Remembering Art's Face

Morning Cuppa

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photo by Denise Flanigan
 

NOVEMBER'S RAINBOW

Flights of songbirds
float over my slate roof
near sea harbor voices
of morning cardinals
searching for slices
of day-old French bread
over an oak tree house
as my memory retains
these spilled-out images
of nest building
among islands of showers
a poet's hand reaches down
on the sandy tall dunes
by the Bayside beaches
to find shells that will echo
night music shadows
of my new jazz sonata
called "November Rainbow"
composed by the closed shutters
covering over my quarter notes
from earth-wise red leaves
falling from trees along the foothills.

 —Photo by Denise Flanigan

OPENING UP

My sax explodes
in the key of G
opening up morning eyes
on sidewalks of Autumn colors
leaving a solo man's love
to play out breathless riffs
through his wide lungs
of restless sibilant notes
beside his evening music
of his drawn-inward dream life
from this heart Beat poet
at a moment of vernal escape
through Autumn's nature
when time changes our mood
and a red vermilion season
has its impressionistic interlude
for poet, artist and musician.

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

A GUY ON A PARK BENCH

With an empty flask
of once-red wine
looking like Ulysses
in a torn uniform
after the war, exile
and sea voyages
had left him feeling remote
and silent from others
with his workout muscles
motionless as a pebble
trembling in his stiff wounds
and a vexed countenance
of enormous disgust at life
his hands and mouth
locked tightly in a sad expression
of a gloomy conscience
that wants to speak out
in November's first light
by the rustled sidewalk leaves
after a new rainbow appears
in view of the blue hills
tells me he has returned home
to find all the promises made
by his own Penelope and son
unfulfilled on his premises
that he has not slept
or eaten for three days
hanging out as a beachcomber
over the countryside's tall dunes
as my soul is moved
like Homer
to comfort him
in his clenched melancholy
and to narrate his story
amid the new dawn's wet leaves.

 —Photo by Katy Brown
 

HEARING

Hearing of a new whale
amid the waves foam
while putting away
my orange kayak in dock
for a winter's hibernation
grateful that friends
helped put out the anchor on
thinking of returning sails
of so many voyages
of Odysseus and Melville
from ancient tales
in endless coastline variety
as I hear my neighbor Igor
in his Slavic tongue
with his wife Galina
singing a song of the Volga,
how strange when Autumn dawns
come after us
and a poet remembers it all.

 —Photo by Katy Brown

EVERYONE HAS LEFT

There are few tourists around
but there are Fall River guys
out on lobster trawlers
with huge buckets and traps
early for a catch of promise
rattling their small boats
with different saints' names
by the waterfront docks
the sun breaks along the dunes
of the waves of our home harbor
by once steamship-noisy docks
full of sailors and their friends,
the wind may be treacherous
on a now cloudy Autumn day
when suddenly a rainbow appears
from out of the South
followed by flocks of blue birds
floating in the indifferent sky
amid the green hills' expanse
as a poet munches
on a free Portuguese fish stew
given to me by a cook.

 —Photo by Katy Brown

IT SOMETIMES OCCURS

On a mild afternoon
of trying soccer practice
beguiled by the ball
trailing along meadows
on a troubled side road
of a farmer's market
a poet watches a new easel
of a surrealist painter
trying her hand on canvas
at rainbows in oils,
she tells me in an English accent
her boyfriend has gone AWOL
somewhere in the Middle East
or Middle West
that he is missing in action
and she has lost her tranquilizers,
that she bummed a ride here
feeling only alive by painting
and telling her of a hostel
she might stay in
and a town's psychiatrist's office
wondering if every poet
since Sappho, David and Homer
still run into the voicing
of such storied landscapes
to enwrap their language
among hyacinth and last roses
to transform their day
and readers.

 —Photo by Katy Brown
 

AT AN ATWOOD READING  

Walking through the hills
on a new Fall semester dawn
trying to be cool and calm
daydreaming under my arm,
nervously waiting to attend
a Margaret Atwood reading
in an academic sitting
with my hanging hand
on my sax
opening like pink petals
between hands
in a flower arrangement for her
only from my mind's eye
remembering lines
from her poems
like breathing rainbows
in spirals of red-leafed
shadows by the river.

 —Photo by Katy Brown
 

HOCKNEY IN THOSE SIXTIES

Waiting by the museum
at my friend's space
needing rest
but watching a film
about Hockney's art
recognizing our own
inner capacity for color
caught up in new bonds
in breathing shapes
from his resilient canvas'
of California's caprice
in swimming refreshment
with a weekend voice
of my own words
helping myself
my slender fingers
write, compose and paint
with our own abilities
never missing a chance
to remember art's face
in our own gifted frailty
yet strength.

 —Photo by Katy Brown
 

Today's LittleNip:

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

—Audre Lorde

_______________________

—Medusa, reminding you that Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe will be releasing a new issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF tonight, 8pm, 1414 16th St., Sacramento.
 

—Photo by B.Z. Niditch

Stealing Apples

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

RUTH THE ASTROLOGER
—Evan Myquest, Rancho Murieta

in her youth
little ruth
from duluth
set up a booth
to charge for truth

when she got old
she got very bold
scraped off the mold

& recycled what she earlier told
& then in the big money rolled

_____________________

MUSIC BOX BALLERINA
—Evan Myquest

With every push of the switch
Opening of the box
I believe
You love
What you are doing

Otherwise
You must be
Tiny psycho dancer
And that makes me afraid

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville
 

NOVEMBER WOODS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
 
Fresh from listening
to Arnold Bax’s robustly keening,
bristling and windswept, rain-drenched glistening
November Woods, I seek out the meaning
why and how such surging ardent tunes
come trimmed in heaven’s warmest ermine,
as if to soften gray daylight’s mourning gaze:
My whole intent is to determine.

Determine why
this Scotland-lowland fine gray cloud
lingers with one vast gauzelike eye,
gaze welling up with misty grief
amid the flames of autumn redleaf.
Trick it out as you will, a shroud’s a shroud.
The earth is breathing one wisp of breath.
We seem decades away from Junes.

Here comes a mist-enveloped ghost.
Ghost turns to girl, and you are there,
November Woods’ rich second theme
luscious with cellos, violas, clear
soft peals from the icicle rainbow celeste.
My inner chill reclaims, from cool
to softening warmth to kettle steam,
the youth you bring in on silent feet.

From your ear you tug a bright musical clatter,
attend to my word-stumbles as we greet.
We say to each other precisely nothing,
no chord, no melodic hint or motif,
much less a fugal theme to trade
as tree-enspiraling squirrel and squirrel
swap turns of tail, pursuer, pursued,
in maypole-twining spins & nutlike bursts
from spring’s long-vanished wheel and whirl.

Yet we convey what we convey.
You smile: elusive, rosebud-shy
mouth lipped with honey. Your snow-soft grin
incisors its brief gleam: spearmint, peppermint.
Then, my thief,
you steal into your green and umber woods,
ghosting your coat of olive and gray
along with you into lostness, fir and pine,
distancing earbud music and girl
till both girl and Bax turn brittle, crystals in dimness.
You’re hiding the sweet deep wintry you
away in this far dark-needled November… 

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville

Wonder widens the eyes, opens the mouth, stops the heart, freezes thought. Above all…wonder both diagnoses and cures ignorance. It reveals that there are more things in heaven and earth than have been dreamt of in our philosophy…
          —Lorraine Daston, “Wonder and the Ends of Inquiry”

INCESTUOUS WONDER, MURDEROUS WONDER
—Tom Goff

Term paper topic: does Hamlet love Ophelia?
That Kobayashi Maru test of English:
exploit sad Hamlet, generate student anguish
and no one the Shakespeare-savvier, not really.
Contemplate Denmark’s prince, with open doublet
bursting her maiden doors as becomes a rapist,
affecting to “draw” her, not drawing her out. A stray mist
filters them, word-torches quenched. A tacit Hamlet!
If only he’d speak of the wondrous, cold, star-scarred night,
drunk king-noises off, and that uncle-drunk a killer,
the night-softened curve and glint of ghastly armor
versus the mirror-clean planes of a dead sword.
Such wonders just reek of secrets, atomize starlight!
Is love true love that leaves so much undeclared?
And doesn’t she also hold wonders, some hidden dimensions?
Whole firmaments he’ll never see, so busy my lord:
the instrument of her bawdy largesse and splendor,
the instrument too of all that sword-struck dementia…
 

Today's LittleNip:
 

THIEVERY
—JoAnn Anglin, Sacramento

We writers steal apples from fenced-in trees,
surreptitiously riffle mail that others leave out,  
take pennies from tip jars, bounce away the ball
left on the grass. We happily carry our oversize
handbags, slip on the coats with large pockets,
some hidden, take the steak from the freezer, snag
flowers from our neighbors’ gardens, deftly slide
in to cadge the caress meant for someone else.
Innocently we explain how we must borrow from
those who may not understand. We want their
grieving and lusting, regrets appropriated with purest
motives, must tuck away significance they could 
misplace. How can we not cherish the objects of
other owners? Pretend not to hear if somebody asks, 
How much did you pay for that?

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's cooks and noting that they all have something in common—each of them will have work in the new issue of Rattlesnake Press's WTF!, edited by frank andrick with help from Rachel Leibrock, and premiering at Luna's Cafe tomorrow night, 8pm. Be there to get your free copy!

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

Thin November

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam

AN OLD NOVEMBER

I saw your rags of web drift by in the
winter sunlight—swift and purposeful;  
one web caught against me—not
unpleasant, but somehow aversive;

and I watched your russet leaves
tremble off the trees that shone in the
sunlight—and the gold ones, too—
and I walked right into them;

I felt the swift blue motion of your sky
as it changed color and made me watch it
for prediction. But I was in a hurry, too—
too soon and too late with myself;

and, oh, the eager pace of the shadows
when the day lengthened—or shortened;
I wasn’t sure which way time went—
but, oh, the pace of the shadows.

ALREADY AUTUMN

At the end of a long street
I see you walking toward me.

You pass window after window
without looking in.

Doors around you open
and close.

You enter none of them.
Children run past

and you disappear
into the swift shadow of time.

It is already autumn.
Will we remember each other?

                    
(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 2011)
 

KEEPER OF THE WIND

Winds lie broken
in your hands.

You hold them
in your quiet moment.

All the beauty
that has made you real

has met the silence
of your eyes.

What has gone wrong
is love.

You mourn it
in a lack of sighs.

O weep soon! you of
the bitter, golden eyes.


(first pub. in Imprints Quarterly, 1967)

FOUR TREES IN AUTUMN SUNLIGHT
After "Four Trees", Egon Schiele

This is the story of four trees,
aligned on a rolling ground

—above, the layered sky,
the fierce red sun—

the four trees turned to fire
in the churning light—

ablaze in fiery vertigo
as the panoramic sky pulls by,

and the red sun sinks into the
old blue hills that wait to bury light,

and the four trees change back
into familiar silhouettes.

URBAN PASTORAL

Sidewalks are strewn with leaves
from city trees, falling in red and golden
patterns of falling.

Some pedestrians pick up leaves for
book pages as reminders of what falls
in the seasons of falling.

Street pigeons tell where is where
and cars and people take turns
stopping and going.

Rude sounds
intrude upon rude sounds
grating on nerves that quiet craves.

Crows claim fields and telephone wires
and trees where they squabble and
scold with cantankerous voices.

In little cubby-hole openings of buildings
small birds make nests and live their lives
amid ours, so crowded against them.

Pigeons line rooftops and telephone wires
and at dusk—flurry up—white-patterned—
against the pieces of sky that open for them.

THE DIMENSIONS OF AUTUMN

How can we tell the tree from the sorrow?
They are both the same. Leaves convey
the same feeling as tears on a moving face.
The wind loves this and comes murmuring.

The trees bend in the murmur
like a dancer fluid with many movements.
The rain remembers and returns.
The rain is the wind’s tears.

Trite! Trite!
Scream the crows.
But the women continue weeping,
the women who are the crows.

Old! Old! Cry the saplings,
and they preen in the rain until golden—
they preen until a sad old face
looks at them from a long drought.

But they are fastened now
to the last of the memories.
Lost! Lost! Screech the crows which are
blights on the air, disassembling.

But the trees are the wings of the air
and they lift into bright pretensions,
patterns that entangle with the crows,
and they claim each other.

In the first memory is the innocence; 
in the second memory the sadness is born;
the third is the prediction, since it is the memory.

                                     
(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 2009)

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

IN THIN NOVEMBER

In thin November, in the land of howl,
with nothing left to suffer but the cold,

more penetrant with every breathing moan—
that disapproval of the self—the self alone;

the bitter moon looks down—as cold and far
as winter life can get, in thin November.


(first pub. in Acorn, 1999)

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for today's delectable delicacies, and noting that our new Seed of the Week is Blessings of the Season. Send poems, photos and artwork on this or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs, though—or blessings.

Threads of Ink

Scarlet Ibises of Trinidad at Night

—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento
 

FITTING END


—Charles Mariano, Sacramento

heard a song
on the radio today
and strangely enough
perfect
for my funeral

thought about putting it
in writing,
a last wish

“to anyone still breathing,
if i die,
please play this”

how stupid
to even think it

there it is again
the song
the one i almost picked,
playing over and over

can feel my chest
heaving with emotion

on a cold, drizzly morning
in November
a priest
says a few words,
makes the sign of the cross,

a guitar
ever so sweetly,
plays in the background
soft, gentle, 
hauntingly beautiful

if i wasn’t so dead,
i’d be crying

____________________

STOP AN GO
—Charles Mariano

got up suddenly
third time tonight
thought i was leaving,
wasn’t

each time
stood by the door
with that
deer-in-the-headlights thing
waiting

i’d take off my hat
if i had one,
so i could
put it back on

when i leave
 

Cat Falls Asleep in a Tissue Box

—Carol Louise Moon
 

A POET'S STAIN
—Katy Brown, Davis

The poet passes a leaky pen and apologizes for the sticky smear
of bituminous ink, carrying possibilities of yet-unwritten words.
Pervasive-black stains fingers and palm in unspoken sonnets,
a haunting lament of red moon and fireflies.

The ink renders a bruise of feeling and observation, of
love and loss and love re-found across seasons.
There is something delicious about stolen words, borrowed phrases;
something about another poet’s breath exhaled through your lips—

Last night I dreamt of an emerald mast on a black ghost ship.  I flew
the white flag of capitulation from the tallest battlement where I stood.
The ink on my fingers fades into lines he would not have written
about an ordinary distaff life kept inside a moated fortress.

Words wash out with the stain.  What of the poet and the emerald mast;
what of the thief who captures phrases from another’s mind.
Is this how the first magic was born?  a poet’s breath; recast words;
stolen visions—a thread of ink drawn to the hand of a bruised soul—

Crawdad Nelson, reading at Shine Cafe

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
 

INK-BLOOD
—Taylor Graham, Placerville
 
A leaky pen passed hand to hands—
our fingers smudged blue-black
to chart a way through unknown lands

of words that won’t be taken back,
that makes us ink-blood kin.
Our fingers smudged blue-black,

the whorls and flourishes of skin
stained with poetry, transformed
to make us ink-blood kin.

Now I take this phrase you formed
as if blotted in reverse, and changed,
stained with poetry, transformed

the way I saw the dawn arranged
this morning in my waking words
as if blotted in reverse, and changed

with the first song piped by birds.
A leaky pen passed hand to hands
this morning. In our waking words
we chart a way through unknown lands.

_______________________

SCIENCE OF LIGHT
—Taylor Graham

I could no more understand it
than how trout rise,
or the beauty of a rusted metal door,

dawn’s ink-blood clouds,
shaft of a feather filled with flight,
or the music of gnats.

So how do I explain the gray
delight of January’s short days
at such a latitude,

freeze in our throats, rattle of ice
over permafrost’s subterranean way?
Hand shielding my eyes

against the brief, low sun,
just trying to see.
It didn’t need to be an illusion—

some causative quirk of light
cloaked the black bird—
Raven of blinding whiteness.

______________________

HIS SILENCE
—Taylor Graham

No prince to living people,
he began planning his immortality
before he was grown,

ruling uncounted clay statues
to guard and guide his earthly body
beyond this world.

Just knock on his tomb.
Is he still alive?
Thousands of clay subjects emerge.

Look in their eyes, their unflinching
smiles; fingers on the reins of clay horses.
Call each of them by name.

_____________________

AUTUMN LIGHT
—Taylor Graham

A path in the woods becomes a walk, a labyrinth
of summer fallen into soil, and fog obscuring
the opposite ridge—gray leviathan surfacing
out of gray. This axe-blaze on ponderosa marks
the fork. Fox might stop to sip at this silent pool
under last night’s crescent moon, before clouds
slipped over—or the young buck who levitated
from brush toward distant traffic. Might he fly.
But this is the mind’s maze-meandering,
conjecture, fancy. The woods, dark but for that
spot of pixilated amber seen through tarnished
oak. What kind of tree? transfigured brief
as rainbow, the way leaf and weather, light and
death conspire to hide and fade and iridesce.

Burning Bushes

—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

Today's LittleNip:

FALL WOUND
—Robert Lee Haycock

The pistachio bleeds summer
Into the night
A vermilion stain
Beneath the street light

_________________________

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors, including Katy Brown and Taylor Graham for the "leaky pen" poems which were begun by Katy (after D.R. Wagner handed her a leaky pen), and responded to by Taylor and D.R. (see last Saturday's post for his response).

Richard Hansen, reading at Shine Cafe

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Looking for the Spider

—Photo by Martie Odell-Ingebretsen

WHERE IS THE SPIDER?
—Martie Odell-Ingebretsen, Sacramento

Time spins a web from the tree of life
and we are caught.
Blown like a feather, we cling
as our need gives us strength.

We touch the lazy leaf in awe,
smell the tangy edge of fruited laughter
and long for truth.

Days are sometimes our slow enemy.
The dullness of them
seeps into our lust
and inhibits our exuberance.

Many times a manic dance
spins us out of control,
before we can think of a purpose
we have passed ourselves
and must seek again
what we never found.

We are the umbilicated
tied to the past by a severed cord,
phantom pains
keep us from forgetting
our beginning.
We are chained to the future
by the microscope of eternity
found in our children.

We throw out a life line
and glean,
through the unbearable
coupling of our bodies, destiny.

From the depth of this beauty
we recognize youth
far back on the road.

The mirror mimics our exterior
when inside we realize that youth
has only become less frivolous
and more kind.

There are signs along the path we travel,
these are some I’ve seen:

Singing when your heart is full
brings sweetness to your voice.

Holding the hand of one
who walks along the river
leads to the appreciation of
little things.

Listening to the message
of the sea
humbles an overripe opinion.

Embracing in love sets a fire
that will not be extinguished.

Looking inward for the teacher
calms the trembling fingers
of your grasping search.

Laughter emptying into your
troubled soup
sweetens the bitterness and strengthens
all the essential ingredients.

To struggle against the web
is to be caught more fiercely.
If we are still, listening and open,
we can appreciate the glistening
of its craftsmanship
and the touch of air
surrounding it.

Peace is fleeting,
found in an instant
when eyelash meets the cheek.

Does the tree of life
concern itself with our struggle?

Tall and sure it holds the web,
but can it protect it from what is
or what will be?

I still have not seen
the spider.

_____________________________

—Medusa

A Moment Before Language

North of Locke

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

—Poems by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

INKLING

The way I saw the dawn arranged:
Ink blood clouds covering most of the skin
Just before the sun found the tops
Of the trees.  These clouds were surprised.

These were no birds that rose up
Before them but words and whorls
Lifted from a leaky pen and becoming
A chart that we might find yes, another
Way to speak to one another.

I get up, carefully wash my hands,
Clear my throat and lift my voice
To reading these words, passing
Them back to where they may
Have come from, a moment before
Language, a moment before I knew
There was ink on both our hands.

How it found its way to the clouds
Is a poet's business.  All we can do
Is use the stains as if they were a true
Map where one heart leads to another.

Popcorn

 —Photo by D.R. Wagner

COMING HOME

It was years before we returned
To the site.  A bunch of rotted

Lace, the shaft of the feather,
A small bit of glass that could

Have been part of a smile.  There was
Little left of charm about the place.

A fireplace could be seen through
The window.  It had its own language.

Twigs could have been wishes, branches could
Have been road maps but probably were not.

"Hello," we said as we came closer.
We could see their eyes glowing, warmer

Than any fire.  "We have been here before,"
She says, holding up a medal of the Virgin.

Ah yes, we remember that evening, honey
Poured like dictionaries into our hands.
"We love it like this.  We never thought
We would return here.  Are you our parents?" 

 —Artwork by Kari Kiyono

THAT THE MOON

That the moon doesn't care for Spring.
That it doesn't fill itself out as an announcement
That a season is coming.  It has its own games,
Water, the blood moving through mammals,
Huge hatches of insects making another music.

Still it shines brighter than all else in the night
Sky.  It opens the earth itself in rain or clear
Light and gives names to the waking of the ground.

No matter where we go, if the night is open,
Clear and the course of this spinning planet
Is open and not just showing off the stars,
There she is, her royal majesty, directing everything
From the top of the night, not caring who or what
Sees her light, the llama races or mischief
In the eyes of old magicians somewhere in Mexico.

Slipping through the fog above the Great Lakes,
Holding court before the Northern Lights,
It is still the moon, careless and reclining
On the whole of our sky with us always loving it.

 —Artwork by Kari Kiyono

STRAWBERRY SPRING

Strawberry Spring hung round with red-
Breasted robin thrushes pointing out
The air with chips of songs, wings flashing.

Sometimes I'll stand at the door
Just to see what the green is doing
At one moment or, charmed by the sun,
To watch its hopscotch across the streets
Careen off of houses and up in the trees.

The wind takes it to mind that
Today shall be a dance made in a particular
Fashion and we must move to charm or blow away.

Leaning out from the tower, the dark
That has retired before morning came
Reaches into its bag of sleeping hearts,
Illness and the quiet of weeping alone,
Throws us a handful or two of its
Secret gloom, but to no avail.
They become clouds, their shadows entertaining.

 Composition

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

AFTER THE CHINESE

"...but meaning I would love her forever."
            —Book of Songs

You have taken the morning.
Still I do not see you.
These birds seem tired, pulling
Themselves across the sky.
You have taken the morning.
The sun does not know what to do.

Here the long grasses keep the wind.
It makes no sound as it passes.
Looking from the tops of these
Low hills I listen for some song
But the long grasses keep the wind.
There is such quiet in yearning.

I have not seen you for a single day.
It is like the autumn.
Weeds romp the fields.  I pace to and fro.

 Leaves

THE PRINCE WHO WOULD
SEEK IMMORTALITY

I have given you silence.
I have given you an endless blue
That bends to your gaze and reveals
That which was hidden from you.

His body was made of crows
Holding on to each other
By claw and beak.  They broke
Apart beyond the harbor,
Circling back over the fields
Behind us.  Where they flew,
The light turned golden below them.

You have been given the ladder
That leads to the window of immortality.
Yes, the dragon has as many heads
As you could remove.  You will be tossed
So high in air that none shall see
How high you have been thrown.

Death will be beaten from the walls
Of this city and you shall remain here
Forever.  We are near the end of this thing.

All we have are the words and the telling of gifts.
I have given you silence.  I have given you an endless
Blue that bends your gaze past the end of the world.
As long as the story remains, you shall live forever.
It is the fate of these words to remain unspoken.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:
 
LIVING AS RAIN

My head to the ground,
I hear the crabs and the fishes.
I am out of control.  The genius
Of my breath finds its own canal,
A casket filled with desire.

I run after the train, its whistles screaming.
I used to be a city but now I am a man.
I swear I was rain for a very long time.

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking D.R. Wagner and his student, Kari Kiyono, for today's delectable delights, and reminding readers that today is a marathon of poetry readings in our area; check out the blue box (under the green box at the right) for all the details. (I see Bethanie Humphries has replaced Meg Pokrass and Bill Gainer at Sacramento Voices tonight.) Please note tomorrow's readings, also, including D.R. Wagner and Katy Brown at Nello Olivo in Placerville, 2-4pm, and Indigo Moor and Sharon Coleman at Avid Reader on Broadway in Sacramento, 2-4pm. AND—don't forget to check out Katy Brown's new album on Medusa's Facebook page: Autumn Rainbows.

D.R.'s Doorway

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Cranes, Computers, & Debbie Reynolds

Sandhill Cranes, Lodi Wetlands

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

THEY DON'T KNOW I'M LISTENING

So here I am, all decked out
in a new suit from Brooks Brothers,
haberdasher to corporate stars.

My wife just got here, rattled.
The kids have been here for hours,
flying in for the occasion.

My wife will make certain 
I look as spiffy as possible.
The oldest boy just told her

a neighbor has agreed
to cut the grass, rake the leaves
and shovel the snow, chores

I performed for decades in return
for a mug of coffee and wedge of pie.
Now my wife is asking the undertaker

to puff out my tie, something she did
before I’d go to the office, armed
with a thermos and brown paper bag.

______________________

BIG BET AT AN OLD-TIMERS' CARD GAME

The morning paper says
Debbie Reynolds is 82.

Sixty years ago, the little doll
married Eddie Fisher,

balladeer back in our time.
Remember, Eddie dumped Debbie

and married Liz Taylor who
put the oomph in technicolor.

Then Liz dumped Eddie
and married Michael Todd,

the aging movie mogul.
Todd died in a plane crash

and Fisher's dead now, too.
So's the beautiful Ms. Taylor.

Tell me this before you deal again:
When Debbie gets her obit

which of us, and I'll take bets,
will be around to read it.

 Blue Heron Bench, Lodi

WHEN COMPUTERS CRASH

Take it from me
sitting on the edge of this star
in the universe with
meteors zipping around me.

Worse things can happen
than having a computer crash
and all your data lost while
chatting in a hotel lobby

with a woman you met in a bar
then having a heart attack
and falling to the floor
having your bladder burst.

You lie there deceased,
a nuisance in a puddle of piss,
as the woman strolls away
and guests in the lobby quiver

until the manager says  
he’s made a phone call.
You don’t need a computer now.
An ambulance will take you away.

______________________

GOING NORMAL

Todd’s tired of being odd
he tells his wife as he lights
candles next to their breakfast tea

and pours two steaming cups.
He wants to be normal, he says,
the rest of his life

no matter the changes
he’ll have to make
in his modus operandi.

It will be worth the effort,
not having people gawk
and mumble under their breath.

He pours more tea
and butters some toast
and tells his wife

beginning tomorrow
he’ll never again excavate
his Roman nose

with his pinkie.
He’ll dig with his index
finger instead.

 Greater Crane

Cosumnes River Wilderness Center

IN THE DESERT OF IRAQ

It took awhile to find Osama.
It will take awhile to find
the Briton with his knife
in the desert of Iraq.
They may bring him back
unless a verdict’s rendered
in the desert
enabling the Briton
to discover in a second
all the virgins
awaiting his arrival
unless he finds
he’s sitting with Osama
holding marshmallows
blackened on a stick.

_____________________

LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED

Before he's had his morning coffee
he puts a silencer on the pistol,
goes from room to room, puts

a bullet in the head of those
sleeping in their beds, takes
a drive in the country and calls

his neighbor Walt and asks him
to check on Martha and the kids.
He’s at their country home, he says,

closing it up for the winter,
something he does every year
the weekend before Halloween.

He tells Walt that Martha and the kids
should be home from church by now
but no one's answering the phone.

 Cranes, Lodi Train Station

ON LEARNING A NEW WORD LATE IN LIFE

Harold, I'm sorry to call you at three in the morning
but you're older than I am and you may have less time
to relish a word you may not have heard of.
It's "rejectamenta," and I stumbled upon it
early this morning when I couldn't sleep.
I wish I had found rejectamenta years ago.
It means exactly what you might think:
"matter rejected as useless or worthless."

Imagine how useful that word would have been
in our younger days as a weapon of choice.
I would have shouted it often when leaving a job
or leaving a nice woman who thought we should marry.
I would have extended my arm like Adolph and shouted
"Rejectamenta!" with the roar of "Sieg Heil!"

For the remainder of my life I will shout it when nettled.
I will shout it at the waiter in that Polish restaurant
the next time he plops pickled pigs feet
in front of me obviously short on gel.
I loathe those feet but the gel is marvelous.

We may be aging, Harold, but we have a word now
we can whip out of our quivers whenever we're miffed.
Perhaps the embalmer will tattoo it on my forehead
if my wife isn't looking, assuming she survives.
Carry on, Harold. The finish line is just ahead.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

AMID THE SILENCE OF IMAMS

Carnage rolls
across the sand
amid the silence
of imams 

Women raped, 
children killed,
amid the silence
of imams

What will it take
to stop the carnage
amid the silence
of imams

________________________

—Medusa, thanking Donal Mahoney and Michelle Kunert for today's Kitchen fare, and noting that Katy Brown has a new photo album, Autumn Rainbows, on Medusa's Facebook page. Check it out! Also check out PTSD Nation Art & Poetry display at University Library Annex, California State University, Sacramento (Curator, Diana Bloom). You are cordially invited to this art and literary event (which runs through Dec. 13) that features the art and poetry of survivors of war, gun violence, and or domestic abuse. Our thanks to Jennifer O'Neill Pickering, who has some art pieces there, for this notice. For more about what Jennifer's doing around town and about the PTSD display, see jennifersword.blogspot.com