twists, turns
Hard rains and assessing
hard losses--
there's so much wrong!
Yet I love, at least,
these quick, easy routes,
studied out twists and turns
I keep making up
to find my way
in this new city
in search of things I treasure,
things I need.
So few are impressed!--
The others are, alas,
in such a rush;
I learn these elessons--
yet how much I've risked
and how much I've confessed
just hoping for more!
DISTRACTED SUMMER
These sad, hungry days
find no magic solitudes
in hot gusts, sweet blooms;
distracted from centered truth,
how I miss... being in love?
RACE-WALKING SUMMER
Great, deep gasps, sobs-like:
Breath-in, one step--breathe-out, five;
hard, mindfully hard
miles: To make my heart wide
for all our lives' brokenness...
STILLED
Do sages realy believe
desire confounds joy
yes stray searchingly
from notebook, Thai tea
to saddled, festooned elephants
stilled in brassy parade
Did such wonders ever exsist?
ON PICKING UP THE PHONE ON SATURDAY...
SO WHAT ARE you going to do on your B'day, Dad? OH NOT much, I told her--have vegetarian lunch with the vegetarian group.. I FORGOT to mention the morning discussion on Taoism I'm going to try to chase down a woman I had a nice chat with last week but was too shy to ask out at the time; I didn't mention the other woman I'm hoping to meet again at the vegetarian lunch--or the inappropriate woman still on my crush list at the pantheism/Taoism discussion... MY DAUGHTER ALSO WISHED ME a happy mothers day, because, she says she now realizes, I've been both her mother and father as a single parent from when she was a kid, a rcognition I'd been waiting for without ever saying so, for a long time...AND STILL I'M SOMETIMES TOO SHY, I've just let her find out, sometimes too shy on first meeting to ask an eligible single woman for a date after 69 years, and she, my daughter, doesn't even blink; how well she knows me, I'm realizing, how well she knows me...
ALL JAZZ ALL THE TIME
My precious wondrous acuity...
part of some indescribably stunning, stupendous, giddy, gawking awareness
barely hinted at in glimpses?
...and my tepidly humdrum, ardouslu grasped, meandering ratiocinations
considerations--
pieces of a grand, benificently fiendish, fireballish, meralgactic, shudderingly
timpani-charged, shrewdly nuanced, conspiratorial cusation
that the mightiest
or even the very tiniest exdrescence anywhere
just can't effervece without?
...And my excrucitatingly, poignantly heart-rendering emptiness
splinter of some sparking, hrutloing all pervasive, blustering, spontaneous spatiality
and mine the freedom to say: Belive all this--or not?
What are these ruminations, fulminations, speculations, imaginations?
What elese can they be?
WHat else can it all be?
But some bursting, startling dream -riff music inside some plucking, percussing,
tootling, trumpetimg, tune-doodling, trembenling somebody somewhere
that just had to get out?
SUNDAY AT TERILLI'S (for Merchel, Hope and Gloria)
I always remember the familiar
shooting--star toning--vibrating,
in sight of somber green
awning, yellow lettering,
against quiet reds and greys
across Greenville Avenue
framed here in this huge window
and me looking, wondering:
What ever on earth did I do
before--after so many
great and lesser disasters--
What ever on earth did I do
Before I found
the three of you
creating the universe
here in this old place
(as well as otherwheres
I can't even remember)--
What ever on earh did I do
Before I found you
To bring life
To my eyes?
MARCHEL IVERY
A friend--a best freind
to me, toothers--
dying Tuesday,
his body breaking down,
as I built mine up. unknowing,
jogging heartily.
also on Tuesday.
after restless sleeps--
remembering we chatted
Friday at the deli
where he was getting food to go
with his four-year-old.
" daddy, look who's here. " she said
and he shook my hand,
his eyes bright, telling me
about chances for new gigs
with his reconfigured
be-bop quartets-
now gone, gone from everywhere,
best friend bop-gone, sax-gone, song-gone,
and everything else I know
a stranger in the house.--
Who will hear this?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Remembering Richard May 30th 6-9pm Paperback Plus
Continued are the poems I have for readers to choose to read at Richard's Memorial. Please choose at least 2 (but up to 4) pieces that interest you, if you don't already have something you have written or something of Richard's you already have. Contact me which you would like to read so I can mark them from the list. If the text is RED it has been CHOSEN. contact me at zen.mantra@gmail.com with your choice, otherwise I would be glad to pick for you. This entire blog is Richards work and I will be deleting this blog after the reading, in respect to him and his work.
Thanks,
Opalina
**********************
ON THE EDGE
(a love poem--and of course, a tribute to W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge)
Childhood tortures haunt my reveries, dreams,
so I turn to this old novel again for the third or gourth time,
needing to know, as fevently as any character
needs to know perhaps even more:
What did happen to Larry in the war?--Not this war
but the one 90 years ago that my uncle was in
and came back changed from without ever telling
me or others what happened to change him;
I've forgotten what happened to change
Somerset Maugham's Larry but now I need to know.
But not soon, Not this soon. So I get up
to get dressed for the day, tossing clothes everywhere,
everywhere--except the back of the armchair
where my loved one will later hang her winter coat;
then in meditation, unexpectedly, healingly,
even with clogged sinuses and daunted by sleeplessness,
I breathe more deeply than ever, more slowly than ever, then bow, as is customary--ritualistic and
customary, along with a half-smile in the
semi-Buddhist practice I'm trying to follow;
it's snowing ourside, a rare thing in these
semi-tropics, and this may interfere--I may
let it interfere--with my walking workout later;
it's snowing, but I barely glance at it;instead,
I linger over notes I composed yesterday,
tapping out , with this keyboard, new ways
to make graphic half-smiles, ritualistic,
customary--sometimes heartfelt--for my notes...
IF SHE REALLY HEARS...
In my mind's eye, I see my lover bend to me,
and move her head to me to kiss me, and kiss me
as we both lie in repose. I see this,
as I said, in my mind's eye/ As I lie here alone.
But what if I told her--and asked her to listen
to me so she really hears--what if I told her,
told her with words she knows I do no use lightly--
what if I tild her of matters that bring me
sometimes nearly to tears, somtimes like today?
Matters of the distant and not so distant past
that bring me sometimes nearly to tears?
What if I told her--with words she knows
I cannot use lightly--and asked her to listen
to me so she really hears? What then?
And what if she really hears? Hears words
she knows I cannot/will not use lightly? What then?
Would I still see her bend to me and move to me
and comfort me so? I mean, in my mind's eye?
THE DAMNED STORM
Okay, let's see if I can figure this out: The cop knows the murdered man called the private detective just before he, the murdered man was murdered, because he, the murdered man had picked up the detective's business card. From somwhere. From someone. But I'd read about that before the thunderstorm brought down power lines and tree limbs and cut off lights for about 3000,000 of us here in Dallas, Wednesday night, big news that left my lover and me in the dark and in anxiety for a few hours, sending me to the cupboard to search out the candle once given me by one who vanished from my life and, it seems, from everywhere else over a year ago. The matches from the jazz clib I'd saved especially for her, afor her nasty cigarette habit, were so old they wouldn't strike. Noth this time. Damn! But there was one other thing to try: The cigarette lighter, still with some fluid, that she's left in the pocket of my bathrobe/ And I'd saved the cigarette lighter too. I had not thrown it out. And I have wondered, why? and I had remembered where I had put it. But I cannot , now, for the life of me remember where the murdered man got the detective's business card in the first place, without turning back to the pages I'd read before the Damned storm. The Damned storm that sent me rummaging for the candle and then old jazz club matches and then the old cigarettelighter that somehow flamed up with a flick of the switch and lit the candle, so that my sweet lover and I could find each other. Find each other by my absent friend's light. By my accepting all her gifts.
HIPPEST
Up earlier than nearly everybody
outo f bed and breakfasted,
myself--a retiree--seeing off
my sweet sweetie, sweetie being
a southernism I'm getting used to,
now walking to the park to sample
early morning early hints
of autumn and observe a few
quiet for-the-most-part dogs
leashed to quieter owners,
I know this could be looked at
as the best of two worlds:
All ready to go and going
nowhere. Going here. Going gone.
In gone coming forth Buddhist sense.
My sweetie plans another 15 years
of pre-retirement days, and who knows
how many days I may have.
I know--and she knows--
I'm missing some late night jazz
To have all that I have now.
"Dallas' hippest senior citizen!"
Bernard Wright, the keyboard genius
who worked with Miles Davis,
greeted me with this a while back.
He knows I make as many jazz scenes
as I can. Bernard once told me
he tought I knew the truth.
I hope that is true.
I'm missing
some late night jazz
to have all I have now.
I'll have to tell Bernard:
Early morning jazz can be
a really hip scene too.....
PRODUCTS, EXPORTS...
--COUNTING, BREATHING, KNOWING--
seated in the meditation pose
before a Buddha's image, a new cartoon-ish drawing
I was glad to find in the book store
where my young friend works.
I'm counting, breathing, knowing,
yet waiting, waiting, waiting
and screening calls for the call
from my besieged loved one
so I can tell her of my grueling day
so she can lift part of it from me,
wanting to do this, knowing
her day is twice as hard, surely longer,
than mine, knowing I'll do it
and breathing, counting, knowing,
and glancing at my bookcase petry
where I recently filed the Odusseu translation
she likes under "h" for Homer,
even though Robert Fitzgerald's version
qualifies for an "f" filing.
because she loves the ancient world
as I did once beit am now uneasy about,
notinghow unsurprised I am
that sensless, lethal violence
has again broken out in the USA
with 33 of us dead.
Unsurprised, un-shocked, saddened, this gruesome, grueling day,
and saddened I'm so sanguine as to wonder
why it happens here so seldom?
As our countrydaily produces
these sorts of gruesome/grueling days
for export to so many others eleswhere?
What do our anciets who
didn't know they were our ancients
have to teach us? About this?
Caesar, Catullus, Odysseus, Homer,
all the rest, even Socrates? Why
leave us with so much to learn?
so much to work out ourselves?
What questions! -- I think, as now
counting, breathing, knowing--
the Buddha's ancient way--returns.
Then the call comes. It's her voice.
I lunge at it...
A DAY FOR PLANS
Up to early for chores, too late for sleep;
breakfasted, embattled loved-one off
for another round, leaving me
in my own swear, distantly ringside,
I creep toward coffee; it's freshened
but wekened, somewhat, for my slower start;
and I make plans--it's a day for plans,
I can tell--I make plans to congratulate myself
for fresh gains, fresh understandings,
for all not being lost, not yet...
If conditions were different, of course,
I know I would disappoint expectations less;
I realize this, and with insight too...
And now as new sunlight begins to impinge,
on my oft-beloved shadows,
I put it all in writing to make sure...
UNPACKING
This well- used wool blanket
is mine to give away.
I know that.
I now remember. I came to posses it
through tiresomely
humiliating life conditions
and used it without thinking until recent introspections.
Last week I thought
I should give it to--
give it to---
a really needy person,
that that would be
the best way of dealing
with this troublesome memory.
Pay ahead, I thought.
Since I can no longer pay back.
The blanket is rumpled up
between boxes I'm still too tired
to start unpacking
from my move last month.
In my last place
I covered a bedroom window with it
to block out sleep disturbing light
and headlights from the parking lot.
Yet I know it;s not mine to keep.
I know it is mine to give away
to somebody really needy.
Next winter maybe I'll do it.
But this winter I think I'll
draw it up over my shoulders again,
in the dark
as I did for 30 plus years,
to recall how I held onto, then
what little warmth I had left to keep.
I think I'll do that again this winter
At least one more time....
A BIG, EMPTY SPACE
Baby I just got the Map Quest directions
you wanted for your job-required trip tomorrow,
your 80-hour a week hob that puts our being
and thriving together on hold sometimes,
at least when you're at it. But don't get me wrong:
maybe I need your job sometimes--
I've realized this in the past few hours:
just like I needed my own job I had for 17 years,
the job they forced me to retire from 61/2 years ago,
the one I made airplanes on, the one --I now know--
I fought for so savagely because it helped
pull me away from the murkey, mud-hole violence
I was born to, that I've told you some about.
Airplanes! Sexy, cool airplanes!
Not so much the down, dirty , sometimes bloddy,
and maybe sometimes fun making of them,
but the airlanes: Fly me--near the moon--all that.
See I needed something like that to pull me away
from this past, death-before-life narrowness.
I still need something like that, because
I know, suddenly today, I can't do it by myself;
and nothing yet does it, neigher politics of peace
nor poetry nor delivering flowers part-time--
it all helped, but it wasn't enough.
Of course there was her, before we met,
the one who kept coming and going
and finally going for good, whom I finally
stopped wanting by snapping a rubber band on my wrist
whenever thoughts strayed her way,
at last, wonder of wonders,
leaving me a big, empty space
where the pain used to be,
a big empty space I promptly
tried to fill with Buddhism so as to reconcile myself
to being alone, to the anguish of it too.
Then you came along, wonderfully, all to the good!
But if you Map Quest directions that school,
you'll find it has you turn right on BELT LINE and then
Left on BRAND and then left on the school road;
But I called the school; they said no, don't do that;
it'll take you across the turnpike, involve a U-turn
and possible confusion. I've delivered up there;
I think they're right; so after 78 becomes SOUTH GARLAND,
bear or turn right on NORTH GARLAND,
at 1.0 miles or son, by Winters Park;
make a right on the school road;
they say there's a Sonic on the corner;
and try not to get lost; make sure you don't get lost;
I've got a lot riding on these directions...
TO MY DETRACTORS
A shambles. My life today a
shambles. A wreckage. An emotional
wreckage. Just for the day I hope.
Just New Year's Eve 1997.
Too much of this. Too little
of that. A life of things
undone, unachieved, weighted against
certain opposites...
After a nap a picking up of
pieces, in the darm crazy hours of
this absurd difficult new year: Three miles vigorous
walking, then 10 minutes awrobic
weight-lifting, circuit training
so-called, then " Tai-Chi Chuan"--
ultimate principle of existence exercise,
I guess sure footed, low centered,
twisting-turning-reaching-deep intakes
of air--did Mao Tse Tung do this?
Does it serve the people?
Picking up pieces with a walk,
curcuit training, Tai-chi,
and also gazing at treasures,
certain treasures...
I want to say to them this:
For years I've had to accept that
what I've done with respect to
these family issues
was done for compelling, I meean
really compelling reasons,
whether or not I know
what these reasons were. Ive had to
trust the evoving decision.
So must you. So must you.
And so I resolve. And so I resolve.
Thanks,
Opalina
**********************
ON THE EDGE
(a love poem--and of course, a tribute to W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge)
Childhood tortures haunt my reveries, dreams,
so I turn to this old novel again for the third or gourth time,
needing to know, as fevently as any character
needs to know perhaps even more:
What did happen to Larry in the war?--Not this war
but the one 90 years ago that my uncle was in
and came back changed from without ever telling
me or others what happened to change him;
I've forgotten what happened to change
Somerset Maugham's Larry but now I need to know.
But not soon, Not this soon. So I get up
to get dressed for the day, tossing clothes everywhere,
everywhere--except the back of the armchair
where my loved one will later hang her winter coat;
then in meditation, unexpectedly, healingly,
even with clogged sinuses and daunted by sleeplessness,
I breathe more deeply than ever, more slowly than ever, then bow, as is customary--ritualistic and
customary, along with a half-smile in the
semi-Buddhist practice I'm trying to follow;
it's snowing ourside, a rare thing in these
semi-tropics, and this may interfere--I may
let it interfere--with my walking workout later;
it's snowing, but I barely glance at it;instead,
I linger over notes I composed yesterday,
tapping out , with this keyboard, new ways
to make graphic half-smiles, ritualistic,
customary--sometimes heartfelt--for my notes...
IF SHE REALLY HEARS...
In my mind's eye, I see my lover bend to me,
and move her head to me to kiss me, and kiss me
as we both lie in repose. I see this,
as I said, in my mind's eye/ As I lie here alone.
But what if I told her--and asked her to listen
to me so she really hears--what if I told her,
told her with words she knows I do no use lightly--
what if I tild her of matters that bring me
sometimes nearly to tears, somtimes like today?
Matters of the distant and not so distant past
that bring me sometimes nearly to tears?
What if I told her--with words she knows
I cannot use lightly--and asked her to listen
to me so she really hears? What then?
And what if she really hears? Hears words
she knows I cannot/will not use lightly? What then?
Would I still see her bend to me and move to me
and comfort me so? I mean, in my mind's eye?
THE DAMNED STORM
Okay, let's see if I can figure this out: The cop knows the murdered man called the private detective just before he, the murdered man was murdered, because he, the murdered man had picked up the detective's business card. From somwhere. From someone. But I'd read about that before the thunderstorm brought down power lines and tree limbs and cut off lights for about 3000,000 of us here in Dallas, Wednesday night, big news that left my lover and me in the dark and in anxiety for a few hours, sending me to the cupboard to search out the candle once given me by one who vanished from my life and, it seems, from everywhere else over a year ago. The matches from the jazz clib I'd saved especially for her, afor her nasty cigarette habit, were so old they wouldn't strike. Noth this time. Damn! But there was one other thing to try: The cigarette lighter, still with some fluid, that she's left in the pocket of my bathrobe/ And I'd saved the cigarette lighter too. I had not thrown it out. And I have wondered, why? and I had remembered where I had put it. But I cannot , now, for the life of me remember where the murdered man got the detective's business card in the first place, without turning back to the pages I'd read before the Damned storm. The Damned storm that sent me rummaging for the candle and then old jazz club matches and then the old cigarettelighter that somehow flamed up with a flick of the switch and lit the candle, so that my sweet lover and I could find each other. Find each other by my absent friend's light. By my accepting all her gifts.
HIPPEST
Up earlier than nearly everybody
outo f bed and breakfasted,
myself--a retiree--seeing off
my sweet sweetie, sweetie being
a southernism I'm getting used to,
now walking to the park to sample
early morning early hints
of autumn and observe a few
quiet for-the-most-part dogs
leashed to quieter owners,
I know this could be looked at
as the best of two worlds:
All ready to go and going
nowhere. Going here. Going gone.
In gone coming forth Buddhist sense.
My sweetie plans another 15 years
of pre-retirement days, and who knows
how many days I may have.
I know--and she knows--
I'm missing some late night jazz
To have all that I have now.
"Dallas' hippest senior citizen!"
Bernard Wright, the keyboard genius
who worked with Miles Davis,
greeted me with this a while back.
He knows I make as many jazz scenes
as I can. Bernard once told me
he tought I knew the truth.
I hope that is true.
I'm missing
some late night jazz
to have all I have now.
I'll have to tell Bernard:
Early morning jazz can be
a really hip scene too.....
PRODUCTS, EXPORTS...
--COUNTING, BREATHING, KNOWING--
seated in the meditation pose
before a Buddha's image, a new cartoon-ish drawing
I was glad to find in the book store
where my young friend works.
I'm counting, breathing, knowing,
yet waiting, waiting, waiting
and screening calls for the call
from my besieged loved one
so I can tell her of my grueling day
so she can lift part of it from me,
wanting to do this, knowing
her day is twice as hard, surely longer,
than mine, knowing I'll do it
and breathing, counting, knowing,
and glancing at my bookcase petry
where I recently filed the Odusseu translation
she likes under "h" for Homer,
even though Robert Fitzgerald's version
qualifies for an "f" filing.
because she loves the ancient world
as I did once beit am now uneasy about,
notinghow unsurprised I am
that sensless, lethal violence
has again broken out in the USA
with 33 of us dead.
Unsurprised, un-shocked, saddened, this gruesome, grueling day,
and saddened I'm so sanguine as to wonder
why it happens here so seldom?
As our countrydaily produces
these sorts of gruesome/grueling days
for export to so many others eleswhere?
What do our anciets who
didn't know they were our ancients
have to teach us? About this?
Caesar, Catullus, Odysseus, Homer,
all the rest, even Socrates? Why
leave us with so much to learn?
so much to work out ourselves?
What questions! -- I think, as now
counting, breathing, knowing--
the Buddha's ancient way--returns.
Then the call comes. It's her voice.
I lunge at it...
A DAY FOR PLANS
Up to early for chores, too late for sleep;
breakfasted, embattled loved-one off
for another round, leaving me
in my own swear, distantly ringside,
I creep toward coffee; it's freshened
but wekened, somewhat, for my slower start;
and I make plans--it's a day for plans,
I can tell--I make plans to congratulate myself
for fresh gains, fresh understandings,
for all not being lost, not yet...
If conditions were different, of course,
I know I would disappoint expectations less;
I realize this, and with insight too...
And now as new sunlight begins to impinge,
on my oft-beloved shadows,
I put it all in writing to make sure...
UNPACKING
This well- used wool blanket
is mine to give away.
I know that.
I now remember. I came to posses it
through tiresomely
humiliating life conditions
and used it without thinking until recent introspections.
Last week I thought
I should give it to--
give it to---
a really needy person,
that that would be
the best way of dealing
with this troublesome memory.
Pay ahead, I thought.
Since I can no longer pay back.
The blanket is rumpled up
between boxes I'm still too tired
to start unpacking
from my move last month.
In my last place
I covered a bedroom window with it
to block out sleep disturbing light
and headlights from the parking lot.
Yet I know it;s not mine to keep.
I know it is mine to give away
to somebody really needy.
Next winter maybe I'll do it.
But this winter I think I'll
draw it up over my shoulders again,
in the dark
as I did for 30 plus years,
to recall how I held onto, then
what little warmth I had left to keep.
I think I'll do that again this winter
At least one more time....
A BIG, EMPTY SPACE
Baby I just got the Map Quest directions
you wanted for your job-required trip tomorrow,
your 80-hour a week hob that puts our being
and thriving together on hold sometimes,
at least when you're at it. But don't get me wrong:
maybe I need your job sometimes--
I've realized this in the past few hours:
just like I needed my own job I had for 17 years,
the job they forced me to retire from 61/2 years ago,
the one I made airplanes on, the one --I now know--
I fought for so savagely because it helped
pull me away from the murkey, mud-hole violence
I was born to, that I've told you some about.
Airplanes! Sexy, cool airplanes!
Not so much the down, dirty , sometimes bloddy,
and maybe sometimes fun making of them,
but the airlanes: Fly me--near the moon--all that.
See I needed something like that to pull me away
from this past, death-before-life narrowness.
I still need something like that, because
I know, suddenly today, I can't do it by myself;
and nothing yet does it, neigher politics of peace
nor poetry nor delivering flowers part-time--
it all helped, but it wasn't enough.
Of course there was her, before we met,
the one who kept coming and going
and finally going for good, whom I finally
stopped wanting by snapping a rubber band on my wrist
whenever thoughts strayed her way,
at last, wonder of wonders,
leaving me a big, empty space
where the pain used to be,
a big empty space I promptly
tried to fill with Buddhism so as to reconcile myself
to being alone, to the anguish of it too.
Then you came along, wonderfully, all to the good!
But if you Map Quest directions that school,
you'll find it has you turn right on BELT LINE and then
Left on BRAND and then left on the school road;
But I called the school; they said no, don't do that;
it'll take you across the turnpike, involve a U-turn
and possible confusion. I've delivered up there;
I think they're right; so after 78 becomes SOUTH GARLAND,
bear or turn right on NORTH GARLAND,
at 1.0 miles or son, by Winters Park;
make a right on the school road;
they say there's a Sonic on the corner;
and try not to get lost; make sure you don't get lost;
I've got a lot riding on these directions...
TO MY DETRACTORS
A shambles. My life today a
shambles. A wreckage. An emotional
wreckage. Just for the day I hope.
Just New Year's Eve 1997.
Too much of this. Too little
of that. A life of things
undone, unachieved, weighted against
certain opposites...
After a nap a picking up of
pieces, in the darm crazy hours of
this absurd difficult new year: Three miles vigorous
walking, then 10 minutes awrobic
weight-lifting, circuit training
so-called, then " Tai-Chi Chuan"--
ultimate principle of existence exercise,
I guess sure footed, low centered,
twisting-turning-reaching-deep intakes
of air--did Mao Tse Tung do this?
Does it serve the people?
Picking up pieces with a walk,
curcuit training, Tai-chi,
and also gazing at treasures,
certain treasures...
I want to say to them this:
For years I've had to accept that
what I've done with respect to
these family issues
was done for compelling, I meean
really compelling reasons,
whether or not I know
what these reasons were. Ive had to
trust the evoving decision.
So must you. So must you.
And so I resolve. And so I resolve.
Remembering Richard May 30th Paperbacks Plus 6pm to 9pm
These are the poems that I have right now for anyone to choose from to read at Richard's Memorial. Please choose at least 2 that interest you and I will compile a list for Saturday. Some of you have some of his work already, or have written something to read, so please get me the title so I can include that in the program I will put together Friday night. Please get back to me as soon as possible, and I'm sorry this has taken so long to get to you all. I just got these today.
Politics
Yugoslavia
I bathe myself,
As our world does,
in a morning fog
that brings it all too near--
though at times I've
treasured this narrowing--
What is so wrong now?
Is anger--all anger--
about being pushed away,
about the broken bond?
Forgive me, I might ask you,
My so instransigent inabilities!
And yet,
And yet....
What was it that told me
the bombs were coming?
Yougoslavia, of course,
but there were other signs
and now that I read so well,
how do I fund my way?
Empire, they say,
will be persued--despite
TERROR-fied resistance!
How little, yes how little
I'm able to change!
My wounds leave their traces;
I shrink before your eyes .
What a scandal!
AT DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART LATE-NIGHT MARCH 17, 2006
THE RAIN CAME,just as I set out on my...mission, the mission I didn't know was a real mission until later; and I drove so attentively as the rain quickened , so circumspectly as I turned, so shrewdly anticipatory of others' auto perambulations that I should have known I only half-wanted to get where I was going... I REALIZED-but fully only later- that I was brooding about being hell-bent to remind these sense-revelers, art-partiers, dance addicts & sundry-and of these I'm sometimes one, especially the sundry-- I was to remind them there's a war on that shouldn't be on, that we are bonded to mass death, mass torture, mass fear-mongering and all the evils resulting; and I dimly, rightly foresaw no love or congratulations would come my way for bringing these matters up...MY POEM DID NOT EVEN highlight way as a central theme; it mentioned Vietnam and Iraq but only as a backdrop to the more...intimate...BUT , THEN, I WAS THE ONLY one-out of 70-odd who were asked-- the only one whose favorite word was peace, or any word comparable; and , then, the only one whose poetry even slightly refered to the current wartwo days before the third anniversary of the start it's awfulness; and so maybe all these celebrator are right; maybe we as a country in time will soak this up and wring this out and still be nearly the same richly raggedy place we were before... BUT NO; the new rain tells me... NO... AS I WAIR overlong for traffic and listen to the sharp drumming on my old car's old roof, the new rain tells me ...NO--yet my mind, is music enough....tonite...
Few know, many mourn;
spring's jagged edge murders song--
twisted tyrants rage,
raise funds, torture innocents;
the WAR is over. We---LOST!
* * *
I settle up my death:
rattle dread papers, read, sign--
dare I twist old chairs
toward long windows? Open blinds
to such welcoming, winged skies?
* * *
Wind maddened whitecaps
splattering up bright lakebanks--
storm maddened life, mine,
breaking, remaking, crushing
again: Beauty--ever new!
* * *
I rush to my rest;
my cupwets my shirt; I hear
shrill barks, read poems
from ages ago, glance up--
let friend and dog pass my door...
-----------------
A friend's son--struck dead;
photos, flowers--hewn words--bask
in stunned, rushed worship;
remembrance stokes flames: Grief, tears...
and such need to become--new!
-----------------
(At an evening vigil in Dallas, Texas to
honor Salvadoran Archbishio Oscar Romero,
popular spokesperson in behalf of poor and
opressed workers, who was gunned
down by U. S. - backed death squads in 1980)
Party lights uptown:
Candlelights downtown, for you--
great, murdered God's man
of !EL PUEBLO UNIDOS!--
here by these darkening streets...
--------------------
TO THE DAYS OF NO-EMPIRE
How will it be
when this madness of ruling
this "ruling madness, "
rule us no longer?
How willit be
to walk out of our house
in the days of No-Empire,
in the daylight to look
into neighbor's eyes, near and far,
with such forgiving
powerlessness?
How will it be, then,
to take up our tasks
with no curse on our hands?
No tremor in our hearts?
No good reason to fear
our stranger-brother's
murderous, mad anger
or to hear, in our shaking,
mid waking in the night,
his sister-mother-wife-child's
so awful, despairing cries?
How will it be, then,
my fellow-nationals of the USA,
to walk into our own, true,
beautiful day at last?
Do you really believe
we will never know?
RECENT WORKS/JULIE
NATURAL-UNNATURAL...
NO BAD DREAMS about wars living in Mexico , you said, bragging a little, I thinkk, about your expatriate life there; you'd driven 50 miles from Fort Worth, which you need to visit from time to time, to join me in the eclectic Dallas jazz bar because you wanted to hear some brilliant jazz before you went back to Mexico where there's music, for sure, but noth like this...I'D TOLD YOU I WAS FIGHTING TO RECOVER from six years of natural-unnatural shocks: a forced retirement, a brutalizing family crisis, a war in Iraq(despite all my frantic and heartfelt peace activism to prevent it) and--finally--an involvement with the girlfriend from hell... YOU THEN REMARKED ON THE IRAQ WAR'S bad effect on the mentality of nearly everyone you takled to in the USA; I told you I still had bad dreams about Vietnam though I was never in Vietnam; it was another war I'd tried, with millions of others to, to end... MY BAD DREAMS COME wheneverI read a novek, or sometimes a poem, about Vietnam; I see myself in the jungle, I told you, uniformed, equipped, killing, being killed, but that never happened--I was never there, though I wake up in horror; you nodded understanding, and then I'd asked you about living in Mexico, and you told me about no bad dreams and that big brother doesn't even want to know you...I'D BEGUN TELLING YOU ABOUT NATURAL-UNNATURAL SHOCKS, a forced retirement, a brutalizing family crisi, the Iraq War and the girlfriend from hell... YOU KNOW WHICH GIRLFRIEND I mean--the one the sharp, sweet jazz reminded me of, the one I started to miss, so much, again, just before you walked in the door and came over to my table, your head full of Mexico...
WHEN YOU WERE IN SAN
ANTONIO HAIKU
Emtiness beds down
next to me here
this late night;
heart far off;
thoughts near...
THIS NIGHT (for julie)
Next to me,
just where you've lain
until this night,
these bedclothes now,
covers torn aside,
gape openly, gape
openly,
left untended,
left untended,
for
your
returning,
healing
making whole
again...
Politics
Yugoslavia
I bathe myself,
As our world does,
in a morning fog
that brings it all too near--
though at times I've
treasured this narrowing--
What is so wrong now?
Is anger--all anger--
about being pushed away,
about the broken bond?
Forgive me, I might ask you,
My so instransigent inabilities!
And yet,
And yet....
What was it that told me
the bombs were coming?
Yougoslavia, of course,
but there were other signs
and now that I read so well,
how do I fund my way?
Empire, they say,
will be persued--despite
TERROR-fied resistance!
How little, yes how little
I'm able to change!
My wounds leave their traces;
I shrink before your eyes .
What a scandal!
AT DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART LATE-NIGHT MARCH 17, 2006
THE RAIN CAME,just as I set out on my...mission, the mission I didn't know was a real mission until later; and I drove so attentively as the rain quickened , so circumspectly as I turned, so shrewdly anticipatory of others' auto perambulations that I should have known I only half-wanted to get where I was going... I REALIZED-but fully only later- that I was brooding about being hell-bent to remind these sense-revelers, art-partiers, dance addicts & sundry-and of these I'm sometimes one, especially the sundry-- I was to remind them there's a war on that shouldn't be on, that we are bonded to mass death, mass torture, mass fear-mongering and all the evils resulting; and I dimly, rightly foresaw no love or congratulations would come my way for bringing these matters up...MY POEM DID NOT EVEN highlight way as a central theme; it mentioned Vietnam and Iraq but only as a backdrop to the more...intimate...BUT , THEN, I WAS THE ONLY one-out of 70-odd who were asked-- the only one whose favorite word was peace, or any word comparable; and , then, the only one whose poetry even slightly refered to the current wartwo days before the third anniversary of the start it's awfulness; and so maybe all these celebrator are right; maybe we as a country in time will soak this up and wring this out and still be nearly the same richly raggedy place we were before... BUT NO; the new rain tells me... NO... AS I WAIR overlong for traffic and listen to the sharp drumming on my old car's old roof, the new rain tells me ...NO--yet my mind, is music enough....tonite...
Few know, many mourn;
spring's jagged edge murders song--
twisted tyrants rage,
raise funds, torture innocents;
the WAR is over. We---LOST!
* * *
I settle up my death:
rattle dread papers, read, sign--
dare I twist old chairs
toward long windows? Open blinds
to such welcoming, winged skies?
* * *
Wind maddened whitecaps
splattering up bright lakebanks--
storm maddened life, mine,
breaking, remaking, crushing
again: Beauty--ever new!
* * *
I rush to my rest;
my cupwets my shirt; I hear
shrill barks, read poems
from ages ago, glance up--
let friend and dog pass my door...
-----------------
A friend's son--struck dead;
photos, flowers--hewn words--bask
in stunned, rushed worship;
remembrance stokes flames: Grief, tears...
and such need to become--new!
-----------------
(At an evening vigil in Dallas, Texas to
honor Salvadoran Archbishio Oscar Romero,
popular spokesperson in behalf of poor and
opressed workers, who was gunned
down by U. S. - backed death squads in 1980)
Party lights uptown:
Candlelights downtown, for you--
great, murdered God's man
of !EL PUEBLO UNIDOS!--
here by these darkening streets...
--------------------
TO THE DAYS OF NO-EMPIRE
How will it be
when this madness of ruling
this "ruling madness, "
rule us no longer?
How willit be
to walk out of our house
in the days of No-Empire,
in the daylight to look
into neighbor's eyes, near and far,
with such forgiving
powerlessness?
How will it be, then,
to take up our tasks
with no curse on our hands?
No tremor in our hearts?
No good reason to fear
our stranger-brother's
murderous, mad anger
or to hear, in our shaking,
mid waking in the night,
his sister-mother-wife-child's
so awful, despairing cries?
How will it be, then,
my fellow-nationals of the USA,
to walk into our own, true,
beautiful day at last?
Do you really believe
we will never know?
RECENT WORKS/JULIE
NATURAL-UNNATURAL...
NO BAD DREAMS about wars living in Mexico , you said, bragging a little, I thinkk, about your expatriate life there; you'd driven 50 miles from Fort Worth, which you need to visit from time to time, to join me in the eclectic Dallas jazz bar because you wanted to hear some brilliant jazz before you went back to Mexico where there's music, for sure, but noth like this...I'D TOLD YOU I WAS FIGHTING TO RECOVER from six years of natural-unnatural shocks: a forced retirement, a brutalizing family crisis, a war in Iraq(despite all my frantic and heartfelt peace activism to prevent it) and--finally--an involvement with the girlfriend from hell... YOU THEN REMARKED ON THE IRAQ WAR'S bad effect on the mentality of nearly everyone you takled to in the USA; I told you I still had bad dreams about Vietnam though I was never in Vietnam; it was another war I'd tried, with millions of others to, to end... MY BAD DREAMS COME wheneverI read a novek, or sometimes a poem, about Vietnam; I see myself in the jungle, I told you, uniformed, equipped, killing, being killed, but that never happened--I was never there, though I wake up in horror; you nodded understanding, and then I'd asked you about living in Mexico, and you told me about no bad dreams and that big brother doesn't even want to know you...I'D BEGUN TELLING YOU ABOUT NATURAL-UNNATURAL SHOCKS, a forced retirement, a brutalizing family crisi, the Iraq War and the girlfriend from hell... YOU KNOW WHICH GIRLFRIEND I mean--the one the sharp, sweet jazz reminded me of, the one I started to miss, so much, again, just before you walked in the door and came over to my table, your head full of Mexico...
WHEN YOU WERE IN SAN
ANTONIO HAIKU
Emtiness beds down
next to me here
this late night;
heart far off;
thoughts near...
THIS NIGHT (for julie)
Next to me,
just where you've lain
until this night,
these bedclothes now,
covers torn aside,
gape openly, gape
openly,
left untended,
left untended,
for
your
returning,
healing
making whole
again...
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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