Flash diagnosis

How's Flash? No organ problems, said vet. The panting and wheezing? Some sort of paralysis/constriction of the larynx. It seems to partially block the entrance to her lungs. Only when she gets excited? Or is it always there but when she's trying to pull in more than a resting breath she has trouble? Vet gave Kent antiobiotics (she has an elevated temp) and steroids and said to call back in a few days to let him know if there's been a change. At her size 12 years is the typical age for a dog. She's 13. Other than the panting she doesn't seem geriatric.

Flash

Kent took Flash to the vet today. She's gotta go back tomorrow for some tests. She's been wheezing, panting, and occasionally choking. But not all the time. Panting & wheezing when she gets excited. And it's not choking like she's gonna die or anything. Just like ... I don't know. Like she's trying to cough up postnasal drip. She seems fine right now, for instance. But I'm glad Kent's taking her to the vet.

ghost post

oh, i'm a posty posty post
i've got all the posty goodness
of a posty posty post

welcome all be debonair
to my bloggy frigidaire

yardwork

I haven't been much up for relating the details of my life on this blog lately. Whenever I've started to I've erased the post before putting it up.

It's cool breezy sunny.

I'm glad we've got tomorrow off work.

Did a little yardwork yesterday. Kent said he wanted to do some barbequing so I thought I'd sweep off the concrete pad and once I got that going I went ahead and snapped off or dug up lots of those tree shoots the trimmed trees have been sending up. Nice to see it tidier back there.

I'm due for a nap.

six feet under

The library bought the 3rd season of Six Feet Under and we powered through it in less than two weeks.

It was pretty good.

comments on "The Man in the Pinstriped Suit", version 2

This is not a major revision. I like that. I'm glad I decided to post a poem on this blog that seemed pretty much done.

What I've been doing up to now has been challenge myself, assign myself a poem that really needed help, a poem that was only going to be done on the other side of a long process, a process that I couldn't see into, could only find my way through with a machete and blind reckoning.

For a long time I didn't have the motivation to do serious revision, the kind of revision that requires the idea that someone wants the poem, wants whatever it's going to be after its troublesome development.

When a poem is a revelation, when it seems to rise up out of emptiness, when it's exciting and brings all its own energy, I can say it doesn't matter whether anyone wants the poem -- there it is!

Here it is, only slightly different from the way it's been for the last 20 years on the page of a booklet of writings from a high school creative writing class.

The Man in the Pinstriped Suit, version 2

The long line to the bank teller’s window won’t move. The woman before me, her black hair twisted into a bun, skin a lighter brown where the straps of her blouse have slipped, sways, one hand hanging onto her toddler as though to an anchor. Her grass skirt sways as she sways. Beside me a man clears his throat. I turn to him, and find myself squinting to keep out the brightness of his pinstriped suit. As he talks, my mouth hurts. His voice draws out, longer and longer, each word crawling past my nose in fuzzy caterpillars. I know I have to swat them or they’ll creep into my nose and I’ll suffocate, but I can’t raise my arm. The woman in the grass skirt has pulled my hand across a butcher’s block. A white surgeon’s mask hides her nose and mouth. For some moments she works steadily with a big knife, then gives me back my hand. I step away from the head of the line, my fingers wrapped in bloody bandages. “That wasn’t so bad,” says the man in the pinstriped suit.

comments on "The Man in the Pinstriped Suit"

I wrote this in high school, in the Creative Writing Class, or during the Creative Writing Class, I don't think it was a response to an assignment. I quite like it. It has that great turn where "I" try to raise my hand but find it's being worked on by the woman who'd been in front of me in line. A dream logic that you just accept when it's happening. And it was a dream. A real dream. How much it is the precise dream I had who knows but it reads like a dream. I'm happy to have run onto it again.

The Man in the Pinstriped Suit

The long line to the bank teller’s window doesn’t move. Before me the lady, her black hair twisted into a bun, her skin tanned dark on her bare back, sways, hanging onto her toddler as though he was an anchor in a storm. Her grass skirt rustles back and forth. The man beside me clears his throat. I turn to him, squinting to keep out the brightness of his pinstriped suit. As he talks, my mouth hurts. His voice draws out, longer and longer, until each word crawls past my nose in little caterpillars. I know I must swat them or they’ll creep into my nose and I’ll suffocate, but I can’t raise my arm. The woman in her grass skirt has my hand pulled over a thick wooden table, a white surgeon’s mask pulled over her nose and mouth. She works steadily for several moments with a large knife, then gives me back my hand. I step away from the head of the line, my fingers wrapped in bloody bandages. “That wasn’t so bad,” says the man in the pinstriped suit.

link

Just discovered the blog of Seth Abramson, poet & public defender. Damn, this boy writes humungous posts and puts up 3 or 4 a day. Plus he's impassioned and intelligent.

comments on "Night Poems" version 5

I've only changed a couple things. If you've seen this poem's last version you may not even spot the changes, though they are more significant than changing "haven't" to "have not" ... a simple change that would have improved the poem slightly. Instead I changed the line "the painted shadows haven't faded" to "the painted shadows shine." Should I go back and say "the painted shadows have not faded"?

The other change finds "My breath offers silence another shelter" becoming "My mouth offers silence new shelter" ...

I feel a little ridiculous reposting the whole piece when I've made such minor changes, especially since too many times when I make itsy bitsy changes the very next thing I do is make major revisions. I don't think that'll happen here. Maybe I'll even change a line back ... "have not faded" is sounding good.

Night Poems, version 5

The window is open, standing somewhere,
open to a door.



I walk the wrinkled corridor between dreams.
In the faces on the walls
the painted shadows shine.

Like trophy heads in a hunter’s jungle bungalow
lamps jut out,
all staring glass.



A mortgage locked by wet stamps
life insurance keyed to contrition

she rides a horse
wakes with car keys in her hand



Surely these clothes are blankets.
My mouth offers silence new shelter.

My hair? It won’t wake.
My eyes turn toward something they saw closed.



fingers up northern faces
of the mildly gated

lights lost in
among handles.

Happy Birthday, David!

Draw, man! Draw!

star wars episode III

"What was the part where you were laughing inappropriately?" Kent asked.

"Which time?"

"Where nobody else was laughing."

"Oh. The long, loud laughter?"

oh blue

oh blue sky oh sun oh sun oh soft breezes

Rain

rain rain rain

comments on "Night Poems" version 4

I'm likin' it. I read "Night Poems" to Kent. We discussed the final period (.) of the poem(s). It's not really ending a sentence. K liked the last few lines as independent statements. They seem to me broken thoughts. The last line of the preceding section, "My eyes turn toward something they saw closed.", might be turned toward the fading dream ... the final lines being all that remains.

I don't know. I don't really like the idea of "dreams" as something separate from what we do as a matter of course. They're not a different place, are they? Then again, yes, dreams do have different rules. I find myself using dreams to suggest something, maybe something too obvious. I've never liked the then-I-woke-up way out of fantasyland. It's how Alice gets home. But if a dream is just a dream it's easily escaped, it's not a real place. Hm. Maybe it is a real place AND a dream.

I got rid of the numbering, tried dashes instead, then decided I liked the extra spacing.

Night Poems, version 4

The window is open, standing somewhere,
open to a door.



I walk the wrinkled corridor between dreams.
In the faces on the walls
the painted shadows haven’t faded.

Like trophy heads in a hunter’s jungle bungalow
lamps jut out,
all staring glass.



A mortgage locked by wet stamps
life insurance keyed to contrition

she rides a horse
wakes with car keys in her hand



Surely these clothes are blankets.
My breath offers silence another shelter.

My hair? It won’t wake.
My eyes turn toward something they saw closed.



fingers up northern faces
of the mildly gated

lights lost in
among handles.

Info Desk Blogging

The person whose regular Info Desk hour this is is out with a bad back so here I am. Been here 5 minutes and it's not crazy yet.

Mysterious stack of Chinese books on the far corner of the desk. Did somebody intend to return them? Or did a person stop here to ask a question, put the books down and forget them? I guess I'll leave them alone for now, just in case somebody shows up anxious.

The boy-watching isn't nearly so good here as at the university, we got a much higher proportion of oldsters and toddlers, but cuties go by now & then. And once in awhile one comes up and asks me a question and I get to enjoy it. One of the benefits of public service. Of course just as I say this, Young Guy gets headed off by Unhappy Old Lady ... oh well, he wasn't cute just young and old lady was unhappy but polite.

Clouds are throwing a few drops our way. Curious series of storms we've been getting. Not our usual May in Berkeley. Overcast is typical and fog, but not rain. Fairly warm tho. I didn't bring an umbrella. But it's not really raining right now.

OK, we're at the half hour and the joint ain't jumpin'. Sure, where are the bathrooms, where's the copy machine, do we have spanish language instructional tapes, but no long involved complaints or mysteries. I'll amend that to say, none that I can help with ... I've sent a couple different problems to other desks. And neither of them has gotten anger turned my way.

I'm going to the Y for yoga class when my relief shows up at 5. Last week's yoga I was all huffy & puffy and at the end of the class the muscly guy in front of me turned to give me a dubious look, "are you okay?" To which I snappily replied, "what's not okay about looking at a hot bod like yours?" ... or I said, "Tough class!" ...

Tough class? Oh. Look. Raining. The Y is only a block away, I shouldn't get very wet.

talkin' thru machines

K had to convert audiotape to CD so he got a cable to connect a Walkman-type cassette player to the Mac. He played the tape through the Garageband program, transferred the tracks to iTunes, and burned a couple disks. It all went pretty smooth.

Nice.

All those fiddly things intimidate me -- recording levels and adjusting this or that. I want to plug something in, hit one button, and have the machines do it. I know I have tapes of some old readings. Maybe I could try this method with those. There's that tape of the interview I did with Mom, too. Boy, I remember that! We disagreed about the way the interview should be conducted -- I just wanted her to talk and let a conversation happen, she didn't like that, wanted to compose each answer before speaking it into the tape recorder. We actually got into a fight over it.

Everything

I'm going to write merely to write. No other reason. One other reason I can think of: in order not to write about other things, think about other things. By writing merely to see words appear I can avoid writing as a way to say something, that which I'm thinking about but about which I'd prefer not to. So I put down another word. I reread what I've said up to now.

out goes London

When I was going through the boxes of papers Wednesday I came across a bag of souvenirs from my 3-month semester in London. Ticket stubs and maps and ... whatever ... I sifted it through my fingers and let it fall into the recycle bag.

This trip was back in fall 1988, a program of Santa Rosa Junior College and AIFS. A group of students from SRJC (and some other US community colleges) brought along professors -- it's essentially your US community college transposed to London. (A friend's grown daughter is currently in Spain under the same program.)

My English professor made keeping a journal one of the class assignments. Thus I kept two journals in London, one for him and one for myself. In the one for myself I could bitch about him and talk about sex. Otherwise they weren't much different.

So my pre-Berkeley life is migrating to Berkeley. And some of it is getting thrown out.

throwing my life away

Yesterday I went through two of the boxes of papers that I brought home from Mom's house last Saturday.

You heft pounds of exercises from your Statistics Class and you think, "Could I relearn this subject from these notes?" What an investment. All those hours crunching numbers and writing everything out. Looks like each assignment was worth 10 points. I'm flipping through the stack and seeing 10s with "very good" in red teacher writing. Then I come to one that, beside the 10, says, "Heh heh." Curious, I looked through the assignment. The final page has me saying, "I can't finish. I'm too tired. I'm going to bed." To which teacher has written, "Don't tempt me! This is not worthy of you who has displayed such mathematical ..." what was the word he used? Meticulousness? No, but something like that.

Out went notes for my Native American Art Class. I saved my term paper. Brother David made off with the carving that I wrote the paper about. It's a fox (or wolf?) head with a flounder lid. I remember trying to jam Matchbox cars in the hollow when I was young and stupid. Mom said my sister Bernice had given it to her. It's a Yupiq carving, I understand. From Nunivaq Island. Mom said, "Bernice has good taste."

Out went the box of 1978 brochures from amusement parks around the country. I loved those things. I remember Mom encouraged me to write to all the amusement parks I had addresses for. And they all sent back their latest brochures. What treasure coming in the mail! I pored over those, imagined myself traveling the nation riding roller coasters. I'm sure all the parks have websites now. But last night I looked through every brochure before dropping it in the recycle bag. Truth? The photos were rarely anything special -- but I do remember some of them.

Last night I felt torn, like I'd betrayed a promise. But now I feel ... lighter.

throwing things away

I'm just down from upstairs where I'd taken a box of papers. The papers were recovered from my mother's house. Turns out it's mostly Oz club stuff. 15 year old order forms, the Trading Post (a newsletter that allowed you to list what Oz books you wanted to buy/sell/trade), clippings of Oz ephemera, including political cartoons. Political cartoonists seem to resort to the easily recognized Wizard of Oz characters with frequency. I tossed the clippings, the Trading Posts, kept the yearly newsletters and club secretary Fred Meyer's Christmas cards.

I always have piles and boxes of papers. Thus there will always be sorting projects waiting.

comments on "Night Poems" version 3

This is a new arrangement of stanzas. I'm still trying to figure out whether these are, as the title has it, poems so able to be read independent of one another, or if I need to tie them together more.

Night Poems, version 3

1.

Between dreams I walk,
down the long, wrinkled corridor,
shadows painted into the faces on its walls.
Like trophy heads in a hunter’s jungle bungalow
lamps jut out,
all staring glass.


2.

fingers up northern faces
of the mildly gated

lights lost in
among handles.


3.

My eyes are sore, having been pulled from sleep.
My hair sleeps yet; my pajamas, too.
My skin is dreaming or near a dream.
My breath? My breath won’t wake.
Deep in my ear there is a silence-shaped ring.
I rub my fingers together. The ring goes round them.


4.

The window is open, isn’t it?
I’m standing somewhere,
somewhere near the door.
But the window is open.
Can the door be open?
Something has long been closed.


5.

A mortgage locked by wet stamps
life insurance keyed to contrition

she rides a horse
wakes with car keys in her hand

celebrity tracking

You know how wheresgeorge tracks money, right? Chrisafer muses, "Sometimes I wish there were a resource on the Internets where you could log on and see where a celebrity is at any given time." Shouldn't that be fairly easy? Set up an interface where anyone can enter a celebrity's name, where the celebrity was spotted (in the Houston airport, in Safeway, at a restaurant), what the celebrity was doing (eating a peach, reading a Stephen King book, peeing), who the celebrity was with (other famous person, child, hobbling old lady), whether the spotter engaged in any interaction with celebrity (got photo, autograph, stamped their ticket). Of course most celebrities would hate this. Maybe William Hung, joke of the day (or yesterday maybe), might be thrilled to be spotted, or some bit player using it as evidence for the advancement of his career would be thrilled to find themselves tracked. And maybe it would encourage more celebrity-bothering, as spotters might find the excuse of their future report be reason for an interaction.

Go to the site, enter a celebrity's name, and see where they were last spotted. If Tom Cruise was spotted several times in Florida a report of him in Amsterdam at the same time is probably a false report. You might see clusters of reports on lookalikes. It'd be cool to have maps, you could see where celebrities are spotted most often, trace a celebrity's movements over the globe.

the old home

After several months of procrastination and gathering dread I at last drove up to Sebastopol to face the boxes piled in the basement. Cindy & Michael, who are renting the house I grew up in, had gathered up all our stuff (Mom's, bro David's, and mine) and stored it in the basement. I've made other trips to sort through stuff -- throwing some away, bringing some back here -- but the long pause since the last trip had me nervous about going again. Turned out OK. There was both more than I expected and less. Less because I was able to throw out more. I threw away the costumes I made for the Oz Convention costume parades. I threw away the puppet theatre troupe D & I had made. I threw away our old worn stuffed animals. And so on. When I filled up the garbage bin Cindy gave me some black plastic bags and I filled three of those.

I brought back boxes of paper -- writings, drawings, books. And a select few objects -- the dollhouse furniture Mom's father made, a ceramic teapot Mom made (it looks sort of like one of those women carved into a ship's prow, only instead of a face she has a spout -- it's actually sorta disturbing), a few strings of pearls (real or costume?) ...

I can probably finish the project in two more trips. Maybe three, as at least one trip will most likely be taken up schlepping all David's stuff to a shipping company.

Poetry & Pizza

My favorite pizza at Escape from New York Pizza where we have our monthly Poetry & Pizza night is bbq chicken. But I also like the sausage, which has big slices of sausage that are rather like spicy meatloaf.

comments on "Night Poems" version 2

What to say. What to say. Suddenly I loathe it. But I think that has more to do with other things going on. So I find myself impatient with the poem. I like the first section best. The second section seems phony. The 3rd and 4th sections are OK. They are much like the original versions, just trimmed.

Night Poems, version 2

1.

Between dreams I walk,
down the long, wrinkled corridor,
shadows painted into the faces on its walls.
Like trophy heads in a hunter’s jungle bungalow
lamps jut out,
all staring glass.


2.

The window is open, isn’t it?
I’m standing somewhere,
somewhere near the door.
But the window is open.
Can the door be open?
Something has to be closed.

My eyes are sore, having been pulled from sleep.
My hair is still asleep and my pajamas murmur sleepily.
My skin is dreaming about being near.
My breath my breath. I can’t wake it.
There is a silence-shaped ring in my ear.
I put my finger to my ear, my loud loud finger.


3.

fingers up northern faces
of the mildly gated

lights lost in
among handles.


4.

A mortgage locked by wet stamps
life insurance keyed to contrition

she rides a horse
wakes with car keys in her hand

something to say

An older woman, a poet who was going blind, who recited all her work, good poems, surprised me with a compliment, "You really have something to say," she said.

I've puzzled over that ever since.

Laurel K. Dodge, a poet whose work I got to know on a poetry bulletin board or two, has made public her blogs. One is for thinking aloud. The other is specifically for poems. Laurel writes a lot. The write-a-lot poet seems to bother people. Most poets don't. The reason books of poetry are so slim isn't just that the poet ruthlessly edits down her corpus to only the finest. Fact is, most just don't write many poems. An argument tends to erupt at about this point in the discussion: fewer poems = better poems? Or no? I'll say no and leave it at that.

As I understand it Laurel started her blog (one or both?) as a private place to put up her poetry, not sure she wanted the raw work available to any old click. But she discovered once the blog went public and she got visitors that she had motivation to post stuff. This is true for me. Even on my no-comments LoveSettlement (unlike Dare I Read where you can comment), I imagine people coming by to read what I write and that's more motivation than I get just tapping away alone at the keyboard, unseeable so unseen. (My email is easy to get to anyway, top of the page.)

Among other things I like Laurel's stream-of-consciousness prose. "There are so many things that I want to say right now and they're all crowding toward the door, trying to shove their way out all at once, fighting to be articulated. I feel overwhelmed. Perhaps it's merely hunger. And not desire, as my good friend would suggest. My good friend who thinks any thing, any damned little thing is an expression of or symbol for desire, whether blatant or latent. Exercise? Sublimation of desire. Hunger? Full blown, out and out desire."

Saturday night

Saw Blue Orange last night.

Saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this afternoon.

On the way home from the movie bought the new New Order CD, Waiting for the Sirens' Call, listened to it today while I did the dishes.

the gay news

I bop by gay news sites to see what's up with the community. And it fucking depresses me. Jeez. When lefties wig out about the fundies ascendant I always think, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? These Godly rejects have long declared war on me and mine. That they're orchestrating these lovely anti-marriage constitutional amendments in state after state -- coming soon to the US Constitution? -- and winning winning winning, usually with 2/3 majorities -- damn, it just juices them up. Now they're going to go around ripping kids out of their homes -- new law in Texas says if you're a foster kid you can't live in a household with gay (or bisexual) people. (I wonder if a gay minor can live with himself?) These people have got the lock on the rhetoric. They are pro-Family, when that means the destruction of families.

These people would happily torture Jesus to death over and over and pay for the privilege. Oh. There was a movie that just did that? Pain and death are way better than sex.

Wait. I'm too angry. I've been told anger turns people off, people who would offer sympathy if I weren't so hot. Golly, that anger, it makes people uncomfortable. They don't want to be around it. Sure, they'll vote against my life but they're only doing it because I'm so angry. If I were sensible and sweet they'd feel better about voting against my life but tell me they feel bad for me.

comments on "Night Poems"

These are fragments. Again from the Tales of the blue & yellow sun / work journal of 1984. I don't know that the pieces will cohere into a single work. But there are bits of them that seem to be calling across the space between dreams to each other.

Night Poems

1.

Somewhere between the dreams
I sleepwalk
striding without destination
down dimly lit corridors.
On the walls hang portraits
with deep shadows painted into the subjects’ faces;
sombre, forever brooding.
Lamps jut from the walls like trophies
in a safari hunter’s jungle bungalo.


2.

The window is open.
I stand in the hall door staring across the dining room,
hair disheveled, pajamas limp,
but my eyes ripped free of sleep
and my skin, so warm,
gathers cold bumps.
Unconsciously my breaths are shallow and silent,
ears pick up only the ringing in the air.

Doubts assail like persistent gnats,
sure I closed the window, locked it,
remember pulling the curtains,
was it even open yesterday?


3.

Haut [?] ascended the stairs like a chipmunk
the geometric shapes humming about
fingers up northern faces
of the marriage gated
where far away lights lost in
among handles.


4.

Mortgage gated
licking stamps

the key to the house
life insurance policy

she rides a horse
wakes with the carkeys in her hand

I’m sorry, that’s all we can do.
One shoots himself.

from Kafka's diary

From Franz Kafka's diary, Oct 22, 1911, he's been describing some plays that he's attended. A small Jewish theatre.

"The sympathy we have for these actors who are so good, who earn nothing and who do not get nearly enough gratitude and fame is really only sympathy for the sad fate of many noble strivings, above all of our own. Therefore, too, it is so immoderately strong, because on the surface it is attached to strangers and in reality belongs to us."

American English

Your Linguistic Profile:

75% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

5% Yankee

0% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Victory in California Violent Poetry Case

I picked up the newsletter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund when I last passed through the local comic store. The Fall 2004 issue, so not the hottest news. I vaguely remember having heard about the case of the high school student who wrote a possibly threatening poem. Seems it made it to the California Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled "unanimously [to] overturn ... the conviction of a 15-year old Santa Clara County student who was imprisoned for writing a disturbing poem." Good to hear one can still write a frightening poem -- especially in high school! Imprisoning poets would definitely have a chilling effect on the production of poems. Get an MFA, go to jail!

No, don't say that might be a good idea.

comments on "Modern Witches", version 6

I wrote this version the same evening I posted version 5. I went ahead and did what I contemplated in comments -- I rearranged the stanzas and pared the repetitions of the refrain. But, especially since I'd just posted a version, I wanted a few days to let the changes gel. I made some minor edits before posting just now. But I think the poem is done.

The end is sort of a let down. From the opening stanza's cold God to the closing stanza's burnt casserole. But it makes sense to me. It's a defying-God sort of let down.

I almost said I wouldn't write a poem so essay-like today. But I guess I did, didn't I?

Modern Witches, version 6

Do witches burn the way they used to?
When passions got God’s goat and love’s fire
curled his heavenly lip with infinite disgust,
did they burn more fiercely then in the face of that cold regard?
And for whom did they burn?

Way back when they’d swim – or float, at least –
while everyone else went straight to the slimy bottom
to sit there, bubbles rising from the mouth and nostrils
until there was no more air to send back to air.

Do witches burn the way they used to --
tied to a post in the town square?
God would take a soul fire had stripped
of sin, some said. By law we kill the witch,
the burning’s a favor. A little water
dribbled on a forehead just won’t quench sin so red.

Time was you’d look to the sky and see a body –
spread arms ending in spread fingers.
robes flapping about the torso like flames –
and you’d think, “It’s an angel!”
Unless it was a woman, then, “Witch!”
What do people decide in such a situation these days?

Don’t witches burn the way they used to?
When it’s an offering they’ve put a match to,
a smudge of sage, the herb that clears the room
of angry spirits. Oh, don’t be stupid. You knew that!
A campfire. A fire for cooking. Witches burn.
The casserole forgotten in the oven. That, too.

Info Desk Blogging (after hours edition)

Right next door is a big construction site. Condos, I believe. They've named the development "Library Gardens".

I don't know what to say about that.

Anyway. Since this is the library (and that manifestly isn't) packages for "Library Gardens" are sometimes delivered here.

There's a letter in the local daily that I find remarkable. (It's the 9th letter down, so you'll have to do some scrolling.) The head of the children's dept says, "As any parent knows, children live in the moment." Hm. I wonder about her airing unfortunate allegations against some of the employees she supervizes. Was that something she should have done?

Looks like as part of the citywide budget cutting measures the library along with other "nonesssential services" (essential: fire, police) will be closed one additional day each month. Because library funding comes from a tax that doesn't feed into the city's general fund our library director was hoping she could avoid the closure. Seems to be no. This will be an unpaid day off. You're not allowed to use a vacation day. For those thinking of retiring this year that causes jaw-grinding and teeth-gnashing because the amount of your pension depends on what you earned in your last working year. This is not really one of my worries.

Kay Loftus

Clive Matson sends me his Crazy Child Scribbler, which is made up of poems and announcements about his workshops. The latest issue features poems of Kay Loftus, who "died recently in her nineties." I'm guessing Kay took some of Clive's classes; none of the poems are given previous publication credit.

The poems use rhyme & meter & occasionally resort to archaic "poetic" diction like "Methinks" or capitalizing "Wisdom". As amateur stuff goes it's not bad, really. That's faint praise, I know. I'd chuckle at an open mic over, "I hate the feel of pointed shoes! / I'll never wear them; I refuse." But I had no interest in reading any further than those first two lines.

Finality

I think it will not be too hard,
to break my bond with breath;
I'll just breathe out
and not breathe in:
then saunter off with Death.

*

Now. I'll have to say I like "Finality". The only end-rhyme is breath/Death. I'm dubious about the personification of death, but it's been done before, certainly, and here it's not overdone. Death isn't wearing sandals or taking our heroine's hand. I like the speaker's insouciance. And the writer has an ear, the pleasing line of bs, a consonantal hard echoing the difficult hard of the first line. I like the repetition of breathe/breath, the mimesis of breathing. I don't scan lines much but here they seem to scan fluidly. I'd debate with myself about including it in a magazine. Maybe I would. What makes me hesitate? The sentiment is defiant but pat, a little on the cute side. It insists that carrying out this resolution won't "be too hard" and anticipates a jaunty "saunter" away from life. It's a very short poem. To keep my interest on repeated readings I'd like a bit more darkness, a suggestion of hard.

I like Kay most when contemplative, as in the opening lines of "This Kind of Stuff Keeps Me Awake":

I came awake and was aware I breathed ...
I marveled that so delicate an act,
not consciously engaged in nor conceived,
could be the force which keeps my Self intact.

Nazi Pope

Other than disgust I wouldn't really care. Except the Catholic Church helps fund the anti-marriage crusade around the world. And Ratzinger creams his cassock over the destruction of gay families. May God open the door for him soon. So the Catholics can move on to someone who also isn't a Nazi anymore.

comments on "Modern Witches", version 5

OK. Having fun now. I wonder if I ought to rearrange the stanzas? The final stanza takes us closest to the silliness of the original. But I think even stanza 4 is funny. It's all a big joke to me, isn't it? ... I'm getting tired of the refrain. But then I often do.

Modern Witches, version 5

Do witches burn the way they used to?
Way back when they’d swim – or float, at least –
while everybody else went straight to the slimy bottom
and sat there, bubbles rising from the mouth and nostrils
until there was no more air to send back to air.

Do witches burn the way they used to?
When passions got God’s goat and love’s fire
curled his heavenly lip with infinite disgust,
did they burn more fiercely then in the face of that cold regard?
And for whom did they burn?

Do witches burn the way they used to?
Time was you’d look to the sky and see a body –
spread arms ending in spread fingers.
robes flapping about the torso like flames –
and you’d think, “It’s an angel!”
Unless it was a woman, then, “Witch!”
What do people decide in such a situation these days?

Do witches burn the way they used to --
tied to a post in the town square?
God would take a soul fire had stripped
of sin, some said. By law we kill the witch,
the burning’s a favor. A little water
dribbled on a forehead just won’t quench sin so red.

Don’t witches burn the way they used to?
When it’s an offering they’ve put a match to,
a smudge of sage, the herb that clears the room
of angry spirits. Don’t be stupid. You knew that!
A campfire. A fire for cooking. Witches burn.
The casserole forgotten in the oven. That, too.

audience

So one of the batches of poems I sent out not long ago got a No. Pooh. Up came that apologetic feeling. Naturally they didn't accept any of these poems, these weren't my best poems, these were poems I've sent around before and nobody else has wanted them therefore they must really not be worthwhile, if I'd had any respect for this ezine I would have sent more recent better work. Hmph. When I choose poems to send out I reread each one and if I don't like the dern thing I don't send it out! Sure, I see flaws in my poems. I see flaws in all my poems at one time or another. Sometimes I even revise them post-publication. But I sent this ezine good poems so I don't have anything to feel weird about. They didn't like them or didn't like them enough or didn't feel like the poems fit with their idea of their ezine or whatever. The poems hit or they don't.

Every so often I see talk about audience. Do you write for an audience? Do you picture a reader as you write?

I do and I don't. When I'm working on a poem I'm seeing an object. If you're making a thing and you see that it wants to stand up on its own you have to adjust its base and its balance until it can do that. Regardless of whether anybody ever looks at it. That's pretty much where I am. I'd be happy to paint the thing the bright colors that would lead to more sales if ... if I were making things people pay for. Or so I imagine.

comments on "Modern Witches", version 4

We now have a fourth stanza. And the repeating line is "Do witches burn the way they used to?" rather than "Do they burn the way they used to?"

It's quite a different poem from the original. I'm enjoying watching it build its rooms. I sort of wish it were someone else doing the building, then I could just watch and not have to produce. When I was reading Oz books as a kid I'd dream of an Oz book writing machine that would knock out a new Oz book a year. I'm not sure why I didn't dream of a new author. Maybe the machine was taking dictation from somebody in Oz? In the tiny Ozian country of Oogaboo there's a tree from which you can pluck novels. Sure, a tree would never be able to do that. But a machine!

Recently I've been writing long poems, poems that I add to over the course of days, weeks, months. Maybe I should keep 4 or 5 poems going at once, the way I work through my stack of books. Write a couple lines on Poem A, then a couple lines on Poem B, then a couple lines on Poem C or skip C and do D. Practically it would mean I'd have to have simultaneous separate notebooks. Or I'd have to do my writing on the computer. I have been working on a Poem A and a Poem B. Poem A is in the notebook. Poem B is "Modern Witches".

What I need to do is get back to organizing books. I have several hypothetical books or books in progress, but I haven't looked at them in ages. There's London Transport, which is poems I wrote 15 years ago during a semester in London. There's fact which is a collection of brief self-conscious poems (you can find links to some on the bottom of the homepage of my poetry site). There's Windows, which I mostly wrote in Lyn Hejinian's workshop at Cal, a manuscript of poems using "windows" as a malleable metaphor. Similarly there is Houses. And there was Cities, but that one didn't really gel. Oh yeah. Telephones, which has become quite dated in a few short years as telephone technology morphs the sorts of phones we use. A book of autobiographical poems. So many! Easier not to mess with it.

Modern Witches, version 4

Do witches burn the way they used to?
I understand they used to swim – or float, at least –
when everybody else went straight to the slimy bottom
and sat there, bubbles rising from the mouth and nostrils
until there wasn’t any more air to send back to air.

Do witches burn the way they used to?
When passions got God’s goat and love’s fire
curled his heavenly lip with infinite disgust,
did they burn more fiercely then in the face of that cold regard?
And for whom did they burn?

Do witches burn the way they used to?
Time was you’d look to the sky and see a body –
spread arms ending in spread fingers.
robes flapping about the torso like flames –
and you’d think, “It’s an angel!”
Unless it was a woman, then, “Witch!”
What do people decide in such a situation these days?

Do witches burn the way they used to?
Tied to a post in the town square?
Was it ever true that the fire that ate the body
cleansed the soul, too? The witch had to be killed,
the burning was a favor. God would take a soul a fire
had stripped of sin, some said.

Info Desk Blogging II

You have to read "Info Desk Blogging" below before you read "Info Desk Blogging II", OK?

So I said, "The library doesn't cater to blah blah blah." Soon's I wrote that an elderly gent pops up. He's got a slip of paper on which is written a call number. I glance at it. Ah yes, the books in that call number are on the second floor. "I was on the second floor!" he gripes. "That was where they gave me this number."

Oh. I pull out the library map. He sees me pointing at the map and starting to speak and decides to fuss. He was just up there, he's just getting the runaround, he wants an accomodation as a disabled person. I tell him I'd be happy to go get the book for him; we don't have a person available to go running to the shelves to pluck books for individual patrons. I was going to explain the hold system -- so that he could use it the next time. Too often when an exception is made the person who gets his way then uses the previous exception as proof that we-always-do-it-why-not-you-did-it-last-time. I didn't get to any of the policies. Rather he kept raising his voice -- and claiming he had a hearing problem. The only thing he allowed himself to hear was, "I'll get it for you." When I immovably continued to let words leave my mouth he said, "You said you were going to get it for me!"

The security guard at the front door stepped up to see if he could help and I sort of waved him away. Finally I said, "I'll get the book for you and be right back."

When I handed him the book he lit up and told me what a treasure it was and something about nuclear something, then he said, "You don't care about any of that, do you?"

A couple coworkers sympathized after the old man left. "He did something like that to me," said one. "He stood over me shaking his finger."

The other said two patrons had told her they were tempted to jump in on my side.

Aw. How sweet.

Other than getting kinda cranked up I was really OK. The worst thing is I only do the Info Desk once a month, and I only get a problem patron every third time or so, so I get totally out of practice. It's not until the interaction is over or almost over that I really get a handle on it. It's hard enough remembering where the tax forms are!

Info Desk Blogging

The Information Desk faces the Central Library's main entrance doors. It looks sunny and nice out there (I can't see the sky, only the sunlight on the faded pink of the building across the street), but a cold breeze comes in with the people.

Been at the desk 10 minutes and the big question of the day is, "Do you have tax forms?" The answer is, "Yes!" After back-to-back calls inquiring about specific forms I've decided to leave the Info binder open to the list. The other big question (asked 4 times) is our year-round, "How do I get a library card?"

We have a new hold system. Instead of running off to check the shelf when an item is listed in the catalog as "check shelf", then grabbing the book and taking it to the Circulation Desk to be held for the caller to pick up, we now put a hold on the item through the computer. Twice a day someone prints out a list of what patrons have requested then goes through the library loading up a cart; all items are then delivered to the Circ Desk at one time. On the whole this is great. But when someone calls who is anxious to get her hands on a particular book TODAY we don't rush off to the shelves right then; she has to come in and hope it really is on the shelf where the online catalog says it is. The library doesn't cater to the hurry-right-now crowd.

brrr

Just back from sushi. Mm.

Kent ran upstairs to watch 24.

I turned up the heat and haven't yet taken my jacket off. I will in a minute.

Sundy is requesting a playmate. He comes up to the chair and reaches out with a forepaw to snag a pantleg or the hem of my jacket. Eh! he cries Eah! I wave a toy mouse in front of his nose and that distracts him for a moment.

On the walk home from work I bought a Lotto ticket. I haven't even won two dollars on the last few tickets. I buy one every third month or so.

APE-related link for today: mkreed

Shyness is nice but shyness can stop you

Lots a times I sit down to write something and my mind's a blank. Today my mind's awhirl, which can make writing difficult, too.

The fine weather sure helps my mood. We had a winter storm come through this week and I know it got me down. One day I waited more than ten minutes at the corner for the bus with gusts of cold rain affixing leaf crumbs to my damp pantleg. A girl without an umbrella or raincoat, just a thick scarf she'd wound tightly under her chin, shivered under the tree next to me, raindrops glistening on her nose. I tried not to cast her too many pitying looks. Of course it has to be the miserable weather day that the bus is late. Usually I walk to work. It's only a 15 minute walk. But one can get well soaked in those 15 minutes.

Enjoyed A.P.E. yesterday. Though we were pretty burnt by the time we left. Glad there was a crowd and hope that everybody sold lots of stuff. Saw everything from the amateurish to the amazing. Zan of Prism Comics said he gets emailed work by young creators who are full of enthusiasm -- "I'm the Next Big Thing!" -- and the work is gawdawful. He tries to say encouraging things and connect the youngsters to resources. A year later, he says, the same artist will be doing stuff that's just incredible.

Am I bold? Will I ever be bold enough to self-promote efficiently rather than haphazardly?

I'm always impressed when I see an example of someone who really takes advantage of opportunities. After last week's Poetry & Pizza a man who'd been in the audience came up to me to praise the evening and, because it's what he does I suspect, he launched into a spiel about his own work, toothpick sculpture. He gave me his card. He rattled off a sort of resume -- shows here and there, mentions or feature articles in this or that newspaper or magazine. He also recited for me a poem he'd written for his mother. Was he shy? No. But yes. He seemed personally shy, a little nerdy. All the great flirts believe themselves shy.

music

When I sit at the desk at work I often listen to CDs. At Amoeba on Telegraph they have racks full of clearance CDs -- every 4th one free! -- and I stock up on sampler CDs for a dollar or two apiece. As I listen I mark songs I like, then listen to the marked songs once or twice more and decide whether I want to add them to the permanent collection. If it's yes I bring the CD home and transfer those songs to the Mac. Gradually I burn the music onto mix CDs.

This is rather similar actually to the way I go through books of poetry. As I read I keep handy a stack of bookmarks. If I want to reread a poem, in goes a bookmark. After I finish the book I reread the marked poems 3 to 8 times. If I decide I don't want to leave the poem behind, I copy it into a notebook.

Technology has at last made it easier to copy songs than copy poems.

But I get tired of evaluating. Especially with a CD by one artist I will put aside whether-I-like-it and just listen. But then these are artists I know, pretty much, even if I don't know the particular album; whereas with the sampler CDs I'm often hearing music by artists totally unfamiliar to me. The odds aren't as good they'll be what-I-like.

Then there are the times my ears get tired. And I put the sound away. This happens reading, too. And reading poems especially. Because poems are rich and thick and require savoring. Sometimes I'll just read one or two poems before putting the book down.

I brought home a new anthology of poems that comes with a CD of songs. The book, Isn't It Romantic? collects "love poems" by poets of my generation (me b. 1965, the poets included born between 1959 and 1976). I listened to the CD at my desk and like these three songs: "I'm gonna watch you sleep" by Hamell on Trial and "The Ocean Cliff Clearing" by Richard Buckner and "She is my diary" by Ray's Vast Basement. I'm not familiar with the musicians. Of the anthology's poets I recognize several names: Peter Gizzi, Anselm Berrigan, Lisa Jarnot, Katy Lederer, etc. ... I've just flipped around and looked at lines so I don't know what I think about the poems yet. Find out in a few years on Dare I Read? ...

Hope

It's hard to post to two blogs in one day. Especially when there's only one computer and two people using it. Just about everything I post at Dare I Read? is prewritten. I keep a Word file (coming up on 40 pages) in which I copy out old diaries entries and comment on them, then I copy sections to the blog. With the LoveSettlement blog I write almost everything in the Blogger box. Then hit post. And hope Blogger isn't screwed up.

it it it

it it a tit a tit a tit tit tea tit tot a tot ought tot tottle tot bottle what caught fought a fit a fit fatter flattened fut fit foot fine fun flat undat undone undittle what pit per spittle cut sit sut send dangle cuff mitt my mit hit cun tuncle sup pun pundle much suffer cat think wit one whit subtle bustle some stit tun tit a bit a bitten bit a bit cut fit think shindle stink sunder bun under stun tong flutter splatter suck tumble munch blund wall lang

the secret to publishing

Jack Martin writes, "I'm going to tell you the secret of getting a substantial number of submissions out without too much work: send out two or three submissions a week for a couple months (or longer--the longer you persist, of course, the more substantial the number). Then once they start rolling back in as yesses and nos, all you have to do is pop the orphans back in an envelope again on Saturday."

He goes on to say, "I used to send out submissions in blocks of fifteen or thirty or so. Now I'm trying to do it a little at a time. It's not so hard to get two submissions ready on Saturday and Sunday. Before you know it, you'll have a bunch of your good poems out to good magazines. And in about a year, you'll have a bunch of your good poems published in some of those magazines."

Jack is absolutely right. I've thought of this method. I've even done a version of it -- that is the popping of rejects back into an envelope right away. But maybe confining the marketing biz to a Saturday morning is the trick. The other trick is being able to shrug off the no and move on. I can. But there are those times I can't. And those times I can't have had the tendency in the past to build on each other until I'm shut down.

I had a migraine yesterday. Today I was really worn out from the tension of it so I stayed home and slept half the day. The migraine was different. Mostly nausea. Usually a migraine is so much headache the nausea seems like a mere side effect. This time it was the other way 'round.

comments on "Modern Witches", version 3

I don't know. I don't know. It's lines.

Modern Witches, version 3

Do they burn the way they used to?
I understand they used to swim – or float, at least –
when everybody else went straight to the slimy bottom
and sat there, bubbles rising from the mouth and nostrils
until there wasn’t any more air to send back to air.

Do they burn the way they used to?
When passions got God’s goat and love’s fire
curled his heavenly lip with infinite disgust,
did they burn then in the face of His cold regard?
And for whom did they burn?

Do they burn the way they used to?
It used to be you’d look to the sky and see a body –
human hands spread wide on the ends of extended arms,
robes flapping about the torso –
and you’d think, “It’s an angel!”
Unless it was a woman, then, “Witch!”
What do people decide these days in such a situation?

the ol' E.V.

I got good news when I checked my email this morning. Tryst wants 3 of the 5 poems I sent them. Right on! Now I have to pick out a photo of me that I don't hate and send it and the poems back to them.

Nothing like external validation to up the mood.

Plus which it was a lovely lovely day. And I'm looking forward to lighter evenings next week.

couch

Kent is stretched out on the couch reading me bits from the latest New Yorker. Sundy is between his legs. Sutra, on the floor to my left, sat up to scratch his chin with a hind foot. Flash is on the wood floor in the dining room gazing placidly at the couch.

dancing

I've been half-depressed lately. I have a lot of the mental blocks but few angry-at-self thoughts. Mental block and angry-at-self have been such an inseparable couple up to now. They are so good at dancing together. Dancing together for days, each leading the other on to new feats of agility, high-kicks, pirouettes, and stamina! amazing stamina.

In the last week I've been noticing poet bloggers who've mentioned their latest rejections. Some even name the magazines that said no. In order to be able to report a no (or a nonono, as I put it a few days ago), one has to send work out. A yes may happen then. There's opportunity for it.

greetings!

Aloha mai kakou e na 'oiwi a me na malihini mai 'o aku o ka honua. Welina mai me ke aloha ia 'oukou a pau loa! Yeah. I'd just like to hear him say it.

Translation: Greetings to everyone, those native-born to Hawai'i and all other visitors from around the world. The warmest welcome I extend to you all!

$300

I'd scheduled 2 poets from Los Angeles to read in the Poetry & Pizza series next Friday, April 1. I was prepping their bios to send out to our email list when I got a note from one of them. She was bowing out. No reason given. (The other refused to make the trek alone.) Curiously, on her own website, there was another reading listed for April 1.

When I wrote back to her saying I was disappointed she 'fessed to the better offer. The other reading was giving her $300! Let's see. $300 hometown reading vs. reading in SF (hours away), no $, free pizza & soda but have to figure out how to lodge self for weekend. Now if you've oodles of integrity you say to yourself I made a committment, I have to honor my committment, say no to the money & the audience of people who know me, and climb in the car.

I'm not sure I have that much integrity either.

I did schedule a local boy, too. He'll come through, right?

comments on "Modern Witches", version 2

Days went by and I had a couple ideas. I could try it in form. Form seems to be good for humor. Since the generalizations about a group bug me I could recast it as musing on a specific (hypothetical?) witch. I may have had another idea but I'm not remembering it now.

The approach in version 2 below is a moving away from the Halloween witch, the Halloween cliches, toward the real fates of people accused of being witches. I'll have to brood on this some more.

Modern Witches, version 2

Do they burn the way they used to?
I understand they used to swim – or float, at least –
when everybody else went straight to the slimy bottom
and sat there, bubbles rising from the mouth and nostrils
until there wasn’t any more air to send back to air.

No doubt they fly. Everybody does these days.

updates at the poetry site

I finally did some updating at the LoveSettlement poetry site. The homestead.com program is not Mac compatible so if I do anything to the poetry site I have to do it at work, after five. Hang around the office after five? ... eehhh ...

But finally I did. The last "featured poem" was posted October 2003. I will no longer note the date of the "featured poem". Poems don't expire like milk or calendar pages but I don't want it so very obvious that I don't update the page frequently. The new "featured poem" will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, which means it'll be new to nearly everybody!

on someone else's blog

Teresa's favorite compliment.

blue blanket

From the weaver's booth at the Oak Park Fair Kent bought a blue blanket, a deep blue green fat stripe alternates with a slimmer sky blue. It doesn't have a tight weave. This is problematic as the cats seem to enjoy sitting on it.

You know how if a cat is feeling particular enjoyment he opens his paws, his claws splay out, then he tightens his paws and his claws curl under. In the tightened position he lifts his paw then lowers it spread.

The spreading paw extends the hooks which neatly capture one of the fat threads of the blanket, when the paw lifts the thread pulls up. Though we try to keep the cat boys happy elsewhere they do once in awhile get pleased with things while on the blanket.

comments on Roger Pao's blog

Here.

Excerpts:

Pao: "Why do people hate Asian-American poetry? One interesting critique often levied against Asian American poetry is its engagement in identity politics/ethnic studies -- that is an evil per se."

Me: "I read the Garret Hongo edited Open Boat. I enjoyed it. I find context interesting. I had previously read most of the poets in Open Boat elsewhere but reseeing them as 'Asian-American' poets rather than 'just poets' gave them a new context. I don't claim any great revelations but I see no reason not to present a collection like this, especially since many of the poets included seem to feel being in the company of other Asian American poets gives them something that otherwise dissipates among the mass of American poetry/ies.

I think this has been true of women included in anthologies of poetry by women. Or Native American poets.

And I know I feel ... empowered isn't quite the word ... encouraged? ... something anyway ... something I like when I read a book of poems by gay poets; being gay it's nice to be able to put myself in the context of other gay poets (whether I ever appear in such an anthology myself). I don't seem to love the work more frequently than in other sorts of anthologies but I do recognize familiar stances, ways of being or thinking or looking, strategies of disguise and allusion or revelation. And there are in such an anthology things to which the ol' white male het seems oblivious. I like the opportunity to have context available."

Pao: "I've wondered whether there is the same phenomenon in the publication of 'gay poetry' as there is in 'Asian-American poetry' of not sounding 'too gay' or 'too Asian-American.'"

Me: "Historically one must say that the only way to publish until quite recently was to de-gay one's writing. I'm sure it's still true that gay writers tone down the details, despite the many publishing out & prouds.

I don't seem to write erotic poetry, I don't even write very many autobiographical poems, and you won't find many of my poems addressing gay-specific issues, but I would be happy to be included in an anthology of gay poets ... you've asked, is it an asian-american poem if it's subject matter is not noticeably 'asian-american'? ... is it a gay poem? a male poem or female poem? While it's a mistake to declare the context more important than the art, the context provides the art's frame and many's the time the frame tells us much about ourselves and audience."

on & on & on & on & on

You'd owned Denny's domes doubt ten he wearing fever end you'd dust dough bite rid employing

writing them, he said, was conversing, he said, putting his hand to his forehead to his eyes to his ears to his cheeks until his head was covered, he said, with poets & their poems making it a noise every Wednesday

here in the arctic we have a splendid view of the eventual merchandise worn applicably newsworthily and adjusted in successive sea-shifts

inland outland knoll bowl sea flee hurries flurries mountain poutin' once tons held smelled hurt spurt difficulty if it's bulky

pow pow power

the future is looking back at you

no & no & no & no & no

You don't send any poems out anywhere in forever and you just go about reading poems and writing them, conversing with the poets & poems you like by writing poems, and the hurt of the nononos gradually, glacially, geologically fades until the mountain that once held back the inland sea has dwindled to a knoll and the sea hurries off to sea as though there were never any difficulty getting there, in fact here's all this power this power that could have been held back by nothing, power you can't imagine being held back no way, so out it goes. And you feel giddy and you think I'll never be rejected again, because the time between the last nononos and now you've gone idiotic, in a good way, you think, not so smart you can see the future realistically. Idiotic in that necessary way that allows you to do something dangerous, as though there's no possibility of being hurt and what is a nonono anyway but idiotic. It's idiocy all around, except for the intelligence of the yes, which you doubt when it happens because no one really knows. Except one knows there's nothing dangerous here, nothing.

Which is to say I sent Steve Mueske at three candles a batch of poems and he read them until he didn't want to anymore and wrote me back nonono. So I'm sending them to tryst.

The Rhythm Balance

"Living In Oblivion (The Living Mix)" Anything Box
"It's A Fine Day" Miss Jane
"Don't Stop" Brazilian Girls
"Torn" In Deep
"You're the One that I Want" Asia Gang
"I Can Feel Your Love" Felice Taylor
"The Heartache Is Gone" Bettye Swann
"I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" Paul Revere & The Raiders
"Home in Your Heart" Solomon Burke
"Alive And Amplified" The Mooney Suzuki
"Get Rhythm" Jawbone
"Michael & Anne" King Apparatus
"Balanco Da Canoa" Toinho de Alagoas
"Flotation Merengue" Blinky & The Roadmasters
"Mi Cuba" P18
"Frenazo" Tony Phillips
"Logozo" Sidestepper
"End Of The World Party" Medeski, Martin & Wood
"Hallelujah (excerpt)" CAN
"Sekusile" Dark City Sisters
"Let There Be Peace" Chris Murray
"#3" POTSHOT
"Fidelina" Alejo Durán


This is my latest mix. Like the last one I posted the songs are culled from sampler CDs. This time the songs tend to the dance, though that's not just contemporary American dancefloor & Eurodisco but Cuban, Brazilian, Reggae, and Ska, as well as some 60s soul.

Tell me why I ought to burn you a copy.

brushing

Sutra is licking his chest. He has a lot of hair and it's long. That is a small tongue. He has to go over his entire body with it.

bags of clothes

I bagged up clothes we've piled behind the front door. These were clothes we've been planning to get rid of, to donate to somebody. Kent was handing me stuff from the front closet, too. Golf clubs, skis. I rolled up the trench coat I wore in London 16 years ago. It's not something I wear around here and it's soiled and I'm done with it. We drove down to Goodwill on University ... and as Kent said, "We're walking out with less than we came with."

comments on "Modern Witches"

I remember performing this poem. I wrote it June 1984. The not yet twenty year old me. And I think it's fun. I see the way it's paced for performance. The ending is a little gift to the roomful of poets at every open mike.

This is of a genre of poetry I've decided I dislike. Generalizing about some group. Talkin' cute about 'em. In looking at a new version of an old poem there's always the question how much / what of my present poetics do I impose on the poet 20 years gone. I didn't think all that much of this poem at the time. I thought it was fun and I loved to hear people laugh and people laughed. If I heard somebody read this at an open today I would laugh. Did I ever send it out to a magazine? I doubt it. But who knows? Get the people enjoying themselves you think you got something good.

This isn't a bad poem. Which makes it tricky. Tricky looking for a way in again. There are only little edits in the notebook. "calculate the witching hour" becomes "check the witching hour" ... "quantum theory and / toadstools" becomes "quantum theory and / the validity of home-growing toadstools" ... Otherwise it's as it hit the page. It's not something I'd include in a manuscript or send to an ezine. Not as it is. I just don't believe in it. It's ... inauthentic.

Modern Witches

Witches today use Black & Decker Power Lawn Mowers
and form co-ops
through which they secure freeze-dried eye of newt
at wholesale.
They install flood lights in their patios
and use teflon-coated cauldrons.
They invent spells on their word processors,
check the witching hour on their digital watches.
They take swimming lessons at the Y
and get their black cats at pet shops that certify feline racial purity.

They meet on Sunday nights and
over tea
they discuss hauntings
and dead relatives,
clairvoyance and
nuclear physics,
quantum theory and
the validity of home-growing toadstools.

Witches today hold down two careers,
witchery and secretarial work,
sorcery and politics,
magic and pornographic film editing,
voodoo and other things.

Witches are liberated,
but not loose.
Witches are close to the earth,
but many use pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizer.
Witches are very private
but do publish the occasional poem,
sometimes under an assumed name.

iced tea & apple

I like to come home and sit down, preferably outside, with a glass of iced tea (from the sun tea jug, no sugar) and a couple quarters of apple. This is when the weather's nice. When sitting outside is pleasant. And read some poems. Or just look out at the yard.

Ronnie & Jenny Go to War

1. "So Happy" Astropop 3
2. "Oh, Candy" The Hurricane Lamps
3. "Me And Mia" Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
4. "Misery" Partly Cloudy
5. "The Revolution Starts ... Now" Steve Earle
6. "Sweet Rain" Gene Loves Jezebel
7. "Between The Eyes" Love Battery
8. "Belly Laugh" Compulsion
9. "Tuck Me In" Alkaline Trio
10. "Yesterday Never Tomorrows" The Stills
11. "International War Criminal" The Slackers
12. "Interplanet Janet" Man Or Astro-man?
13. "All The Young Dudes" Mott The Hoople
14. "Sugar Blue" Jeff Finlin
15. "Rock & Rock Part 2" Gary Glitter
16. "Verb: That's What's Happening" Moby
17. "Nadir's Big Chance" Peter Hammill
18. "Love On Death Row" Chris Spedding
19. "Chicago Is Burning" The Lawrence Arms
20. "Wild, Wild Jayne" Groovie Ghoulies
21. "Foreign Land" SOFTBALL
22. "Jenny" Cretins
23. "Ronnie Is A Psycho" The Parasites

This is my latest mix CD. It's culled from hours of listening to sampler CDs (ones that come with music magazines like CMJ and MOJO) and odd compilations (the Schoolhouse Rock songs covered by alt artists) and the occasional soundtrack. It's mostly pop punk/rock. No electronica, ambient, country, hiphop or soul, not strictly. After listening to piles of sampler CDs I find I like more than I would've guessed. I always knew I liked a little something from every category and it's cool to find a few country and hiphop tracks in my mixes. Country and hiphop may be the two genres in which I'm least likely to find something that appeals to me but that doesn't mean nothing does.

Write to me and tell me why I ought to send you a copy.

What to do when the FBI shows up at the door

Step outside and close the door so they can't claim you've invited them in, says Ron.

marriage wins a round

California Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer has struck down as unconstitional (under the California State Constitution) the restriction of marriage to purely male-female couples. You can download a pdf of the decision from Lambda Legal.

Some excerpts:

"To say that all men and all women are treated the same in that each may not marry someone of the same gender [an argument submitted to the court in favor of upholding the restriction of marriage to mixed gender couples] misses the point. ... The argument that the marriage limitations are not discriminatory because they are gender neutral is similar to arguments in cases dealing with anti-miscegenation laws. ... [Quoting the US Supreme Court]: "'we reject the notion that mere "equal application" of a statute containing racial classifications is enough ...'"

"[T]he question to be answered is whether [an] individual is being denied equal protection because of his/her characteristics."

"[T]he starting point is that one can choose who to marry, and that choice cannot be limited by the state unless there is a legitimate governmental reason for doing so."

Tradition, the judge says, is not by itself sufficient "reason."

The news always says the decision will be appealed, which means nobody gets to get married even though to prevent them from marrying is so obviously not a state power and an abrogation of human rights. Hmf.

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 4

Again the changes are few. I'm not at all sure I can get away the line, "A wall stands up for me." I like it and I think it's too clever and it fails by its cleverness but there's something appealing about its failure. Could be it's out of place.

I returned line breaks to the piece and the banal dialog was painfully exposed. The dialog works best, if it works well, in a doesn't-matter-who-says-it sort of way. I like the naturalness of it -- sounds like real people talking -- but this is a tiny universe and the things in this universe are huge because there are so few things in this universe. Reading it the umpteenth time I think it works. This way. As a prose paragraph. Read in a rush, without the concentration of attention line breaks invite.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating, version 4

Glenn! Dinchu hear me? A gust gets around my hair, been like that all day. Two girls, one dark, one fair. Hi. A wall stands up for me. I’m glad to see them. Really. Graduating Friday? No! Tomorrow! Seen any of the summer movies? One, but not really a “summer” movie. MariBeth stands beside me smiling, but she doesn’t say anything. Julie pulls her dark hair from her shoulders, lets it spill again from her hand. I want to be natural, but I’m unnatural. Doing anything? Well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter. She bites her bagel. Coming to graduation? Julie and MariBeth both are graduating, a year after me. A year. I’m eighteen? As they walk on I walk. I hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party? No. A wind blows between what I say, what they say, what Julie says. A wind blows between the fingers I’ve taken out of my pockets.

so beautiful

It was so beautiful yesterday. And it was warm this morning. I felt comfortable getting out of bed, the translation from covered to uncovered no shock to my skin. So I planned to have a sunny day.

And there was fog. High fog, but enough to blank out the view of San Francisco. When I stepped out on the porch wearing a Hawaiian shirt the cool of the air crept up the sleeves. Darn. I went back in to add a layer or two.

writing a book

C. Dale Young said, "I would have a meltdown if I sat down to work on a poem and had even a slight expectation nagging in the background that a new poem need conform to a 'book' or the idea of a book."

I commented, "If a project grabs hold of me, keeps generating. I bang on that iron fist that's got hold of my ankle till its fingers wiggle free at the joints and I end up sitting on a warped park bench wondering why I'm not dragging a growling metal critter down the street anymore and get to miss it."

Info Desk Blogging

Gosh, I haven't done "Info Desk Blogging" in ages. I used to have an hour each week on the Info Desk here at Berkeley Public Library but that hasn't been the case for months now. I sort of have a once-a-month hour, which would be this hour. The last few times I've been here it's been hectic.

When I wrote "Gosh" 15 minutes ago it'd been pretty darn quiet, then, of course, I got several calls and people coming to the desk with questions. The call I just hung up was from someone who was asking about Trouble in Paradise. We have 4 versions of something called Trouble in Paradise. Two of these are novels (by different authors) and two are movies (one from 1992, the other from 1932). The 1992 movie stars Raquel Welch and we own the VHS format. The caller wanted us to hold the 1932 version for him to pick up, "I called earlier and talked to someone in the Art & Music dept and she said it was there and it was VHS." The 1932 version we have is DVD format and it's checked out with two holds. The caller asked for Trouble in Paradise; the library owns four distinctly different items with that title; unfortunately the person in A&M the caller talked to didn't have it clear which Trouble the caller needed. So I had to disappoint him.

feathers

Got a call at the office. Kent had taken the day off, was calling from home having gotten back from some shopping. "Feathers," he said. In the side room. Feathers leading to a bird. Bloody and dead. K says when he came upon the bird Sundy followed him, paused to sniff it, but was otherwise done with it.

Update on Flash

Flash stopped chewing herself a week or two past. But she has these dry bald patches on her butt and tail where the hair seems to be thinking about growing back but hasn't made any committments.

dare I?

I've posted several times to my new Dare I Read? blog. Have been enjoying it. It's not meant to be a collection of book reviews. Rather, it's a collection of thoughts about what I've read.

I see the only person who's commented there has been my brother (hey d!), so I'd guess I'm getting few visitors. I haven't investigated stats services. When last I looked into free webstats a couple years ago there wasn't much available. I suppose I should look again. When last I had semi-decent stats for my poetry blog ages ago I would check them obsessively ... oh look someone entered "idiotic poems" in google then came to my site! 3 people visited in one hour following the link from my poem on that poetry bulletin board! Wow. ...

It's more relaxing not to be obsessed. People will find their way to Dare I Read? or they won't.

I do occasionally comment on other poetry blogs. That's probably how I get the visitors who turn up here. LoveSettlement has been blogrolled. I ought to put up a blogroll. It seems polite. Plus there are several blogs I read that I'd be happy to recommend to other readers. Postings about them slide off the main page and who has time to poke around the archive?

Sutra sleeping

When I'm at the computer and Sutra is on my lap he likes to rest his chin on the keyboard tray as he snoozes. This means I have to type gently.

award-winning poet

Paul Guest at his blog says he didn't win a contest. "Joan Houlihan has won The Green Rose Prize for her manuscript Cincture. Which is cool. Many sincere congratulations to Joan." Joan? Oh, yeah. Joan. Proves you don't have to have a brain to win a poetry contest. Or a sensibility. Or taste. Or be nice.

Guest goes on to grump, "But, damn it all, my manuscript was in that pile with hers. Over the last two years, its pulled in several finalist spots in great competitions: the Brittingham; the Beatrice Hawley; the Levis Prize; and so on and so forth."

Fuck that. Contests are stupid. They don't have to be corrupt to be stupid. Publishers fuss about how poetry doesn't pay for itself, that it's not unreasonable to ask poets so few of whom seem to buy poetry to help subsidize the publication of books of poems via contest entry fees, that contests give valuable publicity to an unknown press, that contests usually only break even anyway what with paying the celebrity judge(s) or whatever so entrants' fees aren't some super windfall, that contests often send out the winning book to all the losers thus the fee actually returns something of value to the entrant, that fill in your justification here. Said John Martin founder of Black Sparrow Press, "My whole thing was [that] I would publish only what I really liked myself, and there's got to be two or three thousand people in the world who would agree with me." I don't recall having heard that Black Sparrow ever ran a contest.

Is it unfair to quote a literary press success story when few presses do anything but eat from the publisher's pocket? Probably. But I wonder how publishers who can't make money off their books can push on, putting all their hearts into getting to press (& distributed & reviewed &c) books not that they themselves discovered and delighted in and drove them but books that some celebrity judge (no matter how admired) got paid to choose out of a leaning tower of payors.

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 3

Hardly worth posting this as a new version. A few small edits.

I may have sweated over the dialog, getting it as close to what we really said as I could, but it's banal. Without the punctuation it is difficult to tell who says what. Is this an advantage? Does it matter who says what? The words could have been said by anybody, really.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating, version 3

Glenn! Dinchu hear me? A gust gets into my hair, windy like that all day. Two girls, one dark, one fair. Hi. I let a wall stand for me. I’m glad to see them, really. Graduating Friday? No! Tomorrow! Seen any of the summer movies? One, but not really a “summer” movie. MariBeth stands beside me smiling, but doesn’t say anything. Julie pulls her dark hair from her shoulders, lets it spill again from her hand. I want to be natural, but I’m unnatural. Doing anything? Well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter. She bites her bagel. Coming to graduation? Julie and MariBeth both are graduating, a year after me. A year. I’m eighteen? As they walk on I walk. I hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party? No. A wind blows between what I say, what they say, what Julie says. A wind blows between the fingers I’ve taken out of my pockets.

Ah! ooh ooh. ah eee.

Sounds I make when Sundy turns his whiskered fast-breathing little nose into my ear when he's cozy on my shoulder.

wow

Double congratulations to Mr. C. Dale Young who has scheduled his wedding/committment ceremony and whose blog has achieved 10,000 visitors in its 2-month life. I wonder if he's seen an uptick in sales of his book?

I've been enjoying Dale's blog. It's lighter than Ron Silliman's. And I've been finding other interesting poet bloggers via Dale's blogroll. (Unlike Ron's the blogroll at Dale's blog is cozy and small. And I'm not on it.)

Maybe someday I'll read their poetry even.

comments on "Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating" version 2

It was time to work on this. I posted it. I said to myself, here you go, Glenn. Go to it. So.

I didn't have a sense the line breaks were doing anything for the scene. So I took them out. That's all I did. Didn't change anything else. I'd been thinking the dialog effective. I actually remember sweating over the dialog. 20 years later I remember sweating over this dialog. How curious. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to capture what actually happened. I don't always want to do that. I did this time.

Once the piece was a prose paragraph I started excising the parts that displeased. I rather like the current result. Quiet and simple. I think that was what I wanted in the first place.

Julie and MariBeth Both are Graduating, version 2

Glenn! Didn’tchu hear me? A gust gets into my hair that’s been stirring the day up. It’s been windy like that. Two girls, one dark, one fair. My back to the wall. Hi! I’m glad to see them, really. Graduating Friday? No! Tomorrow! Seen any of the summer movies? One, but not really a “summer” movie. MariBeth stands beside me smiling, but doesn’t say anything. Julie pulls her dark hair from her shoulders and lets it spill again from her hand. I want to be natural, but I’m unnatural. Doing anything? Well, really we’re late but it doesn’t matter. She bites her bagel. Coming to graduation? Julie and MariBeth both are graduating, ayear after me. A year. I’m eighteen? Are they younger than me? As they walk on I walk. I hadn’t planned on it. You going to a gradnite party? No. A wind blows between what I say, what they say, what Julie says. A wind blows between the fingers I’ve taken out of my pockets.

it's raining, it's cold and windy

When better to watch a Morrissey video. "Do you hate me? Do you hate me?"

Thanks for the link, Talk Talk.

Meanwhile Paula's feeling "Dissatisfied." As she says, "Have you ever felt dissatisfied, thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself? ... [W]hatever I write, draw, shoot seems of no importance. Cheer up, Paula ... Would someone to blame help more?"

AB 1825 Sex Harassment Trainer

Kent has started up a new blog, too. AB 1825 Sex Harassment Trainer ... You know how it is, you work at the day job and you have ideas, ideas there's no place for at the day job. It's not that this is info he doesn't deal with at work. It is. But it's packaged in a particular way there and on the new blog he can pour out all this stuff he's picked up that doesn't fit the mold the day job requires. So. Cool. He's enthusiastic.

Meanwhile I had a huge surge of anxiety about the booklog. In a swoon I collapsed upon the bed, tucked my knees under my chin and sobbed.

OK. You know I didn't. Not that I haven't ever done that sort of thing. Boy howdy! But the surge of anxiety part, that happened. What if ... people don't like it? Don't like MEEEE??? ... Waaaaah! ...

Sniffle.

Leave me now. Read about Koko's nipple obsession. (Yes, that's the sort of thing you'll read about AB 1825 Sex Harassment Trainer ... Are you getting this google spider?) ...

Dare I Read?

I have started a new blog. It's called Dare I Read? and it's my booklog. I've been keeping a booklog for years. It's not reviews so much as it's notes on books so I don't forget them entirely. This could be interesting. Or not. Anyway, I've started it up and it's totally an experiment and everything's very preliminary but if I waited until it was perfect it'd never happen.

When I started the LoveSettlement blog the templates were very basic and I've hardly changed a thing. Obvious, right? But now the simplest templates come with comments and fancier graphics so we'll see how they work on Dare I Read? and if they work there I might be able to get over my trembling terror at change and incorporate them here.