Let's say

a beautiful balloon falls on your head. It's a large balloon. Large as a house. But your head, as of last night, is three houses long and two wide. People knock on the door but no one answers. You are trying to be quiet because you know the balloon's grandmother has an axe and if you don't answer the axe will swing against another neck. However, one of the people so insistent at your door of doors is the son you gave up for adoption when you yourself were adrift, back in those terrible days when boils flamed up on your eyelids and the lamprey on each arm was warm with your lymph. Those weren't the sort of days you want to own up to, even though you did pay off the mortgage and got a letter from the bank saying as much. Which bank was it? No doubt it also has been absorbed into the greater family of institutions greater and greater than all lesser gods, including your cats -- those still living -- and your parakeets -- those still nibbling at the bone wired inside the cage.

Info Desk Blogging

Would I get in trouble for Info Desk Blogging?

Now & then in the news you hear about somebody being fired for blogging. Usually it's because they've said bad things about their employer. Or discussed things that happened on the job in a way that made the employer nervous. Surely, I've been circumspect here.

I haven't told any of the bosses at the library that I blog while at the Info Desk. Easy enough to find out, I suppose. If one thinks to look.

Woman just came in holding hand of blond toddler. Toddler hops, hops. As she turns her back to me I see sewn to her white Tshirt, at each shoulderblade, a hand-sized white wing.

D. Travers Scott is going to be reading in SF this Wednesday. I'm thinking of going. I just read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Scott's novel, One of These Things is Not Like the Others, uses elements from the Hemingway book.

evil has no meaning

"The NAACP unfortunately in the 2000 campaign likened the president to James Byrd, who was a racist killer in east Texas, who the president brought to justice." -- Ken Mehlman, Republican National Committee Chair, via Eschaton

James Byrd was the black man dragged to death chained to a pickup truck in Bush's Texas.

Bush brought James Byrd to justice?

to scrutineer

"[L]ike many of the competitors [in the solar car race], Cal's team needed to tweak things on its vehicle, named the Beam Machine, during the scrutineering process." link

Life in Berkeley

The city closes off a small street around the corner on Thursdays for a Farmer's Market. They haven't been doing it long in our neighborhood. There are FMs on other streets that've been going for years & years. It's nice. Today I loaded up on tomatoes and squashes and peaches and got a watermelon. I cut some peaches after Kent got home but they weren't so good; juicy but tart.

The flesh around Flash's eyes was itchy & swollen so K took her to the vet again this week. Conjunctivitis, says vet. And he encouraged K to give Flash a tranq when she starts with the heavy panting. It's part of her therapy. The panting may overstress her chest muscles. So K gave her a tranq last night, a whole pill. In the past she's gotten a half a pill and then gone groggy on us. Last night? One pill? Three times she just fell over. She lost control of her pee. Dog pee, it seems, ain't anywhere near as nasty as cat pee. So. We won't be doing a whole pill again. Today she seems to be doing well.

peeping

Yesterday I mentioned seeing a "hot blond" come in the door while I was on the Information Desk.

Not long after I wrote that we had an incident involving a peeping tom. Sheesh. Makes one self-conscious.

I remember when I first became aware libraries were hotbeds of pervishness. I was working at the SRJC campus library and my boss was after a guy for peeking under desks, creeping out the girls who were trying to study. I didn't believe it at first. Doing what? And the guy my boss was after was someone I knew slightly who seemed like a nice enough person. Well, one day I was out in the stacks shelving books and, damn, our peeper was being so obvious. Squirming at his desk, dipping his head down to peep at the girl across the aisle. I gave him some odd looks and I think he got up and moved. That day or some other I remember my boss chasing the guy out of the library.

A library aide yesterday told me that he sees it far too often and sometimes now he will say something, something like, "Can I help you find something, sir?"

Info Desk Blogging

Here I am ten minutes late for my first regular Monday Info Desk slot. I have such a regular routine it's tough to remember variations.

But then I had a helluva time keeping track of my hours when I was an intermittent -- a substitute. I so looked forward to having a regular schedule!

And it'll be nice to settle into a regular Info Desk hour again. So far the hour's not been crazy. I've been interrupted several times but, um, that what's supposed to happen, right?

Forecast has several days of hot weather for us.

Speaking of hot ... had one hot blond walk thru the door while I was on the phone. I'm not one who gets excited by blonds in theory. I'm more likely to find dark attractive. But hot is hot. It was nice to be on the phone so my eyes were free.

Today's Info Desk questions have been pretty standard -- on what floor is this call number? can I change my address in the computer? what do I need to use the internet? ... that sort of thing.

"The air conditiong in here is great," a man tells me passing.

Daddy gives each child a video to return. Girl runs to closest drop slot, boy to the next. Boy drops his in then says to girl, "No!" Girl is trying to return DVD in Book slot. Daddy intervenes and girl gets to drop DVD in the correct slot.

cat pee

One of our cats peed on a cardboard box of poetry books I brought back from my mother's house. I threw out one of the books (sorry A.D. Winans) but the rest I'd prefer to hang onto, I think. Pah.

There seem to be a lot of hints on the net for removing the smell, but they are mostly for fabric (carpets, clothes). Anyway, I'll isolate the affected books and see what I'm in the mood to do about 'em.

I suspect the urinator is the big fluffy one, Sutra. Why? Because Sundy is so sweeeet. And Sutra hates hates hates to be trapped inside. The revenge theory of peeing!

wrestling the stump

The trees planted along the eastern fence of the neighbor's yard control the afternoon light in our yard. We also have trees planted along our eastern fence. Thus we have trees to the west (their yard) and to the east (in our yard) and one strip of sunlight down the middle during the middle of the day. It's a yard mostly in shade. This makes gardening problematic.

But we seem to like gardening more in theory than in practice, anyway. Frankly, yard work often depresses me. But the last few weekends (except the one we were out of town) I've gone out and cut away at the berry vines (two kinds) and invasive trees (the neighbor's trees aren't content staying on their side of the fence).

There's one particular strip of tree growth that's been working its way east; we've cut it back every year. Today I tackled it with the idea that I was going to root it out. Roots are the story. The trees send these fat roots under the fence and shoots lunge up along their route. There's been a stump six feet or so into the yard that's about the size of two fists. After I cut and yanked up all the smaller shoots I turned to this stump. The wood of this tree (I don't know what kind it is) is brittle. Typically a good pull breaks branch or root. But this stump was taking my weight and not budging. So I got a shovel and dug around it and tried again and nothing. So I kept digging. Where was the parent root? The ground was getting harder. At top the soil is dry and loose but dig down a few inches and you hit hard clay. This probably is a problem for the trees, too. Four or five inches down I found the root; it was about an inch thick (inch & a half?). I managed to wriggle the shovel tip under and pry. Again used my hands to pull at the stump and it wobbled. Again with the shovel and snap. The root broke.

There's still, of course, lots of root underground that can throw up new shoots. But there are no more stumps to stumble over. Yay!

queer flicks

I posted today about queer TV circa 1985 on my Dare I Read blog.

Then on his blog Charles Jensen writes, "I've been noticing lately how rampantly contemporary American cinema reinforces the 'norm' of heterosexuality. So many of the films I've watched recently have incorporated into their plots some kind of inane romance, affair, or love story involving heterosexual couples. This was never as unfortunate as it was in the recent Land of the Dead, where, among the walking corpses, two plucky heteros—one a freedom fighter, the other a virtuous whore—come together."

I wrote the following in Charles' comments:

I saw Land of the Dead (typed Lawn of the Dead, then corrected) last weekend also. My view of it is much more benign as far as its queer aspects. First of all it's a genre movie and those tend to rely on stereotypes. So you sorta give it that coming in. I don't recall any out gay characters in George Romero movies but you might want to check out his Martin, a vampire movie that's definitely queer. Romero cast black leading men when it was not the thing to do, especially in a horror flick. The lead in Night of the Living Dead is black. And Land of the Dead is by no means all white (except at the top of the bad guy hierarchy).

These days we almost take for granted the butchy femme carrying a big gun in the action movie but it was not always so. Romero included action women in his Dawn and Day zombie movies while standard Hollywood femmes tended to the fainting. Anyway, can't you give some queer cred to a movie with a chick who programs the missile launcher being called "Pretty Boy"?

Plus I disagree that the cute male lead (worked for me!) hooks up with the gun-wielding prostitute. They never kiss. They never even embrace. They don't even exchange charged looks. The most significant looks between her and another male character, I'd say, are between her and Riley's buddy when she's sussing out their relationship. "I make myself useful," the buddy says. And Riley says later, "He's good with a gun." You might say Slack (the prostitute) adopts their language when flirting with Riley when she later says she too is "trying to make myself useful." Is she sexualizing an innocent remark or is something else going on? Yes, if there's a sexual component to the boys' buddyship it's totally covert but monsters and handicaps in horror movies have often been codes for queer sex -- and Riley's retard (fag?) buddy is physically damaged (horror movie code for the inner life). In this day & age we deserve somebody out & taken for granted. But I don't agree that the lead boy & girl "come together" in the breeder sense.

more on the above at skook

Info Desk Blogging

Nothing new in the "Hot Info!" section of the Info Desk Clipboard/binder. So I guess I'm not totally behind the times.

Starting next week I have a weekly Info Desk hour again so you might see more Info Desk blogging. It's 4-5 Mondays. I hope that's not a crazy hour.

The hour's first question: Are all the new books of the retranslations of Proust's In Search of Lost Time now available? Or have the last few not yet been published? I couldn't quite locate the answer. The Prisoner, which is the book the patron was seeking, is not listed in our catalog, nor is it listed in Penguin's catalog, Penguin being the publisher of the preceding volumes. I was hoping to find there at least some sort of publication announcement ... no luck. A line was starting to form so I sent the patron on to the Reference Desk upstairs.

During my lunch breaks I've been reading Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Frankly, I'm getting a little bored with it. Is it anything other than a travel diary? A slight memoir of an American living in Europe between the wars?

Looks nice n sunny out, breezy. The vat of roofing tar that for weeks had been smoking away at the curb seems to be gone. Whew.

I just checked out at one of the RFID stations at the Circ Desk. First time I've done that. Easy. I jumped the line for an old lady who'd already been through it once; an item was supposed to be on hold for her but wasn't. Fortunately another copy was on the public shelves so I found that for her. Now I realize if the item on hold shows up and the patron doesn't pick it up she'll be charged for not picking it up. Oops. If I remembered her name I would cancel the hold. Naturally, I do not remember her name. My nonphotographic memory -- a security feature!

Looks like we finally have enough DVDs that some are on the shelf now when people come in. Oddly the DVDs are now intershelved with the VHS tapes. Maybe that's why more are on the shelf. They're harder to find.

Update: Later I realized I did remember the title of the movie that was supposed to be on hold so I was able to look it up and cancel the hold on it. Ha!

introspection

There's not a lot of good news in the paper (or the paper's website) these days, but when is there?

Nor do I have much to say. Not about what's on now, anyway.

I skip thru my usual blogs (kos, ron, gay news, and whichever of a long list strikes me at the time) but it's all motion and I can concentrate only for a paragraph.

I've discovered the library has taken to cataloging graphic novels in adult fiction so on break I sometimes wander the aisles scanning spines for something that looks graphic novel shaped. Today I brought home Jens Harder's Leviathan, a wordless book about whales & popular culture. Or something. I've just sampled and it looks interesting.

I went to yoga after work.

It's overcast and breezy out, I see.

happy birthday, country

May your best years be ahead of you!

prognostication

As you no doubt already know we're in for a battle over Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement on the Supreme Court. A nasty ugly mean battle. Bush will choose someone who wants to bring back the death penalty for homosexuals and the Democrats will say we'll vote for her if she just assures us she hasn't decided yet which homo she wants to shoot in the head. She will say, "I can't comment on a case that isn't in front of me." And the Democrats will say, "Well, okay, okay, Ms. Absolutely Fucking Incredible Patriotic Genius Who We Love And Before Whom We Will Bow & Scrape, just say, 'I will consider not shooting a homo in the head with a gun if the case before me makes that action seem really really inappropriate.'then you'll get 99 votes." And she'll say, "Senator, I don't deal in hypotheticals. But I will concede that I have seen a case that involved a homosexual and, after due consideration, I thought he deserved flinging over a cliff." 99 votes!

wrote a poem

I wrote a poem in my notebook. I was pleased with the poem. It's a new notebook -- I just started writing in it last week. It was fun to be pleased with the poem and I think the book is off to a good start. Many many blank pages ahead.

I filled the notebook I'd been working in for a year. I usually title the notebooks when I'm midway through. Typically a title will come calling and hang around waiting to be affixed. This time I don't remember thinking about a title at all. Not until I was only a few pages from filling the book did I realize it had no title. I flipped through what I'd written. Helen ... my mother's name. Mom died shortly after I'd begun the book. I'd written a couple poems leading up to her death and a couple poems after. Helen ... It's the right name for the book. So I wrote "Helen" in plain script on the inside front cover.

dumb post

a post that's dumb as a post

a post with a nonspeaking role

a silent mailing

a bill one realizes it was a mistake to put on the wall

comments on "I miss you" version two

I'm suspicious of ending on "light" ... but I'll let it sit awhile and see what I think later.

I like this version. I wrote it a few days ago. Then we went out of town. Now I'm reading it again, am more distanced from the creation than usual, maybe have more perspective. But I can't think of much to say. The new title is from a translation of a nahuatl poem. I've been reading an anthology of World Poetry and there are lots of poems about death. The nahuatl poem, for instance. (Nahuatl is the language of the Aztec of Mexico.) So I was trying to pick up some pointers.

I'll have to come back to this.

If you missed the first version it's here.

"I miss you", version 2

Not Forever on Earth

for Helen Luster


The perfect shape to drop to the earth
and roll.

Bees in the honeysuckle,
telephone ringing through what you say softly,
the neighbor’s telephone calling somebody other than us.

The bumps of his vertebrae pass under my hand
as he crosses to leap and settle into
the lap you put together for him,
the place in the room he’ll stay.

In the cradle of your hands, fingers nearly
thin as their arms, you rest your glasses
from their focus.

“I don’t know if it’s a poem,” she said.
Or you said. You said.

What happens stays in the shadow it didn’t notice,
what was prevented
as well, as well as, as well as what deliberately
stood up,
meaning to catch light.

mud baths

We were out of town for a couple days. Drove up to Calistoga for some relaxation. Paid well for it, too.

I wanted a mud bath. I loved mine! Felt pretty close to my fantasy about floating away, supported and semi-conscious. The black mud is warm and supportive. Unfortunately in the next tub over Kent was suffering, his body overheats and it makes him miserable. I'd love to do it again. Kent? I think never.

We had massages afterward.

There's also a big pool filled with water warm from the earth. A sign by the pool said it was 94 degrees. Boy, that was great, lying back on a floaty, closing my eyes and drifting about.

suffering

Just had a shower. When I rush through my weekday gotta-hurry-I'll-be-late-for-work showers I can't say I get much pleasure from them. So it sure was nice to stand there and let hot water sluice through my hair, feel it course down my back.

I'm a little surprised my body is feeling good this morning. I went to the gym yesterday right after work and did the weight machine routine. Last night I was feeling sore. Tuesday I did yoga class and, boy, sore and weary was I for days after that.

Exercise for me has been suffering. I've seen gradual improvements in my body's flexibility and strength and stamina. But more noticeable have been the aches and wearies. When others have heard me complain (waah!) there's the inevitable question: Why do it?

The way I see it I have two choices. Both involve suffering. I can suffer to decline, get stiffer, have more headaches, be less & less able to do things physically. That's the don't-exercise choice. Or I can suffer toward improvement, gradually over the counter pain meds have gotten better at tackling my headaches, I have a greater range of motion, more strength, my body looks more normal rather than hunched.

Suffering. Or suffering. Which would you chose?

Friday cat blogging

Sutra and Sundance

computers

We had a scare this week. The mouse for the Mac stopped working. I was sure it was more, that the computer had crashed. We discovered it Sunday. If we were going to take the computer to the shop it wasn't going to be Sunday. After much fruitless fiddling and letting the computer rest I plugged in the optical mouse I'd bought for the PC (Kent was sure we didn't have any replacement mice in the house, nothing from the PC would be compatible!). The Mac rebooted and I ran a diagnostic and -- the mouse from the PC worked! Yay!

Last night we hooked up a new wireless port. We can't get it to bring up the internet.

Computer problems. Ugh.

Update: I'm updating this post from the new laptop and wireless connection. Kent figured it all out. What a smartie.

family updates

Sis-in-law Sarah has a new column posted at tuppenceworth. It's from the memoir, I think. The memoir would be called Work in Progress? The column is about Sarah's childhood and, be forewarned, it's intense.

Bro David has posted new drawings for the forthcoming revival of Oz Squad.

My sweetiepoo is following the Bush admin's indecision over whether to issue a new I-9.

poets bloggin'

Via Ron Silliman I learn Pamela Lu is bloggin'.

Pam and I were taking poetry workshops at Cal at the same time. Which teachers did we share? Lyn Hejinian? Yeah. Think so. John Ash? Definitely.

When I went to Pam's reading as part of the UCB English Dept series last year she told me, "I read your blog!"

Like this one Pam's blog doesn't have comments enabled. Aren't we antisocial? I recently added an email link, but nobody's used it. (Should I say that? It makes me sound so unpopular!)

Commenting on the movie, Saving Face, Pam says, "[D]o I really 'need' to see appealing pop-media reflections of my identity to feel good about myself as a person? Not really, but it's sure helpful. I think I'd underestimated just how helpful and validating it could be. Half a week after seeing Alice Wu's movie, I'm still beaming and feeling good, better than usual. The experience has been totally surreal for me, in the best way possible."

I'm there.

and then one day

After we got home from BB Kent lay down for a nap and I went for a wander. There's a 1-bedroom condo (1 unit in a 3 unit house) for sale up the street; there was an open house so I went in. They're asking $439,000 for it. It's small. I don't even know what to think about these prices anymore. Is this in real money?

I walked up to Euclid, the block nearest campus and stepped into a bookstore. They have two signs up, one says "Analog Books", one says "Signal Books". When, after a couple minutes, the girl behind the counter asked, "Can I help you find something specific or are you just in for a good browse?" I said, "Uh. B?" Then, "What's the name of the bookstore? Analog or Signal?" The man who'd owned the place as "Signal" (and not for long) sold the store when he got a job in "New York publishing." But he wanted to keep the rights to "Signal Books". You gotta have your rights.

I bought three issues of And Then One Day, the self-published comics diaries of Ryan Claytor. I rather like the genre of comics diary. They remind me more of poetry than prose. You can't really say much so there's more focus on the few things that are said. (And depicted, in this case.)

I read the comics while sipping a steamed milk (with vanilla syrup) and a choc chip cookie at the cafe across the street from the bookstore.

what's for dinner?

OK. Saw Batman Begins, the reboot of the Batman movie series. You know, I've never liked Batman. Not the grim dark knight Batman, anyway. I just can't take seriously a goon in a cape and pointy eared cowl. I can't. Two poet-bloggers posted positive notices about the movie. I hadn't been thinking I cared, but then it turned out poets like it! So I had to go.

Poets don't know shit.

It's not a bad movie. It's perfectly competent. Or adequately competent, I should say. But it sure didn't win me over to Batman love. The filmmakers pushed hard on the Bat-as-icon-of-fear gig but it was still a goon in a cape and pointy eared cowl. At least his girlfriend could kick ass. That I liked.

Now, what to fix for dinner?

updating

I updated the LoveSettlement poetry site.

One of the ezines that had posted some of my poems seems to have evaporated. Goodbye Wired Art for Wired Hearts. I liked your comics-esque design.

I added Tryst to the list of links.

One of the other ezines changed its archive linkage making the link I had useless so I had to fix that.

Exciting, huh?

Same featured poem on the main page, same pic of kittens on the Who Knows page.

collecting comics

Used to be if you started buying comic series The Ultra Supers on issue #10 and you wanted to read issue numbers 1 thru 9 you had to buy the original issues from a comic book store. In the last ten years the graphic novel has taken off. Old issues are reprinted several at a time in trade paperbacks. I think this is great.

On my walk home today I ran into Rory, the owner of Comic Relief, and we talked about all those comics I was buying back in the 70s and 80s. Yes, he said, it used to be the collectors and readers market was pretty much the same because everyone was competing for a finite batch of books. These days only the first edition collector crowd (a small crowd) is out for the original issues. People who just want to read the stories may not even have to buy them -- sometimes the library will own the paperback reprints -- not the sort of thing that happened in the 70s! Probably the only real way to get value out of the old comics (other than rereading them), Rory says, is by donating them and writing off the donation on taxes.

Rory says there is probably a handful of my comics he'd be able to resell. Probably the very ones I'm least willing to part with.

Info Desk Blogging

I've been suffering a headache since I woke up this morning. Have been taking acetaminophen (tylenol) and ibuprofen (motrin) one pill at a time as needed and only in the last half hour has the pain lifted -- now feeling a bit lightheaded.

A cute young guy just asked about employment at the library and I surfed over to the employment section of the BPL website, showed him the job descriptions and the number to call at the city. Got a little gay vibe off him, which is a plus. Good time to be asking about jobs, actually. Now that we have some good news, budgetwise. I think they'll be hiring aides again soon, at least a couple. During the big scare nobody's been hired to fill the slots of the people who've left.

Across the street a vat of tar has been bubbling away for weeks. I hope they finish their roof work soon cuz damn that stink is nasty. Once in awhile, I'm told, it gets sucked into the library's ventilation system. Fortunately the offices are on a separate air system than the public areas so I haven't smelled the stuff while at my desk. (No, at my desk I get to smell the pizza or popcorn cooking in the breakroom upstairs.) When I go out on break I sort of hold my breath for a block.

Ah, I see now it's raining. What a fine June we're having.

Yes, we do have Sisterhood Is Powerful, a 1970 anthology of feminist writing. I walked a young woman to where it sits on the shelf. Beside it, Sisterhood Is Forever, the 2003 sequel.

The phone hasn't been ringing much. I do prefer helping people face to face, but then people who've come to the desk so far today have been easy & pleasant. And few.

comments on "I miss you" version one

I cringe when I get to the end of the poem. And I don't like the juggling conceit -- memories like bean bags? No. No. And no.

Not that I don't forgive myself for trying out the idea. Sure. Try it, see if it works. Gotta get the poem going.

I don't think this one does Helen Luster justice. But poets are always writing memorial poems, especially to other poets. And here I was -- a poet! Shouldn't I be writing the memorial poem?

I post it here because I do like aspects of it. It does bring Helen back in gestures -- the cat that was only happy in her lap, the way she would cradle her glasses in her hands. And it's a challenge. Can I make of it something? something that ... I don't know ...

I miss you

for Helen Luster


As I juggle these bean bags
each is a poem, a verse I’ve heard you speak
each a firm, even-weighted recollection,
preserved in the perfect shape to juggle.

This is your porch, the honey suckle vines, the bees,
telephone ringing from next door punctuates every word you utter
incessant exclamation points,

this is your bony cat, his vertebrae poke like knuckles from his back,
he will only curl in your lap,
only settle on the quilt that wraps your legs

this is your glasses, crooked on your face
the connecting joint bent or missing
I don’t know which.
you slip them off your nose, cradle them in hands nearly as thin
as you discuss the poem you just read,
“I don’t know if it’s a poem,” you say.

this is Paul’s sun splattered veranda,
the trees that lurch and sway
leaves rustle in discussion of their own
as the potluck crowd mingles, balancing paper plates as they
manufacture conversation, or slip into old debates like worn sweatshirts
you hardly leave your chair, a shadow drapes across your face
from the wide brimmed hat.
Ambi Sextrous performs,
your quiet eyes observing as he sings

Every memory whirls through the air before me
as I think of you.
The bean bags tumble,
rolling unevenly on the floor.
I crouch to my kees and pick each up.
But I don’t resume the juggling.
I hold the pieces I have left
like eggs. I know inside
an embryo, a stirring grows.


-- 3/5/85, 3/7/85

dishes

Many dishes to do. Will put on some music loud and slop some water.

I turned the compost pile earlier. I like compost. I prefer it to gardening. It's less work for one thing. And you like to see the bugs crawling all over it, that's what they're supposed to do. Weeds and bugs don't bother you if you're composting.

update on the library

The Berkeley Daily Planet has an article about the apparent resolution of the antagonism between the library employees/union and the administration/Director Jackie Griffin. I'm glad to hear there's less tension, there are no lay-offs, we get our little raises, and taxes go up. Gotta love taxes.

Can't we pay for library services with some of that Iraqi oil?

Director Griffin talks about RFID (radio frequency identification) making it possible for the library to be open more hours. She imagines almost all patrons being able to check out their books/DVDs/CDs themselves, freeing bodies from the circulation desk for more service-type work. I hope she's right. I don't work with the public (except the rare times I'm on Info Desk or subbing at Circ Desk when they have a meeting), but adding RFID tag attachment to the regular process in Tech Servs will change what I do, especially if I am the one who has to affix the things. We'll see.

gym or not gym

Every day I wonder if I'll get to the gym after work. Some days I start out feeling good, but by the end of the work day my energy is gone and I'm tired and achy. In these cases I do not go to the gym. I've learned that if I work out when feeling poorly I will feel twice as tired the next day and even more sore & tired the day after. Best I go when I'm feeling spry. Other people tell me exercise energizes them. It doesn't work that way for me, sadly.

Today was one of those I-feel-good-don't-I-don't-I-no-I-better-not days. Too bad. So I came home and schlepped two more boxes of David's long-sloughed snakeskin to the shipping store. The North Berkeley farmers' market was still going so I picked up some carrots, peaches, cauliflower, squashes, a spicy tofu salad, and a bag of rolls.

I'm listening to some tracks from Offbeat, a Red Hot AIDS fundraiser CD. It's a comp of ambient and some spoken word.

tryst

The new issue of tryst has been posted.

I have three poems in it.

what's in front of me

the "ghost post" of may 31 was written by K

sutra is on my lap, he would very much like his chin scratched now

oops, he left

dog breathing loudly behind me, but she seems to be able to subside into a quieter rhythm

the mother's house chore seems to be presenting the possibility of ending, even the likelihood

I like that word "likelihood" ...

there are several pens under the monitor, it would be good if they all worked; there are papers, too. a postcard from Michael in Amsterdam, scratch paper with notes on buying a digital camera (didn't we do that already?), a five dollar bill with a stranger's mash note written on it, a note about some unnamed event on April 4 (the dust suggests it wasn't this past April 4)

Poetry & Pizza

Tonight is Poetry & Pizza in SF. Paul Geffner, the owner of Escape from New York Pizza, will be reading. I wonder how many poems he's written. In toto.

Just curious.

I've been reviewing my 20-year-old notebooks for DIR and I see I was filling a blank book a month! My pace has slowed considerably. I've gone through periods since where I challenge myself to write a poem a day. Though I've learned useful things from the experience but I don't think I'll do it again. The battery runs down. And when I allow space for recharging, the writing comes out way better.

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!