Love What You Are

LINES FOR WINTER
—Mark Strand

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

________________________

—Medusa

Mark Strand, 1934-2014

...And the Witch No Longer Was...

Drawing by D.R. Wagner

—Poems by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

 

THE DEEP GIFTING

It was a deep and thick-browed sleep
That came upon me full of halls and doorways,
Some of flame and some of stone and some
From which the scent of heaven wafted
Upon no breeze at all but a pregnant stillness
In that air found alone in dreaming and carved
In certain chambers of the heart.  The lonesome speech
Known to fall from the mouth of ancient bells,
Tripping one and keeping one from finding
Any way back from the soft and guarded arms
Sleep surrounds us with, it boards its indeterminable
Train and makes for mountains darker still than midnight.

Here is the dwelling place of spirits long forgotten
On this earth.  Spirits whose speech is of a tongue
No longer heard upon our world and scarcely remembered
In any land.  It is hinted with a cadence known to fairy,
Heard when troops of them dwelt up an airy mountain,
Down a rushing glen.  It was a voice of wings that carried
The blue away from the sky and pushed the sun to clouds,
That it might hang its lyric on the walls of our souls,
Admonishing us to be still and await a kind of rapture
One might hear only in the presence of mystery.

I have walked there and will walk there again
For I have deep business with the shades and fleeting
Beings that dwell there.  I am come to them to find
Those words which are seldom heard in any poetry
Or song, in any prayer or any curse that might
Be given to those who read these words or speak
To one another of the wonders of the dreamlife.

I learn within those rooms and behind those silent
Doorways of the many rooms and enchantments
That live beneath closed eyes and breathe that other
Breath that rushes from our lungs when we are
No longer present in this old and fitful world.
I would carry this to you that we may share it
As a feast so seldom given to each other
That one might call it madness or others
Call it truth.

 "Avatar Spider" by Kari Kiyono

THE FALL OF THE MAGICIAN

I was unable to speak, I had never seen
A bird before.  I did not know what to call it.
It came with a long and repeated falling
Through chains of molecules or of having
Discovered crystals in my blood.

How do I tell if this is even close to the truth?
I felt the plurality of everything within me.
I tried to move out of this feeling without
Losing the possibly of returning, even if
Only as a message discovered in mitosis.
Deep meditation might do this but it is
Unprecedented except in conversations
With the dead.  Will I be other or will
I be all?  Or will I be no one?  Why
Am I smiling?  Is it the temples?
Is it the gardens?  Is it the map
Of the labyrinth secreted in my clothing?

I am about to change my memories.
When I read this again, I may be you.
I may recall nothing of the empire
Or of the weaving and unweaving
I have studied so long in solitude.

Here it says: I was once a magician.
What meaning is this in the catalog
Of possibilities I see here before me?

There is no longer any waiting.
I am unable to tell you if this is some future
Dispute or a quarrel left over from yesterday.
I fill my mouth with the words of others.
The vision is the transit.

 "Tigger" by Kari Kiyono

WITCH

We heated nine pins
In a pan of milk
Until it began to boil
And it stopped the witch
That stole our milk.
She sucked it from our cows.

It poked nine holes into her heart
And the witch no longer was.

_________________________

AN ABDUCTION GONE WRONG

        “The moon was shining,
         For it was the month of August
        And the river was smooth and as bright
        As a looking glass.”
                      —From an Irish folk tale

It’s too late.  Here come the stars.
They have found that we were
Hiding her beneath the moon.

She held me like the river.
The cathedral looked pink
From just beneath the water.

 Drawing by D.R. Wagner

AN APPARITION AT DAYBREAK

Across the lonely way
The bats and the night flies
Begin to play.

At Prime and Tierce
The sun broke through
The tall, tall hedge
And half a moon stood there
With yellow branches—
A pale, half-moon,
Tied with green ribbon
And legs all covered with hair.

The hair was red as blood
From the heart.
The half-moon stood on the edge
In perdition.  It twisted and struggled,
Died on the spot.

There was nothing to do
But to burn the woods down,
The half-men, the ribbons,
The devil’s red legs,
Till nothing remained
But the dawn.

 Drawing by D.R. Wagner

HOUSE OF THE BANSHEE

Lights inside the bottles.
They are the lights of souls
And pulled against the doors
Where old, and old and old
Dancers danced to pipes
Until the dawn was paid
In gold that was not gold,
But leaves and only leaves.
And the finest of the pipers
Screamed his pipes till
People threw open their doors
To drive him away.

And who would keep her
Here but tall and solitary
Giants who dwelt among
The rivers that had
The water horses
And those who vomited corpses
In the tumult of the night,
Calling out from time to time
To make sure we were the ones
Who rode the night mares
And they could draw us
From beneath the straw
Under which we slept
Or draw us from the froggy
Drains where we had gone
To hide from them.

Beware and then be well,
My friends, and hold your
Eyes toward morning,
Lest you’re snatched away
And made to pray at the grave
Of some god who never knew
Morning or the call of the Banshee
Upon the ears.

Practice well the songs you know.
Do not forget the words
Or tune, or they will find you
In your dreams and drag
You from your sleep and drag you
Before the Banshee’s house
And hang you deep and down
And low, so low, so low.
Be careful, for the Banshees know.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

He had many strange sights to keep him cheerful or to make him sad. I asked him had he ever seen the faeries, and got the reply, "Am I not annoyed with them?" I asked too if he had ever seen the banshee. "I have seen it," he said, "down there by the water, batting the river with its hands." ("A Teller of Tales")
              —W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Fairie and Folklore


How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,
And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.
What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?
I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.
Your wife can’t be a banshee—
Or can she?
             —Ogden Nash, Private Dining-room and Other New Verses


She had wailed loudly enough to wake the dead and make them call the cops.
             —Ilona Andrews, Magic Strikes

_________________________

—Medusa

Sacramento River Reflections

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Squatters & Thousand-Leggers

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO
—Photos of Alcatraz by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento, CA

AT BUS STOPS ON THANKSGIVING DAY

Before dawn, people
who work on Thanksgiving Day 
wait in the wind for a bus
to arrive or maybe not.
It's too cold to talk
so the people stand
like minutemen and plan
a revolution that would shock 
nice families who drive by later,
children tucked in scarves
and mittens, laughing
all the way to Nana's house 
for turkey, gravy, stuffing
and later in the day
a ballerina of whipped cream
twirling on pumpkin pie.
Thanksgiving is the day
America asks for seconds
and sorts its servers
from the served.

__________________________

MIDNIGHT SQUATTERS

Homeless man
in a Trayvon hoodie
under an old raincoat,
a gift today from

the Salvation Army,
sits like a capital L
against the wall
of a downtown bank

while a homeless cat
strolls around him,
hoping for bits of ham
from the gnawed remains

of yesterday's sandwich
as happens many nights
when the cat visits him 
despite no bell or kettle.

 View of S.F. from Alcatraz

FERGUSON WILL ROLL

Ferguson will roll
until we turn
the volume down
and have no need to seek
concussions in the street.

Now we joust
to prove that black
and white are different.
The twain must meet
for years in bed until

so many cocoa
are conceived we
drop our weapons
and no longer seek
concussions in the street.

______________________

AN ISIS NURSERY RHYME

Listen, young lady,
this is the man

who will cut off your legs
and this is the man

who will cut off your arms
and this is the man

who will cut off your head
if you fail to tell us where 

your parents hid the gold.
Had we known about the gold,

they’d be here, not over there
in chunks, baking in the sun.

View of Golden Gate from Alcatraz

THOUSAND-LEGGER AT MIDNIGHT

I rise to pee at midnight
and it’s nice to see
no gunman in the bathroom
waiting to shoot me

but there’s a thousand-legger,
a centipede, if you will,
in the tub, disoriented
by the light

walking in circles
like an unhappy cat.
He’s obviously upset
he can’t escape the tub

because of the high walls.
A mystery how he got there.
The walls won’t let him go
where life might dictate.

Now that autumn’s here,
maybe he’s come to visit
or maybe spend the winter.
He doesn’t know it but

he won’t survive my wife,
well-known to other insects,
now deceased, as Big Foot.
Every once in awhile

he tries to crawl the wall
but falls to the floor again,
the longest centipede
I’ve ever seen, a caboose

suddenly left behind,
deserted on a railroad track,
going nowhere till my wife
applies her heel. 

 Cell block, Alcatraz

ANNUAL PHYSICAL

You go to the doctor
at 21, no problems.
Maybe a flu shot.
That’s it.

You go to him
at 40, and you
need a pill or two
and he says
watch your weight.

You go to him
at 60, and you’re
now a fixer-upper.
You need more pills,
he says, and
watch your weight.

You go to him
at 70, and he finds
plumbing problems
and asks questions
to verify that all
your lights are on.
Doesn’t mention
your weight.

You go to him
at 80, and he says
you’re doing well,
all things considered,
but it wouldn’t hurt
to put your affairs
in order.

You tell him
you can’t remember
any affairs but he
can ask your wife.
She’s still raising hell
about someone
named Mildred,
if that was her name.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

AN ATHEIST ON SUNDAY

On Sunday his wife
and children walk
to Mass

and he goes
into his garden
to work

all day
primping roses
lilies, dahlias

weeding, pruning
making things right
on his altar of life.

At dusk he brings
his heaven home
in soiled hands.

A big bouquet 
for a wife
suddenly in tears.

________________________

—Medusa

Dummy of Alcatraz Guard

The Fog We Live In

Tall Pine

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

MORNING FOG

I'm that kid next door again
as the morning fog
along the daytime
still holds me in empty spaces
along the once luminous Bay
in my motorcycle jacket
thinking he's still James Dean
for an hour's highway drive
seeing unfamiliar tourist faces
hitching rides
in wonder of the season
with only the emerald lights
from wreathes and Christmas trees
attracting the new ruddy faces
of Black Friday shoppers
traveling to strip malls
this uncomplaining Beat poet
having finished reading the news
plays word games and solitaire
on the once-pawned card table
as his sneakers are covered
with patchy dew
after a very brief jog
silently passes cottages, capes
and farms with cranberry bogs
with sounds of gulls approaching
along the docks of the shore
where his refurbished kayak
is sleeping
out for the winter's hibernation,
the harsh winds quickly carrying him
past the hyacinth woods
with a few red leaves weeping
for the abandoned branches
on swaying elm trees,
now he's hunkered down
like the brown bear
neighbors call "Brownie"
sighted last weekend
following the soupy mist
and needing some laughter
watches the comic movie
The Muppets Take Manhattan
with Joan Rivers
making a great cameo appearance
playing a comical Big Apple
perfume sales woman
and Linda Lavin as Kermit's doctor,
then determined to be creative
composes smooth jazz on sax
on the open porch
now grateful having a doggy bag
of left-overs from Thanksgiving
grateful for being alive.

 Pink Tree

IN A FOG

My neighbor Igor's father
seems to be in a stupor
sways in religious devotion
crossing himself
again and again
after he speaks
his gestures are animated
after his prayer walk
tells me of what he endured
far away in a memory
of long suffering
with the pleats showing
from his woolen pants
far too big for him
opening his Tolstoy novel
gives me a blessing
with a siren's sound
like a gull's cry flying south
above his roof
his wife Galina baking shortbread
resembling Russian tea cakes
eaten around Christmas tables
by an old samovar
with red beet borscht
in huge bottles for me
lodged in the freezer
during the long winter days
Galina sings me
an Old Believer's hymn
in her busy pantry
amid a light-headed noon
all wishing me a time for peace
health and double miracles
from my creative juices.

 Old Wood

IN NEW YORK CITY

In a spurt of fog
from first light
my sax waits for me
wishing to be part
of a new world
jazz symphony,
like any fresh violet
snuggling up
from the earth,
already missing
Andy and Edie
from the Factory
whose gates
have closed,
wanting to again
believe in art
and not commercials,
traveling to the Metropolitan
to enjoy the Expressionists
and to be undisturbed
on a wall
in my old brownstone apartment
full of my city's graffiti
by a back alley
in the Big Apple
on a November misty day
I'm driving in a taxi
blowing sax riffs
in the key of "E"
as rain showers
like dusty shadows
fall on the windshield
and in my green poncho
full of poetry notes
I lost at J.F.K.
fed up with no energy drinks
left in my travel,
my head stuck down
away from the cops
in traffic lanes
of so many hours
with uneasy streets
picking up my friend Jan
who sings the blues
by a dark doorway
of the club
with dying red flowers
intoxicated by the night.

 Pineapple

THE FOG WE LIVE IN

Still with all coolness
in the fog we live in
this poet is always
in a new home
once as an exiled sax player
feeling the blind sunshine
on another's back,
just at this Fall dawn
among red turning leaves
fresh from giving an urban read
from playing riffs
all night at my gig
as the Persian cat "Babr"
suddenly visits us,
now living along the beach erosion
I'm lifting my camera's gaze
with a sliver of liver in a lovely dish
once carrying cherry blossoms
sent from a Tokyo film maker
who enjoys reading
my surreal peace poems
with her better translation.

 Rushes

RILKE'S BIRTHDAY NOV 4

In the doubtful fog
from the grey windy shutters
of open country air
awash with rain
of youthful memory
in an international time
of hope for peace
your voice attached to words
through outside bird sounds
which soon become lyrical
as Mozart's piano musical notes
you hear by the windows
yearning to write sonnets
by the burning fireplace,
outside is the Fall orange foliage
blushing of earthly language
amid your love letters
clutching a book of verse
from Maria Tsvetaeva
on your green sofa
as birthday candles on an angel
and sponge cake are lit,
drawing a short breath
as you hear the whistle
of a train in the distance
when you will soon
have a chance to meet
Tolstoy and Rodin.

________________________

Our thanks to today's super-chefs in the Kitchen, and a note about two deadlines you might want to look into: 

•••The sixth annual New Year's Poetry Challenge, featuring a poetry prompt each day, begins this Saturday, Dec. 6 and runs through Jan. 4. If you're interested in participating, contact Gillian Wegener at wegenerspage2@gmail.com/. 

•••Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust offers 3 online classes each year. The first for 2015 is "Showing vs. Telling in Fantastic Fiction" and begins Jan. 1; Dec. 6 is the deadline for applications. See www.sff.net/odyssey/online.html/.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
 

—Rainer Maria Rilke

_______________________

—Medusa

 Waterlily

Staring Into the Future

Michael Paul with Friend

THE WORKMEN
            for Alan Michael Parker

Just before the workmen, worthy of their hire,
come into view, they are announced by strange melody
and syncopation—the rising and percussive songs
of nails, like questions; the descending arias
of saws, like answers. The rat-a-tat-tat of nail guns
in a rhythm section repetition:
shave and a haircut, shave and a hair cut—
the very music of Vishnu and Shiva,
personified in hardware.

A woman, sunbathing naked on the roof, gazes out
into the sky’s thin sea, watching clouds scud by
like schooners. A woman who, between the din and drum
becomes a tuned fork, tines humming to the whine of saws,
thrumming to the drums of hammers.
And the workmen, worthy of their hire, become aroused
at the sight of skin, that world, that sea of skin, into the which
they each and all wish now to be drowned.
And gravity fails, in a localized manner.
And the naked woman rises, in a profane annunciation.
And the workmen, worthy of their hire,
stare into the future and begin to speak in tongues. 


‪(first pub. in the anthology, Don't Blame the Ugly Mug, from Tebot Bach Press)‬

_________________________

HIGHWAY 39 REVISITED

There was a big commotion down at the Bistro,
over some dame. A broad. This chick
who, in the Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous literature
would be someone to whom
Magical Powers were attributed.

She was fussing over some old-fashioned
beatnik, new-fangled upstart, Post-
Post-
Post-Modern dialectical immaterialist
who wore a heart on his sleeve, which
resembled
nothing
so much as a magnesium fire.

He had the look
of a three time loser
gazing at liberty for the last time before
having the book thrown at him
for spitting on the sidewalk.

She had the look
of the last chance for gasoline
before 40 years in the wilderness, carried herself
like royalty with a cigarette in her mouth,
and a scotch, neat, in her hand.

Together
they behaved like
George and Marion Kirby, after the car crash. Like
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, before the breaker was thrown. Like
John Cusack’s marionette versions of Abelarde and Heloise
in that Spike Jonze movie.

They were so beautiful, in a violent kind of way.

Around them people wailed
and rent their garments, scattered ashes
upon each other’s heads, sang threnodies.

Outside, an armed robbery took place in plain sight.

And somewhere, poems yawned

and rubbed the sleep out of their eyes.


(first pub. in Spillway)

A POEM FOR GOD, MY DOG, AND CAROLYN SRYGLEY-MOORE

Come to me…
Come to me…
Come to me…

The Father’s heart calls:
If not close to my bleeding side
Then near to me
I long for you
I call you compañero, brother, child
I long for you.

Here boy…
Here boy…
Here boy…

I say to my pup
Fuzzy kaleidoscopic mind
You curious you
So like me –
Interrupt driven, self-willed, stubborn
So noble yet so base
So beautiful in your youth, but
Already bearing marks of age

O sister…
O sister…
O sister…

I say to the poet, across oceans
Of electricity
On wavelengths
Borne by machines of loving grace
Your words are written on my wall
Spray painted with your fingertips
Graven from your heart

He calls to us…
I call to him…
And I hear you...

With fuzzy ears grown long from years

___________________

BEFORE REVEILLE
          for Roux

At oh dark thirty
You read the morning news
In blades of grass
With the spectacle of your snout
Dark doesn’t matter, your sense reads braille in the
Front page, Entertainment, and the Classifieds of our lawn
Perused. And the Sports Page

Sets you gamboling
Around our gravel walkway

What do your furry antennae hear
From the singing speaking stones?
What messages do you chew upon
In the fallen sticks from trees?

Light comes…and

What do you see with those
Triangular melancholy eyes
Akita mine? What stories?

Sticks and stones you have already suffered?
Losses? Mother, brothers, sisters
And false hope of a home?
Tell me dog of sorrows

Speak boy. You with your possible dysplasia
Marks of age prewritten in your young body
My ears are open—my shoulders
Boney and not so wide
Are yours. My promise is this:

This will always and all ways
(As long as I have breath)
Be your home.
 

 Michael with Claudia

SEVEN METAMORPHOSES FROM SYRUP TO STRANGE FLIGHT

1.

Last year, when you were in the kitchen,
mostly naked,
studying to become a tree,
I was in the yard,
pencil tip to tongue,
awaiting lightning.
Now you are, cum laude,
aspen, quaking, warm dewdrops of summer
morning draping all your slender limbs.
(Soft flesh, not wood you are, I wrote)
and I am still this
love-struck scribbler.

2.

When you ceased to be a banker
I renounced my life of crime,
but not until I held you up—
I had to take you hostage
in order to make
a clean getaway.

3.

When I am a painter,
you are all the cool colors
of my palette:
malachite, lapis, cerulean, green,
swirling burgundy down
into your favorite—
royal purple.

4.

If you were a painter
I would be all the warm:
sienna, umber, ochre, blood,
alizarin and autumn gold.

5.

We are complementary,
chromatically and temperamentally.

6.

If if is is,
maybe becomes be.
Tenuous turns tensile.
Almost morphs to most,
and all these ifs of you,
and all those whens of me,
burn to ash, and from that pyre comes this weird phoenix:

7.

We.

____________________

AIRPLANE POEM

like tin pushers sitting in darkened rooms—
the better to see the green spokes circling
the screens, the better to wrangle
the calculus of transponders in motion—
watching, hushed, while
little alphanumeric scribbles
representing unbelievable amounts
of metal and flesh flying at high altitude
and speed, tick their incremental way
across a video game version of flight

a hundred years from kittyhawk
to here, darling, where we live
beneath these aerial pathways

remember in the barrio, how the roar
of inbound to LAX bothered us less
than the loud late-night mariachi wafting
on the weed-scented breeze,
or the occasional drive-by bullets?
while three blocks away
behind the invisible barriers of their
manicured lawns, the well to do worried
more about plummeting property values
than planes falling from the sky

how oddly fitting that our address
and fortunes have changed—
yet our circumstance remains similar

now the roar of inbound to john wayne airport
is the whitenoise we’ve grown accustomed to
up here on our hill, above the taquerias,
the carnecerias, the noise and graffiti
of all those sweet brown people
who pray God into their cinder block and wrought
iron walled yards full of cars
to protect them
from falling airplanes and from
the whites who live above them
like tin pushers sitting in darkened rooms

____________________

HE, BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKS, PIPES, WRITES

Listen:
lessons in bone.

Jazzman lifts brass, like knife,
riffing filigrees of sadness, sonic scrimshaw
upon hammers, anvils, stirrups, all
the smallest ossicles of this
benighted head.
Bowed head. Eyes burn.

Listen:
my love comes,
kittenlike,
bearing gifts. Four roses odorless
and still as newly killed mice;
lays them out, like my heart,
at her feet,
with the news of her leaving.

Alone now with the jazzman,
taking all the wine dark lines
of haunted face,
written by the blind luck draw
of double helix,
scribed by horn
(not ax, but knife)
now sharpened on the castanet clatter
of my love’s knocking,
my love’s leaving. I raise

a toast:
a cup of gladness
turned to vinegar and gall.
Put four roses into it:

The color of memory.
The complexion of time.
The shade of solitude.
The hue and pattern of
the chiaroscuro coloratura
the jazzman scratches on my bones.

Listen:
I will raise a toast to the woman,
whose tuition, though bitter,
costly as a mouthful of ants,
is the unwilling dues
I pay to hear
all the way to my bones,
that hard bought beauty

of the blues.


(first pub. in Blue Satellite)

____________________

ONEIRONAUTS

In my sister’s dream redemption comes
in the form of a pickup truck.
In mine, my father, dead for decades,

drives a yellow bus to the shore
where a bilingual fish explains
all secret knowledge.

In mother’s dream Christ appeared to her
after the manner of Yahweh disclosing
his backside to Moses,

but it didn’t involve vehicles,
just a tree, a red flannel shirt
and dungarees. Cars are omens

in my wife’s dreams; their portent
depending upon make, model, mileage,
Kelly Blue Book value, but above all

who is behind the wheel of this latest model
augury? And who drives my sister’s pickup
while she pulls the walking wounded

over the tailgate into safety?
And who could possibly imaging my surprise
when the folding door hissed open

in my dream, and the driver of the bus
was my dad, finally come to take me
to the place where all the real answers

were revealed.


(first pub. in Dog Whistle Politics from Lummox Press, 2011)

_______________________

Today's LongerNip:

GRAFFITO

And so we drive through weather & night
outlining the coast with our lights
in an evanescent calligraphy, like

an ideogram for the two of us,
and the suchness of earth & water.

Graceful, dramatic, frightening
as the breathtaking dive the continent takes
into the misnamed sea.

Everything about this moment
from the tire hiss to the intermittent
metronome of the wipers,
delineates a character, much like

the stylish gang-write I saw, on the black
metal backdrop of a streetlight in Santa Cruz,
the one which made me wonder
if archeologists of the future would find it elegant
but indecipherable.

The jitterbug line of light we describe
along the ragged edge of our world
becomes our secret art & text—

its translation known
only to us.

________________________

Our thanks to Michael for today's poems and pix. About himself, he writes: ‪Michael Paul is the author of six chapbooks from three small presses (all now defunct—no fault of his) and a perfect-bound collection titled Dog Whistle Politics from Lummox Press (2011) which has garnered several good reviews and is selling well on Amazon.com. Michael's work has also appeared in a number of literary journals, including Blue Satellite, Pearl, Spillway, The Valley Contemporary Poets Anthology, Dufus, FTS, Silver Birch Press and Spilt Ink Poetry. His poem, "Dear Doctor", was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Michael has performed featured readings at many venues including the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and Beyond Baroque, the Santa Monica Literary Arts Center. Michael is entering a low residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College next year and has switched his genre from poetry to literary non-fiction as he is currently devoting his creative energies to essay and memoir, though poetry will always be his first love. Michael wears many hats—husband, father, grandfather, ranch hand, house husband, volunteer, and now student—he may have to wake up before he goes to bed in order to fulfill all those roles, but he is nothing, if not game.‬
Michael lives in Auburn, California with his wife, Claudia Licht.

Welcome to the Kitchen, Michael, and don't be a stranger!

________________________

—Medusa
 

Forever the Old Ruse

Candle Smoke

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

 

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 . . . .

______________________

THE ACT OF LONELINESS

The act of loneliness is hard to separate from the
comfort of some old reunion never made real—
only the abstract place and time—interruptions

in time, to redirect some wrong-way almost
taken.    Fate has its place in things.     Forever
the old ruse, the never reached, the far away,

the long reel of experience, though that is not
what you call it. You are here now with your
new page of yearning—as empty as ever—a

pocketful of words—pathos and whimsy. Write.
You sit and think out the window or into the dull
face of the clock, forever at war with you. You

open yourself and face the turmoil, or the little
incidents of memory that drift in and out of fog,
that other where of you. You are still lost.

A fastening : someone said red-winged bird—
and blue boat—and something less tangible
that was gone before you caught it, and that’s

the one you want—that image, that sound,
that something that turns and looks at you
with your own eyes that is not a mirror.
Oh, reach . . . reach . . . .

 Tree with Crows

DRIVING IN FOG

Today the fog pulls me away.
I am the gray within the gray,
detached from traffic grope,
surreal with lost direction.
I follow the first meander of my mood:
past abstract, unknown neighborhoods;
past streetlights that smear the names
of street signs at unreadable corners.
The whole world sifts around me—
the sky on my car—my feeble headlights
trying to peer in far enough to get us through
to where distorting time determines I should be.


(first pub. in Bay Area Poets Coalition's POETALK, 2007)

____________________

LISTENING TO CHOPIN ON A GRAY DAY

I play Chopin, over and over, all morning and into the
afternoon, and fall into some old time that was his, and
feel how sad such distances become and how wonderful
to still connect.  And I am glad that I have made the reach,
and wonder about him: Handsome.  So young.  Tubercular. 
A genius.  On his way to early death—that stealer.  I feel
the gray day as tenacious as that, this day-long fog that
sifts into mind and mood and sorts out the music of my
bones.  I am in love with music that can use such gray to
enhance the misery of winter.  He must have felt the same
cold about his shoulders, in his composing hands, and so
created what I listen to today—hour after hour—how I
defeated for awhile that Sacramento Tule fog that stays
and stays and stays.

 Music Notes

WINTER MAN RUNNING IN SUMMER

That man
who runs around the football field
of the school
is so old
he is up to his knees in fog.

It is early summer
so he carries his fog with him
like a load.
He is a heavy runner
lifting his iron legs up to his chest
and throwing his head back
so he cannot fall.

He has been running
all morning.
The children have come and
played their games;
the sedentary people have come and
walked their dogs,
but none of them
has noticed the runner.

Now it is evening
and he is up to his waist in fog.
He is so desperate
and so weary.
Fog-swirls
slip from his arms like chains.
His heart is making its last try
before darkness.
                          

(first pub. in MojoNavigator, 1973)

___________________

ON LOST PERSPECTIVE
         After "Figure in Fog": Photo Credit: David Wagner;
         “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you…”
         Text by Dag Hammarskjold

Walking into winter
as though lost upon its path,
a seam of light divides the way.

White shadows break aside.
You—or the one you watch—
recede, and you in loneliness remain.

The veil of thought is heavier
than light. What’s lost is lost
and cannot be reclaimed.

An easy mist will always take you in
where particles absorb all substance,
where the end of something must begin.

No warning works.
The figure walks away—your shadow
or your life—in transformation.

All is swirl:
the light, the dark—
the dark, the light—all turned to gray.

 Branch Over-Hanging

PALL

What of the white pallor of the sky
this day—this day without mercy—this
dimensionless day—this white-fog morning.

I test the skies with my gray look. How thin:
they could not hold me. I shall not fly
nor flex a dreary wing in agitation.

I may just sift against this day until I fit—
somewhere far or near—
it does not matter. I am in a drift.

Some wet bird lets a cry cut through.
I feel it reach and offer back my silence.
Nowhere does sensation end—

I am all of it—the monotonous pale light,
the few shapes wavering. The same bird
cries again. I open myself. I let it through.


(first pub. in Sac. Poetry Center's Poetry Now)

 Pink Clouds, Bare Branch

TO FIND EACH OTHER

Your theme is not entirely relevant
to my reality.  How do I fit

your expectation—
fill in the numbered spaces,

like a jigsaw puzzle:
white on white,

the cuts identical and small
in a huge white box?

What kind of clue is this—
this map to your theme,

as vague as a white road
in fog, paved swirlingly,

and a white sound that cries
forever in patient melancholy?

What can I say to you
that would not get lost here?

The cry is my own, and the cry
is your own, so eerily blended.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

FRAGILITY

It was the sea-light that came from nowhere
and extended all over the metaphor . . .

and it was the fog-light near morning that
remembered and warned of it all . . .

a shrill dog barking somewhere became
its interruption . . .

and the flow stopped . . .
like a poem started and never able to finish . . .

_____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's gourmet goodies, including her fog poems for last week's Seed of the Week. Joyce writes a lot about loneliness, and it's a lonely time of year for some people, so let's take up her challenge: our new Seed of the Week is Loneliness, whether it's people, animals, landscapes—or loneliness of the seasonal type. Send poems/photos/artwork about loneliness to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs, though.

—Medusa

Standing Wall

A Few Words...

Stone House

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

A FEW WORDS
—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

words scratched in the walls
cut like broken glass
words carved in alabaster
lead
ice
clay
words hinged together
an old door that sticks
words hammered on an anvil
hot
red
soft
words raining down
burning up
words flying away

______________________

MOSTLY HUMAN DANDER
—Robert Lee Haycock
 
There were holes in the ceiling
Holes in the walls
When Lolly came to visit
She talked of her Jesus
Then lifted her skirt
Her legs were covered
In beggar's velvet
From lips to tips of toes
I was filthy with it
When Lolly ran away laughing
You said nothing
Tried to clean up the mess

______________________

THE NEW SOFT SHOE
—Robert Lee Haycock

The cobblers are much happier
And our boots are so supple
Since we started flaying the children
While they are still breathing

But our closets are full of screams
Blood pooling beneath our beds
And the Moon can hardly stand
To look down on us

_____________________

LYRIC OF LAST RESORT
—Robert Lee Haycock

The foppish pirates
Danced their way ashore
Passing out candy
Disabling fax machines
Stealing keys
As they advanced

The flying babies
Blood in their eyes
Spit in their palms
Swooped down
Joining them in
A pincer movement

The first line of defense
Redecorating our offices
With jarring combinations
Of stripes and plaids failed
Gathered in the employee cafeteria
We sang the old negro spirituals

______________________

A MATTER OF TIME
—Robert Lee Haycock

R. was tired of being dead
And so he wasn't
Driving around in my beat-up truck
We ordered huge breakfasts we didn't eat

But it was inconvenient not being dead
The stripes on his back festered
One night he turned toward me half-asleep
"I've pushed the off button," he said

Only a matter of time now
And our hosts were relieved
When I got up that morning
The records were still spinning silently

 Vallecitos y Vaqueros

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

TO THOSE WHO BUY MY BOOKS AND WORDS
—Richard Hansen, Sacramento

Ne'er a frivolous flowery ballad lover
unthinkingly
weeps seeking solace
surrounded by family and friends with no end
blankly approving of
your every fart and holler

Neigh !!!!!
such being are you
good Sir and good Mam
but for them such so
your sympathies are granted
and
your diligent works
financial resources
behind stand
not empty words
but your tireless efforts
on their pathetic behalf
and
if only
you could just be allowed
to lend a hand
but for they to themselves command
blatant mediocre crap
that
soothes their self-indulgent
sense of them selfs
They know not what they do
to any near degree that
you and I do
so...

Oh that I shall heap
such Grand
and Endearingly
Tons and Tons of Accolades and Praise
Awards of the Highest Honor
so obviously earned
that anyone ever questioned would heartily never argue
Bravery
Courage
Grand Judgment under Pressure
You are That
and so much more
the massive rock on sandy shore
that isn't phased by mere
category
18 billion hurricanes or tsunamis
or
whatever unpredictable
that seeks to do
like
put a dent in your Armour
they shall fail

Tho the lowly of human beings among us
invited to join and dine
to share in the warmth of your hearth
and spared the indignities
brought about by
less lesser human beings that
happen to be
incredibly wealthy

To those who buy my book and words
Gratitude of Unworldly Measure
ejaculates uncontrollably
from my soul
onto you
whom
with every point of my IQ
there be surrounding you
in heightened awareness of
just who you are
and

I Thank You

__________________

KEVIN, MAY YOU REST IN PEACE
—Richard Hansen

That
he was just...
walking around
had food to eat
usually had dollars in his wallet
slept comfortably
in a warm spot
was due to gifts he had
that quite whimsically fate
had granted
in the brutal human condition
of our current advancement
manifesting
families sailing or failing containing
anchors or wings
or those being
particularly nothing
of any good or ill to anyone
occurring
at equal distribution into
every social-economic strata
breeding sociopaths and saints
some grow to be above the law
some grow up to see
no justice at all
and where he came from
was a place below a line
defined
by the green almighty
and he wasn't white
so naturally he was denied
safety nets and alternatives
less access
to positive male role models
but nonetheless
there must have been kindness
plus he had brains so
He authored a technique
taught himself to be
naive
didn't think much about
what a luxury
to consider his tomorrow to be
an expectation that was reasonable
andso
just went up and
talked to people
I mean anyone!
had to make some listen
No problem!
he was that clever and funny
he could draw a crowd
his laughter was bombastic
and sometimes
it was only me and him laughing
and
I love him now
more than I could back then
because
he was one of God's most
precious and delicate flowers
with huge white teeth
contrasting black skin
chicken and biscuit crumbs sprayin'
when bombastically laughing
there were those little
silky petals of course
reflecting
the sun's blinding brilliance
when he was insightfully analyzing
what was happening
during the hours pimping whores
at the airbase
payday to drunk horny soldiers
He died at the age
of 42 in bed never waking up
I was half way around the world
heard about it when
a few years later attending
a High School reunion
turnz out
his heroin habit was
second to none
I never knew
How the fuck
do you hide that?
unless
ya wanna keep a friend
you're loyal to
that doesn't do heroin

 Upstanding

—Robert Lee Haycock

WINTER VALLEY NIGHT
—Taylor Graham, Placerville
 
Fog so thick, I want to cut it with an axe.
Mud sucks at my boots, clogs the laces.
My flashlight makes halos on ground-cloud.
It’s dark as pretend. Let’s say I’m here
for adventure, lost treasure without a map.
The topo in my hand is sodden with sky,
and useless where I can’t see the land
beneath my feet. Lost treasure, old woman
whose car got stuck in mud by the levee.
Somewhere through fog breathes willow
in its zen, its soothing celadon lapped
by slough-water. Water—river condensed
to fog—carries away everything, even sound,
any color but gray. The old weatherman
gets high, talking of radiation fog, inversion
building up from the ground; our Tule
fog, as if that clarified anything, as if
it told us where a lost woman would be.

____________________

AGAIN?
—Taylor Graham
           
The child was born to thanks-giving,
congealing into a form more solid than before,
when its chest was full of birds, their song.
             His lungs worked well enough,
doctors were pleased, the mother smiled through
her cloud. But his wail was not birdsong.
             His bones began to harden,
an inner shell of what he had been, a skeleton
map of mountains with their veins of rock
and river.
             He wailed for the horizon where earth
meets sky and the sun pries them apart each
dawn, as if a day were a new life.
             He wailed because of the outer
walls, the unnatural lights, the hands grasping.
A nurse stood sweetly sentinel.
Each newborn is once in a blue moon,
she said, let us give thanks. But, all around,
there was no dust
             of stars and ashes. No print
of all he had learned before. Wiped clean.
What was this birth, anyway?

____________________

AS DARK CAN BE
—Taylor Graham

One whiff of the color orange, and he stirs
out of old-dog sleep. House dark. I’ve pulled on
my SAR T-shirt, and he knows. It’s search-time.
His heart somersaults. Without a breeze, he
scents vast distances stored in memory, he’s
receiving signals—the sun’s agenda,
lofting air. The line between dreaming and
weather loping across the sky. High cliffs,
a man walking without aim. How to find
him, lost. My old dog comes alive again. 
 

Morning Moiré

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

SHEEP IN THE SUN
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Today, more papers on To love, or not
to love: does Hamlet’s rapier wrist
caress in spirit, or cuff, the fair Ophelia? The mist
is all. All fog till I ascend the slight Folsom grade.
The law of mountainous winter California:
so much closer to snow, so much
farther from fog. The fog, so the eye of
cliché believes, is thus much lambswool,
thus much Alaskan Husky fur to pull,
to catch, to comb upon soft lithe tule snags,
rough rubbery pampas grasses and reeds
plucking the river blanket. But that’s down-
valley, where cloud dogs and vapor sheep
leave pieces of gown, fragments of parting rag.
And I think again of Hamlet. Been introducing
students to A.C. Bradley, stout Victorian
definer of character: good on the principals,
especially phraseworthy on Hamlet’s mom.
She loves, he says, to be happy: a sheep
In the sun. Wants all around her, Hamlet
and Claudius, Ophelia, Polonius, happy,
like more sheep in the sun. Ah, wretched
Danish queen, you should see these ramsback
fog-racks glisten from up here, in these Elsinore
Sierras. Here’s looking down at you, Gertrude…   

______________________

DEAR THEO; OR, TO SPEAK OF VAN GOGH THAT IS IN MARRIAGE
—Tom Goff

    Goodness gracious—mustn’t one pity the poor wretch
    who is obliged after having provided himself with the necessary
    documents, to repair to a locality where, with a ferocity
    unequaled by the cruelest cannibals, he is married alive
    at a slow fire of receptions and the aforesaid funereal pomp.

    —Vincent Van Gogh, letter of early 1889 to Paul Signac

Theo Van Gogh, the go-to dealer for
Impressionists, wildman painters of every stripe,
will soon be quite lost to Vincent. Who deplores
the nuptials; he can’t help but like the impending wife,
straight-gazing, sweet-faced, intelligent young Jo,
a woman of tact and languages and breeding,
at last a helpmeet worthy of a van Gogh.
What heartblood must suffuse his brooding, foreboding?
What suckling in diapers must lawfully interpose
between him and his tubes of paint, his canvas lengths,
his studio rent: his own de facto children?
Oh, envy intensifies fear. The lovely throes
still anguishing, star-whorls, swirls, star-cocoons
squeezed out in great gouts onto easel—his unique strengths—

won’t all this be snuffed, right down to his candlelit night-hat,
in one birth, one red-faced niece- or nephew-sprat?

And what are Vincent’s vast spasms of creativity
to one who can will the white pigment from his guts
into her guts, through the durance of starrier nights,
loud outcries more intense than the absinthe fights
with Paul under gaslight (that puce and baize interior!
That sump of billiards—no: bilious hungover despair—
the pimps and whores would shun, miscalled a café)?

Theo has done for himself, poor Theo the good,
Theo the shy, the refined, the neat, the trustworthy.
To stand in his presence makes one a crass inferior.
Yet Theo’s a sexual creature, a man of lusts,
while—just look at Vincent, the spawn of merde and dust
overlorded by beauty he crudely renders
yet masterfully, painfully, swept upon by gusts
of Arlesienne mistral. Such abject benders.

And yet whose offspring’s more likely to be remembered?
How soon will the tortured friendship be sundered,
Vincent gut-shot and gritting his teeth at death,
Theo’s last syphilis-tormented breaths
defending his brother’s writings, his spurned artwork.

Let’s leave with a salutation from letters of Vincent’s:
A hearty handshake in thought. So innocent:

…yet notice, black-garbed as Hamlet, Vincent lamenting
the funeral baked meats now hotly venting
steam over the marriage tables: Theo, by Jo
so subtly cannibalized, in his best suit,
his smile uncertain, yet polished as each neat boot.
Married alive in a slow ceremonial fire,
roasted and kissed, lips pried apart, apple-stuck.
Do grooms any more resume their human shape
than so much publicly pulled and shredded pork?
Consumable, strand by strand…is this Vincent’s desire?

Envoi:
See Lucien Pissarro’s rough sketch of Theo and Vincent,
hatched out amidst some bench-conversation event.
Arms crossed for a long sit, lips wagging…guess who that is:
the droop-hatted theorist buttonholing his brother,
loudly proclaiming a color-wheel revelation
involving, down the line, some fiscal subvention.
Now see the other:
Eye out for park disparagers keeping witness,
the top-hatted sibling leans in, listens, stiffens…

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE FOG PEOPLE
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

Nights like this,
When I was young,
I’d go out,
Walk all night,
Looking for the other
Fog People.
Turns out there
Weren’t any.

____________________

—Medusa

And the Painted Ponies Go Up and Down

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock