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8/23/21 - But What Does It Mean?

8/23/2021

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Picture
​
like soft hands

like soft hands
stroking

sweet-breath
summer breezes

midnight lover
​

Transitions
Shadrach in the Fiery Pit
Picture
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
Picture
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

​

Picture

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

​

Picture
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

​
Picture
​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
Picture
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
Picture
Picture


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.

​

Picture
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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08/16/21 - LIFE AS A NON-ECTOPLASMATIC

8/16/2021

0 Comments

 
I'm Ascaird of Dinosaurs
Picture

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
Picture
​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.
Picture
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

​
Picture


​


​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.

​




Picture
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
Picture
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





Picture
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
Picture
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
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8/9/21 What was, and won't be again

8/9/2021

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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

Picture
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
Picture
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
Picture
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)

​

Picture
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
Picture
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
Picture
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
Picture
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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    ​78 years old, three times retired, 2nd life poet, 3rd life artist

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