HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
 PATH TO ENLIGHTMENT I intend to put my brain on a leash this morning because I'm thinking I want to be taken seriously as a poet and adult human being of the masculine persuasion and nobody takes nobody serious who's always running off at the brain like I'm prone to do, chasing every little bushy-tailed squirrel that happens to cross my path to enlightment meaning making it hard to get to the end of that path, difficult to find the enlightment that one naturally assumes of a human being of the masculine persuasion, and a poet to boot... never even close chasing squirrels instead... but, second-guessinig myself, something us chasing-every-squirrel types rarely do, and never without good cause, I'm reconsidering my decision to adopt the leash-constrained mode, thinking to abandon the chase for the mantle of seriosity expected of poets and adult human beings of the masculine persuasion because there are advantages to the chase-every-squirrel state of mind, like flushing out a bird bath, getting rid of all the leaves and algae and bird poop that collects in the presence of birds and shallow water, giving it a good flush, a good scraping out, leaving behind clear water, water free of entrenched distraction, water renown for its clear thinking, water that knows its own mind - and I'm thinking that is a clear advantage for the chasing-every-squirrel state of mind because how is one to find enlightment when the path is strewn with leaves and algae and philosophical bird poop? just won't work... if you want to find enlightment, you have to clear the path, flush the pump like you flush a bird bath and that's what a chasing-every-squirrel state of mind, freed from the leash and on the chase, is good for, stirring up such a frenzy, a regular misdirection that blows all the extraneous crap out of the way, leaving a clear path, enlightment just over the next rise... seriously... Another practice board  A REAL LOSS T0 POETRY it was a golden night, no moon, stars buried behind thick, low clouds reflecting back to the ground and streets and houses, the golden light of the city, never sleeping golden light filtering through the trees like spun gold gold, orange shadows in the golden night, and down at the creek water flowed in golden bubbles of light while the crickets cricked and the frogs farted and, oh crap, haven't I done this before and who cares, anyway poetry is serious business and ought to be about serious things like, how about that helium? if I ate a ham and helium sandwich, would I rise to the ceiling like those balloons they give to kids at the supermarket who let go of the balloon and the balloon rises to the ceiling which is lined with balloons given to kids who let the balloons go,, red, blue, green, what a bunch of colors lining the supermarket ceiling and what if I ate two ham and helium sandwiches, or maybe even three, would I float away into the sky if outside where there is no supermarked ceiling to keep me safe, would this be a new mode of transportation, great airplanes guided through the sky by teams of pilots gorging on ham and helium sandwiches and what about the porpoise, Einstein of the sea, Aristotle with fins, Plato with a snout and a jolly smile and what do you call more than one porpoise - is it porpiees, maybe, and what about a gathering of porpiees, not a school, because that's fish and porpiees are not fish, and not a herd because that's cows and horses and sheep, and porpiees are none of those and not a swarm, cause that's bees, and not a flock cause that's geese and chickens and not a pod cause that's whales (which I think is a silly name for somethng as vastly gargantuan as a congregation of whales - it would be much better if we called such a gathering a "tundra" or something else equally as vastly gargantuan, but that's just me) and at least whales are mammals like porpiees and not fish, even though, like whales, porpiees like the water and frolic all about in it, at least the porpiees I saw at Seaworld like to frolic all about in the water, so maybe a group of porpiees who travel together might be called a "frolic". but that's just a suggestion... and anyway, I could go on and on because there's lots and lots of important things poetry should deal with instead of getting stuck in frou-frou poems about golden nights and cloudy skies and absent stars and vanished moons and crickets and frogs... and what about those frogs and the way they mate like a honkytonk in Amarillo, has anyone ever written a poem about that - well, in fact, I did, but no one else and that's a real loss to poetry... I'm telling you, a real loss Showing off several of my boards and my new haircut (even though, actually and on purpose, it looks exactly like my old haircut)   I wrote this at the request of a very good friend who had just experienced a terrible and unexpected loss. FOR KATIE'S NANA Remembering Katherine 4/3/1998 - 6/22/2010 a child like a star is born and brightly burns through the darkest nights, then, flickers in the universal winds and fades, its alloted time compete and all the constellations that burned with it dim in a fellowship of lose... until grief fades, consumed by memories forever closely kept... for what more can we ask of a child than to be a star  LIFE IS life is like a duck hunt every time you really begin to fly some asshole in the weeds shoots your fuzzy butt right out of the sky art by Vincent Martinez These poems are fom One Hundred Poems From the Chinese, collected by Kenneth Rextoth. The book was published by New Directions in 1971. No translator is credited for any of the poems. The first two poems are by Tu Fu, one of the greatest of the Chinese poets. Loneliness A hawk hovers in air. Two white gulls float on the stream. Soaring with the winds, it is easy To drop and seize Birds who foolishly drift with the current. Where the dew sparkles in the grass, The spider's web waits for its prey. The processes of nature resemble the business of men. I stand alone with ten thousand sorrows. New Moon The bright, thin, new moon appears, Tipped askew in the heavens. It no sooner shines over The ruined fortress than the Evening clouds overwhelm it. The Milky Way shines unchanging Over the freezng mountains Of the border. White frost covers The garden. The chrysanatahemums Clot and freeze in the night  Written a couple of years back, before routine became my preferred way to spend my day. the source of my problem routine, that's my problem, too much of it... I haven't seen an Albanian gypsy in years, or heard the plaintive cry of a river flattapotumus or smelled the acrid stench of burning filagabbit feathers... looking around me in this restaurant I see not a single Grenadian pirate or Singhalese soul-snatacher, just plain old moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and little kids with chocolate milk mustaches, and the old guy in the corner, typing on his computer, dripping grits in his beard, muttering to himself about things conspicuously unhinged... just another Sunday morning... how is one to find a poem in a life so unadventurously confined  A personal reckoning of the day We went to my brother’s funeral today. In Victoria, in the Golden Crescent, center of the state’s Rice Belt, 178 miles either way. A short jaunt for Texas travel, but a difficult one going, late, racing time on small country roads. We arrived near the end of the service, plenty of time for the essentials of funeral, time to comfort the living and learn the lessons offered by the dead. In my case, as we filed past the coffin to see my little brother, for the last time, in his box, to learn the tricks of time and its tides, the tricks that put him, the younger, in the box where I should be. He, who should have been last, leaving before me, making me the last. And what of the last? What is to be made of my last? I thought of the two of us and our lives as brothers. The four-year difference in ages meant that when we were young, it was rare for the two of us, outside home, to be at the same place at the same time. Meaning we grew up on different life tracks. His life led to a life of personal comfort. Comfort that, on my life track, I have never found. I still, in the time left, I seek it, never expecting to find it. Seems I have always been a step behind satisfaction and comfort with where I am and what I’ve done. In my old age, I am a man of strict routine, routine that cushions me against the desperation and depression I expect to find around every corner. And my routine has been broken now for two weeks, leaving me exhausted and on the edge of a quiet despair. My life, interrupted, focused almost exclusive around the inadequacy themes of my poetry, which I no longer write, and my art which I doubt will ever be as appreciated as the pleasure I take in it Too big, too unrestrained to ever fit on anyone wall, needing a large, pale wall in need of the color I can add to it, a mansion, perhaps Bill Gates has such a place, or something institutional, a university or a bank or an office building needing to bring life to their walls. But I don’t know Bill Gates or any institution interested in the work of a past-due amateur. But I paint them anyway because of the pleasure each new piece brings me. And the poetry – that is over, I think. Perhaps this prose is as close as I come. Never again for me, I’m afraid, the thrill of a mind running free and frantic to find new joy in old words and old ideas to jolt back to life. And so this is it, not the poem I hoped to find in the day, but a report and a reflection of myself; gone to morn and comfort, finding also, as is almost always the case, variations on the stories of oneself. Addendum: The poem is self-explanatory as to the purpose of writing, my effort to find some truth in myself as final survivor of a family of five. I hoped to be honest, but in one aspect, I was not, maybe, honest but incomplete. I mention the despair and depression that always seems right around the corner,but I was not as specific as I could have been. I didn't name it. It is a thing perhaps stronger for men of my age and history, growing up in an age of male domination, when it was thought and we males were expected to be in charge. Finding in our late years the shadows of a time coming when we will be in charge of nothing, not even our own bodies and minds. The names of people know for many years, forgotten, the words, simple and well-known, that disappear (and for a writer, what worse than the lack of words), the fumbling fingers trying to turn the page of the daily newspaper, the car key that are gone from the counter (gone from where I know I last put them), the uncertain gait on a flat sidewalk, the dread of stairs, the ocassional explosive rage that comes and goes over trivial inconveniences. These simple things, the first signs, we fear, of a time that might be coming. Assuming another five, maybe ever ten, years of life. For how many of those years will I be present and accounted for. It is the word men of my age don't like to think about. Dementia, the disappearing self.  the very proper lady in the black Sunday dress the very proper lady in the black Sunday dress and jeweled necklace and dangly earrings blows her nose into a tiny lace hindkerchief and her eyes bulge like a bug's or maybe like a big spotted frog caught wide awake on her lily pad at midnight thinking silverfish thoughts, and her ears, I swear, are flapping and I'm tiinking, "holy shit" her head's gonna explode like the bad guy's head at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie and I don't know if I should watch or shield my eyes from the sight, so I compromise and peek through my fingers and watch as the pressure slowly eases and her head shrinks back to regular size and her ears lie supine at rest against her head and her eyes slink back into mean little slits like when she came, only I didn't notice then like I do now... that is one evil woman, in her proper black dress and jewelry and hanging earrings and, by gosh, I'm glad she didn't blow up or I'd probably have evil debris gunk dripping all over me... a pretty scary experience for this early in the morning, but it is one of the reasons I like to have breakfast here - you meet the most interesting people, and other creatures one can't be entirely sure of Art by Vincent Martinez  This is another piece from One Hundred Poems from the Chiniese, this one by Ou Yang Hsiu. Old Age In the Sprintime I am always Sorry, the nights are so short. My lamp is burning out, the flame Is low. Flying insects circle About it. I am sick. My eyes Are dry and dull. If I sit Too long in one position, All my bones ache. Chance thoughts from I don't know where crowd upon me. When I get to the end of a Train of thought, I have forgotten The beginning. For one thing I retain I forget ten. When I was young I liked to read. Now I am too old to make The effort. Then, too, if I come Across something interesting I have no one to talk to About it. Sad and alone, I sigh with self pity. Another practice board   Over the course of a 30-year professional career I attended, often convened, many such meetings as this one. business breakfast there is a large crowd, ten diners, on several tables pushed together a business breakfast meeting it seems, for a congregation of insurance agents (my guess, they look like insurance people) mostly men in dress shirts and ties and a couple of women frantically over-compensating for lack of male genitalia... at the head of the table, a large red-faced man who appears to be the boss, pontificating, with the assurance of a person genetically in the dark, telling sleep-deprived staff all about the Shinola he don't know shit from, and beside him, a mid-thirties blond, well-put-together, who has a 17-year-old daughter at home who's driving her nuts with skimpy dresses and good-for-nothing boyfriends, all this exposed to the world before the meeting began, and now that it has, reveals herself to be the boss's carry-on brain, taking over his Shinola punditry to bring the meeting to order, providing such business as there was scheduled to be at this early morning business meeting apparently other eight at the table know who knows what needs to be known because their droopy-eyed attention to the boss's Shinola is immediately replaced by edge-of-their-chair attention when she starts talking, chewing reduced from a roat to petite and silent chomp-chomps as eggs and bacon slide quietly and respectfully down alerllt and thoughtful gullets I have been to, often convenec such meetings, sat at the head of many such tables spouting my own Shinola, killing time until my right-hand brain finishes her poached egg and fat-free milk and sets herself to take care of business, while I relax, my job done for the day This is an old board, but I don't remember ever posting it here. Cortez Discovers Mexico  Poor little Pumpkin little Pumpkin, Texas, hiding out among the trees KoKo's Gas-n-Grub Faith Evergreen Baptist Church poor little Pumpkin population 43
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 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 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… 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   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
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