YES TO LOVE, NO TO 8

Yes, this is a parody of YES ON PROP 8 commercials. I'm not going to link to their evil. But I think you can figure out their arguments from the parody version.

receipt

Mormons are bad people

All their marriages should be destroyed!

Poetry & Pizza video

I asked Kent to bring his digital camera to Poetry & Pizza last Friday, the camera that took the great whale movies, and use it to capture me reading a short poem or two. I'd intended to bring a tape recorder but forgot. I wish we had a nice digital audio recorder ...

So Kent set up and got some video of me telling people to settle down we're just about to start, then several exciting seconds of my back as I fiddled with the amp trying to rid it of that weird waah it often adds to the vocal. I'm the only one of our technologically challenged crew who has the courage to twist a few dials -- courage but little understanding.

Of the three short clips Kent captured before the camera decided it was full (no reason for it to be) the one of my announcing the readers (Glenn Ingersoll, Mel C. Thompson, and H.D. Moe) is the only one I'm going to post. No, there's no substance to it, but it's short.

Glenn Ingersoll at Poetry & Pizza

7:30pm Friday, October 3, 2008

GLENN INGERSOLL
H.D. MOE
MEL C. THOMPSON

POETRY & PIZZA meets the first Friday of each month
at Escape from New York Pizza, 333 Bush at Montgomery
(Montgomery BART or Sutter/Stockton Parking Garage)
in downtown San Francisco and offers free pizza to all comers.

http://popizza.white.prohosting.com
poetryandpizza@yahoo.com

Donations of $5 benefit an organization of the poets’ choice.
This reading benefits SAN FRANCISCO FREE CLINIC.

GLENN INGERSOLL’s poems have been seen in Exquisite Corpse, Prairie Schooner, and Snow Monkey, and online at 3rd Muse, Siren, and Tryst, work is forthcoming in Shampoo. He maintains two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Ingersoll lives in Berkeley and works for the Berkeley Public Library. He is one of the coordinators of Poetry & Pizza.

H. D. MOE is an experimental Poet/Philosopher, who has over 30 books published, including "Plug In The Electric Dictionary" - Community Press; "Muse News" - City Lights; "Bean Trip" - Canterbury Press; "Only A Cage Should Be In A Cage"- We Press; "Jazz Pajamas" - Mother's Hen Press; "Blackwidow Vitamins" - Coo-Coo Clock TV Press; "Wingéd Wows" is his latest book. Some of Moe’s Poems have been translated (an almost impossible adventure) into French, Portuguese & Russian.
For 13 years H.D. Moe published “Love Lights, The Erotic Poetry/Art Newspaper of San Francisco”. Currently, H.D. Moe edits "The Berkeley Review Of Books", and gives talks on women Philosophers at Humanist Hall in Oakland. He also coordinates the "Living Philosophers Forum" at The North Berkeley Senior Center in Berkeley. Be sure to check out his website: www.hdmoe.com

MEL C. THOMPSON was born in 1959 in Los Angeles County. He was raised in the suburbs of North Orange County, California. Thompson began as a songwriter but switched to poetry, then he moved to the Bay Area and founded Cyborg Productions, a well-known underground press of the early 1990s. His own work has been published in mainstream and small press magazines such as the SF Bay Guardian, The Chiron Review, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Lynx Eye.
Thompson’s civil rights work for free speech and his legal work for California workers has been noticed by USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, NPR Radio, Canadian Public Broadcasting and KRON Television. For a time he was a radio personality and musical performer on KMEL.

SAN FRANCISCO FREE CLINIC, 4900 California Street, provides comprehensive medical services at no charge. It is a training site for medical students and residents from programs throughout the country. The SF Free Clinic exists because over 150 physicians pool time, medications, supplies, equipment, and funds. Services include cancer and heart disease screening, diabetes care, childhood and adult vaccinations, and family planning and contraceptive counseling.

Pizza is Free, Poetry is Priceless

Sarah Palin

That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Hong

My last post featured a video of an elephant painting. It is watermarked with the website of Exotic World Gifts.

In various places on their site Mark Fangue & Liz Allen talk about how the video came about. Here are a few excerpts:

“While looking for beautiful products handmade by artisans in villages needing sustainable income, we came across this refuge camp for elephants in Northern Thailand. With camcorder in hand we began to witness an elephant painting an ‘Oh my God’ image of an elephant.

"The owner/operator is a very tender hearted woman who loves the animals and feels pain when her elephant camp is unjustifiably grouped with other camps and/or individuals where animal abuse is tolerated (it does exist and our goal is to educate and help stop cruel practices). We have done research and investigation into the camp’s training techniques and we have not observed any abuse. The elephants seem happy and well cared for.”

The painter featured in the video was given the name “Hong.”

“’Hong’ and her mahout (trainer) … collaborate[d] to produce a wonderful image of an elephant holding a flower. It was amazing to see her retrace lines and add her playful personality to her work of art. She draws one or two flowers depending on her mood and when finished painting her flower, she presented [sic] a flower to a person of her choice.

“Hong is an 8 year old female who has a very curious nature and loves to investigate everything and once managed to use her trunk to open the door of a truck. This kind of curiosity made Hong a natural candidate for artistic instruction. She has so much control and dexterity with her trunk which allows her to create more advanced realistic paintings ... and only started painting 2 years ago. [ellipsis in original] I had the pleasure of rewarding Hong with many bananas and sugar cane after she finished her painting that appeared in our video.”

This barely begins to answer my questions. More posts to come.

the elephant artist

This video of an elephant painting a representative figure - a self-portrait? – is beyond amazing. It is a beautifully choreographed performance, never boring, often suspenseful, playing itself out over the course of the 8 1/2 minute video (there are some edits, it looks like) in a way that holds the attention all the way to the end, the end providing both surprise and satisfaction. I have watched it a few times, captivated each time.

I would like to know much more about the context of this elephant painting.

Who is this elephant?

UPDATE: Her name is Hong. She is 8 years old.

(More in my next post.)

comments on another way of looking at "Green Spree"

Kent went to a lot of work to put together this version of "Green Spree". It's supposed to show the greens all stacked up, like a trunk or spine, as I said Friday. The rest of each line is supposed to jut out from the central green to the left or right.

I think formatting the poem this way prevents it from fitting into the space available in the blogger template I'm using. Thus the lines get broken up even more than intended. But you can get a somewhat better idea visually of the green stack than in the earlier posts of "Green Spree".

another way of looking at "Green Spree"

                               The green story is the only story.

   Or maybe it's the second story, green

                                or greener, step by step to a

                                   greener top. It's waiting. It won't

                     go a bit more green, already

comments on “Green Spree” version 4

I like it. Surprising myself. I’ve been having so much difficulty with poetry lately. I write something and I hate it. I hate writing it. The writing isn’t fun. The writing used to be fun.

The first line came to me and excited me so I wrote it down. I still like it. “The green story is the only story.” And the writing after that was fun. It felt like it knew where to go, and the good parts from earlier versions seemed happy to abandon their old contexts and come aboard.

I presented it to my little writing group and they liked it, too. Ah, I remember that! The praise of the peers. It was always so warming (then the praised poem got rejected again & again by the magazine editors).

I have a version of “Green Spree” formatted so “green” appears like a trunk or spine down the middle of the page, the rest of each line poking out to the left or right. I don’t know how to set that up on blogger …

Speaking of sending out to magazines: I got response from two ezines this week. One a yes: Shampoo. The poem will appear soon, editor Del Ray Cross says, in a “sneaky previoo” of the next issue. The other was a no. After getting the Shampoo response I wondered about the other to which I’d sent poems at the same time. In response to my status query the other’s editor wrote back: We said no on 6/22/08. Maybe it got caught in your spam filter? If so, I suppose my spam filter meant well, wanting to save my feelings.

“Green Spree,” version 4

The green story is the only story.
Or maybe it’s the second story, green
or greener, step by step to a
green top. It’s waiting. It won’t
go a bit more green, already
green, you know,
green to the tips, the very
green top, fantastic banners
of unpleasant green snapping
out breezes that goad green
clouds toward green mountains,
their greens the skills they’ve
practiced for green years.
Even today when your thumb, still green
after years of thumb-sucking, green
stubborness clinging, green as
a pendant of grief, greasy green listening
while the rash breakage of evens goes greenly
on, odds on, favorite son, green
on a green hill, where the
steps dragged their planes, green faces
cut into green slopes, a wet flat
old blue through which green shows,
younger than you but green too,
greening to get that way. On a shy
tongue a green drop, on a long delay
a steady green fuzz. What cups
sat in the sun bearing green
waters to the future? Green ones.
Green, the price of entry,
shuttered citadel on green hill,
spires tangled with sagging green
that the wind ties up with green
string stolen from the red talus green
gave way to, one slender green
blade laid next to a frail fork, green
face turned down, hypothetically, her green
heir to the green-wet synthesis that
puts green to hunger and
green to sleep, the coming
green not so green as you expect, a horizon
lined up for the sun’s trick drop, the green
sparkle snapped up by green-vacant violet, if you’re lucky
and who isn’t lucky, the green under fingers
absently plucking, the shine of nap greening
toward black, sheen after sheen sanded by green
ridges. What green knows
green learns late – too late? – some say so,
but isn’t it green to say so? doesn’t it reveal,
green under white stone, that black
has green in its road, the road, moreover,
cutting through green already pass-tangled,
green-fangled, speckled with eye,
green-dyed claw, a green the jaw grinds.
Green built in law of jungle courthouses
a green justice,
green script illuminating brown
muds and black muds, green
fighting back green-yellow and
yellow-green and blue-
green and
green
far greener. Poor kid,
green as he’ll ever get, already breaking
out in other colors. A sugar green needle,
the hour not green either, the stutter
green suffers, hue gone to cry, gone
to whimper, the rarer green raised
to a new position over vulgar green,
green all the same? all the same!
Green meat, meet
green fly. The happy gallows’ good
green creak, the long shadow
you miss as much as mother, her green
felt hat and the green feeling
you returned to to stain green
blond feet, to green the knee
and green the sea that never
looked green, did it, except when
it broke and spilled your bruised green
dream, hissing over seagrapes, green
until they dry on a green-papered shelf
in a green room painted with pictures.
You stored a green kiss for years.
How many green years?

comments on “Green Spree”, version 3

When last I read version 2 I hated it, its beginning. After it got going, maybe a third the way down – somewhere around the clouds? – I started to like things. I started version 3 thinking I would just cut off the beginning of version 2, cut to what I liked. I didn’t do that. That may have been the right idea. I don’t know.

“Green Spree”, version 3

Up old green steps,
up steps, green and older
than green and
greener than maybe you’d like
green to be, ever, even today
when your thumb, still green
after years of thumb-sucking, green
stubborness sticking to its green
guns, the drop that clings to a green
leaf or falls or doesn’t fall or, green as
a pendant of grass, listens
to the rash breakage of evens, greens
into burdens, odds on green, favorite
of the other, the mother in a green blouse
on a green hill, where the
green steps dragged their planes,
cutting slopes into green faces, flat
and wet, especially when green puddles
set up in green middles, the old blue
older than you but green
younger and younger and greening
toward birth or away from, green come
not to stay but to stray, green in travel,
all the green gravel passed
through a green mouth,
a green trembling on a tongue
no longer looking green except
to a justice in uniform, green issue
fitting native green

comments on “Green Spree”, version 2

In thinking about this form – green having to appear in every line, providing the poem its spine – I’ve been torn. Do I make it make sense? Is this a narrative, a proposition I’m arguing? Over time and a lot of poem-reading I’ve grown less interested in the proposition poem. It tends to take a wisdom pose, as though modeling for a statue, stiff and important and cold. It wants that Ah! from the reader – O, how wise, what authority it bespeaks. I’ve never felt particularly wise and the wiser I’ve become the sillier the wisdom pose of other poets has come to seem. Phonies! As far as narrative goes, I’ve become more interested in the dream version. Everything seems to be connected, but when you try to explain those connections, they turn out to be strange, they turn out to rush down convoluted paths, sometimes they turn out to run right past or around each other and don’t connect at all.

“Green Spree”, version 2

Up the old green steps to
the green pension, an older thumb
still green as the tongue
pressing a green drop that fell
from some mother, some green gumdrop’s
other wuther, the green of a nice ice,
the green of a bride’s pretty price,
her yet-unentered citadel on a green hill,
spires green with pennants flapping
or greenly sagging or slapping
the red-tinged green of their gay
tatters on new clouds and old clouds greened
by brushes with green peaks,
that which green seeks being only
one drawer away, one slender green
blade laid next to the fork, the green
lace and the green face turned
down toward an earth, hypotethically, her green
heir to the green-wet synthesis of drop
and hunger, the coming green on a horizon
lined up next to a green flash the sun,
escaping the day, tricks into that green leap,
that green sparkle you get if you’re lucky
and who isn’t lucky, green felt by fingers
absently plucking, the nap greening toward
black, shine after shine lost as green catches
ridges and green knows
what green learns is learned
late, too late? -- some say so – but isn’t it green
to say so? doesn’t it reveal, green under
white stone, that black has green in its road,
the road, moreover, cutting through green
already pass-tangled, green-fangled,
speckled with eye, green-dyed claw,
a green leaf and a jaw grinding
a nip of it, what green built in law
of jungle courthouses and wrote in green
script across ill-lit muds, green competing
with green-yellow and yellow-
green and blue-
green and
greener
green
than what you see splashed, green
by green,
over and under the wander some sucker, green
as ever a kid’ll be, got sent on, the green
beans already in his pocket cuddled by a green
foul of threads and furze, evergreen
as ever was green and ever will be
(she said, plucking her lute under a green
bower), the hour not green, brown
rather or browning, green shifting,
hue a cry gone to whimper,

comments on “Green Spree”

I’ve had this one in my mind since I wrote it (& it failed to satisfy me). The version you see here is already an edit of the long list poem that appeared in my 1985 notebook. I want to use and reuse one word. Why green? Not sure. It’s a nice enough word. Has more than one meaning to start with. In a way – because I’ve been thinking about how to do it perfectly for so long? – I’m feeling more than the usual trepidation about working on it. Suppose it turns out crap? Well. Suppose it does?

GREEN SPREE

green freeze sneaks into me
green release

green eyes
green cries
green surprise
green flies in the face
green lashes and tongues
green lips
green lids

green meat
green fruit
green buds
green break
green made too bright

green flecks
green fingers
green trembling in bushes

green track
green attack of
green tension
green suspension
green gallows
green grass

green to kiss
green to list
green to miss as much as mother
green to love another
green to fuss
green ability
green tranquility
green seizure
green pension
green retention of old
green steps

blame the cat

poem from 1985 notebook

Quit staring at the apple
as though it would jump, screaming
from the fruitbowl, bound
across the table and attack your unprotected throat.