next year, drinking canned Schlitz under the desert sun on the Northwest Frontier, the Hindu Kush a like a shadow on the far horizon… look, please, at my beautiful pearls memories are like pearls, beautiful only to those who hold them, their splendor invisible to most others, look, we might say as we show them arrayed on a golden chain, look at my beauties, we cry to others who see only black and sooty lumps of coal on a string of brown packing twine and we do not understand our life in memories, our story, the wonder of “me” - how can others not see that wonder, how can others not love my moments as I love and remember them? how can I cherish these memories, such a life that means nothing to others? perhaps all has not been as I imagined, perhaps I can imagine better, become a star on the memory circuit, candidate for the applause my imagined life so rightful and richly deserves Black Orpheous  join the song the universe vibrates with the poetry of stars billions of singers in a chorus of life ever-affirmed by a carpet of lights visible to all from everywhere join the song, even if only to listen This piece is from my third book, second eBook, "Goes Around, Comes Around." Available, I am compelled to say, anywhere eBooks are sold. day 24,387 and counting another day, another dollar, a million days, a million dollars... that's what the fella down at the Happy Valley Home told me... and depending on your capacity for long term planning,, that view can be very encouraging, even coming from one of the Happy Valley cohort, who, if you choose, can be seen as not out of touch with reality, but living instead in a greater reality closed to the more prosaic of us - or not... as for me, I'm a believer in reality, but only in romantic affairs - when it comes to money, I settle for no less than the wildest fantasies which is why I'm sure I'm on the road to riches every day and while I may not get the days I need to get there all the way, being on the road to something good is better than being stuck in the weeks like a back-roads vagabond with a flat tire and no spare in the trunk I'm a human being of the American persuasion after all, and, like my kind, want to get everything there is to get... and expect, by God, to get it day 24,387 and counting This piece is from "Japanese Love Poems - Selections from the Manyoshu" published by Dover Publications in 2005. The Manyoshu is Japan's most significant early anthology, with poems dating from the 8th century and earlier with more than 4,000 poems. This poem was written by Tajihi Kasamaro for whom I can find no biology though, pulling pieces together I did discover that Tajihi can mean persistent and Kasamaro is a region in Japan. The book includes several poems, including this one, written while the poet was traveling. an old threnody (lament) The mallards call with evening from the reeds And float with dawn midway on the water; They sleep with their mates, it is said, With white wings overlapping and tails a-sweep Lest the frost should fall upon them. As the stream that flows never return, And as the wind that blows is never seen, My wife, of this world, has left me, Gone I know not whither! So here, on the sleeves of these clothes She used to have me wear, I sleep now all alone!  in a Mexican courtyard, 1959 a Mexican courtyard under a rhinestone studded sky on a black border town night… she dances, slowly, like a cat, around the courtyard, pausing before every table to stretch, again, like a cat, perfect in its shadow body, feet barely brushing the dirt floor, compact, sleek, full breasts, dark Indian nipples erect, no burlesque, no go-go dancer, nothing overtly sexual, more like a cat stretching, except she is naked and it is a whorehouse and it has to be about sex, sex as a cat can be like sex, slow and sensual in every step, every smooth, silky step a caress of the night…. 15-year-old boys clutch their tight crotch under the table and wonder if the girls they know could ever be like this The Spot  truthies fella in the booth in front of me is wearing a shirt advertising Squaw Valley maybe he went skiing there, or at least he wants us to believe he did, he might have just bought the shirt at the ski shop at the mall and has never seen any more snow than what he sees when defrosting his refrigerator you never know so many ways for people to lie about themselves these days, so many ways to create an image of themself, at least the self they’d like to be - just for the price of a tee shirt they can have been anywhere, done anything, with anybody… not for me, I don’t allow my body to become a billboard for anyone or any place or anything, my shirts purposefully “no-comment” shirts, blank, but for their color of the day, no products, no events, no vacation hideaway no sports team gets the pleasure of my promotional garb… if I’ve been to Squaw Valley you won’t know about it from reading my shirt, for my shirt includes neither truth nor lies, just plain old shirt that’s because I believe in truth in shirting, the old truth that if you don’t have nothing to say, don’t say nothing and I don’t have nothing to say on my shirt that’s because I do all my truthing and lying in my stories and that’s where you might find the story of my trip to Squaw Valley, if I’ve been there or maybe not that’s because truth in poetry is about the same as truth in t-shirts, you reads the story and takes your chances
THIS POST IS COMPLETE CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN FOR PREVIOUS COMPLETE POSTS  if my mind was geography I hate to write poems about being unable to write a poem but let’s face it… if my mind was geography, it would be the Chihuahua Desert, nothing but dry sand, angry frogs, prickly pear cactus and ugly bugs… if my mind was a ship it would be saying, “What iceberg?”… if my mind was a parking lot it would be deserted but for oil drips and skid marks where glories past collided with reality present… if my mind was a coffee cup it would be empty except for coffee scum and a wet cigarette butt on the bottom… if my mind was a mountain it would be underwater, never seen and never climbed… if my mind was an ancient Egyptian it would be a mummy wrapped in sandpaper… if my mind was a burro it would be climbing the Andes on cracked red toenails… if my mind was a sentry at Fort Knox it would be asleep, dreaming of copper pennies and the baubles that bought Manhattan if my mind was a poet it would be writing about the twitchy fella in the booth up front, my god, he won’t stop talking, facing the wall all a ‘bouncing in his seat, perhaps he’s the poet in the woodpile, twitching with the trickle of a poem tickling between his ears a poem, I’m thinking nothing like this one Riot on Sunset Strip  barku express night an envelope closed around me - marked, “return to sender” --- parked bus rumbles - in the dark, writing my first poem --- crossing the continental divide - soft snow drifting, first snowball fight --- walking - university to downtown - snow, falling, cold, soft angels touching --- homes carved in cliffs, fires, cold relics, deserted - all lost --- Indian boys replay Bighorn revenge - flatten grass over Custer’s grave --- distant mountains - white on blue like clouds cresting - first snow --- dog pees intently, doesn’t see rabbits in the brush, watching --- journey ends for the day - dog snores, dreams rabbits - running my function it is a beautiful day today, the kind of day I love, temperatures in the mid-twenties, bright sunshine, the icicle splinters flying in the wind gone, the air still, trees reaching high to reassert themselves as tall guardians of the day… it’s the early mornings, before the sun has risen that has been hard on me for the past several days, the cold, colder in the dark, a silent knife slicing skin from my cheeks and nose… dog-walking in the freezing dark, the dog loving it all, sniffing and smelling every leaf hanging cold and crisp and dry on every ravaged bush along the way, looking for, who knows a dog’s mind, especially this dog, near strange in the extent of her curiosity, missing her cat friend who would walk with us and encourage dog along if she began too long dallying, pushing her cat head against dog’s neck, time to go, time to go, the cat, like me, not so happy with the cold as the dog, the cat, Mama cat, our morning companion, unseen for over a week now… I woke, as usual, at 5 this morning, lying in bed, dog, as usual, impatiently rattling her collar beside the bed, time to go, time to go, lying in bed, thinking of the cold and the dark, wishing dog had an opposable thumb so that I could give her the leash and tell her to go walk herself she would in a minute if she could, I know, my small function in our morning exercise, we both know, is only to hold the leash An excellent place to be leaving Even the non-believer driven to morning prayer I can see the moon through the large window by my booth, hanging low over the meadow like a silver coin on a black felt table, so bright and clear in the dry, cloudless sky I can see all its dark ridges and rills, and the face, a president’s profile, eyes watching resolute to the south, all clear and sharp, the president’s pigtail on the disc’s northern edge, “in God we trust,” it declares, a declaration of dependence, hopeful that he’s paying attention, that it’s his moon too and that his fearsome eye will not burn so brightly in the coming day, his fire banked and fresh breezes blowing instead The big lie  just like my first girlfriend my liberation box is tight around me today… feel like I should be doing something that isn’t this… a drive to the coast, or a slow dance on dusty country roads, or a jaunt out west, Hondo, Uvalde, maybe all the way to Del Rio… or stay at home, do those things I’ve been avoiding all summer - fence to repair, the volunteer oak up front, couple of feet tall now, too close to the house, perfect place for it out back with my other volunteers… but I’m stuck in idle, motor running but going nowhere but here in the parking garage of good intentions… dead time… and I hate dead time, too old for dead time, time too precious to waste, but brain too clogged with not-now, not-today, next-week, maybe-tomorrow to figure out what to do with it… everything sounds great until the first step is called for and it’s just too damn hot to take the call… but that’s just an excuse real reason is my brain waves have gone flat like yesterday afternoon black clouds on the horizon, the calm before the storm except the storm told us to fuck off and went east instead of south a lot like my girlfriend back in 1962…  thank you, Jesus I am thinking this Sunday morning of Sundays past, when I was a kid, in the back seat of whatever beat-down Plymouth we had at the time, going the eight miles to the Lutheran church in the next town over for a boring sermon by an intense, boring pastor, a middle-aged man with a little mustache like a gray-haired caterpillar on his upper lip, an old-fashioned hellfire and damnation preacher who taught us in confirmation class that fossils were left buried in the earth by Mr. Devil, crafty fellow, left there for us to find so as to tempt us away from the literal truth of the seven days of creation… half-asleep in the car, half- asleep during the sermon, except when the singing started, for despite the fumbled-fingered organist, ancient woman in a modest hat, butcher of music religious and profane, I loved the singing… the woman did her best, and was a volunteer, worth all the nothing she was paid, so everyone sang, loudly, in hopes, I suspected, of drowning out the organ, including my mother who had a fine high voice, and my father whose deep baritone vibrated the dark, varnished timber of the pews... I sang along, too, trying to imitate my father’s voice, coming out, instead, more like the crackling growl of a coon chased by the dogs up a hackberry tree… me and the old woman at the organ, we did our best, preserved, despite the pounding we were giving it the glorious old hymns, the beautiful, joyous music of faith and affirmation and although I haven’t passed through the doors of a church except for weddings and too many funeral in at least 50 years, music I still love to hear… “haven’t passed the doors of a church,” I said, because I enjoyed the benefits of an excellent education in the religion of my youth and later in other religions, becoming an atheist, as do so many well-educated in the mysteries of gods and their disciples, this transition from believer to skeptic, to the intellectual wakening of certain non-belief, coinciding, not entirely serendipitously with my discovery of the pleasures of slow Sunday morning coffee and a copy of the New York Times, my alternate sermon of all the truth that’s fit to print… it’s a long and not so interesting story, this passage from Pastor Westermania, earnest and determinedly ignorant for the sake of his faith, to the New York Times, but I am reminded of it this Sunday a week from Easter Sunday, remembering that my favorite church services were the sunrise services, the faithful gathered on the church parking lot on Easter Sunday morning as the sun rose on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God and Man, Bringer of the gift of eternal life to all who believed in his holy name and cause… it wasn’t so much the revelations that brought me pleasure, because, in fact, I slept through most of it it was the pancake breakfast that followed… thank you, Jesus, I would think, for delivering us unto these pancakes and can we do this again next year? lust like ol' Jimbo, I lust in my heart… for power and fame, for a lottery winning number, for another day, every day, for some good chicken and dumplings like my mother used to make, for a sweet tasting watermelon like nature grew in the field beside the swimming hole when I was a kid, for a more comfortable pair of shoes, for a flatter belly and broader shoulders like in days past, for hair to return to the spot its departure left bare on the top of my head, for fast cars and, occasionally loose women ol’ Jimbo, he got to be President, so I can’t feel too sorry for all his unrequited lusts, but me, I’m going to have to settle today for a meatloaf sandwich at that little restaurant in the middle of tiny Utopia, Texas, about fifteen miles down the road from Welfare, on the way to Comfort where the old stone buildings promise, at least, long life in a place where old people in short pants and flowery sun dresses and straw hats will come to visit and take my picture… --- but that won’t stop me from thinking about chicken and dumplings and comfortable shoes and fast cars and, especially, loose women Too early to declare this post done, so what to do next. Maybe a couple more photos. Mr. Wonderful just does the best he can the Wonderful Wizard of Oz wasn’t so wonderful but he wasn’t a bad guy either, just a piss-poor wizard though good enough, in the end, to keep Oz safe in his so-un-Kansas world with witches lurking at every point of the compass and flying monkey-monsters, and rusty tinmen, and highly-flammable straw men and lions who could never, ever be counted on when the chips were down, and munchkins, don’t forget the munchkins, everywhere under foot with their lousy singing, always singing in their fingernail-on-a-chalkboard squealy voices (how is a wizard ever supposed to get a good night’s sleep)… I mean, it takes a maybe not so necessarily wonderful but still a pretty good wizard to keep the gears of that kind of place running, keeping Oznians happy and content and not having riots in the streets and such and, not to forget, the inflationary spiral since the devaluation of gold bricks, simple things like Oz-bread going from two gold bricks to two and a half in just six Oz-months you pretty much have to have something on the ball besides blowing curtains and a projector screen and a booming, scary voice to frighten Oz-children who might venture into the wonderful palace of the mighty Oz… I mean you try it, even without that pesky girl and her vicious mutt it ain’t easy being the Great & Mighty Wizard of anywhere, especially a cockamamie place like Oz THIS POST IS COMPLETE
CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN FOR PREVIOUS POSTS Nova through Saturn's rings revealed  remembering a summer afternoon remembering a summer afternoon sitting behind my parent’s house on a patio I made from bricks salvaged from a demolished building downtown, enough bricks for a fifteen by fifteen foot patio and a brick sidewalk from the back door to the garage, purposefully made rough, bricks not completely even, to give the appearance of great age like an ancient cobblestone street in an old and venerable city of my imagination the patio where my parents, unaccustomed to air conditioning until later in their life, would sit in the evening, catching the soft, damp breeze that blew from the gulf almost all the time, a generation from a time when stuffy houses were left behind at end of day for quiet talk in the cool of an outdoor evening, sitting, my parents, until squadrons of mosquitoes swarmed in with night's dark shadows, sitting, my parents, in the shade of a very old mesquite, lightning struck, a large hole in the middle of its trunk where it burned, a lightning strike many years ago fierce product of a savage thunderstorm from the northeast, a thunderstorm like the one approaching again from the northeast, black and swirling clouds on the horizon, approaching quickly from across the fields, the reason I rushed to finish mowing, to be done before the torrent came, to be done in time to sit here on my rough patio with a dew-dripping glass of iced tea, watching it come, a ready-or-not storm coming fast and strong… but I’m ready and will watch it all from there on that patio I made from salvaged bricks… --- many years later now, mother and father long passed, the house long sold to others, others I imagine sitting on that same old patio under that same wounded but eternal mesquite tree, leaving me to wonder, as I imagine, if they ever notice my initials outlined in bright red bricks right where to kitchen door step meets the patio bricks… wondering if they ever wonder… Eventually I'm going to run out of paintings, so I decided to include my photos as a part of each post. there is a thread there is a connecting thread that binds the world and all its parts, the new and the old the dirty and the clean the saint and the thief the chicken and the road the peanut and the butter the prince and the pauper the acorn and the oak the tree and the forest the lake and the trout the love of a man for a woman of a man for a man of a woman for a woman the love of all that moves in the day and whispers in the darkest night the moon and the stars and the sun and each of its orbiting globes whether gatherings of gas or rock and iron and death and life and the hydrogen and the oxygen and the orca and the ocean that enfolds it and the field and the mouse and the mountain and the top and the oceans and the deep and me and you, the me part you the you part me there is a thread that connects us to all all to us and finally us to we together  If I ever have a crush on a jock, it will be Becky Hammon. Becky became assistant coach for the Spurs seven years ago, the first female to hold such a position in the NBA. Previously she was an all-star in the WNBA for years and was judged one of the fifteen best female basketball players in the game's history. Turned down a number of times by other teams for head coach positions, most recently not hired, though better qualitied because that team valued "gravitas" over experience. I take that to mean no 5'6" female should ever even bother to apply. I wrote this piece years ago when Becky was first named assistant coach. In the meantime she has turned down several job offers to head women's programs at universities. Current Spurs head coach Popovich in his seventies is expected to retire if not this year, soon. If she can't get the job here, after 7 years here as Pop's lead assistant, she might should re-evaluate those university positions. a sports story Becky Hammon, 5 feet 6 inches tall, 37 years old, star for sixteen years in professional women’s basketball, judged to be in the top 15 players of all time in that league, hired by the San Antonio Spurs as an assistant coach, the first full-time, paid female on the coaching staff of any National Basketball Association team in the league’s history… how like the Spurs this is… so, now, courtesy of the Spurs, stick it in your sexist pipe and smoke it… the fog downtown from the heights the city's skyline seems to float on gray clouds at street level, the fog coils like a snake between the buildings, drifts down the city’s twisting colonial-era streets, curls around river bridges, and below the bridges the murk lies quiet and calm, only inches above the green, slow-moving water, here and there green-shelled turtles surface, separate themselves from the green water to raise their heads into the mist for gulps of damp air... I have walked these streets in years past, like the turtles, keeping my head down as I walked along the river at the midnight hour, when it was not a safe place to be, mysteries sheltered in each dark doorway, under each bridge at the water’s edge, knife-fighters, whores, thugs and the generally insane wandering through ghosts known only to them… the dense morning fog reminds me of those nights, misty shadow-things lurking but benign, pale remembrance of the dangers of the dark and lonely... the greatest danger this morning, collision with a park policeman cruising the Riverwalk on his bicycle a better place to be now, but lacking the drama of those low-living nights before Red tide  night beach night on the beach in a tiny camper trailer, waves whispering as they pull and push sand from beach to the sea and back again while tiny beach creatures scuttle, little crabs pushing from dens under wet sand, like babies being born, pushing aside the grit that holds them in the damp dark, the holes they come from closing up again as salty foam washes over them, the grind of new sand, washing over them... bare as the salted air washes over me, waking as the sun rises over warm gulf water, breakers shining orange under dawn’s fiery glow - the red end of night, the time of night when the sharks finish their feeding in the surf under the bright tropic moon... even as I am awakened by the golden light… even as the animals are fed, I am hungry, rising from my hard bed, walk the beach through ankle-deep surf, feeling the flowing sand and tide, advance and retreat over my feet... shaking the night blown salt from my hair, I dress, drive for breakfast Sandy’s Pier, oatmeal and crab cakes and coffee, then back out to the warming beach, back to the trailer, where I hitch up and go home... ~~~ a playground in the light of day, the beach a church in the night, a place of solitude, a place of worship for those who believe in no greater power than the push and pull of the tides, a place to feel at one with the power of the moon, a cathedral at midnight under a sky of stars , when the sharks feed under the full, tropic moon, and the orange glow of dawn on foaming waves, the the bright morning light reflecting on the wet beach, just as the moon shone back from the sand at night… night is the time for the beach, sleeping in the quiet of whispering surf and scuttling crabs…  Two from Colorado secret places acres of brush, paved over these days, parking lots, WalMarts, Dairy Queens, nail salons and half-priced barbers, broken-down shopping centers, empty storefronts, dirty display windows, graffiti, trash blowing over cracked asphalt, almost deserted. everything there before, gone, replaced with fly-by-night evangelical churches, flea markets, bingo halls, and other shepherds of the cyclical bust out to fleece the flock one way or another… but before, the brush uncut, thick, paths winding through like a dirty gray maze, lined by scrub mesquite, brilliant green in spring, yellow huisache, wild chilitipin, tiny berries advertising their heat in intense red, and wide red-ant beds, the big ones, trails of them, like a Russian red-army parade, like little red trucks carrying bullhead thorns to scatter around their beds, their first line of defense, and horned toads who went to sleep if you rubbed between their horns and who, some said, spit blood at you if riled, and long, low, sleek green-stripped lizards, racing, so fast across the trails, and snakes, in the brush, rarely seen but the rustle of their slither heard along with the cries of mockingbirds and redwing black birds and raucous jays and the most fearsome creature of all, tarantulas, big black and hairy, not poisonous we were told, but those big pincher jaws sure to produce a painful bite… and throughout the brush, pockets of cleared space, under a mesquite tree, a safe circle where fifteen year old boys could talk, smoke Parliament cigarettes and look at the Playboy and Cavalier and Sunshine and Health magazines they inherited from older boys, some so old, so wrinkled and crinkled and fragile, third or fourth-hand girlie magazines, the closest a fifteen-year-old was likely to get to first-hand fortresses in the brush, secret places where secrets were told and kept, dirty jokes, big brags, scary stories of ghosts and ghouls and tarantula bites… important places for us back then, relief for a fifteen-year-old from the oppression of the world outside seeking, like the tarantulas, hairy and ugly and slow and unloved, a place to live a quiet hidden life where only the select know the secret places and the secret paths to get there… A new board Squiggly, jiggly, giggly, and swoop  THAT COMPLETES THIS POST I'LL START A NEW ONE TOMORROW |
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