The Teachings Cannot Be Silenced

LOG OUT
—Rhony Bhopla, Sacramento

The man at the entrance
of Gandhi’s tomb
swore at me for loving.
He hissed with his shaft tongue:
“If you log in, you had better log out.”
He spat into my ancestral heart.
The paan juice dribbled down my
breasts, empty sacs filling with
his inspired gaseous poison.

The messages of the world are
paramount—women wailing after
kidnapped children,
crafty photographs
of
wide-eyed unknowns.
We have worlds within worlds.
Whose world am I in? 
Everyone is waiting in line for something.
Log out.

On a bitch trip.  Sailing, flying, speeding
through storms that heave
on the other side of the universe. 
I don’t know who you are, crying baby.
Switch.
The rapists.
Switch.
I’m watching a lady now, she is
telling someone that the broken glass is everywhere.
A gauge hyper-extends,
my sword made up
of revolving pendulistic breasts
slicing through
a looter’s rage, as I spin.
I throw fantastic amounts of money in the face of
this woman.  Someone is dead again. 
There it is.
—the ripped carcass of one’s dream.
He said it once, about the dream.
Log out.

I walk onto the “crunch, crunch” of glass
on the convenience store floor, and knock on
the tomb of Bapu.
Three bullets shot my breath
—I speak through all mayhem.  He responds.
“Clean it like a cat vulva, after a litter. The infection must not spread.”
Log out.

I wrap the small dead man with my unraveled turban cloth.
The teachings cannot be silenced.
One two three.  Lift.
His blood trickles down my arms,
staining my death as if to resuscitate
me.
He speaks to me as I raise him high.
I place him into the thinnest verticle line
through a miniscule cavity in the top of my skull.
Bapu Ji, you stay in my blood
like the smell
of ancient memory.


_________________________

—Medusa


Bapu:  father, well-known reference to Mahatma Gandhi
Ji:  Term of respect
paan:  betal quids

We Make Our Own Labyrinths

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke

MESSAGE

First there were fires that scattered the villages
Far and wide.  So many languages came upon
Us that it became most difficult for us to understand
One another.  The fires made a night that lasted
A long time.  We often walked long distances
Singing songs we invented during the night.

Recently we have been able to see the sun.
It has made us want to find all of the others.
Once we saw many ships on the great waters,
Near the horizon.  We built fires to signal them
But they passed before us headed to the west.

To prepare ourselves we have created dances,
Plays and three spectacles including many animals
We have come to know and speak to as friends.

Our dances allow these animals to come into
Our bodies and speak directly to us, telling us
About our relationships to ourselves and others.
We wear masks at these times so that we may
Leave our bodies empty for their spirits to come
To us.  We have found we must do this as it is
Difficult to speak to them otherwise.  They are

Guides and messengers.  We have learned
Many things from them.  We fear this information
May be lost.  The buffalo, the eagle, the deer,
The antelope: the ways we share with one another
Are many and quite complex.  Even when we
Meet our brothers, we must depend on these dances.

There are many signs telling us that much will
Be lost.  Even these words coming so late through
The spirit may seem quaint and unimportant
To you as you read them.  Please.  They are not.
Listen to one another.  Try to hear this.  Wear
Masks if you are able.  Gather together with
Your friends.  Your bodies can carry messages
Far beyond what you may imagine.  You do not
Need to be more than to be in love with this world
For this to happen.  Surely you are able to do
This.  Surely this is why you are here now.

________________________

DA CAPO

Look at that song.

We are singing it.
It has almost filled the room.

We feel our voices leave
Our lungs, fully formed
Around its sound.

It dances across our lips,
Blessed with melody.
We lift it with our hearts.

It acquires form.
A truly visual form.  Occasionally
We can actually watch
It for briefest of moments.
We use all of our senses to do this.

*

Perhaps it looks like these
Words.  We have no way
Of knowing, except that
Anyone who sees can move their eyes over these words,
Sounding their particular
Tessitura, their singular moments.

Perhaps this sound is like
Nothing else except melody.

Perhaps we can only
Imagine this as a song.

Perhaps this singing moves
Around us as we read,
As we play these words.

Read this again, any time.

 Evening Over Stuart's House

RED BALLS

For weeks now we have floated
In this eldrich and resplendent
Space.  The small red globes
Had increased in number every day,
Until today it became almost
Impossible to move through
The space with them.

Although they weighed little
And could easily be pushed aside,
There were now so many of them,
So close together, pushing them
Was becoming more and more difficult.

When Ramon had suggested we
Find a way across this blood
Space and try to emerge near
The tops of the high cliffs
Not one of us felt it was
Possible to pass through those clouds
That hung below the glittering lights
Of what we supposed to be cities
High up in the vertical crevices
That loomed above our narrow valleys.

Now, weeks later, we were still wading
Through a thickened sea of red
Balls, slightly sticky to the touch
And capable of pulsing almost
As if they were in possession
Of some terrible consciousness
That threatened our own dreaming.

Ramon made us stop climbing
And asked us to unwind the
Elements of our tiny cookstoves.
As we did, he began to hook them
Together into primitive net-like
Structures.

He tied the loose ends to our wrists.
When we had completed the task
He then asked us to turn our
Devices on at the same time.

They began to glow and to emit
Both a heat and a sorrowful sound
That reached back into our bodies,
Filling them with a profound
Sense of loss and great sorrow.

As if by magic, the red balls
Began to move away from us,
Sliding out into the space away
From the cliff face.  We began
To climb once again.

Within the hour we had climbed
Past the red clouds and found
Ourselves on narrow paths
Leading into the rock crevices,
Where we could discern that
The glittering lights were indeed
Those of great vertical cities.
We began to sing the evening song
As we unwound our feeble nets.

Climbing closer and closer to the vertical
Cities we began feeling a kind of wonder
We had never experienced before.

Ramon began to teach us a new language
He said we would be required to speak
To those who dwelt there.

We were proud to see we had
Climbed so far past the place
Of red balls, and began to
Identify everything we saw using
Words of this new language.     

It smelled like lilacs when spoken
And turned upon the tongue
In praise of light and curious
Shadows that could communicate
With clouds. 

 My Beads

     
THE PRESENT

They broke the early edge of morning,
Filling the positions of the day almost
Immediately.  Great platoons of moments
Forming ranks, files, minute by minute,
Hour by hour.  There were so many

Ready to greet the dawn that it became
Impossible to predict what might occur
Between morning and evening.  Love
Songs rose spontaneously from myriad
Places, decisions and resolutions assembled,
Sure of success.  It was as if everything

That could happen on any given day
Would happen today for certain.

This went on every morning, no matter
What; Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall,
A seemingly endless parade.  Surely there
Must be something to all this activity.

We stood on the hilltops watching.
We looked out from our windows.
We greeted one another and discussed
Every event as it unfolded itself.  Each
Thing seemed new.  We hardly noticed

How it all worked until it became
Necessary to remember where we
Were and what was happening to us.
By then our joy had moved to the children.

We continued this way for an indeterminate
Amount of time and then it was over.
At first this seemed strange.  Later we
Involved ourselves in the making of it.
We became the things we observed.

________________________

AN ARGUMENT

Everyone connected with the event
Believes that what they observed
Was some kind of miracle, an
Unexplained manifestation of un-
Known energy.  There could be
No other explanation.  None.

We did not see this event, not
A one of us.  We heard about it,
Read about it, watched endless
Replays of images purporting
To shed light on what happened.

To us it seemed that such a thing
Is more than possible, more than
A singular occurrence.  When we
Rise in the morning, just before
The sun, we often have the feeling
That this day will exceed all of our
Expectations, that something of great
Importance has every chance of happening.

One day there was fire.  One day the
Wheel.  One day farming.  On another
We became friends with dogs.  There
Was a day when there were cities, when
We realized families, when we understood
The passage of time, the seasons, how to play.

We see no reason not to believe that our
Lives are not connected with all other life,
Now that this “proof” should suddenly
Become unquestionable, seemed inevitable.
Some of us have even conjectured
That this "conclusive miracle" was merely
A kind of exhalation of the collective
Consciousness, a catalytic conversion
Fueled by research, reflection, driven
By a universal yearning of all life.

Ask yourself if you believe that such
An occurrence, such an event is
So out of the ordinary as to demand
This notoriety?  Only the fact that

Everyone on the planet realized it
At the same moment is unusual.  This
Has, however, happened before.
Love works in mysterious ways.

Back Porch, Night, Russell & Deb's

THE CAT WHISPERER

The silences began to have particular shapes.
I thought some of them resembled you but then
I hadn’t spoken to you in a couple of months
And any silence could have had the same effect
The sirens had upon Ulysses, a particular madness
That one might never recover from.  This one was shaped
Like a large cat moving through a bamboo glade.

I reached for the door knob but it came off in my hand.
I could hear the click of heels going down the stairs.
Reason had obviously left me far behind.  I poured
A cup of coffee and sat at a low table listening for anything
Else.  I found myself on my knees begging for music.

Now, while it is not twilight quite yet, the day has
Already bought its tickets for the flight out of here.
Duke Ellington’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor slides
Up against the window, the whole horn section
Bending into the the window glass.  Shadows
Start explaining particular parts of the gardens.

We make our own labyrinths out of every day.
I have collected everything I could and the room
Only looks cluttered with bits of paper and electrical
Connections filling baskets like snakes.

If dreams come true, these same silences will
Rise to fill my heart with a great peace.  I will
Listen for the breeze to lift from the river and
Touch my skin as if it were my lover.  I continue
To reel in the shapes and watch a man walking
Through the garden followed by six cats. 

 Night Porch

DEAR STEPHEN
            (for Stephen Beal, 1939-2010)

As this poem begins, dinner is still thirty minutes away.
You are still leaning against the door jamb looking into the kitchen.
You are still nine years old.  The color of the milk in the glass
Pitcher has become extremely attractive for a moment.
Perhaps the red line painted around the top of the vessel is making it so.

It is still October.  The quality of the light seems to have a mind of its own.
It flattens the table top precisely.  It puts a tiny diamond on the spout
Of the pitcher.

The phone rings.  Your mother still answers it.
You can hear her voice in the other room.
First most excited, then concerned, then impatient.
There is nothing to do until Daddy comes home, any minute now.
You are still leaning against the door jamb.  You think about the way the napkins
Are folded.  The edges of the cloth seem delightful
For no reason other than these careful folds.

You will not recall this moment again in your life.
You had potatoes for dinner.  Their color was much more
Solemn than that of the milk.  You are surprised to have
Noticed this.  It pleases you to have done so.  It pleases
Me to have been able to see this exactly as it happened.
It is like recognizing a friend somewhere in a vast crowd,
Across a great distance like in dreaming or watching a film.

________________________
               
Today's LittleNip:

THE MESSAGE

A tree
Hiding
In a forest
Notices

A star
Hiding
In the night
Sky.

They notice
One another
Moving.

Neither
will say
Anything
About the other.

________________________

—Medusa

 

Moon and Tower

The Magic Maps of Imagination

—Poems and Photos by Martie Odell Ingebretsen, Sacramento

THOUGHTS ON AN OPEN DOOR

From the open door
the last trace of summer
is the garden hose
snaking between knee-high dandelions
and sweet peas gone to seed,
air, tinged with the scent
of gasoline and flowers,
leaves, dancing down the street
with a wily breeze
as crows mark the minutes,
timed to an intimate knowledge
of some unfathomable clock.

While the door is open
you can let in the magic
maps of imagination,
browse, in lines of words,
wonder, is the melodrama
a footstep's crunch
away from becoming
ordinary,
or a tapping foot and dog's bark away
from balancing
the straight back of self assurance
and the gentle slope of being content,
with the churning of doubt
and the longing to change.

While the door is open
you can wait for a poem to enter
(as Summer necks openly with Fall)
whose meaning cannot be thoughtlessly
introduced into a conversation
or nonchalantly thrown
in hopes that the retriever can make
its meaning clear,
or you can close this last
vestige of summer door,
and catch the poem waiting effortlessly
on your shoulder,
with the patina of humanity
dulling its brilliance,
winking one mischievous eye.

JUST A NOTCH OVER

The sky has turned thick
and ominous with blackbirds

She hears the calling of the crows
as a portent of change

Are the clouds holding
the sky captive?

Let go of summer evening’s
ache of last twilight
and close the door
on sweet and long dusk
now is the month of falling fallow
and it rustles with giving and taking

so say the dancing leaves

Heart to the keyboard
she plays the clouds and crows
a riot of life
where fingers are birds themselves
and feel the sun slant in the window
to touch the shoulder
variegated and dappled

How hold on to the light
when the sky is dark?

A strong thing      a love song
fed with sweet small things
change comes quietly
just a notch over
where truth has always been

She will roll up her jeans
admitting at last that it's ok
to be as tall as she really is

LISTEN

As the first breath squirms,
then sirens
across the lap of beginning,
hear the fragile power
that is life.

Fragile,
a candle’s flame
blown out in dark clouds
of hatreds careless and despicable.

Power,
the spirit that began
before time cut the umbilical cord
and freedom became a feeling.

Fragile falls,
it bends and melts
and will never be again.
But, the life force,
the spirit that builds joy
from a foundation that hugs compassion,
grows stronger.

And when a circle is formed
of hand touching hand,
there is no measure of its strength,
for it is indestructible.

From the open door
the crows argue with the sky
and I listen in awe
as an airplane softly roars
into my understanding
that life goes on.

Listen,
I hear commitment,
it feels like the breath of spirit,
it feels like power.

ANTICIPATING AUTUMN

A hawk called in fly-by across the blue
and suddenly the sun closed down
with a dog barking the neighborhood gate
sounding alarm       too soon not too late

All my skin was wind wise
and in the place of feathers and questions
I draped my sheer portent     determined to close only clouds
and ease into something that I don’t know yet

But I feel it coming like a slow train
beating out a rhythm
calling to my lack of rain
with fresh fill of some song it is bursting
and I can almost sing along

Then like some sweet minute never meant to end
it’s gone and I am all alone again

Today's LittleNip:
 
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

―Albert Camus

_________________________

—Medusa

Daylight Turned Dusky

WTF Editor/Luna's Host frank andrick

reading at the release of the new issue of 

Rattlesnake Press's WTF! on Aug. 21

—WTF! Release Photos by Michelle Kunert

OCTOBER
—Patricia L. Nichol, Sacramento

October is the time
of terra cotta
persimmon
dead leaf fall

the tang of pomegranate
hovers in the air
on the tongue
released by ruby seeds

wood smoke soon will
lace the air
daylight turn dusky
and night overthrow the day

candles will be lit:
ruddy radiant flares
against the deadfall
of the coming dark

even with the darkening
of the year
life does not fall away
but is quiescent: seed, nut, root

Listening to Tom Goff at the WTF Release.

Front table is Annie Menebroker, Eva West, Bill Gainer

MORNING WAKES
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

the sheer stillness of morning
the sniff and smell of scents
the smell of lawns greening

poof, a brilliant sunlit fence
and, poof, the sound of one poof
What was it heard by all?

What was meant by the
blue jay’s call that unstilled
the brilliant morning?

 Featured Reader Lee Foust at the WTF release

 

HAWK AT SEA'S EDGE
—Carol Louise Moon

Brown buteo above my head
without benefit of wind.  Wood-
light echo on spiraling track,
I hear your call in summer’s tide.

I watch your knife-blade wings—you glide,
light-echo on spiraling track
without benefit of wind.  Wood-
brown buteo above my head…

 Sage Robbins

Today's LittleNip:

LAST MOON OF AUTUMN
—Carol Louise Moon

an old face, yet new—
after the other visitors
have left the park


(prev. pub. in BREVITIES, Vol. 129)

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's poets and to Michelle Kunert for the photos. Carol Louise Moon, Patricia A. Nichol and Cathy Love Murphy will read at Sac. Poetry Center next Monday night, Sept. 8, at 8pm. Be there!

Rachel Leibrock

Word-Mining

—Photo by Caschwa

SUN CLOUDS
—Caschwa, Sacramento

I rest my head on a
Panoramic pile of pillows
Moving slowly en masse
High above all else

Harnessed together like
Elephants, trunk to tail
Talking to me in their sleep
With gentle, subtle ripples

There is more movement
Overhead, courageous colors
Bursting the ribbons that
Surround gifts of pleasure

Now the greed sets in
I demand more time than
People ever have to
Admire this spectacle

Fears spoil the serenity
This could be a trap to
Snare prey for hungry beasts
That roam in our dreariness

Whatever my fate the clouds
Will keep drifting along
Parading proud hues
Oblivious of news

—Photo by Caschwa

ARE MORNING AND EVENING EQUALLY PURE AND AMBER?
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Now what must it be to see morning and evening amber?
Yes, and by amber I mean the sweet-swirl cream
spun into cloud-stone, not that translucent sunbeam
some insect eclipsed, gum-stuck in its primal clamber.
When towns were hutments, and the odd smoky puff
all that could pall or appall the afternoon,
so dawnlight held and caressed the same amber tinge
as eventide, each timeframe cradling the moon,
sundown and sunrise liminal, each one a hinge
on the door of day or night: but, already, enough.

Tell me, my amber, my young sweet one, are you
the cream-yellow resurrection who enfolds
my aging skin, or are you the dying golds
whose tints enhance my skeletal white, the one who
can promise for all my dying a tenfold rebirth
in supple, yielding, inseminating youth?

Come show me the heaven you are, your underearth,
your dawn and your twilight equally clear and amber,
so that if I speak, and speak the truth,
you may deign to reveal, inside your chamber,
your scented sky-skin, your armpits of hush and cloud,
your dying and borning glow, so though I rise
twelve hours late, still, you put on no shroud
or cope like our evenings’ asthma-making haze.
Declined from the Golden Age, we feel the smear,
the tarnish rub off on our hands, on the evening breeze.

Yet under your sensitively modeled hands,
I can’t tell apart dayspring and dayfall, there
in the gloaming, the mistful substance we love and breathe.
Through rough Saharas I’ve dragged and I’ve knelt the long ways
to you, all dawn and all dusk one melting amber
poured into one promise of sugary aftersands.

_____________________

SUDDENLY
—Tom Goff

How subtle you are, appearing so suddenly
near me. On silent feet you alight like dawn:
you’re not the back-cloth clumsily overdrawn,
scrawled emblems of sun over barn and rooster abruptly
muffed backstage, let slip down with a bang.
No: graceful and unafraid, in with true morning
you glide, from the utmost cosmos come volplaning
mutely and easily, revelation’s fang
piercing me with the ecstasy of you,
the rare touch of your deftly tender hands
surpassing all the ladyfinger lands
I’ve labeled heaven, caressing me gold before blue.
Some dawn imposter may swoop down, one more claimant
who, beside you, is just one more crow: squawking, clamant.

_____________________

PEACH STONE
—Tom Goff

What bleeds from this core seed into the fruit,
scoring the ripe dawn-amber with red decline?
What is it about this heart so like a small moon?
Eclipsing the peach, it yet sends welling through it
sun and more sun, with a stab that surpasses cane
for sweetness. What beginning pegs the dark
so deep in enigma-gnarl, in pangs of wolf’s-bane?
Do wormholes in the seed admit small sparks
of life within? And does your cerebral kernel
breed toxins, seeping cyanide-subtle traces?
My sweet dark hardness, chokepoint at my center,
who’s gnawed you, molar and wisdom, till you splinter?
What grit of yours with liquescence interlaces,
tingeing your blush with syrups from the infernal? 

 Trailhead

—Photo by Taylor Graham

FALL THROUGH GRAY
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Gray under November skies, gray as when
the dandelion gave up blooming, when the cat
stopped being a kitten; gray as limbs
overhanging the dry creek, a tree that once
broke out in pussy-willow; gray as that harbor,
cold and hard, where a small child
grovels in sand as if he could dig clear through
to summer, its boat songs. You say
the willow will bud out again, the dandelion
blossom yellower than yellow. 
You, believer in romance, see everything
through memory or imagination, clear
through the immediate gray.

—Photo by Taylor Graham

 STRANGE DANCING
—Taylor Graham

The stranger said, You’re dim as moonlight
at dawn. And yet, within you is a ship
under sail. Can’t you feel it?

What you feel is a mysterious pain
in the back of your side or the side of your
back, too deep to explore or explain.

All day it waits its time like a bird of prey.
When the bones won’t dance, it’s up to tendon,
ligament, and muscle. You flex and hold,

and then release; dawn like a burst of crows,
and the dire night-bird flies
as muscle-dance becomes morning.

Press the moon in your side.
Watch the pain as it dims to distance,
till it’s a glow not quite lost at the horizon.   

Hatch Graham reads underground at Cosmic Cafe

—Photo by Taylor Graham

MINING WORDS
—Taylor Graham

Crows are bursting with their own black song
above Main Street, as we step out of daylight
into thick walls of rhyolite, the old Gold Rush
relic soda-words. Everything that isn’t stone
creaks. Overhead, a ghost might be massaging
memories, looking down through paned
glass on our speeding century. We order iced
tea, as if the ice weren’t freezer cubes, but
chunks of a frozen lake, from a block hauled
down-mountain on a dray, kept summer-long
in a tunnel dug into this very hillside.
We carry our drinks back there, to the caves—
chill cubbies barely lit for us to read our
offerings, our poems. This is word-mining:
sense and symbol out of Time and Everyday;
not a passing avocation. Sometimes the cavern
lamps blink dim then bright. I’ll see a flicker
out of stone and hear a whisper, as if a ghost
echoed our words. At last we emerge to those
black glints on daylight, Main Street crows
with their undiscovered motherlode of song. 

_______________________

A BURST OF CROWS
—D.R. Wagner, Locke

I thought they were flowers,
So soft and reaching upward,
But no.  They had eyes, dark and glittering
And the petals were great wings that clustered
Round the morning in bursts, as if they were a greeting.
Bouquets for the day just before the sun quite knew
What to do with the whole thing.  Crows, hundreds
Of them gathered on the trees, then forming into
Dark bursts.

I lie in my bed looking through the screens
As it all unwound.  The bouquets, the bursting,
The raucous voices assaying to sing but hopeless
When it came to other than calling and scolding.
Sun finally touching the tops of the trees.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

WHITE ON BLACK
—Taylor Graham

Flat on your back on the xray table—
“what’s this?” the tech demands.
Your flashdrive on a string around your neck.
In case the house burns down, you say.
All the poems you ever wrote, updated daily,
what might be your plug-in to eternity.
“Tell me a poem.”
You recite from memory.
The rest of your opus, your eternity lies—
like you—beyond your grasp.
Flat on your back, you release one poem
to this small cubicle, to air, and listen
as it shimmers out the door.
 

______________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Cashwa

A Burst of Crows

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

BRINK OF AUGUST

Morning’s white moon hovers in the flat blue sky
—metaphor for silence, or whatever you prefer
of personification—it is what we share here.

Two crows quarrel past the window
and take my attention, leaving a scar of sound,
an empty space of staring.

What I need now is a connection—contrast
against similarity.  I reach and find only the
fading moon and the absence of the crows.

You, whom I addressed before, are no longer
a part of this—I am watching the perfect moon
and listening for another burst of crows

—which happens even as I express this thought.

 SOUND ARROWS

The dogs bark in the hollows of morning.
The echoes listen.

Through the listening air, an invisible
mockingbird—both make echoes.

The dogs bark. A silent interval.
Then other dogs bark back.

Flat summer sky.
Mockingbird morning.

Soon the echoes are lost in the din.
Street workers. Trucks.
Someone hammering in a backyard.

Low-sounding airplane
scars the morning—from where to where?

Dawn’s lingering silence yields
to the sounds of the assembling day.

Dog rules once more, barking at
everything and everywhere.

From tree to tree the agitated crows
sound like invasiveness and misery.

THIS DAWN, THE OLD MOCKINGBIRD

I know he is an old bird,
for his song is very rich and long

—made of pure melancholy
and mad joy in the same true notes.

He fills and fills the brimming sky
with his deep singing.

______________________

DREAM STRUGGLE

At dawn, a silence, thick as air,
gray as morning. Some despair
lays its heavy hand
on troubled sleep and
smothers there—
sleep’s strange land

where sleep becomes an anxious place.
If guilt lives there, so must disgrace.
Mind unlocks—relearns
what always returns:
old concerns
it must face.

                                    
(first pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine)

LISTENING TO BLUE

Blue is a dawn word
and a twilight word; at dawn 

it sounds like the moment just before
birdsong; at dusk it sounds like a shadow.
       
Blue is sometimes an alto saxophone
and sometimes a flute sound in the rain.

Blue moves in slow motion to hear itself
move.  Blue is heavy with saturation.

Blue is a kind of prayer spoken
by loves who have lost each other.

Blue can dance to its own blue music
to which reunited lovers are slowly dancing.

THE BOOZERS                                          

They were bleary old.  They lived in a ground-floor apt.
off the alley.  They were alcoholics.  She never combed
her hair.  Her face was bloated.  He seemed to love her.
They looked sad.  Her eyes were unfocusing, beyond tragic.
She had been crying.  He was out of words.  His yellow
hand held the stub of a cigarette.  The room was blue
with smoke, his clothes rumpled, spilled upon.  The
bottle, a prop, stayed between them, its label turned,
just so, like an advertisement.  Their glasses gleamed
with the burnt-amber color of  its contents.  It was all
they could afford.  The drank slowly, pacing it like
time.  It was 10:00 o’clock in the morning.

                                                              
(first pub. in Parting Gifts, 1996)

_________________________

ABSENCES (OUTSIDE OF THE PAINTING)

“I’ll get them to delay the train for Rouen
 half an hour. The light will be better then.”
‘You’re mad,’ said Renoir.
                                      —Monet (Gare St. Lazarre)


train silhouette at dawn,
passenger silhouettes in cold huddle . . .

the turbulence of time—
its railway tracks—its flurry . . .

night-fog dispersing its heaviness,
impatience of the hour . . .

long thread of excitement—anxious for
the ‘all aboard’—the long ride to here . . . .

WHERE LIFE GETS STUCK

Small Town,     Small Town Blues,
on the only juke box in town—its only song,
no matter how many slots of selection.

I sing it to
my self-hugging dance:
circle    circle     circle    to the tune.

At night
the same old crying winds
return—howl through my dreams—

sound like a train I wish I were on—
as long as my nowhere to go—
as long as that.

I feel like a bend in time.
Mornings I feel the wide cold distance
hollow back with the echoes I know are gone.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

GLIMPSE

bird shadow on white wall—

             morning’s first poem

_______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam for today's poems and pix (many of the latter from Locke), and a note that our new Seed of the Week will be stolen from her "Brink of August" poem: A Burst of Crows. I know—a flock of crows is known as a "murder"—but I like the image of a burst of them. Send your bursts of creativity (poems, photos, artwork) on this or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail. No deadline on SOWs.

Breathing In Echoes

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Denise Flanigan

LATE SUMMER AMBER

A landscape with fragrances
keeps a forest vigil
from pinewood and wild roses
you wear your gemstone
of Dominican blue amber
on a blushing silver dress
as a once-wedded witness
under a timbered canopy
by heavily dense fir trees
hearing again the fireflies
bluebirds and crickets
when the first dead leaf
in the luminous wind
falls over orange brown foliage
we are still breathing in echoes
covered with sunflowers
under these green mountains
as on this anniversary
covenant and reunion
we will again dance
with eagles' wings
on cold feet flying over
the hollowed sky
embodying first light
at a wedding
under this anniversary
in our loving shelter
seated on river beds
under the many ray's
waxy lustrous horizon.

___________________

LATE AUGUST, 2013

On a park bench
by a freshly painted gazebo
putting on my snorkel
above the blue surface
off Cape Cod's waters
around the amber landscape
as long as summer lasts
with a Danish life guard
in front of first light
with his kindled camera
and voice to record
taking pictures of turtles
and many colored fish
under the sea.

FINDING AN AMBER GEM

Scarabs of an amber gem
from my looking glass
I locate
out at the sea port
near Pigeon Cove
sunshine gleams over me
my arms extend
along the rocks
of the beachfront
under a landscape of sky
glancing out
from the August absent air
on this dog day
heating many suns
as gold and neon butterflies
gleam out at me
over a just-initialed BZ
on this poem's tree of life
grows and disappears
by heavy trembling winds
at the port's luminous waves.

 B.Z.

SKY DIVER

A lightning bolt
hits a young guy nailed
in his sailor suit
who just skydived
in a white firmament
above me
dangling and suspended
like the august wings
of a mourning dove
waking me
on my beachcomber blanket
effacing a downpour
of cloud and rain
praying for a sign of life
as he emerges unscathed
from the legroom
of so many resplendent skies
comes close to my welcome
in our stretched-out arms.

______________________

WRITING AND FISHING

Newport engages
the sea's other waves
opening a memory
of writing and fishing
by the shore voices
early at dawn
the wind rips your blanket
along the water's surf,
by shadows of shore birds
in a foreign tongue
combing the beach
seeing repainted daydreams
at first light
that sway at the breeze
trying to read
your last revision
as you hear fish as mirrors
in your mind's eye,
when sounds as air waves
encourage the language
of the high tides
now in your dingy
which floats and rises
in an amber imagination
leaving you spaced out
by the gulls' flapping wings.

ON AN AMBER ROAD

Uncombed on an amber road
close to a home harbor port
almost disabled and sleepless
dying from regrets
after your two years at sea
having a day of amnesia
among ambrosia
once setting sail
in a life jacket
and old navy shirt
now with a South Sea fever
dropping as a still life
supports me on board beds
covering ocean docks
with a horizon of vistas
poised for my gestures
from new Indian sunglasses
bought for a song
at the last fishing port
as you recall
the keel and mast
from great winds
aromatic waves
blowing hurricanes
flirting with daily death
by deserted islands
with nascent earthquakes
bubbling volcanoes
with each echo in my ears
at unexpected storms
and tsunami forecasts
your detailed logs
waiting to be set to verse
in your mind's eye
as you take in
one more voyage
from beachhead squalls
like Melville's ventures
with a tidal journal
seeing dimensions
along every coast
swallowing a conscience
sprinkled with the rain
of memory and remorse.

Dancing Waters

AUGUST 26

August 26 at noon
and someone is watching me
making for a childhood path
as a first chestnut falls
on my river-run day
to an amber-like island
of memory opening
from secretive eyes
known only to shadow
of an entrapped body
sleeping on the beach
in an August dawn
under a sun-studded
sky and ocean,
deserted from answers
of summer school
and forgotten questions
after an invisible miracle
wanting to live again
along the shore's solitude
confessing the past
mesmerized by absence
of this surrounding nature
of exotic blue birds and fauna
a paradise wearing tall clouds
listening to a sea echo
of my own voice.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

LABOR DAY WEEKEND

The summer's end lands
quicker than a butterfly
we will not pretend
to say our goodbye,
but soon we welcome
a new resuming season
then an Autumn sunshine
leaves us with its own reason,
we will keep our memory
retrieving us by the sea
as shining pictures and poetry
are reliving in our life's society.

_________________________

—Medusa

B.Z. Niditch