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.
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