After the Fireworks

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

“SPIDERS COULD THEORETICALLY EAT EVERY HUMAN ON EARTH…”
           —headline in the Washington Post

The grand Sierra Dome—daddy-longlegs—is gone. On lacy silk-work across my window, there’s only the pretender—smaller spider of a lower tier. I’d been expecting battle, a mating dance; ruler against an upstart challenger; elder consuming younger or vice versa; one spider digesting, the other nothing but un-torso’d legs splayed like ribs of an umbrella. I search for spider-remains. My breath stirs silk-weave. The young victor approaches slowly, each leg finding foothold; an aerial dancer, like my disaster dog feeling for a piece of rebar with one paw, three paws balanced on splintered rubble-scraps—she’s focused on a thread of scent, her living quarry. 

mid-air focused on
what’s still breathing—leg by leg
spider moves closer

CALLING THINGS BY NAME

Your mother would have whispered Undesirable
if I showed up, fresh from walking the outskirts,
examining whatever my dog sniffed along the way.
If I opened my iPad to the photo I took, your
little boy would wrinkle his nose and say Icky.
But a poet likes to be specific. I call it Scat—
and ask him if he knows whether it was left
by Fox, Coyote, or some other beast who simply
occupies its life, not switching styles and
habits with the current trends. I wouldn’t blame
you for turning me away. But if you open
the door, be prepared for who and what walks in.

ON THE FOURTH, 30 YEARS AGO

That year we’d signed up to march
in the hometown parade—we in volunteer
field uniforms; our dogs clipped on leash, leading
the way bold, alert and proud in their red-and-white
rescue vests. But we’d just come off the search
for a city-boy, a child of “abnormal development”
lost in mountain meadow. Had he wandered
into the Devils Keglerland of granite boulders, hot-
spot for broken bones? a place you’d scan
through binoculars and say “no way.” Helicopters
overhead, jeep patrols, ground-pounders.
With our dogs we cut for scent and sign, checked
clues that led nowhere. A runaway? Massive
two-week search, suspended with no trace
of the boy. Fourth of July. We’d signed up
in advance. What to do but march? like soldiers
off the battlefield 200 years ago, not knowing
how things would work out in the end.

FIREWORKS

Wrack and cackle
from what used to be the hen-yard.
A crack in sky promising storm.
Deeper. Grunt-effort of clouds heavy-bellied
with rain.
More distant, higher
with lift of mountains to the east. Louder,
nearer.
I wait to catch the winds’ whirl,
wizardry of heavens. The darkness, loneliness—
lovely-fearful thunder
simultaneous with electric
incandescence.
Right here!
home—crater’s edge,
creation of the next world.

4th OF JULY DETENTION

They didn’t get here by whim
but on foot, shadows moving under star-
light (not those 50 stars flapping No
raised on a pole against them).
Should they hide if they hear a vehicle?
They carry what they can—a daughter
too young to walk; maybe
enough water to get them across a saline
desert, hot sand to cauterize their soles.
They have no vouchers, no passports,
only their reasons. The trip
unravels at the border. Can they hear
the marching bands, the cheering,
the speeches exhorting “let Freedom ring”?

 AFTER THE FIREWORKS

Sun-bleached weedy field
mowed down close to sun-burned earth—
but look! Overnight
flames sparking in the dawn’s cool—
Flanders poppies vivid red.

Today’s LittleNip:
 
POEM WALKING
        a Flamenca

Oaks over-lean the road.
I take their blessing, leave
their shade. May their grace
buoy me, my exhaled breath
stir their slow-summer leaves.

—Taylor Graham

 ______________________

Our thanks this morning to Taylor Graham for her vivid poetry and pictures! Some of her photos are from the El Dorado County Historical Museum at the El Dorado County Fairgrounds. And for more about the Flamenca poetry form, see www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/flamenca-poetic-forms/.

If you're wondering where the hyphens should be in daddy longlegs, look it up. It's every-which-way, sometimes even in the same article!... One of those "take-your-pick" moments in life.

Wellspring Women Writers meets today at Wellspring Women’s Center in Sacramento, 11:30am. And tonight in Old Sacramento, The Moore Brothers present their Spoken Word Collaboration, 8:30-10pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry and wishing Art Luna (barista, restaurateur and proprietor of Luna's Cafe and Juice Bar in Sacramento, home of the long-running Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe) a happy birthday! Many thanks for putting up with us crazy poets all these years, Art. You da best!

 Big Daddy

—Anonymous Photo

For more about "Daddy Long-Legs Facts and Fiction", 

see infinitespider.com/daddy-long-legs-411/.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Dust Devils & Crayon Suns

Driftwood Giraffes

—Poems by Jennifer Fenn, Fresno, CA

—Photos by Carol Louise Moon, Placerville, CA

CRAYON SUNS STILL SHINE

Mid-afternoon sun heats Sacramento,
casting its rays into the windows
of the activity room at Shriners Hospital.
It beams on children drawing at a table,
sharing a rainbow of crayons
spread all over it.

One boy with a prosthetic leg
makes a yellow sun shine
in the corner of his picture
of a square-and-triangle house
with four windows, an orange tree,
dog, cat, and a stick figure family.
There are Mom, Dad, and two boys
all with red smiles.
Which boy is him?
Both brothers’ legs look alike.

A little girl learns to use
a prosthetic right arm.
She moves her back muscles
to make the metal hand open,
picking up a blue crayon.
She draws a pool full of children,
herself with her missing arm.
Yet an orange sun still shines
on her as she hits a beach ball
with her left arm to her friends.

What will other children here draw?
Their families at birthday parties?
Playing miniature golf?
On water slides? Walking their dogs?
Flying their own planes?
Whatever they draw,
crayon suns will still shine.

 Burl Stump

MATCHES

With its searing fingers,
the sun lifts the night
like a matchbox lid,
revealing millions
of brittle, yellow grass blades
along the San Joaquin River

like matches waiting to be lit.

 

HARDPAN FORTUNE

To make something with a lot of money is easy, but to make something out of nothing, —that, now, is really something.
            —Baldassare Forestiere


My friends and I descend the stairs
of Forestiere Underground Gardens
to the stony chambers of hardpan bricks,
carved by pickax and shovel.
Our guide begins the story,
leading our imaginations back to 1905,
where we watch Baldassare rushing out,
despite the seering San Joaquin Valley heat
to the fields he just bought,
shovel over his shoulder,
eagerly smiling to plant his first seeds
for his vision of orange orchards.

We gasp with him
as his shovel bangs on hardpan,
expecting his vision to vanish.
Yet our minds spin along with his,
moving the trees of his vision
to underground planters,
rising through skylights to the sun.

We forget our bitterness,
ignoring the perpetual muscle aches
from digging and cutting for forty years,
triumphing with Baldassare
as each room gets carved,
as each tree pushes past skylights,
bearing armfuls of oranges, lemons,
grapefruits, and citrons.

We relax in the coolness by his fishpond,
his chapel with the picture of Virgin Mary,
the walls with climbing grapevines.
We’re away from the heat above the ground,
basking in his hardpan fortune.


(first pub. in a 2018 Daughters of the Nile newsletter)

ROADSIDE GANG

Some sunflowers rise
from hard, sun-scorched highway ground
in dense, dusty air,
ignored by all passing cars,
surviving drought together.

ALREADY EIGHTY-SEVEN

I step outside into heat
left over from yesterday’s triple digits.
My yellowing lawn crunches
under my feet as I make my way to my car.

7:30 A.M. on my car clock
and already eighty-seven degrees.

I arrive at the office parking lot,
the green glass of our building
towering over the San Joaquin River
like a magnifying glass
capturing the sun’s white-hot glare.
It’s ready to set fire
to the parched banks,
the flames spreading to the water.
I already fear the steam’s hiss,
see fire trucks barely able to squirt water
at our charring office.

Escaping to the cool inside our building,
I try to forget this imagined scene.

I go to the refrigerator for water.
Due to a bad filter, none comes out.

FOOTHILL ILLUSION

Yellow hill looks soft,
like baby chicks’ down feathers.
How scratchy up close!

 Old-fashioned Cart

 

DUST DEVILS

...try to invade heaven,
rising from ashy soil,
spinning, spinning
around and around
the same old place,
reaching, reaching
’til their own dirt falls
back on the ground.
They’re left behind
in their own torment
of a Hades-hot valley.

Today’s LittleNip:

OUT OF THE VALLEY
—Jennifer Fenn

We pass the last veil
of Ferguson fire’s ashes.
What? The sky is blue?

__________________

Thanks, Jennifer Fenn, for today’s sizzling poems about valley heat, and welcome back! Jennifer was featured in the Kitchen on Jan. 11, 2017. She says that, as a native of Fresno, California, she has had lots of experience with heat waves!

And another thank-you to Carol Louise Moon for these phine photos from her series called, “All Things Wooden”. Carol Louise and Jennifer are both members of these long-distance poetry groups: Pantoja Espinella Circle, Pantoja Sonnet Circle, and Pantoja Pleiades Circle, all named for former Sacramentan Janet Pantoja, now of Woodinville, WA. You may have seen work from these groups posted in the Kitchen in the past.

Poetry Off-the-Shelves poetry read-around meets in El Dorado Hills tonight, 5-7pm, at the El Dorado Hills Library. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry!

 Jennifer Fenn

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

The Things We Keep in Drawers

An Un-Title-Ment
—Poems and Original Art by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE FATEFUL MOONLIGHT 

(Celtic folklore)

You hear a cry and sense a shadow : a falcon in the torn
hands of a girl, as if one of them is hurt or in danger from
the other, and you note how the moor gives rise to a
swirl of low fog and small circles of whirling light that
enhance the mood, something like a warning.

But you are intrigued—how you simply emerge when
the instant is right : it is night, deepest night, when the
moon is full, but waning. The trees scratch the sky as if
this were the winter edge of the year. You sense a change
as of something remembered long ago : there was a night
like this when your guard was down and your memory
was faulty.

But you are driven, and she stands here now—holding the
falcon—grown twice as large as before. You blame the
chill of your mind and go toward her—but the falcon stays
hooded—and her eyes say no.

 Good Night, Sky

FULL MOON, MIDNIGHT,

Today it still is summer, last night cool enough
to think about the change of season still to come,
though not yet August, not yet those
unbearable days and nights that swelter
when we yearn
for rain,  for rain,   for rain,
like some denial that one must endure;
and last night’s moon, so full,
outside my window—
so full it seemed
to move—it
seemed to move
in the mild night,
—a pearl-white
moon of midnight—
perfectly arranged for me
to blubber on and on about—
the full moon—window-framed—and I—
attuned to everything, not limp and weary,
but drifted down to one day’s closing hour,
yielding to it, like a comfort ritual, and then
this morning, groping for these words with
which to celebrate in simpler admiration.

__________________

THE CONDITIONS OF LIGHT
After Pink Dish and Green Leaves by Georgia O’Keeffe

As pure as light before time slips backwards into
windows, nothing as far as dark with its limitations.

The mind can go where it wants : take this vase
on this windowsill, how it glows and supports

the burden of filtered radiance, how it knows
how to balance the edges of perspective—

nothing peripheral to claim the eye away from
light’s hypnosis when light has nowhere else to die.

 Neat-Freak Special

THE THINGS WE KEEP IN DRAWERS :
THE NOTICES AND MEDALS

We divide our time by wars. Let’s hear it for the dead.
Let’s hear it for the living. Wars keep scores, keep scores.
Let’s hear it for the wars—the death that keeps on giving.

Let’s hear it for the tears. Oh, can the dead be weeping ?
Still ? What if each death deplores the tears that bear the
living, what of the flags ? the crosses ? the gun salutes

and taps ? War adores its widows. Let’s hear it for the
graves, so full of deaths and flowers. Let’s hear it for the
shovels. Let’s hear it for the diggers. Time is not given

whole. It has an edge, an edge. It has a middle. Fold it.
Snap it closed—an uphill // downhill struggle: half of it
is used, the other half is trouble—trouble with the scores.

____________________

EGYPTIAN RELIEF
(Werner Forman Archive)

Their mouths are stone.
Her eyes stay closed forever.
He is only half there—his mind
has already strayed away from her.
She does not know this. She does not
know he is disappearing. Her eyes are
closed. He is being eroded. Their mouths
still kiss, but the kiss is different—his
is amused, unimportant now, she
leans back in full surrender.
They still kiss. Sweet time
will not undo them.

 Blue Muse

COUPLETS AS TWO’S
After Psychological Morphology by Roberto Matta

The sun is the eye now
How it sees

Spilled jars of colors
Oil on water    Caught by the eye

A fold in the middle
A division    Two sides and an edge

Somewhere a signature    In code
An “N” and an “N”    No vowels

There is always a focal point
That shimmers    That has a center

There are knobs… And tryings
Too slow to verify

Let us leave this panel
Before it overwhelms 

 Big Bang, Baby

THE SUNLIT WINDOW

Back in the vague dream  :  was I ever a child,
a child that I knew and remember,
rightly or falsely ?

Did I make up my own stories ?
Was I born?

I go to myself with Questions  .  I am a Secret.
I will not tell what I know  .   My mother
Warns me.

The wound is a river—
How can I say such a thing ?
Fragments are islands—
How can I say such a thing ?

a small round table by a sunlit window  ,  curved
to the day’s light ,  a bowl of tiny round crackers
at the center of the table ,  for a child not to touch
sitting at the table — looking out the window —

Why do stories have different endings — this one
that one    ,   the ones   —   not lived   ,   or written   
And What     Is the blesséd light   forever-dulling  ?

 Lullaby on Soothe

SERMON

a mute in the land of silence
a sage in the land of praise
a singer in a field of song birds
a gossip among rumorous bell-ringing . . .

these are the tellers of what we ask
these are the tellers of what we answer
these are the voices and non-voices of all
the babble with which the world is filling . . .

oh, go to the mute for silence
go to the sage for opinion
go to one who is hushed by birds
and let the old bells keep ringing . . .

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

MIRO’S ‘RAW CHROMATIC EXUBERANCE’
(After “The Peasant” [dated 1912] by Miro)

How he BbLlUuRrSs in a rage of painted MuSiC
!FLASHing! In!YELLOW! PreeNing in !RED!
BeaTinG the CONE OF MUSIC under his RaPiD
HaNdS—his face gone lax and lost in the Churn
of Rhythm—ORANGE and LOUD—with cool
under-mute of brown and green—the very air
around him charging with !BEATEN SOUND!
—his body—tensioned—He Is The Sound Now—
He Is . . . The Beat . . . The Beat . . . The Beat . . .

—Joyce Odam

_____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam today, exhibiting her wild and crazy side in some of her more playful, experimental poems, plus her always-intriguing zentangles!

Our new Seed of the Week is Creation. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

Speaking of Creation, Sacramento’s Jeanine Stevens writes that she has a new book out, Citadels, from Folded Word Press. (See folded.wordpress.com/portfolio/citadels/.) Congratulations, SnakePal!

Would you like to be a SnakePal? All you have to do is send poems, photographs, artwork to Medusa's Kitchen, at kathykieth@hotmail.com/. The snakes of Medusa are always hungry!

—Medusa, celebrating SnakePals and their creations everywhere

 —Anonymous Drawing

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Stardust and Locusts

It’s later than you think…
—Photos by Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

ARCHITECTURE LESSON
—Caschwa

In the company of flying stewardesses
on the way to see flying buttresses
holding together some old cathedrals
whose names don’t easily roll off the tongue
unless you learn them when very, very young

They offered me a drink, non-alcoholic
I’d much prefer a menu not so bucolic
need a vacation from all the procedurals,
from the new normal hysteria
from café-bacteria

Need to part ways with the standards of yore,
there are so many goodies to buy at the store
welcome Neanderthals in underalls
the plane is now landing, my seatbelt secure
a new hat would be nice, if it’s not made from fur

_________________

BEFORE YOU ADOPT
—Caschwa

Just like with your other pets,
kittens, puppies, snakes, or
birds, politicians need to be
trained to stay within the
confines of their particular
enclosures, it

matters not at all that they have
never been in this scenario
before, they will somehow find a
path or scheme that allows them
to escape into the wild, to

set up their own policies and
procedures in place of any you
have tried to impose, the new
law being that you are here to
serve them and not the other
way around, as

current events have shown the
futility of crying foul over and
over, until no amount of well-
intended resources can resolve
the problem, so

before we hold another general
election for POTUS, we need to
firmly establish some quite
impenetrable barriers to keep
that wild critter we elected aptly
confined

LIFE IS A BOOK
—Caschwa

There is no Preface or Introduction

Chapter One starts out abruptly with
primary school where the 3 R’s are
masterfully covered by daily hours of
rote rote rote repetition

Chapter Two presents secondary sex
characteristics, squeezed sanitarily dry
of anything joyous, and locked in the
dungeon of “don’t even think about it!”

Chapter Three explores all the glorious
ramifications of tertiary syphilis, where
the unfulfilled lives of Rote Scholars are
visited by the inevitable damage to blood
vessels, bones, brains, eyes, heart, joints,
liver, and nerves

The Epilog completes the cycle with a DIY
exercise that offers an infinite number of
blank, lined pages on which to set forth
any single idea, over and over

__________________

HALFWAY HOUSE
—Caschwa

Being one of more than a few
people who were born and
raised in California, New York
is not literally “back East”, but
some of us might get into the
pioneer spirit to take the 3,000
mile journey there to see the
sights.

Likewise for folks who were born
and raised in “New Amsterdam”,
who might opt to go “back East”
3,000 miles to the old country to
renew their connections with the
British.

Having said that, New York would
be just the halfway mark for those
Californians who decide to go all
the way “back East”.

IT’S EASIER IF YOU AGREE WITH HER
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

She thinks she
Is a giraffe
With a neck
Long enough
To see
Over the trees,
Above all
Of the leaves.

Woe unto him
Who disbelieves!

_________________

STARDUST AND LOCUSTS
—Joseph Nolan

Stardust
Disguised as locusts
Descended on a
Farmer’s crop of corn
And left its stalks
All shorn,
Like an afterburner
Of a comet,
They swiftly flew away,
A dark and noisy cloud,
A pestilence
Of flying hunger,
Bent on eating
All, asunder,
Beneath their beating wings.

After they’d gone,
There was nothing left
Behind them,
Save the emptiness of space.

EARNING THE G.I. BILL BY
FIRST LEARNING TO KILL
—Joseph Nolan

Connection, defection, rejection.
Curtains call the end
Of the show
That played on stage.

Many are in rage
Over the ways
Our wars
Are waged,

Over so many
Dead bodies,
Far away
In foreign lands.

We might kill
A million,
In some
Foreign sands,

While our soldiers
Write back home
To parents
They’ve left alone,
In quest of the G.I. Bill.

To college,
Off, they will,
When they get home.

It’s just
Part of
The process
Of growing up.

________________

A BEAUTIFUL WONDER
—Joseph Nolan

She runs naked
Behind
Green, hanging fronds.
Her legs splash the water.
I watch her
Dive naked
Into the welcoming pond.

I watch the sun
Sparkle and glisten
Across her silky, wet skin,
And I wonder
If this beautiful wonder
Will ever let me in?

Today’s LittleNip:

BURNING
—Caschwa

ANSWER: enriched uranium

QUESTION: what can I get if my
anium is underperforming?

______________________

Our thanks and good morning to today’s contributors, including Caschwa, who sends us photos from his nicely-performing garden. He writes, “Harvest from the raised bed. We also had a bumper crop of apricots my son helped glean. Tomorrow we’ll enjoy some potatoes and onions, and I’ll harvest a few more apricots, rid them of the pits, and freeze them till my son returns to make us cobbler.” Signs of the season. Thank you, Carl, and thanks for your poems and those of Joseph Nolan.

Congratulations to Sacramento’s frank andrick, who writes, “I am so proud to have my ‘Hard Candy’ story/prose piece be part of the National Steinbeck Center (www.steinbeck.org) permanent collection, in the ‘Works Inspired by John Steinbeck’ section. Special thanks to Bob Stanley for bringing the story to print after hearing me read it once at the Sacramento’s 72-Hour Poetry Marathon. I was tipped off to its inclusion by JoAnn Anglin. See what happens when poets pay attention and support and post each other? Magick!”

This week’s poetry events in our area begin tonight at Sac. Poetry Center, 7:30pm, featuring Izzy LaLa plus open mic. SPC workshops this week include Tuesday Night Workshop for critiquing of poems at the Hart Center (27th and J Sts.) on Tuesday, 7:30-9pm (call Danyen Powell at 530-681-0026 for info); and MarieWriters Generative Writing Workshop at SPC for writing poems, 6-8pm on Wednesday, facilitated this week by Laura Martin.

Another workshop, this one for women: Wellspring Women’s Writing Group meets at Wellspring Women’s Center in Sacramento this Thursday at 11:30a.m.,  facilitated by Sue Daly. That evening, The Moore Brothers with Terry Moore and Khiry Malik Moore perform their Spoken Word collaboration at 8:30pm at Laughs Unlimited on Front Street in Old Sac. And Saturday is Sac. Poetry Center’s Second Saturday Art Reception, 5-9pm.

Then travel over to Angels Camp this coming Sunday to hear UC Berkeley Poet Carolyn Tipton read at the Manzanita Arts Emporium, 3pm. (See manzanitaartsemporium.com/events/monthly-calendar or www.carolynltipton.com for info.) Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating the harvest of poetry!

Harvest: Potatoes and Onions 

—Photo (and Harvest) by Caschwa

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Dyspeptic and Broke

—Anonymous Photo

FOURTH OF JULY AT THE MALL
—Kathy Kieth, Diamond Springs, CA

Done with illegal fireworks and greasy hotdogs, we
head down to the mall for All-American pizza

and ice cream. At the neon restaurant, the twenty-
something hostess with blond curls and deep

purple nails stares out the glass front door
all through dinner: no one to seat, her life floats by

the window as she pulls in $6 an hour. Outside,
a toddler in huge shorts and a ten-gallon hat careens

past a teenager with dyed black hair and nose-
ring, sophistication cancelled by her pouty

cherub face and hovering mother. We drift over
to the bookstore, where we spend too much money

on credit, then to a forgettable movie; but its ex-
cruciating soundtrack sends me reeling

into the bathroom for the calm of cool porcelain
peace. Finally, dyspeptic and broke,

we head back home to sleep off
another holiday. . .

_______________________

—Medusa

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Showers, Sunlight, Showers

—Poems by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
—Retro Photos Courtesy of James Lee Jobe

Morning is here
After a long and empty night
And now I will be one with the truth.
The wind will be the light from my eyes
And there will be sunlight in my speech.
I will never escape time, but then again,
I don’t wish to. Let the end come
In any manner, at any moment.
I am the truth. My life is the truth.
And that is enough.

___________________

Looking outward, I find a valley
Bathed in rain.
Looking inward, I find a valley
Bathed in sunshine.
My goodness,
How this life goes around!

It is a warm afternoon in October

In Northern California's huge Central Valley.
The day considers getting hot,
But decides against it in the end.
Riding my bicycle west
Puts the late-day sun in my eyes.
I ride that way anyhow;
Some people are like that.
Pulling over in the shade of an old cedar,
The ice water in my bottle
Tastes like the love of heaven,
But then, of course, this is heaven.
Isn't it?
Other people have their own stories,
This one is mine.

_________________

Showers, then breaks for sunlight,
Then showers again.
Turn, and turn about.
The sky has great power
And so commands our actions
By what it will and what it will not
Allow us to do, and yet remain dry.
Showers, sunlight, showers.
From below, we watch and wait.
Raindrops tumbling from the sky
By the millions.

In 62 years this body has become worn;
Lumps and bumps and bald spots. Aches.
Places that hurt and I'm not sure why.
Other things have changed with age, too;
I spend more time thinking about the sun and moon,
The trees and watersheds.
Much less thought goes to the curve of a shapely thigh.
There is a beauty that comes with age, perhaps
You, dear reader, are still too young to see it.
It is the beauty of a tall pine bending in the south wind,
The loveliness of a delta breeze on a hot day,
Cooling the entire valley with its sweet breath.
Yes, it’s true, I have a game knee
And my feet hurt a lot, even in the best shoes.
But when I stand in Putah Creek
I know where the water came from,
And I know where the water is going.
An old turtle sits on a log, very still,
And I get to put him in a poem.
Lovely.

___________________

Forgiveness. It is so fine to learn to forgive
That which we do and that which we say.
And to forgive ourselves, not just each other.
Kindness and self-kindness.
And yes, a lot of what we think
Needs to be forgiven as well.
Especially that. Forgive ourselves,
Forgive the people around us, and
Then walk outside and stand in the sunlight,
Stand in the moonlight.
Open our beating hearts wide and just be.

Language is a tool, the craft of communication. Human to human, speaking, listening, a thought, an idea, a need expressed. A desire spoken. An answer for a question. This work will never end.

____________________

My friend wanted to know,
“James, in your poems,
You go down to the creek a lot.
Is that true?”
Summer in the valley,
About a half of a year of waiting for a real rain.
Still, the Sacramento River charges down the valley,
Fed by other rivers, like the Feather River,
And by creeks, like my Putah Creek,
Fed like a nanny feeds a child.
Along the banks, trees grow madly,
In other places, they hang on.
Often, my footsteps kick up dust.
I am like a tree that hangs on,
A determined valley oak,
Or like a rattlesnake lying in the sun.
About a half of a year, waiting for a real rain.
When it finally happens I will dance
Until my clothes are soaked through.
Until then, I will visit the creek.
The frogs and the herons don’t look dry at all.

In
the 801 days since you died
I
have slowly gotten stronger.
I
no long weep every day, just some days.
Of
course, I think of you every day,
But
most often it is the good memories

Slipping
in, not the horror of heroin, meth,
And
a heart that couldn't bear the load.
—You,
at 5, interrupting a poetry reading
To
ask the poet if he “had any Rumi.”
—You,
at 7, up on a fire lookout tower,
With
all the forest below you, asking me,

“Am I the King now?”
—Your
band playing a gig in a basement,
While
you banged away on the drum kit.
801
days. I have a lot to do on day #802.
The
patio needs cleaning. Laundry.
There
is a project where I need to finish
Writing
my application. Other things, too.
But
it can all wait while I write
One
more poem for you. One small poem.
My
dear son.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

I have lost much in life, but two things remain steadfast. My wife and the moonlight.

—James Lee Jobe

_____________________

—Medusa, celebrating the poetry of James Lee Jobe!

 “My wife and the moonlight.”
—Anonymous Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

An Elephant of Awareness

—Poems and Visuals by Norman J. Olson, Maplewood, MN

GOING HOME ON THE #12 BUS

The sky beyond broken buildings slips
between
the thighs of evening.  A low-rent
Batman locks eyes with lover boy (or
lover girl) and feral cats eviscerate
field mice
in
his look.

The bus driver studies bible prophesies
and figures the end is coming soon.  Last
summer, he cut two fingers off with his
table saw.  For a while there, he thought
the end was coming
then.

Batman distends as bumps in the street
massage his cancerous prostate.  Lover
girl (or boy) looks out
the window
where roses bloom in the snow.

impression of Ostend

the carnival ride
was called, “Mission Space.”
set up in empty space
in front of the
old cathedral, it whirled people
in a red and blue circle
almost as high as
the old gray gothic towers…

a fat lady in a low-cut
black dress with round rouged cheeks
and scarlet lips
sashayed by
looking for an Ensor painting
to jump
into
 

on visiting the HR Giger Museum in Gruyeres, Switzerland, April 27, 2008
 
my fingers twitched
like
patterns of black shapes
in webs and layers of translucent
paint.
hours crawled up the walls like spiders. 
a cute boy in a black
shirt typed
cryptic equations into a
cash register and light slipped through the
windows
like a ghost made of alpine snow.

airbrushed rivets and girders beat bound flesh with straps and snakes

I imagined the staircase
without walls, my knee hinges flexing
on rubber steps.  in my scalded skull, a dizzy brain
spun
as I stumbled upward 
on a flimsy staircase high above the
tourists
and the camera cobbled streets.  mountains
in the distance danced
like zombie teeth
and the sun shone
like the glazed
dazed eye of a Geneva junkie
as the needle digs
again into the familiar ruin
of flesh poisoned, decaying and
torn by
terrible dreams.  invisible screams
whirled in the mountain
wind.
 

UNSAFE SEX IN THE SUBURBS

There is no expiation. There is no
interdiction. There are only crows
roosting in the crabapple tree. The
apocalypse turns out to be a
cellular problem and the soul
is nothing but a bowl
of chemical soup.

Somebody give Bernini a Martini...

Neatly trimmed lawns curse
the sod that pounds
grass up into the naked air.
Grass grows best in rotting flesh but
fertilizer will do.
The raucous birds cry and that is the only
benediction the atomic number of carbon
has to give.
God is pushing a lawnmower across the
pellucid sky. Sixteen-year-old girls have saddled
up the apocalyptic horses and are riding
among the pastel houses. They cannot see that the
gene pool has become an oblong swimming
pool filled with acid rain, dead
cats and chlorine.
My hands are shaking even as I type this....
Cathedrals of bones are floating above the
holy Ganges which is
desperately polluted. Words fall from my fingers
like shit from the asshole of the damned
but still,
I carry an elephant of awareness on my back.
Capitalist birds are gobbling sunlight
like they
own a thermonuclear furnace and happy
crows are roosting in the
twisted blades of the crabapple
tree.

ON SUNLIGHT

The black and bottomless
sky wears a blue mask
and thermonuclear
eyeballs gleam
like suns.  Gray
asphalt is
flipping photons
into deep wells of space
and time.
A maroon
pickup
truck stops at a red
light, right outside of
Ryan’s bar and a gray car
gleams with dull surprise.
Sunlight
licks the masks
and
faces
in the crowd
and tiptoes from
sheet metal to the
stratosphere, unwinding
faster than time and slowly
warping
space.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

FREE WILL IN A BENEVOLENT UNIVERSE
—Norman J. Olson

Every blade of grass
would
be happy to grow in my rotting
flesh. Every crow squawking at
the
roadside would stand on my face and
peck out my dead eyes.

______________________

Our thanks and welcome back to Norman Olson, all the way from Minnesota, with his startling poems and imagery from his Forty-Four Image Poems (www.lulu.com/shop/norman-j-olson/forty-four-image-poems/paperback/product-23723310.html/).

Cross over the Causeway to Davis tonight for Poetry in Davis, featuring Nebraska State Poet Laureate Matt Mason plus open mic, 8pm, at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating the vivid imagery that poetry can bring us

 Norman and some of his work

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.