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...
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