HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
 like soft hands like soft hands stroking sweet-breath summer breezes midnight lover Transitions Shadrach in the Fiery Pit  This poem is by Cynthia Zarin, from her first book, The Swordfish Tooth, published by Knopf in 1989. Snail In the breeze of the propped-open green door I lay my head against your leg and tasted salt. And in the last light I felt myself close kin to the snail you found. Amber, primordial, lossed from the lettuce tongues it crawled across your palm, its searching head a sure iambic bob, then quivering - shining breast wheel turned pull-toy, dragooned by a lucid, creeping milky finger. All week, my mind interior, I watched the snail lit by its whorl traveling along your sun-tanned hand; cartographer of the myserious male life, its loping, upward arching line. Autumn light  MOONWALK walking under a full November moon, a bright, shadow-casting moon, the stone steps down to the creek shining liquid white as I step from stone to stone carefully, barefoot, conscious of the caution to diabetics, "watch you feet, always guard your feet " but the moon is too full, the night too bright to watch anywhere but up, neck-stretching , to the bright disc, gleaming in the sky like a silver dime in the sky, passing as I walk beneath the bottom side of tree branches gasping black against the glare of the moon bright moon eclipsing the stars as I open the creaking gate to walk beside the creek... it's 4 a.m. - the frogs and birds still sleeping, the water stumbles over limestone rocks, tremnbles as it flows through the grassy creek... I stand, showered in moon-shine, turn, climb back up the hill on the gleaming white stones, back to bed, having drunk my fill of November night and moonglow  Best friend's best friend adrift in cold storage I'm looking for a poem this morning but can't find it because of all the other crap cluttering my head that I don't want to write about it's like trying to listen to a Chopin etude in a thin-walled apartment while your neighbor is pushing Metallica to the max but perhaps it's possible to push tiny balloons between the prickly bushes without getting pricked ````` cold morning, a fur-bundle of huddled cats at my doorstep, winter-fat cats demand food every time they see me ````` dark all day, winter vistas gray and dreary ````` trees skeletal against roiling sky - bony limbs over-reaching ````` birds outside my window - their winter song, "turn up the heat"{ "turn up the heat" ````` ice on the birdbath - no skating allowed ````` search the drawer for winter socks... big toe arctic explorer poking out ````` dog scratches at the back door, wants out, but not for long ````` man walking dog, bundled-wrapped with hat and gloves dog lover in winter- best friend's best friend ````` with snow, beauty in the mornng - without, just cold and bare ````` chill winds blow shivers and sneezes - better still than August or July  THE BEGINNING OF THE END OR THE END OF THE BEGINNING OR JUST ANOTHER DAMN DAY IN THE LIFE OF BEGINNINGS-ENDINGS I was going to write a poem about how miserable everything is how the lunatics have taken over the asylum how good things everywhere are hightailing it for the low hills and high gulches how the bad guys have stolen all the white hats and posture and preen and pretend they are the good guys who are off somewhere eating crackerjacks and drinking lattes and smoking rose-tipped cigarettes, mute and blind to the ravages of their absence, content in their philosophy of okey dokey pass the smokeys while the world burns with the riders of the apocalypse going eehaw through the great divide of hip and hop and spit and spot and drip and drop and pip and pop and duck and fuck and chickety cluck and eeehaw we ride, they say our grim teeth gnashing and you run your white ass flashing in the light of the dying moon you had your chances, they say, now it's our time to ride, gnashing eeehawing in the light of the dying moon, we are the riders of you inconsequential doom you betcha and I've gone old and my damn coffee's gone cold and my left foot's gone sleepy, twitching like jello in a junk-jar from jiom-jam jarheads, and I don't know jack, spratt garage sales and that's just the beginning of it... but nobody wants to hear all that so I'll just start over, junk this jerky poem and write a new one about blue birds and puffy-fluffy clouds and shit like that  From 2017/18 , in the midst of the Trumpian attack on everything decent and wise. I was thinking the photo above of the greedy winged beach rats was appropriate illustration. JUST BECAUSE THIS POEM IS ABOUT IDIOTS DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN IT'S A POLITICAL POEM THOUGH I ADMIT IT DOES MAKE IT MORE LIKELY trying to write a poem this morning, maybe something about how the wind is blowing, shaking up the trees, snapping the flag over at USAA (I bet if I was outside I could hear it pop in the wind) and the possibility of thunderstorms, welcome rain, and if it does come, a good strong rain, I'll be out in my backyard, naked, stomping and sliding in the mud when the first raindrop falls, flapping and rolling in the grass like a bird chasing worms, and the biscuit and gravy I had for breakfast was especially good this morning... but politics continue to invade, steady against the wind, not the national stuff about which I have given up in despair, resigned to waiting for the next election, retaining some hope that all those insane fucks from the last election will be sent packing back to whatever hole they crawled out of... no, not talking about those national intellectual and moral abominations, but the more local type, the Texas Legislature winding up its bi-annual 180 day session, dominated by Republicans, the same kind of slime-sucking snakes brought to us nationally by the last election, ending one of the most dishonorable sessions since secession like yesterday, heading into the las frantic days of the session, three pieces of last minute skullduggery - the "let's go-shoot-our-professors" guns in classroom bill, and the "too-damn-many-poor-democrats" voter ID bill, and the "let's-send-all-them-damn-meskins-back-to-Arizona" sanctuary cities bill and the months to the next elections seem to stretch further and further away every day, especially when I hear a couple of Democrats at the table next to me yesterday about how we shot bin Laden when we should have given him a party hat and a party horn and brougt him back here for questioning, like in "Law and Order," but only after having his rights read to him in seven languages, including Sign and I'm thinking, holy shit! are these the idiots who I have to look to to get rid of the other idiots and, see, that's why I'm tired of thinking about politics cause it seems all you ever have is a choice of which idiots you're going to let give you heartburn next... but then it might rain and I might go sloshing in it and I've heard some folks are trying to talk Tommy Lee Jones into running for Senate in Texas and that'd be almost as much fun  THE BEAUTY OF ORIGINAL SIN "Abyss of Eros, beauty of original sin." wrote the Korean poet think how exciting it must have been, how delectable, delightful, outright beautiful that first sin, the original sin, the concept , “sin” unknown until the thing, the sin, was done… doesn’t make any difference what it was… maybe it was the eating of forbidden fruit like the book says or maybe it was sex, or less complicated than that, maybe it was when he first noticed the curve of her breast, the round perfection of her ass, and liked it, or maybe it was her sin, seeing the arrogance of his massive cock, erect, so different, she thought, from the little nubbin that hung so humbly between his legs before, and she imagined so many uses for it… or maybe it was something more abstract, maybe just a random thought, the one or the other or the both thinking something that hadn’t been inserted for them to think, something that they thought up all on their own, maybe it was just that creativity, impinging on the realm of he who created all and reserved creation as a thing only for him… or maybe it wasn’t that complicated… it could have been something as simple and small as putting a slug in a parking meter - but no difference, a thing large or small, it was wonderful, it was new, it was the first and it was original, the first original thing for them, and, thus, by the rules it was, in its originality, a sin, the original sin, and it was beautiful… they may have wondered later if that sin was worth its consequence, but to no avail, for in their wonder they sinned again, there was no turning back.. My backyard several year back. It was a really good year, no freeze, no drought, and things just grew and grew. FAST TIMES AT THE FLATONIA FOLLIES   BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN? sky hanging low and heavy this morning, clouds dark and deep - something's up ````` that's the way this poem begins what's next? what are these heavy low dark and deep clouds predicting this morning? ~~~~~ are the heavy low etc. clouds a representation of smoke, the fires of the apocalypse burning again today, the first sparks here in the Texas hill country of the conflagration that will sweep the world in the final throes of judgement day, brimstones next on the agenda I know some hardshell ecclesiasticals who would buy into that in a minute, unquestioning believers in every chapter, verse, word, period, comma and colon of the Word which says and they agree, we're due our heavenly smiteance andy day now and all these low heavy etc. clouds prove the time is here hallelujah, praise be to He who smites ~~~~~ on the other hand all these etc. clouds could be sign of the first wave of alien invasion, like in that movie, huge alien spaceships pushing their broad gray noses out of the clouds any minute now aliens with teeth and tentacles and tiny feet with twisted talons come to eat our brains, rape our women, and abduct our children for slave labor in the potato mines of the barren planet Bitselboogerish - aliens come to cut down our trees, build massive pulp factories to turn our trees into cardboard for cheap tinnis shoes to sell in China before they eat their brains, rape their children, abduct their women for slave labor in pasta mines on the other side of Bitselboogerish where buffalo no long roam and skies are cloudy all day, where seldom is heard a discouraging word since everyone is under ground digging for potatoes and pasta and you can't hear them moaning discouragingly topside... I have a brother-in-law who would buy into that, a watcher-for-aliens in the night, discouraged because he's never seen one except in the movies where they always get it wrong, waiting every night for his inevitable abduction for weird alien science sexual experiments on the average alien-believing male when awarded conjugal visits with their Lady Gaga simulation, plastikiey, but pliable and open to new ideas as to more unusual practices of conjugality, they just want to see how it all works and he's willing to show them if they're willing to take him back with them to their fantastical home planet of noodle and noze ~~~~~ or it could just be that the clouds, all low and heavy and dark and deep are just the precursor to rain... but that's just one crazy idea too many... if I was you, I'd go with the apocalyps or aliens if you're wanting to bet with the odds This poem is by Robert Bonazzi and is taken from his book, Maestro of Solitude, published by Wings Press in 2007. The poem startled me as I read it because it seemed it could be me, about me. from Unframed Portraits III Forgive if I seem to be talking to myself - I do not write for an ideal reader or contemplate a classic muse Today a fellow poet declared that I'm not really a poet Characterizing my efforts as fragments more or less in the manner of Pascal I burst into several meanings of laughter secretly honored and humbled Forgive if I seem to be trapped in a monologue - I belong to a species most endangered: I do no know my name.  Waiting for promised lightning pumping gas pumping iron pumping my fist upon receiving a $5 coupon at Bar-B-Que is us pumping Mary Sue in the back seat of a '48 Hudson - oh, how soft those seats and Mary Sue (you don't have to read the above, it's what I call "priming the pump" - dropping a few irrelevnat words down the well with the hope that the addition to the well of irrelevant words will, through force of the Heimlich Manuever - or some such sciency word-thing having to do with one force activating a counter-vailing force - will cause good words to rise to the surface, being irresistibly pushed there by the irrelevant words) meaning, according to the Heimlich equation, that an actual poem will start somewhere below - .....patience may be required being it's a process thing and process things must process else they would be called "miracles" like Jesus' face of a tortilla, or Jimmy not cracking corn when the master's gone away, or my 1906 computer suddenly humming and buzzing and computing again, or the phone company guy arriving at 11:59 for a service visit promised between 8 a.m. and noon, or me getting a hot date when I was fifteen years old or next week, whichever comes first ````` miracles, you know, where would we be without them, the miracle of conception and birth, the miracle of divining wisdom, the miracle of Slinkies and Hula Hoops and Rice Crispies snapping and cracking and popping every time, the miracle of meteors not crashing into the earth like last time, except this time making us the new dinosaurs, converting in the tar pits into some future form of fuel for the finally and again ascendant cockroach, no longer getting squashed in kitchen corners - that's why cowboy boots have pointy toes, you know - cockroaches in cowboy boot doing the squashing this time instead `````and the little circley thing is circling on a blue screen which means the aforementined pending poem is still processing, but not so quickly so if you have something else to do you should go ahead and take care of it and I'll give you a call when the processing poem is processed, arisen, so to speak, from the depths by the force of the Heimlich processing primal push to relevancy in this portion of the universe but, maybe, since the phone guy hasn't come yet, I'll just email you, or maybe send a tweet which I almost never do, fearing being pigeon-holed as just another tweeting twit waiting for promised lightning Adios
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I'm Ascaird of Dinosaurs  Between my second and third retirements, I worked for a company that scored state assesment tests, 4th to 11th grade. During my time with the company, I scored tests from easily 15 to 20 states. My speciality was reading and writing and, ocassionally, social studies. Some states did a good job with their tests; some states did awful. There are some Southern states that, if I had kids in school, I wouldn't live in. I liked the state tests as counseling tools, a way to identify areas where students were not learning the things they needed to become a useful, functioning citizen and, identifying those needs, developing an individually-based curriculum to identify, then address the deficiencies. It was, and still is, a misuse of the tests to use scores to grade schools and individual teachers, and especially not as an excuse to hold students back from advancing to their next grade. Our school systems continue to operate as if all their students are out working on the farm during the summer. Instead, summers should be used for good old fashioned summer school, three months to address the deficiences in individual students identified by the tests. There were problems in all states, but a common one I saw in most states was that the people designing and writing the tests had been out of the classroom too long to understand the students they were writing the tests for. Too often I saw questions that I knew many if not most students would reference the world view of the students the test writers knew from 20 or 30 years before, questions that those long ago students would have know easily but that modern students taking the test would misread, misunderstand, and fail, providing a perfectly correct answer in modern context that would be not at all the answer required.;' A particular question comes to mind, a reading question. Under instructions of the question, students were to write an essay based on material from the text. What the test designer didn't understand was how much current children know about dinosaurs. I have a three year old neice that can name 15 or 20 dinosaurs, using their correct and proper names and even describing some characteristice of each one. The fourth graders taking this test probably know more about dinosaurs that the person writing the test and are proud to share their knowledge in their essay, forgetting all about referencing the text that was the basis of the text. Doing so, despite all their knowledge, they will fail the question. A Texas issue, though I never scored Texas test, I did proof them, and, as I did that I saw very clear instance of trick question, questions clearly designed to trick students into a wrong answer. I never saw anything like that in any other state. Scoring a hundred tests a day (especially when they are writing tests and every state teaches the same writing formula of three paragraphs, etc. etc.) can be very boring, like reading the same essay on the same one or two subjects a hundred times a day can be mind numbing. That's why running across a brilliant 8th grade writer, ignoring the rules and writing a piece worth publication anywhere can be invigorating. Also the essay with intentional or unintentional humor can send giggles and sometime loud outbursts of laughter across the room of a hundred readers all reading the same paper. Such as this, a response to the dinosaur question by a 4th grade boy, not laugh-out-loud funny, but good for a tender smile and a chuckle. The little boy answers the question, ending his answer with, "I'm glad I didn't live when the dinosaurs were around cause...I'm ascaird of dinosaurs." Another Practice Board  CONTINUING MY LIFE AS A NON-ECTOPLASMATIC my quarterly brush with mortality today as I see my doctor for the regular review of my quarterly labs the schedule is pretty well set so I rarely have to wait long before she comes in with her quarterly declaration “IT LIVES” and turns the rest of the session over to her assistant, Igor, who finds some reason or other to give me a shot in the butt and an appointment for the next quarterly visit the fact is, I have pills for everything so I remain relatively healthy for a person in my condition and the primary purpose of the regular visit being to confirm that the meds aren’t killing me by destroying my liver and good humor and whatnot the fact is (again, another unfortunate fact) I have a lot of dead friends and a lot of friends presumed dead through long absence, so, a quarterly stopover at the doc’s office and a quarterly blood draw is a welcome confirmation of my continuing non-ectoplasmatic place in the world of the not-so-quick but living I feel better just thinking about it River Views, Downtown ANOTHER SUNDAY MORNING moon, falling toward the west horizon, slips behind a lacy morning cloud, hiding the shadows of its ancient scars ````` grackles on cue, fly from their nightime nests, cover the sky, dark cape of the Phantom of the Morning ````` strong winds, warm and wet, blow smells of the southern sea across the stark remains of northern winter ````` light seeps from a pinched eastern horizon, the sky not yet ready to open to a new day ````` moon shadows fade as sun shadows grow toward the retreating night ````` cat does her mornng stretch - doubles her length front to back, legs reaching in both directions, belly on the ground, tail straight in the air, little red anus like lantern light at the end of a train ````` dog stirs in her bed, too old for morning calisthenics - eyelids lift up, then down, enough for now Catching pieces of news this morning, moved me to write this.  Today's Sorrow Beautiful green valley Between stark, treeless mountains, Mud homes that will wash away In the first heavy rain Climb the side of the mountain, Row after row A small, busy downtown, Buildings mostly built of wood Close to the ground, occasionally Two or three floors, with wooden Balconies looking out on the Busy center of the city, traffic Bustling with bicycles, donkeys, Camels, One or two-passenger pedicabs, Converted golf cart taxies, widely Decorated, a hundred colors clashing One tall building, The Spirazan Hotel, A place where foreigners Could drink, a western style Bar, with a band, a rock and roll Band from the Philippines, Elvis, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, The same band I had heard At the NCO club on my base On the Pakistan frontier, And even earlier, at the NCO club At the NCO club at the base Where I was stationed in Germany in attendance, Russians, Americans, Europeans, young Arabs, a place outside their own country, A place where they could drink And party western style Outside view of anyone else The road from downtown, paved, unlike most That connect to it, Merchants along the road, Resting their camels, one Selling hot nan, so tasty When hot, like ceiling tile When cold Passing the zoo, animals Mostly ragged, but A beautiful young girl Who dropped her veil for just A second before her parents Could see Passing the Russian Embassy, Entering the Embassy To buy some maps, dangerous, As low level American intelligence agents, A violation of our secrecy rules, And subject to arrest by the Russians If they cared… But, apparently they didn’t care enough For an international incident To the USAID house Where we stayed, a crowd Of young children passing, Beautiful brown eyes and eyes emerald green, In their school uniform, Laughing all, Singing as they marched past From my room overlooking A lower floor, A grey cat slept, stretched On the roof, As cats stretch, Sleeping in the warm Afternoon… Kabul, Afghanistan, Easter, 1968/69, Before the horrors began  Starting a new board this afternoon. Should have it finished in a day or two. In the meantime, here's another practice board. These pieces are by Lalla (born 1320 - died 1392), fourteenth century North Indian mystic who wandered through medieval Kashmir singing her songs. The verses are from the collection, Naked Song, published by Maypop Books in 1992, with translation by ColemanBarks. When you eat too much, you forget your truth, and fasting makes you conceited, so eat with some discipline, and consciously. Be an ordinary human being. Then the door will open, and you'll recognize the way. Lalla, be moderate! ```` Everything is new now for me. My mind is new, the moon, the sun. The wholeworld looks rinsed with water, washed in the rain of I am That. Lalla leaps and dances iniside the energy that creates and sustains the universe. And speaking of Indian poets and mystics, I happened to read by chance today one of my friend and favorite Facebook poets. I used his work a lot on the old Here and Now and now here he is again in the new. He is a free lance writer in New Delhi and his name is Bharat Shekar. He is also an artist and usually includes a drawing with his poetry. This time, he did not. The poem was written in 2019. REMEMBERED RADIANCE (Yearning to wander) Not to dispel darkness, but to be its companion and guide, silver spreads silhouettes in moonbeams. . A darting owl scatters silence inside night with its feathery flight. . Then, every sound only deepens the quiet- a creak, a hoot, the thud of a stone tumbling over grass, startled 'twit-twit' of a lapwing, in some forgotten distance the gurgling mouth of a river making liquid love to rocks in passing. . Heaving with sleeping breath of flowers, the air turns moist to drip dew drops on leaves and blades of grass. . In ruins of abandoned houses, almirahs buckle open to free themselves of shadow substances. . Across valleys, over hills, Himalayas loom, immense, icy, intimate, holding each others' shoulders among the twinkle of stars.  I wrote a poem, Up at 4:30, harking back to a time fifty years past when, while at the university after military service, living in a small trailer on the Blanco River, I would stay up all night writing and talking to my dog before getting up to meet a 10 a.m. chemistry, biology, or physics class (three classes I managed to graduate without ever passing.) I admit now, that fifty years later, my pleasure in watching the sun come up has lessened a lot. This might be a sunset campanion to that piece, though written more recently. Night lays in night lays in with a sigh like an old woman pulling bed coverrs up to her chin breeze rustless trees like feather dusters brushing the stars, frogs come alive in the creek, nighthawks hunt... on my patio, I strip down, lay back in my chair and join the frog-symphony, imagine the fresh, cool mud between a catalogue of reeds on the rain freshened creek-side, imagine the blood-tasty mosquito caught on my long green tongue, settle, squish, into the singing night Muffin-making and other activities of the long night  As the end of night begins the moon at midnight is full and bright, slipping through the trees like a slow and lonely dancer drifting as the end of night begins toward the west and away from the other side of the sky, the edge of the world over which its bigger, brighter sister will soon rise to claim a new day high in the cold, cold sky, near where the domain of all earth creatures end, icy scudding clouds provide a chill backdrop to the pale sister's passage the siblings, never together, can only nod in passing  A lot of Texas poets, both pros and amateurs, get lost in the diversity of the state. It's not hard to do. If you spend any time driving around through the varied cultures and vistas of the state, as I have done, it's hard not to want to put it all down on paper. The many stories and myths of the state are also a draw on any writer's imagination. Elane Carlisle Murry is one such writer, as in this piece from her book, The Law of Tough Mesquite, growing from the myths of the traveling cowboy, the loner who sees it all. Winnerof the W.E. Bard Book Award, the book was published by Eakin Press in 1993. The Fence Line At the top of the rise the rider drew rein and saw stretched before him a brush-studded plain. The soft desert wind blew the cedar's fresh smell as his horse stepped with care, down the steep rocky trail. At the foot of the hill, she shifted his weight and the hoofs of his horse built a fast steady gait Behind him the dust rose. He pounded a track till his eyes saw a fence line, narrow and black. At the sight of the dark strand he changed his straight course and veered toward the open and challenged his horse. Away into nowhere, away in a streak, sweat staining his shoulders dust streaking his cheek. PARTY TIME  her lip trembles
her lip trembles and I love her for her courage ````` her day begins in yellow light, like lantern light, before the sun, like an old woman rising from her dark bed, crests the eastern mountain ridges... the basin will be dark before the sun falls through the western notch, the desert floor, a blaze of reds and yellow and orange... she stands before the colors far below, arms stretched wide, embracing the failing light... this is the way she wants it to end, in a glory afire with completion not soft and unsure, the way it began Once is good enough for me I know a volcanic crater left from ancient days of thunder and fire that is a meadow now, broad across, covered in high yellow grasses that blow in golden waves under midday mountain sun I know a beach covered in stones rubbed smooth and round by the rough caress of rolling tides, ten thousand years polished, the glow off moonlight, beacons of passing years --- I know these places and many more because I've seen them, but I know I'll never see them again because, like most travelers who prefer the small and uncharted roads, I find many beautiful places I'll never find again you who travel the main roads never suffer this loss of beauty for you always know where you're going and where you've been, it's the in-between you lose, a wind-streaked blur passing but I've seen these things, found these other places once, places you'll never see, and once for me, to remember and cherish is good enough for me anticlimax so Einstein is proven right again! gravity comes in waves like on the beach, just like he said… and so it is now a proven and, I’m told, mind-blowing event in the galactic news feed but I’m haven’t figured out yet what this means in the imagination of a poet who builds sand castle fantasies out of superficial understanding of such grand and glorious revelations a poet’s mind that gravitates (in waves, I suppose) to the more dramatic news as in two black holes stumbling in their ordered galactic waltz, the two colliding like two heavyweights on a swept-black dance floor, creating a “chirp” heard round the universe the chirp the proof sought for generations, announced like the cry of a tiny fledgling sparrow upon its maiden flight… such sturm and drang, the crashing together of two gods all-powerful in their own spaces contesting now for a single space - now that’s the stuff of a poem but gravitational waves, all that bring to this poet’s mind are visions of sand castles surrendering to a voracious gravitational tide eating the beach and all the castles on it the cataclysmic smashing of gods in the end leveling only delicate imagined structures on sandy playgrounds anticlimactic at best, seen better on TV  WHO COUNTS AND HOW DO WE KNOW IT In the Whitman poem I used in my last post, Walt wrote: Many sweating, ploughing,thrashing, and then the chaff for payment received, A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming. So that's one way to know who counts, who gets the shaft (I mean "chaff") and who gets the wheat. Here's another way, a poem I wrote in 2016. newspaper headline this morning “SUV OVERTURNS, PASTOR’S DAUGHTER KILLED” the grief of a pastor over the death of his daughter, real and to be honored but why is it always a pastor’s daughter in such headlines, or a banker’s daughter, or financial analyst’s daughter, or a CEO’s daughter, the death of such luminaries headlined in the morning paper but why do we never read headlines noting the death of the carpenter’s daughter, or the route salesman’s daughter, or the janitor’s daughter, or the laborer’s daughter, or the daughter of the homeless man who lives under the I-35 overpass downtown? ah, just another way our values are weighed, to really count in this world it’s clear your daughter has to get a headline when she dies… I wonder who else’s daughters died last night, unknown and unmentioned, apparently no one important Another practice board  This poem is by Kevin Pruffer. It is taken from his book National Anthem published by Four Way Books in 2008. GOTHIC LEAVES The leaves fell out of the trees and feathered the grass. The birds dropped too, all morning their way-too-human eyes rolled back, then black and gone - So, stripped and, for once, visible, the naked twigs - hob-fingered, tack-fingured. My mother was a rocking chair: Best clean that up. *** Don'tdrive through piles of leaves, she said, children play there. She rocked in her chair. Crick, crick. Heaps of leaves on the roadside - boys buried in them, leaves in their brittle hair, stopping their mouths so they couldn't speak *** Leaf rot and bristle - The mounds of leaves and the bodies inside, the wind grown chill and mean. Soon, she said, it'll be winter. Best bring that dead wood in. The naked branches the window panes, but never broke them. BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK H  how did the doornail die and how old was it at the time Harper Lee is dead and Umberto Eco and Justice Scalia and many more, I’m sure, that I don’t know about, all dead as the proverbial door nail whatever the hell that is and whatever it is how did it die and how old was it when the end came and Ursula Andress is 79 years old and that can’t be because the last time I saw her she was on a beach coming out of the surf in a bikini with a knife in a sheath and long blond hair and a lean, tan body and there is no way she can be 79 years old and more important what does that mean for me and how did the doornail die and how old was it and questions like that especially about how Ursula Andress got to be 79 years old and when is her doornail due, and what about mine and just thinking about all that stuff gives me a pounding headache (maybe that’s how the doornail passed on)  guess they really liked the drummer read last night at the coffeehouse not poems, but from my recent book of flash fiction an experiment with drum accompaniment worked well sold four books I guess they really liked the drummer APO NEW YORK THE THING MOST WORTH THINKING ABOUT so to begin, the scientists who study the science of way-old things have named the “Iceman” -the mummy discovered in a melting glacier in the Alps, as possessing the earliest known tattoos… dead for over 5,000 years and preserved in the ice, it seems he was a hunter-warrior suffering from many of the same physical ailments as me, except that he died in his thirties while I’m still hanging on in my seventies… also he has some obvious war- wounds that I have avoided and he also has tattoos which I have also avoided - the tattoos, five on his lower legs and ankle and one on his wrist, all at bone joints and possibly a very early attempt at relieving pain - something like the practice of acupuncture invented by the Chinese three thousand years after the Iceman and two thousand years before our own time - this notice, leading, in the article I read, to an intense discussion about the effectiveness of acupuncture as a medical procedure, some declaring reports of its effectiveness to be poppycock (this being a scholarly article - such technical language is not unusual) and others responding by declaring that anything people do for two thousand years must be effective, which doesn’t strike as a particularly effective argument to me since the Iceman had war wounds and five thousand years later we still have warriors with war wounds and I don’t see how that proves the effectiveness of war as a prescription for health and wealth… but that’s a whole other argument that I don’t find so interesting, nor do I find the whole business of tattoos pleasing what is interesting is the wonder of finding a five thousand year-old corpse sufficiently preserved to allow for medical investigation and the other thing, the big kahuna, the fact that the glacier that for five thousand years preserved the body is melting… it seems to me that’s the thing about the story most worth thinking about… GILLIGAN PLOTS OUR COURSE HOME  It's not the actual experiences that matter, but what you learn from them. AN ALMANAC OF LIVED STORIES I got years Worth of stories Out of less than a year Driving a taxicab In a small city in bordertown Texas Same for a year On a foreign desert And months of construction work On the hot Tex/Mex border And drinking too much, Lots of good stuff there When the midnight drunk Bled into a sullen, overcast morning Never got any poems Out of cashier work at a grocery store Except establishing my asshole detector, First activated by customers Who came in to do their weekly shopping Five minutes before closing time While I have my day’s pay Burning a hole In my pocket, Saturday night plans put on hold Never got much Out of my first girlfriend, Tall and lean, a dead ringer For Paula Prentiss, Except how love is like Pork chops left out in the sun, Even the best love and pork chops Turn bad with just a few weeks inattention, Especially when a best friend Is there to provide what I In my absence could not… Mostly a good life, but turning At times, temporarily rough, Making poems out of good times And misery And I think of the new University-bred poets Whose work reflects Neither good times Nor misery I read them and think, Jeez, if they had just A couple of months Driving a cab through 12-hour nights, Or woke up drunk, mouth Agape, head in a stupor Resting on a foul-smelling bar, The last near-survivor Of a night of wrong moves, Dawn breaking through an Encrusted window, neon Still flickering, near dead But not yet… what a great poets They might be ON THE COAST  Story of my Life I owned a 1952 Cadillac once, bought it for $100 and had it for 3 months in 1968 while attending some advanced military training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas... beautiful car, cherry shape, inside and out, two-tone factory paint, cloth seats as soft as any bed I ever slept in, but wouldn't go over 45 miles per hour without overheating gave it away when I left, to cover a bar tab… car of my dreams… story of my life... Another practice board  the Wednesday meet-up and talk group the Wednesday Meet Up and Talk group is arriving here at the coffeehouse in a straggle, so far, mostly antique women, sitting behind me, discussing the various ailments of their age, the one just moved here from Montana, talks about the whatever fire out there and how she can’t breathe anymore up there because of the altitude and the others too, every part of the body, blood, skin, bones, ears, not to forget eyes, bowels, (even hair, according to the lady who brags on her wigs) at least one medical failure per customer, several, it seems, going for quantity over quality, trying a little bit of everything… no men have shown up so far this week, so, I have to stop here, there being no slow, dropping thinking old man to slow the ladies down, they are talking way faster than I can transcribe (maybe I’m quitting too soon, the ladies are into allergies, a subject upon which I can commiserate, pontificate, even, so maybe, since there are no other old men in attendance I ought to turn around and pass on some of my own allergy wisdom…) This piece is by Walter McDonald, taken from his book Night Landings, published by Harper and Row in 1989. Coming Home At her age, my mother should know I'd break her heart,tumble downhill and break my neck. She never learns. Soapsuds in her eyes, hands winding themselves dry in her apron, she hurries to the car and hugs us, my wife first, at last her arms choking the grandkids. They disappear inside her spongy belly, giggling, clutching and clinging. For days she chases them like a nanny, pots steaming on the store, dinner for king. My father would have slipped them peppermint sticks the way he spoiled his own. Gone, like the last passenger train from the roundhouse. Nights, while my kids play games in the garden, I squint to make the stars move like Pullman windows that winked on the way to Houston when I was nine, the year my father died, when I knew it was never my father's run but waved anyway at the lights. This, from me in 2016, a product of reading the New York Times Science Section every Thursday.
the whole of it could be the biggest bang since the big bang, just discovered, blowing away an unthinkably vast section of the universe, but so far from us it is barely a smudge on our most powerful telescopes so far away but still we will feel its effects in millions of years, just as nothing happens anywhere that doesn’t or won’t affect us sometime somewhere - just wait for it, the tide of all things moved by all the tides of everything, as no man is an island, no island is alone on even the most vast sea, like we, up to our armpits in ourselves, bump through the slip stream of everyone else… this makes some people very sad, this oneness, making them feel inconsequential in their smallness, others, like me, celebrate the magnificence of being such an important part of everything… (as all parts of a whole are important lest it be not whole) And here's another of the "deep think" variety, also from 2016. what we leave behind will define us all we know about the ancient times that came before us are fossilized remains, hints of long before we study and examine and hope to learn how the was became the is... like the imprint of a jungle leaf on a dry canyon wall, or, in San Antonio, at the bottom of another canyon where once flowed a clear, cool stream and on the old stream’s sandy bottom, turned by time to limestone, and in the stone, frozen in time, footprints of the great and cumbersome dinosaurs who once in eras past drank here, ate from the flora and fauna that lived around it, procreated and died here… and in the great deserts of the southwest, fossils of tiny fish and shrimp and other creatures unknown in our time, their lives hinted at only by their flesh turned to rock… the truth that all that has ever been, remains in some form, as rock, as chemicals leached into the rock, as air, the composition of which altered by the breathing in and out of it during eons beyond eons… and now, says those who study, has begun the new “Anthropocene” era, the time of human dominance, a time when old fossils undisturbed for millions of years are pushed aside by new fossils made by the hand and mind of our human kind so that many epochs ahead, whoever, or whatever, follows us, curious and studious as we, wanting, as we want, to understand the past of the earth upon which they trod, will seek out in the re- configured planets hints of us in the fossils… and what will they find? a fossilized pickle jar, the mysterious symbols “Vlasic” etched in rock; the complete fossil of a ’49 Studebaker, lost in 1952 to the bottom of the deepest lake in Wisconsin, unearthed during some unimaginable construction project, open to the light of day again a million years after its disappearance; a small action figure, Batman, maybe, or GI Joe or Princes Leia, or some hero or villain we haven’t created yet; a baby rattle, a dog collar, a wedding band, a tuba and a clarinet, a statue of an idealized woman holding one arm high, stone turned to stone, at the bottom of a deep and murky sea; signs of the times, “Dancing Girls 24 Hours, Lap Dances, $20” and the new who follow us will wonder, what dance did they dance and how did the dance on what is a lap and what is symbol, number 20 and how much is that; carbon from our burning and breathing, radiation from our wars, lead and other heavy metals from television tubes and compute detritus, perhaps the fossilized porcelain of my store- bought teeth some many numbered levels above the dinosaur footprints at the bottom of Government Canyon; treasures from attics, junk from second-hand stores, refrigerators, coffee makers, microwave ovens and margarita makers, things important and coveted, things lost and never found, things found and forgotten… so much we will leave behind, more than even we know, but all will be there, in some altered form for the new ones to find, just as we now find and marvel at that which was and won’t be again… |
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