weather report

brr.

Overcast. Chilly. Doesn't look like it'll rain. Weather report has it raining on the weekend.

What with the Monday holiday and taking today off I had a three day work week. A long week. By the end of the day my head's in a fog. Last weekend was a bust, despite the 3 days. I had 2 headaches and Kent was feeling low, too. Aren't there always so many things to do?

I put in a load of wash. I typed up a writing project.

Piles of shite to sort, and action needs be taken on some of it. What about selling Mom's house? Well?

Cats are underfoot. Sundy just bounded across the room. I'm not sure if it was to attack his brother.

hate

Kelli Russell Agodon has posted Marvin Bell's "32 Statements About Poetry".

#8 struck me: "Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate." I guess the advice here is to put ugly stuff in the poem, stuff you know some reader will loathe. Fact is, of course, it takes no effort to produce something someone will hate. Soon's you've put a word on paper someone will scorn it.

male gaze

"I look straight into men's eyes. Not with desire, but with the interest of one human being in another. To a straight guy, for whom that sort of relationship with a woman is complex and blurred, a stranger's unashamed and direct gaze is sexual. It's the gaze of the prostitute." Eleanor Brown

library down

The Berkeley Public Library has been having computer troubles for three weeks now. Sometimes just the internet is down. Sometimes everything's fine. Other times all the computers are kaput and when you go to the check-out desk the desk clerks have to write down the barcodes of the books you want to check out; when the computer comes up they'll rush to enter as many barcodes into the system as they can before the computer goes down. This also means the library catalog is down most the time so you can't look up anything. More than one patron has said, "Don't you wish you'd kept the card catalog?"

I guess in Technical Services where I work (no, Tech Services has nothing to do with keeping the computers running, it's where books are ordered, received, cataloged and those nice plastic covers put on) the computers have been up more often than the ones at the public service desks, so I've been (ugh) relatively lucky. Supposedly the problems plaguing the network for the last two weeks got fixed; then on the Monday holiday a power outage burned out a couple hard drives (or something). Though the computers were up today they weren't up to much. The later the day got the slower the computer on my desk got. And the back-up disk only captured activity up to Thursday night, thus everything entered into the computers on Friday was lost. That didn't affect me, but my supervisor was sure moanin'.

It's been seriously unfun, y'know?

poets bloggin'

"I was the guest speaker at a software conference in Sidney and got fired in the US while in Australia, so I spent 5 weeks living in a hotel, reading Pynchon and feeding the larakeets on the lanai." link

"I looked down at the controls: the power light was out. I toggled the switch but nothing happened. The chair was dead. That didn't stop me from trying the switch several more times, though. Almost immediately, I knew what I was looking at, besides the wall: five and a half hours until Steve would show up. And five and a half hours it was." link

"If you are thinking about welding, forget it. Poems do not weld. A highly skilled person can braze a poem together, but the high heat can distort it and can be expensive. I recommend 'gluing' poems together." link

Anagrams of names of poets' blogs ... includes "Therapist With a Dream Inside: I Am the Pirate’s Hardiest Wind" link

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 1

This is another 20 year old poem. It's from that "Blue & Yellow Sun/Work Journal Part 2" from which I've taken my last couple poems-to-revise. Poor me. I was a depressed kid. What? You're surprised?

I'm posting this one because I like elements of it, it embarasses me a little, and I don't see what to do with it.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating

“Glenn! Didn’tchu hear me?”

The day is whipped with a whisk.
A gust pulls my hair,
flicks my forehead with stray strands.
Two girls, “young women”
one dark haired, tan skin,
the other fair, rippling white-fleece hair.
My back to the wall. “Hi!”

As always I step back nonphysically,
though I am glad to see them.
We converse
graduating Friday?
No! Tomorrow!
Seen any of the summer movies?
one, but not really a “summer” movie.
MariBeth stands beside me smiling,
saying little,
while Julie pulls her hair back
from her shoulders.

I want to be natural,
not tumbling over inside.
Hands clutch, unclutch in pockets.
doing anything?
well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter
munches on her cream cheese slathered bagel.
The wall offers little support
as I rest my back.

coming to graduation?
Julie and MariBeth both are graduating,
only a year from my formal exit.
It’s a cliché, but can it be a year?
They still seem so young
but I feel no older or more mature.
Am I really eighteen?
They are ready to leave.
I tag along.

i hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party?
no.
The subject dilutes in the wind.
We are wandering down Main.
they hold up more conversational weight
than I.
I exist in a limbo world; isolated.
My words filter through the void,
I am an incredible distance from them,
when should i be holding on?
already I let go.

Flash

Flashy is chewing her butt raw. We've dosed her & the cats with flea meds, both internally & externally. Hope that shuts down the irritation that's causing her to gnaw her fur off. Poor girl. Besides the flea-specific potions Kent bought some anti-itch sprays at the pet store. The sprays seem to have a lot of tea tree oil in them, which at least doesn't smell bad. They haven't done magic, though. Today when K & I got home from an aborted trip to SF (BART train got stuck at MacArthur station for an indefinite delay -- "at least 20 minutes," the announcement said, sounding optimistic -- we hopped out and took a bus back to Berkeley) we found Flash had chewed another hole in her fur, her exposed skin inflamed. As with barking and trash raiding she knows we don't want her chewing herself so only really gets down to serious gnawing when we're away.

gannon

The Gannon Story has been bubbling up for a couple weeks now. "Jeff Gannon" is nom de video of the man in the White House press room who asked George W. Bush that weird softball question recently, the one that accused Democrats of being "out of touch with reality." Gannon's sort of noise fills up the private rooms where Republicans let down their hair, and gets noted with indignant gasps on lefty weblogs or op-eds but seldom gets disseminated from such august settings as the media room of the White House. My favorite coinage so far tags the story, "Propagannon"; this man smelled of the dirty-tricks propaganda campaigns of Bush behind-the-scenes man Karl Rove. Or, anyway, some diarists at dailykos decided to run "Gannon" in Google and see what came up. And things came up!

You have to know already the context for this post, but it's a nice thumbnail of the "gay underground", the closeted men who know that being out would get in the way of their hobnobbing with the powerful, so they're not out, sometimes married, and often verbally bash out gays, either because they are self-hating or as a calculated distraction. Padraig (at the link) says, "I know Gay men of a certain age and income who routinely excoriate "the fags" ... But since the lights are out in the orgy rooms, good Republicans are happy to just overlook and pretend not to see. It is the public avowal of affection that makes them crazy over the gay marriage issue. ... I personally am sick and tired of being told that my only option is to have a lavender marriage with an understanding lesbian or a loveless marriage with an unsuspecting woman while trolling public toilets and internet chat rooms on the side. [Typical Republican alternatives to same sex marriage]"

For that context go to the "Jeff Gannon" page at dkosopedia.

po biz

Are you interested in the poetry business? As a writer of poems and one who would be happy to see a few of those in print it's my job to be, I guess. But reading about how many thousands of poems jostle in the slush that washes up on the desk of every harried poetry editor, especially when an editor says something like this, "I have 61 submissions [3-6 poems in each submission] I need to read, a combination of submissions that passed our initial readers, submissions from previous contributors, and submissions from very established poets. Although one can always dream big, it is unlikely I will find more than maybe 2 or 3 poems in this stack to publish."

[Full disclosure. *And, no, I haven't seen nearly so many poems.]

Then there are contests. I don't like contests. I don't think they are a good idea. I have entered contests -- yes, I wanted to be a Yale Younger Poet! I just think a publisher shouldn't publish the best but what he likes the most, what he loves, what he has fallen in love with, what he can't live without, what he has to show the whole goddamn world, what he is willing to sacrifice for, because with poetry publishers rarely break even let alone make bucks.

On his blog Steve Mueske posts correspondence with a suspicious poet on whether the new contest Steve is sponsoring is rigged. I know Steve a teeny tiny bit from an online workshop and from publishing one of his poems in the latest issue of Hogtown Creek Review. He's a very good writer and his three candles is worth reading. Now he's getting into the publishing of real books. The poet who wins his contest will be fortunate.

reviews

I haven't been reading it much lately but I discovered Rhubarb is Susan, a blog that reviews individual poems plucked from ezines and if anyone is curious about such a project it's quite readable.

we have poems

Kent took my back-up Zip disk to work and transferred its load of poems and other writings to one of those little flash memories plug-ins, which he brought home and poked into the USB port. Nearly everything that I'd typed into the PC was on that disk. OK. We're in business.

a shuffle of ten

1. "Bamako City" Malian Musicians & Damon Albarn

2. "Scottish Rite Temple Stomp" Ninian Hawick

3. "Get Up and Go" The Go-Gos

4. "American Pie" Don McLean

5. "Jack Names the Planets" Ash

6. "Miss Dandys" Bandit Queen

7. "Laid (live)" James

8. "364" 7th Betty

9. "Worked Up So Sexual" The Faint

10. "Speeding" The Go-Gos


Curious, I thought I'd deleted the Go-Gos from my iPod. Oh, I see. I only deleted the playlist for the Go-Gos. They must still be in the library. Hm. Gotta fix that. I don't hate the Go-Gos or anything. I just didn't much like this selection of Go-Gos' songs so I deleted them all (I thought) to make room for other stuff.

poets bloggin'

I am pleased to see two names that became familiar to me via poetry bulletins boards are now blogging:

Amy Unsworth ... in her latest post Amy asks if she should be working harder on getting her work out, "Should I be more motivated to submit? When I'm in the mood where I hear time's winged chariot, I get annoyed because I haven't been submitting. But for the last few months I haven't felt motivated to get the work out. Writing alone is enough."

Frank Matagrano ... In posts so far Frank has excerpted from articles on Deep Throat (the Watergate source), the benefits of a wok's breath (wok hay), and prescription drugs. But he also notes an acceptance of two poems by a literary magazine.

sending poems out

I have not sent any poems out anywhere in ... months? Maybe years.

I only have a few on the Mac, the computer with internet access. I can print out poems from the PC. I tell myself I'll do that. There are certainly places I could be (ought to be?) sending work.

But last night I decided to send some stuff out and I wasn't up to the whole printing and self-addressing and stamping so it would have to be a literary ezine. I quickly wrote a note and grabbed 3/4 of the poems on the Mac (which would be 6 poems for those who want to know) and copied 'em to the email to send to Poetry Superhighway.

Featured poet of the week? Me?

random blog sentences

"This seems like something I would like to do with my life. Write a great book and then hide in an apartment in new york." link ... how funny. the preceding sentence has been edited out of the post to which I linked. The post, having been edited, changed its URL. Now the only place these words appear on the web is here. Whatever!

"people left, got new shoes, came home, had fun" link

"two guys playing a $25,000 match of Pong" link

"Albert got the idea that he could weigh his mice. So he brought them down one at the time and put them on our scale. And then he wrote down how much each one weighed." link

ALL SENTENCES FOUND BY HITTING THE "NEXT BLOG" BUTTON AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE.

this year

I didn't go to City Hall. But many did.

SF marriages

The marriages at SF City Hall. A year ago.

scary rabbit

My brother David has occasionally been creating his own renditions of movie monsters, particularly the ones that could have been realized better in their bad movies.

"Night of the Lepus is a bad movie. Well, not a bad movie so much as a bad execution of a silly idea. ... But think about it - giant jack rabbits hungering for your flesh? Giant carnivorous beasts that move as fast as panthers and can leap a twelve foot wall?" Scary!

Hogtown Creek Review

Hogtown Creek Review is now available at Cody's in Berkeley.

It's supposed to be in Moe's, too. But I can't find it on the shelf. I left 3 copies with Owen, the poetry buyer, when I was at Moe's for the Ron Silliman/Kit Robinson reading.

comments on "Love" version 5

I don't like version 5 as much as version 4. I've been thinking version 4 is the final version. But I wanted to try again after I achieved a final version. I haven't done that before. Plus I find version 5 interesting. I think its argument is better constructed than version 1. There were things (many things) version 4 left behind and I wanted to give the other elements another chance.

"Love", version 5

The sky likes love.
Love always rides there with the moon.
The stars are jealous.

I dream about love between the stars.
The sky is passionate with me.
Stars love passion more than they love me.
Love vanishes like stars in the sky.

Stars love the way I love.
Love loves love in the sky.
In the sky love pursues love to the stars.
Still I love love.

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the love in the stars in the sky.
I love the way the stars love the sky.
I love the sky.

see the clever birdie

crow fashions tool to get yums

summary judgment

Judge Doris Ling-Cohan of a New York Supreme Court (unlike the US Supreme Court, the New York Supreme Court is a lower-level court; the NY Court of Appeals is the court that has the last word in NY) ruled on summary judgment that the state of New York must begin issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Being as Kent's a lawyer and reads & writes about court decisions as part of his job I asked him how significant he thought it was that the judge ruled on summary judgment. Kent shrugged. "You have a trial when the facts are disputed."

In her opinion Judge Ling-Cohan says, "Defendant [the City Clerk of New York] does not dispute that plaintiffs [the same sex couples currently suing to be allowed to marry] are serious, committed couples, devoted to building lives together as families, whose relationships are no different from those of married couples. In fact, [the city clerk] acknowledges that same-sex couples can establish committed, loving relationships and can be fine parents. Since both sides agree that there are no material facts in dispute, summary judgment is appropriate."

Further the judge finds, "[The city clerk] does not dispute that plaintiffs and their children suffer serious burdens by being excluded from civil marriage. Marriage provides an extensive legal structure that protects the couple and any children." She goes on to list several of these, including joint income tax filing, joint property ownership, collecting on life insurance, presumed relation to children, inheritance, etc. I downloaded the pdf of the decision. The pdf is available at the Lambda Legal site.

The judge stayed her order for 30 days. Even if there had been no appeal (and the mayor of New York City has already appealed) there weren't going to be any gay marriages right away. Some surprise. Anyway, Kent seems not to find the summary judgment aspect particularly significant, at least as regards the eventual outcome. At this point it's this judge's opinion and nothing has changed really, not for anyone who wants to get married.

comments on "Love" version 4

ah yes, even more "brutal" ...

"Love", version 4

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the sky.
I love the sky in the stars in the sky.
I love the stars in the sky in the sky in the stars.
I love the sky in the sky in the stars.
In the stars I love the sky in the stars.
I love stars in sky in the stars’ sky.
I love the sky, the stars, and the stars.
I love the sky in stars.

fingerspelling

I've studied sign language. My hands are frequently in motion anyway so some years ago I decided to incorporate fingerspelling into my fidgets. If my hand was going to be jiggling or fiddling it might as well be improving my manual alphabet at the same time. I'll fingerspell signs as I pass them, fingerspell words as they pass through my head. When this will come in handy, who knows, it's not like many people can read fingerspelling.

the sun king

When I hear an American soldier has died in Iraq I picture him kneeling blindfolded on the White House lawn while George W. Bush plugs him in the back of the head.

Last night Kent said, "Bush would never be able to do that."

And I said, "He could. Easily. Maybe he'd need a couple authority figures standing beside him, a Dick Cheney, a Donald Rumsfeld. But he would do it. And feel good about it. Day after day."

Kent had been watching a special on Auschwitz and was impressed again by the way ordinary men were essential to the running of the factories of death. He saw one interviewed, a man who processed the goods stolen from the people shipped to the camps, the man volunteered an interview to contradict the Holocaust-deniers. It really happened, he wanted to say. It happened and I helped it happen. Was I ever prosecuted? No. Few were.

Funny Bush's assertion that democracy is essential, that freedom is what America is bringing to Iraq. I don't believe him. He is no fan of democracy. He's not interested in it here.

Fact is, I'm okay with the notion that democracy can be/ought to be spread around ... that a benevolent military power might even effect positive change with guns. There are certainly evil dictators that need taking down. But it'll only work when the power that forces change is ... not stupid. Is truthful. Is generous. Is thoughtful. Is ... wise? Wise. That'd be something. Wise would mean such military might is used rarely and then carefully, thinking far into the future about what changes it brings -- both to the liberated people and to the liberators.

The American people in sending Bush back to the White House chose the sun king, the lord that feasts on human hearts ... in order that the sun come up tomorrow? And the American people decided his hunger could be fed with a few troops a day.

pwoermd of the day

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepuh?

misc

sore from lifting weights at the gym ... one of the personal trainers was helping a new member set up his routine, I worked out around them, the trainer said to me, "you're doing good, nice form." ... I followed a woman onto a thigh machine and had to reduce the weight by 5 pounds; later I followed her on an arm machine and she looked all worn down so I said, "if it makes you feel any better I had to reduce the weight when I sat down after you at the thigh machine." she blinked, then said, "I guess that makes me feel a little better."

kent gives me updates on "24", which I don't watch. I prefer k's updates to watching the show.

kent made a mix CD last night and listened to it today, "it's really tough to get a mix just right."

went to a meeting this morning to learn about the library's newest Electronic Resources. what comes to mind when you see the phrase "Electronic Resources"? me, I get stuck on the "electronic" part, then I think these "resources" must have to do with electronics or computers or something ... but it seems these are reference databases the library subscribes to. dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes to periodicals and associations. during the meeting I suggested renaming the page, instead of "Electronic Resources" howabout oh maybe "Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Indexes, etc."?

influence

C. Dale Young wonders about his "voice": "When I first started seriously writing poems, I spent a lot of time worrying about 'voice.' So many people, especially in graduate school, had a running discussion about finding one's voice. I became a little paranoid about it. Listening to them, I knew I didn't want to become an imitation of a poet I liked. I went so far as to never read one book of poetry at a time because I feared I would start emulating that poet. I always read two books around the same time, hoping to offset the other. So, I would read Sylvia Plath next to George Herbert, Marianne Moore next to John Donne, John Ashbery next to Whitman. ...

Recently, a friend of mine read the galleys for my new book. In a phone conversation, he reported: 'Your work is all about shadow.' My response: 'What are you talking about?'"

I posted the following in Comments: "Several years ago I thought to myself, the poem I'm writing today sounds like it's in the style of a poet I read a month ago. I wasn't sure whether that excited me (hey, I can write that sort of poem, too!) or if it made me nervous (anybody can see this is just an imitation of so-and-so).

There are certain poems I've written that sound most characteristic of my own 'voice'. There are times I think all my poems sound the same. A teacher once said one of my poems seemed typical of me and I said, 'What's typical for me?' A sort of meditative, contemplative poem, he said. I had to think about that."

Kent and I ate our brunch at on Chester's deck this morning. We were able to see San Francisco clearly, despite a quite usual thin haze. Young has a nice post today about the weather where he is: "Outside, the sun is out and the light is that gauzy light you see in San Francisco many times during the year. All that salt water in the air refracting the light and the hills partitioning up this light so that everything glows as if in a very well-planned fish bowl. Out over Golden Gate Park, the Marin Headlands, grey but somewhat golden from the sea's reflected light. And off to the left, the breakers landing at Ocean Beach while two teenage boys are running along the tops of the dunes. Out by the Cliff House, a red kite. And everywhere, the sound of the Pacific, the dim roar one hears in a shell held to one's ear."

Why do I suspect that "gauzy light" is as much smog as "salt water in the air refracting the light"?

comments on "Love" version 3

I restricted this version to these words: love star sky I dream moon

OK. You got me. I didn't. I may yet.

"Love", version 3

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the sky, the way the sky loves stars.

Stars love the sky.
Stars love the way the sky loves stars.

The sky loves stars more than I.
I love stars and I love sky.

I dream about love between stars.
In the sky there are stars and stars.

Stars love stars.
There is one sky, one love, one me.

There is one dream the moon turns.
And in this dream I love and sky.

Rice defines herself

Last week I heard an excerpt from the Senate confirmation hearings for Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, after having run through a list of Rice's statements in the lead up to war, "Your loyalty to the mission [invading Iraq] ... overwhelmed your respect for the truth."

To which Rice replied, "I'd like to [discuss this] in such a way that it does not impugn my integrity."

That night the local PBS station was airing some sort of guide on buying antiques. The show's host demonstrated how to ask a dealer questions about a piece of interest. Ask where the dealer acquired the piece, what he knows about its history, has he himself made any repairs, etc. The host pulled out a drawer and pointed out a hidden repair to the back end of the drawer. The dealer nodded, made a couple additional comments ... When he'd walked away the host said to the camera (I'm paraphrasing), "That dealer was honest and upfront. He answered my questions quickly and matter-of-factly. Beware the dealer who says, when you point out a flaw in the piece (and a possible contradiction in what he's so far told you), 'Are you trying to impugn my integrity?'"

Japanglish

In David Chadwick's tale about moving to Japan to study Zen, Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan, he spends a couple pages on the ways the Japanese use English; it's a dash of the exotic. A lady's dress shop called Infect. A coffee shop called Guns and Coffee.

Chadwick taught English. He copied down these slogans from student Tshirts:

Pay close attention to various objects and be calm

for the player who demands the ultimate best sensitive comfortable fat fashion good things exist throughout time

Here's something printed on one of the notebooks he bought: please use this note book politely, and use up the last sheet. And then please use your brains everyday.

Dear Emily

In her poem "Dear Emily Dickinson" Cathleen Calbert asks Ms D lots of questions ("... how would you classify yourself? / Agoraphobic? Anorexic? New England eccentric? / ... / Did you have trouble rhyming? / ... Were you thinking -- / in gaps?"), and ends her poem with "... I've read every one / of your goddamned poems, / and I still don't know what they mean."

It always baffles me when I see people who otherwise fume about obscurity in poetry call Emily Dickinson a favorite. I've been gradually working my way through Dickinson's complete poems, I've been working on it for years now, likely I'll be working on it for years yet. Dickinson intrigues me. She really is like no one else. But her poems read like riddles. And they seem to me so fierce, a philosopher's work, as difficult to read as the thoughts they contain. Sure there are the anthology pieces. Dickinson wrote many many poems and many are easy, even goopy in their bees and sunsets sentimentality, but the more typical Dickinson, I'd say, is:

poem numbered 868

They ask but our Delight --
The Darlings of the Soil
And grant us all their Countenance
For a penurious smile.

What are the "Darlings"? Flowers? I'm tempted to say worms. And why is the smile "penurious"? Is it begrudging? Is it the smile of the poverty-stricken?

Then there's, poem #870

Finding is the first Act,
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"
Fourth, no Discovery --
Fifth, no Crew --
Finally, no Golden Fleece --
Jason -- sham -- too

Is this a version of the Hollywood formula -- boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-gets-girl-back? ... Maybe boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl-boy-never-really-had-girl-in-the-first-place ... boy was even deluding himself that he met a girl? And boy doesn't exist either? It's a fucking movie! Stumble out into the daylight and take your popcorn with you!

Ron Silliman

Being as I've been reading Ron's blog almost daily (it's a nice break from the political blogs I otherwise obsessively visit & revisit), and he did quote me on his blog, something like, "What the hell are you talking about, Ron?", I hied myself over to Telegraph Ave for his reading. He lives in Philadelphia. I'm not sure what brought him to Berkeley, other than the Moe's reading (he gave another reading or two while in the area). I'm sure I've seen Ron read before. At least once. But I didn't remember his reading style. Turns out he's above average as a poet-performer. He read about farting underwater and punned and riffed off pop culture & politics, one long jumble of a piece.

Kit Robinson, who read first, writes in a similar vein (Ron said, "Whenever I hear Kit he reads poems I wish I'd written.") but he read with little inflection. I was sleepy (having woken in the middle of the night last night and not been able to get back to sleep) so I yawned and yawned during Kit's reading. Ron's reading was sprightly enough to wake me.

comments on "Love", version 2

I wrote version 2 last night. Right fresh it seemed clever and funny. Aged a day I'm finding it faux naif. Too cute. The original version is brutal, you might say, in that it forces variations even when they're absurd, the variations limited to a few words. Version 2 gets love-eyed and stars dance like fairies in it, reaches for a pretty metaphysics, less bounded loses tension.

"Love" version 2

"Love as a Matter for Stars"


I love the stars.
I love the sky which provides a place for stars.
I love the sky, most all the time.

The sky loves its stars, why not?
The stars love each other, love each other times one billion trillion.
The stars love!

The sky loves its stars more than I.
Stars would love me if I were a star, especially if I were a big star.
In the sky love is all over, filling up the space between stars, filling up the stars.
Is there room for anything else? No! Love is always expanding.

When I wake up in the middle of the night I discover I’ve been dreaming about love between stars.
It’s very hot, this love. I have to take off my sweaty shirt.
Even though it’s cold in space love doesn’t shiver.

Love rides a sunbeam, when it’s relaxing, when it doesn’t want to get anywhere fast.
Otherwise love is already there, where love would go if it weren’t there.

Love is sitting on the moon watching me.
I want to be there, too! I’m envious.
I would hop up and down in lunar gravity, holding onto love.
Then, because you have to, I’d let go, whee! And we’d both fall down.

comments on "Love"

"Love" is from the Tales of the Blue & Yellow Sun notebook. But not the Blue & Yellow Sun section. After I grew tired of the Blue & Yellow Sun stuff the notebook sat around partially filled and I began a notebook which I titled Tales of Nothing in Particular. It was my first work journal and it was there I started using the method I've continued using for 20 years now. I start a poem in the notebook, then write on it until it's finished or I don't want to write on it further. When next I open the notebook I either do some tweaking of the poems already in it, continue the last poem I was writing, or start a new one. If a poem wants extensive revision or an older poem wants additions I would type the poem then do revisions on the typed version. Since I've had the computer I've done most revision on the computer. In the last couple years I've done serial poems in the notebook. Used to be it was rare for me to extend a poem; it was always a new poem I was writing, even if the new poem was a sequel or variation on the theme of the poem last written. These days I seem to do a lot of variation on a theme in the bounds of what I think of as a single poem. I'm now willing to allow the poem a lot of range.

In "Love" I was trying out a lot of variation on a single idea. I think it works pretty well. Maybe it's fine as it is. When I was reading it in the notebook another version started bubbling around it so I quickly typed up the original then started pursuing the new.

"Love"

I love the stars in the sky.
I love the love in the stars in the sky.
I love the way the stars love the sky.
I love the sky.
Stars love the way I love.
Love loves love in the sky.
In the sky love pursues love to the stars.
Still I love love.
I dream about love between the stars.
The sky is passionate with me.
Stars love passion more than they love me.
Love vanishes like stars in the sky.
The sky likes love.
Love always rides there with the moon.
The stars are jealous.

my job

A friend asked me about the state of my job. "I haven't read anything about it lately on your blog."

I haven't been talking about the library because, frankly, I've been waiting to find out something definite about it. Will I still be working there at the start of the new fiscal year this summer? Until this week I'd thought my chances quite good -- lay-offs depend not only on whom or what positions the library administration wants to terminate or eliminate but also on union seniority rules. My seniority in my job classification is fairly low but since I'm fulltime I've actually banked a relatively large amount of seniority since most jobs in my class are parttime. But the rules are complicated, it seems. And is the administration doing a bunch of job reclassifications? Can person with 20 years experience in parttime position X job classificaton U, where position X is being eliminated, bump person with 2 years experience in position Y job classification V, where position Y is fulltime and job classifications U and V have different requirements?

I'm told there is going to be a special meeting of the Board of Library Trustees this Wednesday. The Board has to approve the administration's proposals and supposedly the board isn't just a rubberstamp but actually curious and skeptical.

lunch hour

Just read through Robert Ullman's comics diary Lunch Hour Comics.

Ullman tried to do a brief comic a day, the production of the day's piece to take no more than an hour. These are simple, nicely drawn moments. Ullman even allows himself a couple, I-can't-think-of-anything strips. Ullman's cartoon version of himself is cute. For a reason that's not compelling (to see if I can?) I've decided to post to this blog every day. This means there are going to be plenty of days in which I think, as Ullman does on his diary of 3/9/04, he's drawing a four-panel grid in his spiral bound sketchbook, a cup of coffee on a napkin on the round table (in a cafe?), his chin resting on an elbow, "It's only taken about a week of this to determine that my life is pretty boring."

pwoermd of the day

eadacheadacheadach

deleted

I leave joky comments on people's blogs. When I go back they've been deleted. On this blog all objectionable comments are pre-deleted.

am I really reading this many books?

What's in my stack of active reading:

A Few Perfect Hours ... and other stories from Southesast Asia and Central Europe, a comic-art travelogue by Josh Neufeld

The Adventures of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, a graphic novel by Chris Ware

Purgatorial, poems by Dale Jensen

What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hip-hop, edited by Gary Gach

In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall's famous account of watching the Chimpanzees at Gombe Stream

The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report by Timothy Ferris

Between the Palms: a collection of Gay Travel Erotica edited by Michael T. Luongo

The Best American Poetry 2004, guest editor Lyn Hejinian

Red Mars, a science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, vol 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude, edited by Jerome Rothenberg & Pierre Joris

The New York Trilogy, three short novels by Paul Auster

Plus the book I read in the tiny window of my lunch hour during the week: Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan by David Chadwick

There are other books I've started but haven't been reading lately. One or more of the above may actually be in that category (or may soon be). Let's not mention magazines and blogs, newspapers and correspondence.

Poetry Walked

The reading was good -- that Berkeley Rep has a nice sound system, except, that is, for the inevitable but unplanned-for tango with the microphone stand. This poet is tall, that poet is short. But is there anybody adjusting the mic for the difference? And, since there isn't anybody to do it for them, do the poets figure out how to do it themselves? Or do they stand on tiptoe, fumble the mic loose from its grip, or hunch over? Yeah. Well.

Not every poet scheduled was able to make it. The man who wrote "Puff, the Magic Dragon", Lenny Lipton, was supposed to croon the song in the first part of the evening but came late. When he did get up on stage he brought along the lyrics. "I wrote this 41 years ago," he said. Most the audience knew the words. Oddly, I got teary. And that song has always annoyed me. It's a death sentence for the imagination.

I gave copies of Hogtown Creek Review to Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, and Judy Grahn. Hass brightened when I went up to him, he's such a nice man, quickly introducing his wife, Brenda (Hillman, also a poet), and I gave my name saving Bob from having to remember it. (Like I would blame him for that!) Lyn recognized one of the names on the cover (Niloufar) and when I said I wondered why they chose to put Niloufar on the cover when she was just the translator, Lyn shrugged, "The translator so often doesn't even get a credit." Judy Grahn was at a table in the lobby when I was shuffling out through the crowd. I thrust the anthology under her nose for autograph. The woman seated next to Judy was saying how much she enjoyed Grahn's Another Mother Tongue, a work of historiography on gay roles. I said, "Ms. Grahn, I read Another Mother Tongue at a time in my life when it was very important to me." Judy paused, touched, and took my hand.

Lucy Day, who has sent poems for HCR to my PO Box, said hi, and I thanked her for sending poems and said I wasn't sure if there would be another issue. I'd let her know. Hope springs eternal, eh?

I've started Lyn's number of Best American Poetry, not out long.

Poetry Walk

The poems have been in the sidewalk for a year and a half now and I still haven't read them all. I remember passing Robert Hass one morning on my way to work. He was holding a cup of coffee and mingling with several other middle-aged-ish, intellectual-looking folks at the corner of Addison & Shattuck. That yellow do-not-cross-this-line tape was stretched between fold-out traffic barriers. Workers were doing something to the sidewalk, I could see.

The poems are all collected now in a paperback anthology. I bought the book at a library event, a trial heat, one might say, to today's 2 hour plus reading with "Robert Hass, Opal Palmer Adisa, Ivan Arguelles, Alfred Arteaga, Chana Bloch, Joshua Clover, Lucha Corpi, Jean Day, Lucille Lang Day, Patricia Dienstfrey, Marcia Falk, Jack and Adelle Foley, Gloria Frym, Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Griffin, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Alice Jones, Joyce Jenkins, Ron Loewinsohn, Jack Marshall, David Meltzer, Adam David Miller, Laura Moriarty, Michael Palmer, Jim Powell, Stephen Ratcliffe, John Roberts, Kit Robinson, James Schevill, Richard Silberg, Carol Snow, Julia Vinograd, and Dean Young." I haven't read the book yet, either. But don't I got lotsa books to read? How many sidewalks?

Blogarama

I listed my site.

titanic

I washed a big pile of dishes. What I had in the 5-CD changer: Jeff Buckley's Grace, which Kent bought today at Amoeba (K has been playing Buckley's version of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" for days), John Wesley Harding's The Confessions of St. Ace, Hapa (their self-titled first release), Pansy Division's Total Entertainment, and Jill Sobule's Happy Town.

A pleasing mix.

Have been checking in on Nasa's page of pictures from Saturn, particularly the new ones of Titan.

I haven't posted a new version of the Blue & Yellow Sun poem because I haven't done a new version of it. I started typing into the computer all the Blue & Yellow Sun poems (& stories), thinking I'd do a global revision, but there are a lot of them.

pwoermds

Ron Silliman talks about Geof Huth's anthology of pwoermds, the term one of many Huth seems to have coined or adjusted the meaning of. "Pwoermds" reminds me of one of my brother David's coinages, "Switagern" which is a griffin-like beast whose front portion is swan and whose back portion is tiger. Note that both Geof & David use every letter from the two source words when creating a new one. Ron doesn't seem much impressed by the pwoermd ... "a comprehensive anthology of literary minimalism – from the one-letter poems of Joyce Holland’s Alphabet Anthology up to, say, haiku – would generally reveal pwoermds to be the weakest mode therein." I don't know what all is in the Huth anthology (I could probably buy the damn thing, yeah?) but I wonder if Huth has included poems associated with American haiku, like the ones I saw in Cor van den Heuvel's Haiku Anthology, "foalmosteady", being a favorite of mine (foal+almost+steady). (Consulting my notebook I see I encountered "foalmosteady" by Emily Romano in the magazine Modern Haiku edited by Robert Spiess, not in the Haiku Anthology. However, in the Haiku Anthology one would see some by Marlene Mountain, including, "sn wfl k s")

In Silliman's comments I threw in a pwoermd, riffing off one by John Byrum, "UTTER":

UDTER

Senorita Beche

Senorita Beche travels the coast.

good Chinese food

If you are in Berkeley and you want Chinese food eat at Mandarin Garden. Mandarin Garden used to be called Yu Ying. Yu Ying River? Or just Yu Ying? I think they changed the name at the recommendation of a consultant. We've yet to order something we don't like. They have prompt delivery, too.

Around the corner there's Long Life Vegi House, which is also good. When I was attending UC Berkeley my mother would visit once a month and take me to lunch at Long Life Vegi. She would tell the waiters how great everything was, how she came all the way from Sebastopol for their food. When I'd graduated and was finally making some money I would pay and insist she be the one to take home any leftovers. Finally, sick of the place, I insisted we eat other places.

Kent and I have probably eaten more times at Mandarin Garden than I ate at Long Life Vegi. And I still like the food. Not that I hate the food at Long Life. I'd eat there again, I suppose. Their gluten-based chicken simalcrum is pretty decent. And it has a certain atmosphere. A very Chinese-restaurant bustle.

money money

I've seen dollar bills stamped "Queer Money" to demonstrate how money passes through the hands of queers, too. A pre-wheresgeorge hint of what dirty (or pious) fingers have fiddled with the corners of your Abe. Didn't I used to suck on pennies? Yeah. They tasted best.

Now there's a gay charity, Rainbow World Fund. Their "mission is to promote LGBT philanthropy in the area of world humanitarian relief." This way people in blighted countries will think, Hey, those weird Western ways sure work for me! Well, as the button on the cap ever on Julia Vinograd's head has it, you gotta be "Weird and proud".

Money from our movement. Tsunami relief or Subaru.

We've had a five dollar bill sitting on the desk for ... weeks? We can't quite bear to spend it, I guess. There's a mash note across the Lincoln Memorial:

EDEN,

Don't worry
I wouldn't
wish myself
on anyone
either but
sometimes
two wrongs
do make a
right.
[heart]
Alekzi [?]
689-9604

all three

All three animals are in the room. Both cats are settled on the back of the couch, facing away from me. The dog is on the floor behind my chair, licking a paw.

I phoned the US District Court in Oakland tonight. No jury duty this time, but call again later this month at such-n-such a time ... this is the 2nd time I've been put off. How many times can they do that?

Kent is watching the start of the new season of "24".

cold & rainy

Looks ugly out the window.

Went last night to Poetry & Pizza, the reading series I help run. Both readers were very good. I talked afterward with Shola Wolpe. She's got several readings in the area. A real variety of venues: coffee shop, pub, radio, bookstore. That's saturation! I hope she sells a lot of books. She lives in Los Angeles but (as you can see by her calendar of readings) she gets around. Even if somebody else (her publisher?) does the bulk of the work setting up readings this is still a lot of work, a big committment of time & energy. Most of these places don't pay (P&P doesn't, but you do get free food). She performs her work well (and the writing is sharp) so I was not surprised she sold several books last night. Shola seems to have done a lot of travelling in her life; it must not cause her anxiety the way it does me. I enjoy travel, but every time I go anywhere I feel doomed. Mildly doomed.

The Best Poems of 2004

Every time I read a book of poems I stuff in the back a batch of placemarks. When I read a poem I quite like, one that I want to revisit, explore, I pop a placemark in next to it. I return to the poem a few times, reading it carefully, sometimes aloud. If after 5 readings or so I still don't want to leave the poem behind I hand copy the poem into a looseleaf notebook. By hand copying the poem I incorporate it into my body of work -- I've written it, after all. At the end of the year I read aloud all the poems I copied out in that year. This year I didn't get around to the reading until Tuesday night. Here's the list of poems:

"Mom told me to grow up and win the Nobel Prize" by Val Gerstle

"I Remember Clearly" by Imre Oravecz

"Theorem" by Walter Conrad Arensberg

"You say, 'I will come'" by Lady Otomo

"My long white hair is framed by green mountains" by Han-shan Te-ch'ing

"mountain sounds carry a chill wisdom" by Shih-Shu

"Written in the Year of the Parrot" by John Yau

"Hangover" by Jeffrey Conway

"A Week in the Life of the Ethnically Indeterminate" by Elena Georgiou

"As From a Quiver of Arrows" by Carl Phillips

"My Body" by Joan Larkin

"The Cow-Boy" by Vicente Huidobro

"Lovely Childhood" by Gottfried Benn

"People" by Hans Arp

two dinosaur haiku, "Fluxist Poem #5", "Friday", "Beautiful Cowards", and "You" by Sparrow

"Instinct" by Edith Sodergran

"Shhh", "Teeth", and "Heaven" by Billy Merrell

"I tie my Hat - I crease by Shawl", "Because I could not stop for Death -", and "Four Trees - upon a solitary Acre -" by Emily Dickinson

Office of Marriage Security

I'm listening to Morrissey: "America ... where the President / is never black, female, or gay / ... you've got nothing to say to me" ... Morrissey, didn't he make a big thing of his celibacy and refuse to respond to questions about his sexuality? A webpage of FAQs about Morrissey quotes Mr M thus, "'I refuse to recognize the terms hetero-, bi-, and homo-sexual. Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs. People are just sexual, the prefix is immaterial.'" So, uh, whatever.

Meanwhile great champion of marriage Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, has announced the dissolution of his marriage. Isn't he Catholic? As a Christmas greeting this year we got a smiling picture of twins and a note that their parents, the Oakland City Attorney, John Russo and wife Chris are splitting. I remember John was contemptuous of Mayor (& former California governor) Jerry Brown's silence when Newsom got SF City Hall into the nondiscriminatory marriage business. John has gay people in his office in Oakland so hosted a party with wedding cake with same sex couple(s) perched atop. Some of his religiously-objecting coworkers disapproved and he says he shrugged, "Who am I to judge anyone's marriage?" Was this his second marriage? Or his third?

There ought to be a Proposition on the ballot! Establish an Office of Marriage Security. Along with a lovely marriage certificate suitable for framing every marrying couple will be issued handcuffs to symbolize the seriousness of the union. The key would be retained by the state. Marriages would be automatically dissolved that do not produce children, as this is a primary argument for restricting marriages to male/female couples. Health care providers must turn over to the state any evidence of infertility, including injury, menopause, congenital reasons, etc. A sheriff's deputy would be empowered to turn up at the couple's home upon invalidation of the marriage; he would bring the key to the handcuffs and unlock them, thus ending the marriage. If it has been determined that the couple entered into the marriage in full knowledge of their ineligibility all property of the marriage must be taken by the state.

As marriages must be heterogeneous the Proposition ought to include requirements for mix of religion (Jews cannot marry Jews, Muslims are not allowed to marry Muslims, Christians cannot marry Christians -- exceptions can be made in the case of sects that hate each other, preferably to the point of warfare or other abuse), mix of race (this is self-explanatory, isn't it?), mix of age, mix of height and weight, etc.

Mars is for the cars

Just watched PBS's NOVA, an update on the robots rolling around Mars, Spirit and Opportunity, and what they've found. Water! No, they haven't found water. They've found rocks that were influenced by water for thousands or millions of years. How long ago? Billions of years ago? At their website Nova has a narrated slide show that's worth seeing.

Life? Could there have been life in that water?

tonight's menu

fish - basa basa - (I think that was what it was called) - white flesh, mild flavor - fried with olive oil and a tangerine-shiitake sauce (from a jar)

green beans and carrots fried with the fish

fettucine pasta fried in the pan with a little more sauce after the fish & veggies removed

a salad sharing the plate: roma tomato slices, cherry tomatoes, shredded purple cabbage, red leaf lettuce torn, grated carrot, chunks of cucumber, sprout mix - doused with an Italian vinegarette (from a bottle)

while it was cooking I stood in the kitchen (which was cozier than the rest of the chilly house) and read four pages of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars: "[W]hat she could sense behind his reserve was some kind of triumph, as if he had won something and she had lost. That Puritan streak in Americans, that sense that sex was wrong and something that men had to trick women into."

then we ate ... I'm getting to enjoy cooking fish, it's simple and quick and easy to clean up and it tastes dern good

nice salad, too

poems to listen to

If you want to sample some poems being spoke: Spaceship Tumblers

links

Pennsound, a site to listen to poems.

Spider Tangle -- this seems to be a collection of what Geof Huth calls "visual poems", which seems to be distinct from "poems" ... I'm still developing my thinking on the idea of "visual poems"; they seem more like abstract paintings than language, but inherent in the definition is that the piece must include the material of language presentation -- letters or things that look reminiscent of letters or punctuation or words or things that look like they could be/could once have been words.

what I'm reading

These are the books that I'm actively working my way through:

Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard

The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report Timothy Ferris

New Blood edited by Neil Astley (an anthology of poetry)

Poems for the Millennium: the University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry vol. 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop edited by Gary Gach


Books I've started and will get back to shortly (probably when I finish, or get bored with, one of the above):

Dora, Doralina a novel by Rachel de Queiroz

Red Mars a science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson


There are other books that I plan eventually to get back to, some I'll pick up where I left off, others I'll start again from the beginning. I won't list these.

happy new year!

oh it's heave-ho to oh four

auld lang syne, everyone!

noises

I pulled down the last Chumbawamba CD "Readymades" and tried the web address that was printed on the box. Didn't work. Turned to Google. Yes, they have a new website. "Last week saw the unfortunate collision of the Anarchist Bookfair and Buy Nothing Day. The groups and small distributors of the political books would have been gutted if they'd set up stall only to be told that no-one was buying anything on principle." -- Chumbawamba ... Chumbawamba is best known for "Tubthumping", you know, "I get knocked down, but I get up again." But they've released an album with Noam Chomsky; they're totally intellectual lefty brits with a pop sense.

I found my way from the Chumbawamba site to Peace-not-war, a jukebox of peace songs. Just heard Martin Luther King name-checked in 2 songs. The Le Tigre song was a celebration of peace demonstrations: "They've shut down the bridge!"

Didn't Noam Chomsky have a blog? Yeah, he does. But he hasn't been keeping it up.

I finished that Man on the Moon book. The book doesn't say who named it but it seems one of the craters astronauts visited (or were to visit) was named Shorty after Trout Fishing in America Shorty, a character in Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America. Every so often I remind myself that I'm going to do a screenplay version of Trout Fishing in America.

comments on The Baker

Last night I said to Kent, "Maybe I'm just trying to see if I have the skills now to write the poems I wanted to write when I was a teenager."

Tales of the Blue and Yellow Sun: The Baker, version 2

Mr F.C. Brown baked bread.
All day it took him to make a single loaf.

As the sun squeezed its blue morning bump
Out of the dark, and yellow stripe followed yellow stripe,
Mr F.C. Brown was plunging his fists into dough
That nudged his elbows.
As the sun threw blue to west and east,
Yellow north and south,
Mr F.C. Brown crouched before the oven door
Listening to the bread brown.
As the sun tugged its blue after its yellow down
Mr F.C. Brown mopped tears and snot
From his red face with doughy lump and crumbling crust.

comments on "Tales of the Blue and Yellow Sun: The Baker"

Another one from the hippo notebook. This one is dated 1/82. Which would mean I was sixteen. A junior in high school. The hippo notebook is a bound paperback, a Quillmark. The cover, an off-white patterned with a brick red hippo motif (the icon-like hippos alternately right-side and up-side down), is lightly padded. I did not want to put anything in it that wasn't finished so I wrote poems or stories on looseleaf notebook paper then copied them carefully into the hippo book, handwriting as neat and legible as I could make it. I had a four-color ink pen and didn't use the same color twice in a row. I remember getting angry with myself when I made a copying error. I wanted to write a series of poems/stories about a fantasy land, like Oz or perhaps like Carl Sandburg's odd Rootabaga Stories -- I remember Sandburg's stories mostly for their strangeness, how many did I ever read? The stories didn't have to share characters, I decided. But they all took place in this magical land overseen by a blue & yellow sun. I wanted them to be inventive and fun. Sadly, as it usually does, my imagination disappointed me. What I was writing wasn't inventive enough, was more work than play.

Typing this old poem I flinch, am embarrassed. It's so ... not good. Not that I haven't read worse. Sure. I've written many poems not this good. And I've read (or stopped reading partway through) many poems or stories by other people that I think worse. I embarrass too easily, maybe. I was no prodigy. Though I was praised for my writing since I was little it always seemed to me there was someone better. There always is, yeah? Does that bother me now? Hm. Maybe it doesn't, really. Best best best. What's that?

OK, Sundy, cat who's been yowing at me and tapping me to get my attention, I'll play with you a minute.

Tales of the Blue and Yellow Sun: The Baker

Francis Brown was a baker
It took him all day to make one loaf of bread
Because travelling lemming salesmen
Kept stopping him between kneads and shouting in his ear.

As the blue and yellow sun
Rose in the west,
Francis Brown was kneading dough.
As the blue and yellow sun
Blazed overhead,
Francis Brown was baking bread.
As the blue and yellow sun
Sank in the east,
Francis Brown was weeping bitterly.

No travelling salesmen had stopped him in his work,
He had made good time
But his bread fell
And his time ran away,
It wasn’t good after all
And Francis Brown was bitterly disappointed.

By the setting
Of the blue and yellow sun,
Francis, sobbing miserably,
Began throwing hunks of brakenburger
At the innocent floor.

The unprotected floor
Burbled in protest,
But Francis continued to toss painful projectiles
Until the floor, in anger,
Swallowed him down.

invisible art

In response to a couple postings by geof huth at his blog, one on invisible art, one on being the poet in the family I wrote:

"I've decided invisible art and my invisible-art-making is a form of spiritual practice. Like prayer (or meditation) it seeks communion with an unnameable, is not "communication" in the ordinary sense, does not offer up a message that someone is supposed to get in order for them to do something -- the message, if any, not being instructional or directive. Of course, saying poetry is prayer is as likely to confuse as to illuminate, as most people will think I'm saying I'm asking God for something, which is not it at all. I've lately been revising poems on my blog, which is as close to publication I've gotten in months (years?)."

Happy Birthday, Kent!

kisses!

Merry Christmas

Odd that I said something snarky about generic holiday songs versus real Christmas carols. Odd because the fundamentalist wing of the noise machine got in a big clattery flap about the de-Christing of the holidays, fuming, it seems, about phrases like "Happy Hoidays" and "Seasons Greetings." Dailykos has a nice touche to that. When I was collecting Christmas songs I found a few winter songs, "Winter Wonderland" for instance, that don't even mention Christmas. And if I enjoyed them I happily included them in my Christmas mixes, much as the compilers of the commercial mixes did.

We listened to hours of Christmas music today, the mixes I put together, then KFOG on our way out to Steep Ravine. Aggravatingly it turned out the combinations that Kent had been given for the locks at Steep Ravine were inoperative. While we were waiting at the gate by the highway two other cars showed up -- the people in the first car also had numbers that didn't work. The woman in the second car had the magic digits. So we all drove down. But the locks on the cabins wouldn't budge for us (nor for the other little family whose numbers hadn't fit the gate). We waited around for awhile, knocked on the "Host" cabin door (no one home), snacked, then took Flash for a walk. Quite beautiful there, the cliffs, the rocks, deer, even a hare, surf and tidepools (sea anemone, hermit crabs, starfish); the air was cool but calm. What to do? We came home. The hot dogs, which had been purchased for a grilling over coals, toasted up in the broiler tray under the oven. Flash hunkered under the table after we got home -- nauseous from the ride or from slopping sea water? Kent left a dog biscuit by her nose; as I was serving dinner she scooped it up and trotted out to the back porch to munch it. Right now Flash is sleeping curled on her square cushion (the only remnant of a couch) and Sundy is snoozing, tail over his nose, on the chair by the PC. Kent is in the side room watching television. Tomorrow is his birthday.

comments on "Man-in-the-Moon" version 7

Wow. I had zero expectations for this poem. With version 6 I found myself delighted. I liked it a lot. Version 7 is merely tidying up version 6.

Reviewing my comments for version 6 I don't see any enthusiasm. Yeah, I didn't want to go, "Isn't this great!" and find later it was merely the heat of creation ... aren't there those times you've just done something and it seems so sharp, so clever, so special ... then time goes by and ardor cools.

So I like it. Hey. Isn't that great!

"Man-in-the-Moon" version 7

In which a man with the face of the Moon is served tea on the porch of a cabin in the woods by a boy who knows the stars, the only lantern low on oil, new snow on the limbs of the trees


A cloud slips off the chin of the mountain and wipes mist
from the Milky Way. The boy tips the teapot and tea,
dark as earth and trailing clouds, falls the long way
to the cup’s dry white. Says the man, “Ah.”
And, “I couldn’t.” But he takes the full cup and empties it
into his mouth, the cup’s round bottom a clean eye
that looks with the blue emblem of its maker at the boy
who looks all the way back. The cup cooling in its saucer,
the man lets his gray eyes drift out of the dark back
to the other. “I couldn’t have another cup, no.”
So again the boy pours the tea, then again, returning
his hands to circle the cup he’s burned his lip on, burned
his tongue. “I’ve imposed.” The man turns his face again
to the lamp’s yellow, though shadows, firm and ancient,
refuse to vacate the hollow of a cheek, the orbits of eyes. He smiles,
a smile the boy won’t see. Stars mess the sky up,
their dimnesses tangled and knotted; any other night’s
incontrovertible points lose this argument. The boy knows
the man’s face. He can’t place it. “How much farther
did you have to go?” he asks. “How much farther?”
the man responds. He rolls his eyes slowly, from one side
to the other. “All the way.” The boy says, “I’ve seen you
before.” “You’ve seen me.” The man glances
at his empty cup, but when the boy lifts the pot it’s light
and the thread from the spout is the tiniest ravel and breaks.
“I’ve barely drunk mine,” says the boy. So the man takes it
and drinks it and puts the cup back. “Ah,” he says
and the boy watches for his breath and sees his own breath
wandering. “I’ve kept you up,” the man says. “I am poor
company. I have taken too much of your time, and you
shall never have it back, yes?” “No,” the boys says, “no.”

What Book!?

The following is from editor Gary Gach's "Pre Face" to his anthology of Buddhist poetry, What Book!?:

Poetry may seem to be only prose cut into short lines
-- but the end of each line lets us breathe, be attentive --
as if we could get up, walk around the block, and come back, to continue the next line
renewed, without missing a stitch --
or spend five minutes on a single line, if need be.
[slightly edited]

Yeah.

smashing!

Wayne Wilkinson read Billy Corgan's book of poetry so you don't have to. Says Wayne, "BLINKING WITH FISTS gives me hope. Hope b/c I know that I write poetry every bit as well as Billy Corgan. It should give you hope too for the same reason." Says Billy, "I taste, relate, to invade you / No wait, I'll change, and await you ..."

solstice!

Shortest day of the year? They get longer from here on out!

More light! More light!

happy birthday to my blog

2 years old this month.

lay off

So the library tax that was on the November ballot did not get the required 2/3 vote, which means lay-offs. I think I have enough seniority in my job classification that I won't be tossed out the door. Last summer some people got pink slips but the union agreed to give back a scheduled cost-of-living adjustment so those jobs were saved. Hopes rode on the tax measure. But there were tax measures for city and fire and whatever else, too. And they all lost. So there are going to be cut-backs citywide.

I didn't get a pink slip in the summer. But if you do get a pink slip and you have sufficient seniority you get to bump into somebody else's job, if you want it. So the lay-off moves down the line. I don't know if anybody with bumping rights will want to bump me out. Since I work fulltime and most of the people in my job classification are parttime if bumped I could probably end up with a parttime job.

Who knows. It's going to be strange watching it all play out.

I decided tonight to do something celebratory what with the baby jesus long since grown and pegged to a stick. So I bought us tickets to The New Pickle Circus, an afternoon show on Christmas Eve. Kent reserved a night at one of the cabins at Steep Ravine on his birthday, which is the day after Christmas. I don't know what we'll do on Christmas day now that Mom's gone. What did we do last year? It's not like either of us is into the Christian thing. Maybe I should take to calling it Santa Day. Not that I've bought Christmas presents either. The whole gift-giving round. I try to avoid it. I'm not bah-humbug about it, but gifts create obligations, even if you hate the gift, and if you love it, too. Things. Things stick to you. Objects, I mean. I can't get rid of them. I feel bad getting rid of things. I'd like to travel light, right? I should want to.

Cats and dogs seem happy these days. Cats go outside less when it's cold and rainy. Hasn't been rainy much. When are we going to get that again?

Lots of bills to catch up on. HCR stuff. I'm blocking it out!

Steve Mueske has moved his blog to blogspot and I commented, "You already know more about blogspot than I do!" And he said, "What? I just chose a template and turned on the comments." Oh. Right. I could do that.

comments on "Man-in-the-Moon" version 6

Here I was thinking the only thing interesting about the poem was what the Moon said. I was faced, I said to Kent, with coming up with something the Moon would say. I am not wise and shouldn't the Moon speak wisely? Shouldn't the Moon have a knowledge beyond the ken of men? Beyond my ken?

I launched the newest attack on the poem thinking I was going to be getting the Moon to speak. He didn't. He didn't, dern him.

The poem has recovered a shadow of its funny. That's a bit of a relief. I hate dead serious poems, especially when they come out of me. I don't believe 'em.

There's a little more situation in the poem now, what with the context given by the title and the boy's queries: "How much farther do you have to go?" But the Moon's answers merely reflect back what the boy says. Ooh. A sort of moonish thing to do, eh?

"Man-in-the-Moon" version 6

In which a man with the face of the Moon is served tea on the porch of a cabin in the woods by a boy who knows the stars, the only lantern low on oil, new snow on the limbs of the trees


A cloud slips off the chin of the mountain and wipes mist
from the Milky Way. The boy tips the teapot and tea,
dark as earth and trailing clouds, falls the long way
to the cup’s dry white. Says the man, “Ah.”
And, “I couldn’t.” But he takes the full cup and empties it
suddenly, the cup’s round bottom tipping up, a clean eye
that looks with the blue emblem of its maker at the boy
who looks all the way back. The cup cooling in its saucer,
the man lets his gray eyes drift out of the dark back
to the other. “I couldn’t have another cup, no.”
So again the boy pours the tea, and again, returning
his hands to circle the cup he’s burned his lip on, burned
his tongue. “I’ve imposed.” The man turns his face again
to the lamp’s yellow, though half stays dark
and shadows firm and ancient refuse to vacate the hollows
of a cheek, the orbits of eyes. He smiles,
a smile so small it’s not visible. The stars mess the sky up,
their dimnesses tangled and knotted; even the points
of any other night lose in the argument. The boy knows
the man’s face. He can’t place it. “How much farther
did you say you have to go?” he asks. “How much farther?”
the man responds. He rolls his eyes slowly, from one side
to the other. “All the way.” The boy says, “I’ve seen you
here before.” “You’ve seen me.” The man glances
at his empty cup, but when the boy lifts the pot it’s light
and the thread from the spout is the tiniest ravel and breaks.
“I’ve barely drunk mine,” says the boy. So the man takes it
and drinks it and puts the cup back. “Ah,” he says
and the boy watches for his breath and sees his own breath
wandering. “I’ve kept you up,” the man says. “I am poor
company. I have taken too much of your time, and you
shall never have it back, yes?” The boys says, “No.”

comments on "Man-in-the-Moon" version 5

I figure I'll resurrect some of what I discarded from version 4. But today when I stopped in at the blog to give the poem a quick read, sufficient time having passed since I last worked it over, I found the poem dull dull. If the damn thing had been in a magazine I wouldn't have finished. But I pushed on and did get interested, about halfway through, when the moon-man talks. I'm not terribly fond of what he says. But at least what he says seems active, the passivity of the descriptions having been deadly.

"Man-in-the-Moon" version 5

In which a man with the face of the Moon is served tea on the porch of a cabin in the woods by a boy who knows the stars, the only lantern low on oil, new snow on the limbs of the trees


A cloud slips free of the mountain and wipes mist
from the Milky Way. The boy refills the teacup.
“I couldn’t. All good men must sleep. Even young.”
The man laughs. No, he does not laugh. “Even old.
Must cross the waters that draw their dark

past the river’s stones. Each stone a dream.
Dream by dream alone he steps the width
of a valley that goes on forever, and a wind
blows softly on him or blows hard and sudden.
You have only hours to get all the way over,

who have to travel, from day to day night by night.”
The boy tightens the circle of his hands around his cup.
He lifts it again to his face, the steam too cool and the tea
again hot enough to hurt. But he drinks. And stops.

And drinks. When he has finished his cup
he feels wounded; he looks at the man whose face,
lit by no moon, only the blue of the snow,
the dimnesses of stars, regards him or looks on something
other. “More tea?”asks the boy, the pot cold.

the uncanny Xmas

We have 2 CDs of Christmas music -- Kent's is old crooners like Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. Bing, however, does not sing "White Christmas." Instead he sings "Holiday Inn", a generic holiday song. "Holiday Inn" is not a Christmas song, not, at least, any more than it's an Easter song or 4th of July song. ... Or was it "Happy Holidays"? Whichever. My CD, which I bought a few years ago, is a benefit for, I think, Choice ... it includes Luscious Jackson and The Presidents of the United States of America. Since I've been burning mix CDs from music I've listened to at my desk at work I thought I could fix the lack of a decent CD of Christmas music by listening to a bunch of samplers and boiling them down to a Best. I now have nearly 3 hours of music in a iTunes playlist. So I'm figuring now that I'll mix up 2 or 3 CDs. A rockin' Christmas, a croonin' Christmas, an are-these-really-Chrismas-songs Christmas. Or something. My sources are a stack of CDs I grabbed from the clearance bins at Amoeba, spent a maximum of $2 per CD (less, as when you buy 3 clearance CDs you get the 4th free). Of course, the library also owns many Christmas music CDs so I've started listening to those, too.

I thought it was gonna be torture. Egad! Tired old Christmas carols! But it's been rather fun. I've heard some pleasant versions of "Merry Gentlemen" and "Silent Night" ... and I've heard rather wearisome versions.

On my way home today I stopped in at the drugstore and at the checkout counter I saw a display of Christmas CDs ... was amused to see one of Bah-Humbug Chrismas songs with liner notes by Harvey Pekar. The CD is called "Yule Be Miserable". Tempting.

comments on "Man-in-the-Moon" version 4

Better. Mostly an edit of version 3. Who are these people? Is it a logical inference that this is "The Man in the Moon"? Does it matter whether it is or isn't? Are dreams stones? Dreams are stories or non sequiturs ... stones?

"Man-in-the-Moon" version 4

Moonless


The cigarette smoke’s wan light takes a shade
of black from the night. The man taps a tiny ash
from the end. “My boy, my boy.”
His words stones, smoothed and softened by
the turning, slow and ceaseless, of an ice-edged creek.

The boy lifts the pot, tips tea out of it,
the tea’s earth-dark dropping into the cup’s
lightly shadowed white. Again the man’s lips
part and the cup touches them, the round white
eye pupiled by the emblem of its maker

rises to gaze upon the boy. The boy blows
steam from the surface of his own cup, sips,
and burns his lip and tongue. Empty as a shadow,
every earth-dark drop drained, the man’s cup
cools on its saucer. He pats the blue napkin between

his long hands, lays it over the unstirred spoon.
A cloud tears free of the mountain and wipes mist
from the Milky Way. The boy watches his breath
move away from the table. The man’s cup,
white as dawn, has caught one star on its gold rim.

The boy looks from it to the man’s still face.
Then he pours the tea. “I couldn’t,” the man demurs.
“I couldn’t. All good men must sleep. Even young.”
He laughs. No, he does not laugh. “Even old.
Must cross the waters that draw their dark

past the river’s stones. Each stone a dream.
Dream by dream alone he steps the width
of a valley that goes on forever, and a wind
blows softly on him or blows hard and sudden.
You have only hours to get all the way over,

who have to travel, from day to day night by night.”
The boy tightens the circle of his hands around his cup.
He lifts it again to his face, the steam too cool and the tea
again hot enough to hurt. But he drinks. And stops.

And drinks. When he has finished his cup
he feels wounded; he looks at the man whose face,
lit by no moon, only the blue of the snow, the thousand
dimnesses of stars, regards him or looks on something
other. “More tea?”asks the boy, the pot cold.

comments on "Man-in-the-Moon" version 3

It's a new version, all right. And it was fun to write, I'll tell ya. Playing variations. Less fun to read, I see. Too long. This is not a fourteen stanza poem. But the nothing happening, it's OK I'm thinking. We'll see what the next version looks like.

"Man-in-the-Moon" version 3

Moonless


From the end of the cigarette he rolled himself, the man
taps a tiny ash and smoke leaves his mouth.
He doesn’t blow it. Rather, the smoke’s wan
light takes a shade of black from the night.

“My boy, my boy.” His words soft as stones
being turned in the winter creek. He does not
look at the empty cup, looks instead at the bones
that have refleshed with snow muscle,

ice sinew, the seasonal body of the skeletons.
The boy looks up at them, too. And those
beside them in their spiky and permanent green.
When the man blinks, the time it takes

seems a phase his face must go through
night by night. And the boy lifts the pot,
tips the tea out of it, the tea’s earth-dark
dropping into the cup’s lightly shadowed

white. The boy also tips tea into his own
half-full cup and put his chilled hands around it.
The china too hot to touch he lets his hands
wait, and they receive what heat escapes.

The man, his gray cheeks catching the light
cast from the window, his eyes almost lost
in an old distance, lets his lips part, and the cup
touches them, the bottom of the cup rising,

a wide eye, the tattoo-blue emblem of its maker
regarding the table, looking unmoved upon
the boy who blows steam from the surface
of his own tea, who burns his lip and tongue

and puts his cup down. Empty as a shadow,
every earth-dark drop fallen out of it, the man’s cup
cools on its saucer. He pats the blue napkin
between his long hands, lays it softly over the unstirred spoon.

A cloud tears free of the mountain and wipes mist
from the Milky Way. The boy breathes the breath
he can see. There isn’t much in the pot and the cup,
white as dawn, has caught one sharp star on its gold rim.

The boy looks from it to the man’s still face.
Then he pours the tea. “I couldn’t,” the man demurs.
“I couldn’t. All good men must sleep. Even young.”
He laughed. No, he did not laugh. “Even old.
Must walk across the waters that draw their dark

around the stones in the river. Each stone
a dream. And so dream by dream alone he steps the width
of a valley he can’t see the length of, and a wind
blows softly on him or blows sudden and hard.”

The boy tightens the circle of his hands, the heat
of the cup less hard. And when he sees the man’s
hand descending and settling the cup in the saucer’s
center circle he sees the cup is dry. “To keep you

from your bed would be burgling from you, my boy
thieving from you the only way laid out for us who have to go,
who have to go on, from night to day night after night.
How cruel I am to take from you, dear one.” This time

it is the boy who laughs. And he laughs until he hears
the dry crackle of his laughter and he takes refuge
in tea which does not burn him. The ember
of the cigarette lights the whites of the man’s two eyes.

It's the end

It's Sunday night, end of four days not working. Five days, actually. I had a migraine on Wednesday so that got me started with the sleeping. The headache lingered through Thursday though mostly as background noise. Some nausea, too. No fun! I still dream that I'm working my way to the far side of the migraine story; yoga shall free me! If I saw a causal relationship, food item to migraine, the sort that I associate with a yoga routine, I would carefully avoid that food. Maybe I would continue to eat said food if I thought the migraines it caused were the result of detox, stored poisons being released thus causing mayhem up to now corraled. That's sort of how I see yoga -- I'm stretching muscles in order to get them to release tension. When a muscle gets stretched, however, it often seems to react by tightening up again -- even tighter! After the migraines pass I do note improvements in posture and it does seem easier to release a day's tension. I've come so far! And the rest of my life to go.

Monday. Ugh. I don't hate Mondays any more than Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays or Fridays.

comments on "Man-in-the-moon" version 2

I have the feeling I've written this poem before, the celestial visitor at tea. Only then the man was an angel. That poem got me praise from my writing teacher at jr college; he said he thought it could be the one that would get me notice -- maybe even into Poetry. I did send it to Poetry and it didn't get me in or itself. I haven't read it in years.

Like the first "Man" this version is toying with rhyme. I'd sort of like to formalize it but I'd sort of like the poem to say something, too.

"The Man-in-the-Moon" version two

Late One Moonless Night


The man, loose of the moon, his gray cheeks shining
like a cool lampshade, neither eye brighter
than a dry pearl, his forehead one long ramp to heaven,
dabbed with a blue napkin at the corners of his mouth.

“My dear boy,” he crooned, the words were stones
soft in a winter creek, and the time he took to blink
was a phase he was going through, night by night.
“I owe you, I think. A cup, I think.”

And, yes, the cup before him, white as dawn,
one star caught on its gold rim, let up no more curls
of steam from tea just tipped in, the man having
slid it all past ridged lips. Empty as a shadow,

every earth-dark drop had fallen out of it.
The man patted the napkin between his long hands
then lay it softly over the unstirred spoon.
A cloud tore free of the mountain and wiped the mist

from the Milky Way. The boy breathed
and saw his breath. He touched his cup to his mouth
and was burned. So he put the cup down.
And tipped the pot to refill the other’s.

“I couldn’t,” the man demurred. “I couldn’t take
the time from you you’d surely elsewise spend,
as all men should, deep in bed, stepping from dream
to dream over the valley brook. If I were to steal

this end of an hour from your proper nightly stroll,
I’d feel I’d snatched from a beggar a buttered roll.”
So saying the man ran a finger over the teacup grip,
then ran it under and a smooth sweep took the cup

to his parted lips and again its bottom rose,
one white eye, the blue signet of its maker in the center,
gazed upon the boy who shivered, who blew his white
breath on the dark surface too hot to sip.

The UN knew better

In the new issue of The Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies (download pdf at the CLAS site) the former Mexican Ambassador to the UN Security Council, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser calls Bush a liar (or, at least, says he "lied ... lied ... and lied," which is the same thing, right?). It's so refreshing to hear a spade called a spade ... rather than something that looks like it might possibly be used to penetrate the earth, among other performable activities, including some having nothing to do with the earth.

Says AAS, "Instead of listening to other views and exploring other options, the U.S. scorned advice about the evident risks of going to war, walked away from collective agreements, revoked multilateral diplomacy and ridiculed the institutional capabilities of the UN. ... Right from the outset and straight through the frenetic and more intrusive inspections which started in October 2002 -- after resolution 1441 was unanimously passed -- Hans Blix, the Chief Inspector, and Mohmed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said again and again that they had found no weapons and detected no programs to produce them. ... According to the imperial logic of U.S. diplomats, the absence of weapons was first and foremost unequivocal evidence that Saddam had them very well hidden. ... The Bush administration was at no time willing to contemplate the possibility that UN measures had led to the destruction of the weapons, and the UN trade and oil embargo had strangled the nuclear program. ... Resistant to reason and evidence and determined not to acknowledge any proof or opinion contrary to their instructions, U.S. diplomats refused to explore ways to peacefully complete what was clearly a good job of disarmament by the UN. ... In the last analysis, Bush went to the UN just as a stopover before moving on to his disastrous war in Iraq, his true and final destination. ... Bush and his administration lied to the world about the weapons of mass destruction, lied when they affirmed that the weapons existed beyond any doubt and lied when they declared that their only intention was to disarm Iraq and they would be satisfied to achieve only that."

Happy Thanksgiving

Kent and I were driving up to Davis to have Thanksgiving dinner with friends Margo & Paul and their kids and in-laws ... took us over an hour to drive 30 miles, with 40 still to go ... Kent was beginning to dread the drive home. A junction was coming up that would allow us to turn and scoot home. We did. As soon as we got in the door Kent called Margo and apologized. Now he's working on cooking a turkey.

comments on "The Man-in-the-Moon"

The poem was written in 1984, July. This was the year after I graduated high school. There's nothing interesting about the poem, except that it so happens I'm reading Andrew Chaikin's nonfiction account of the Apollo missions, A Man on the Moon. I put that book down a few minutes ago, having decided it was time I posted a new poem-to-revise on the blog. I walked over to the paper bag of journals I'd brought back from my mother's house several months ago. I fished out the one with the smiling hippo motif. I flipped open the book and there was "The Man-in-the-Moon". The first lines have a midly amusing voice and the piece starts out rhyming, which tends to make even serious verse snort-worthy. Then nothing. Despite the bravado of "I know the end of this story" I'm sure I hadn't a clue. I figure I said it because the piece was being written as though recounting an anecdote, you know, talking about something that had happened. Something fun, something droll.

I have no idea what to do to revise this as the only thing about it I find even vaguely appealing is the voice. But I have no confidence in that sort of voice now (if I ever did). Vacationing in the Bahamas? Yawn. I'm posting the poem as a challenge. And to honor the coincidence, the echo in my own life of the Apollo missions, which are amazing.

The Man-in-the-Moon

I had tea with the man-in-the-moon,
at least that’s whom he claimed to be,
and, although I really do not like tea
we got along splendidly,
or rather we got along well
until I started asking details about his home and his job and his family,
and reminded him about Apollo and Neal Armstrong and “one small step” and all that
and I asked him, “By the way
did you happen to run into any of those astronaut fellows
on your way to my house?”
So, of course, this put the entire conversation on edge
(if I’d known this would’ve happened I don’t suppose I would’ve advanced the subject,
especially as I know the end of this story).

The man-in-the-moon dabbed uselessly at the corner of his mouth with his linen napkin
in exactly the way I’ve seen many a nervous gentleman do in the past,
and, at length, he made this reply,
“My dear chap,” said he (and I didn’t think to ask him why he thought me such),
“You strike me as a very intelligent young man
of some manner and some wit
and I do owe you a debt of gratitude for a pleasant hour and a fragrant tea,
so I will tell you three things.
I am not telling you out of any malice on my part”
(here I record accurately, but now I have reason to suspect insincerity)
“but solely for your information.”

“One: At the time of the space missions I was vacationing in the Bahamas.
I watched the whole thing on the telly.
It was very entertaining.”

“Two: I have no other family than the moon and the stars
and the rabbit-in-the-moon
whom I generally avoid.
As to my occupation, why,
I do nothing more than I have to.”

“And three: I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
He brightened. I didn’t.
“Thanks for the tea, old man,” he said
and with that he rose up into the sky and disappeared.

I must tell you I was more than
a little surprised by this behavior,
it being so uncharacteristic of a polite gentleman to leave with quite such abruptness.

Well, to this day I have felt somewhat nervous under the gaze of the full moon,
and every since my teaset vanished
(I must tell you the man-in-the-moon complimented me highly and frequently on that very teaset)
I lock up my valuables on those certain days of the month
when the old boy’s particularly bright.

unreasonably satisfying

I find the election results horrifying. Like a car wreck. That you wake up in and you feel around in the dark for your body parts. And it turns out they're all there. Some of them are wet. Hard to know what that is. Blood? Gasoline? One spark and you could be suddenly aflame. And I understand that hurts. If you survive it. But you've survived the car wreck, haven't you? So you look around for a way to extricate yourself from the twisted metal. Pulling yourself out alive becomes its own interesting problem. You think, I'm trapped but I can still move and feel around for an opening. Are you still cursing the driver? Full of dread for the impending crash? You're out on the highway, aren't you? Dark. Any car, truck, hurtling along at the usual 30 above the speed limit will cream your little wreck. Won't see you at all. Crash! That'll be it. Do you panic? What will that do for me! Panicking! You take a deep breath; it tries to find room in you to hold on, but it wooshes out again.

When I hear about people killed in Iraq now I say, That's what the American people wanted.

When it's an American soldier I say, Well! The American people voted for you to die! It's democracy in action! I gotta get with it.

America voted for lies and failure! Yay! Can't be surprised about it when we get what we want.

But we Americans love lies! (Different from the rest of the world?) Love to lie down in down comforters of lies. Don't give me that truth! Too prickery and it annoys me. I have what I been told and that's it. I have a right! A right! Right not to learn. What about the 3 Rs? WAR? Writing ... Arithmetic ... Reading ... Don't tell me bout that in school. Just tell me about the pretty bombs. The pretty surgery of boom. Whee! If God wanted me to listen he would've given me ears, instead of these lie reception devices. What about eyes? Did you get eyes? I haven't seen eyes for days.

Today is Mom's Birthday

On the Hawaii vacation I had a dream with Mom in it.

She was piloting a 747, flying the family to Brazil. She was maneuvering the plane through a steep valley (like the ones we flew over in a helicopter on the Big Island), the rest of us getting nervous about a big plane in such a narrow valley. Our nervousness was making Mom nervous so we tried to reassure her that, yes, we really did believe in her flying ability but if she saw a place to land we could use a rest. Just then we emerged from the narrow valley to one with a much broader floor. We spotted a divided highway and Mom agreed to land the plane on the highway, which she did quite smoothly. Being as a highway is not the place you're supposed to land a plane we shortly saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles approaching.

Except for Mom getting a little flustered by criticism the dream had a good feeling. I'm really quite tickled by the idea of Mom flying a big passenger jet.