Medusa's Kitchen

Welcome to the Kitchen!—daily poetry from around the world (poetry with fangs!). Read our DIARY, the cream-colored section at the left, for poets local and otherwise. Then scroll down our GREEN AND BLUE BULLETIN BOARDS on the right for more poet-phernalia. And please feel free to be a SNAKEPAL and send your work, events and releases to kathykieth@hotmail.com—see "Placating the Gorgon" in the FUCHSIA LINKS right below here for info. Carpe Viperidae! Seize the Snake!

Monday, August 31, 2009

A Small Shack Labeled, You

Pachypodium namaquanam
Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

STREWN
—JoAnn Anglin, Sacramento

Not clumsy wildflowers laid on the roadside berm,
but the wrecked leavings of an unsought transition.
A family of modern Joads lightened the load, fleeing
some catastrophe, dropped or abandoned the pathetic
Treasures; what they had valued no longer adheres.
Old ambitions of cleanliness show in the cracked
dish pan, pieces of vacuum cleaner, Swiffer duster.
Nothing is whole, as if some scavenger dragged off the
meat of an easy kill, leaving behind the useless parts.
See the soiled plaid dog bed with cloacae-like stuffing
adorned with bristly curlers—pink, blue, green.
So there must have been a dog. And children:
a stained doll landed on broken head, legs splayed;
a plastic turtle shell, devoid of turtle, riding atop
an unshaded lamp. Beyond them, a masonite boom
box, a broken rocker, seem to be emerging, like
tombstones, or old roots rising out of damp earth.

___________________

Thanks, JoAnn, for your thoughts on What Remains. See more about JoAnn Anglin on Sacramento Poet Laureate Bob Stanley's Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Council's web page at http://www.sacmetroarts.org/PLcountylines.html/; at the bottom of the SMAC entry, there is a link to the archives to see the previous five Sacramento poets.

There are quite a few weekly poetry events that I haven't listed on Medusa's Kitchen in the past because ya never know when a weekly which doesn't send out regular notices is going to take a week off and not tell anyone; I wouldn't want to lead the readers astray. But I decided that it's kind of a disservice to leave all these wonderful events off our calendar. So from now on, I'll include them, but the caveat is that you might want to check before you go to make sure any event is really going to happen.

And today, after the calendar, some Frank O'Hara (with a few monkeys) and a dollop of Russell Edson. You can always tell when my life is getting too strait-jackety—I post some Edson...

This week in NorCal poetry:

•••Mon. (8/31), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Rob Lozano and Garland Thompson for a BYOBlanket in Fremont Park (downtown Sacramento between 15th and 16th and P and Q Sts.). Garland Thompson, Jr., is a poet, an actor, playwright and producer whose career spans the left and right coasts. For more than 20 years as a poet and spoken word artist, Garland has toured the U.S and Europe. Locally, Garland has performed at First Night Monterey, the Carmel Performing Arts Festival, and The Austin International Poetry Festival, and he recently appeared in Carmel's Pacific Repertory Theater production of Man of La Mancha. For the last seven and a half years he has produced and hosted the weekly Rubber Chicken Poetry Slam & Open Mic at the East Village Coffee Lounge in Downtown Monterey. He has been featured at, hosted and produced poetry readings and slams across the nation, and is known as the creator and producer of the West Coast Championship Poetry Slam, an annual event that was held in Big Sur at the Henry Miller Memorial Library from 1998 through 2007. You can find his work in Spoken Word from Lollapalooza 94, Manic D Press, and, most recently, in Sometimes in the Open: Poems from California’s Poets Laureates. Rob Lozano was born in Quezon City, Philippines, educated at University of Utah, with a BS in Anthropology. He has “cawwed” poems as a crow and was very active in the Sacto. poetry scene through the '90's as Editor/Publisher of Say Yes magazine and small press, where he published books of poems for Gene Bloom, B.L. Kennedy and several other broadsides for poets gone and traveled. He hosted the first poetry slams in Sacto in '96 and '97. He has been on radio and heard and seen live at Sacramento, Yosemite, Fresno, San Francisco and Chico. He was part of ZRAIL artist collective with Vincent Kobelt, Mario Ellis Hill, Phil Goldvarg, Samuel Iniguez, Yaya Porras, Angelo Williams, Guy Ollison and a number of other freestyle 'anti-injustice' poets. His latest interest in Antonin Artaud is lodged solidly in the sense that, as Nietzsche wrote of the death of God, Artaud wrote of the death of poetry. Rob Lozano's collaborations with Gilberto Rodriguez call attention, through Artaud and his doppelgangers, to how psychologically-emasculated poetry has become in this society. This has resulted in the authentic mythic quality of poetry drifting to the banal which has forced it to be transformed into a mere conceptual and easily digested palatable anti-poetic pablum. Fortunately, the demise of one kind of poetry often leads to a new poetry poised to take its place.

•••Tues. (9/1, and every Tuesday), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center Workshop at the Hart Center, 27th & J Sts., Sacramento. Free; bring 13 copies of your one-page poem to be read/critiqued. Info: Danyen Powell at 530-756-6228.

•••Wednesday (9/2), 5:30-7:30 PM: The Sacramento Poetry Center and the Sacramento Room of the Central Library present Sacramento’s Favorite Poem Reading, 2009. This FPP event, which will take place in the Sacramento Room of the Central Library, 828 I St., will be the first of a series of SPC First Wednesday readings in the Sacramento Room. The Favorite Poem Reading will be free and open to the public. This month's readers include Carlos Alcala, Sacramento Bee; Jeffrey Callison, KXJZ; Marcus Crowder, Sacramento Bee; Clare Ellis, The Sacramento Room; Richard Hansen, The Book Collector; Muriel Johnson, California Arts Council; Sheree Meyer, Chair, CSUS English Dep’t; Don Nottoli, County Board of Supervisors; Suzette Riddle, California Lectures and Ray Tatar, California Stage. [See last Tuesday's post for more details.]

•••Wednesdays, 9 PM: Mahogany Urban Poetry Series at Queen Sheba's Restaurant, 1704 Broadway (17th and Broadway), Sacramento. $5 cover, all ages.

•••Wednesdays, 5 PM: Dr. Andy’s Technology and Poetry Hour, KDVS radio station (90.3 FM) or http://www/kdvs.org/.

•••Wed. (9/2 and every 1st and 3rd Weds.), 9 PM: Featured reader plus open mic at 10 PM at Bistro 33, 3rd and F Sts. in Davis. Free. Hosted by Andy Jones and Brad Henderson. Info: http://poetryindavis.blogspot.com/ or 530-756-4556 or aojones@ucdavis.edu/; schedule at http://www.bistro33.com/bistro33/.

•••Thurs. (9/3): Sacramento’s Past Poet Laureate, Julia Connor, will lead a free poetry workshop for ten weeks beginning Thursday, Sept. 3 at the Hart Senior Workshop, funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Info: Hart Center, 916-808-5462. [This workshop will meet in the afternoon; check info for time.]

•••Thurs. (9/3), 10 AM: Local poet and Sacramento Poetry Center Board Member Tim Kahl will be appearing on Capitol Public Radio’s “Insight” with Jeffrey Callison on KXJZ (90.9 FM) to talk about his new book, Possessing Yourself. The program will also be streaming at http://www.capradio.org/programs/insight/default.aspx. Tim Kahl’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, American Letters & Commentary, Berkeley Poetry Review, Caliban, Connecticut Review, Fourteen Hills, George Washington Review, Illuminations, Indiana Review, The Journal, Limestone, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, South Dakota Quarterly, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Texas Review, and many other journals in the U.S. He has translated German poet Rolf Haufs, Austrian avant-gardist, Friederike Mayröcker; Brazilian poets, Lêdo Ivo and Marly de Oliveira; and the poems of the Portuguese language’s only Nobel Laureate, José Saramago. He also appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog, The Great American Pinup (http://www.greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/). Additionally, he is also the editor for Bald Trickster Press. He can also be found online at http://www.timkahl.com/.

•••Thursdays, 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Featured readers, with open mic before and after.

•••Thursdays, 7 PM: “Life Sentence” reading at The Coffee Garden, 2904 Franklin Blvd., Sacramento. Open mic.

•••Thursdays, 10-11 AM (replayed Sundays 10-11 AM): Mountain Mama’s Earth Music with Nancy Bodily on 95.7 FM. Music/poetry woven around a central theme deeply tied to mountains/earth.

•••Sat. (9/4 and every 1st Sat.): Rhythm and Rhyme readings at Butch N’ Nellies near 19th & I Sts., Sacramento. Televised music, open mic. Info: myspace.com/RNRshow/.

__________________

A PATHETIC NOTE
—Frank O'Hara

Think of all the flowers you've ever seen
and remember me to my mother, or be kind

to some white-haired blue-eyed old lady
who might remind me of Grandaunt Elizabeth

were I with you. When you go down West
Fourteenth Street think of Africa and me,

why don't you? and be careful crossing
streets. Keep photographing the instant

so that in my hysteria I will know what
it is like there; and while my teeth rot and

my eyes seem incapable of the images I'd
hoped, I will know you are at least all right.

While I write this eleven windows stare,
clothes hanging on the wall stir testily.

The ceiling's miles away. I'm sitting on
the floor. Since I last saw you things

are worse. What can I do without love,
without honor, without fame? Can you see

me? It is evening. Other people's lights
are going on, I think. But not your friend's.

__________________

A VIRTUOSO
—Frank O'Hara

The crowd is assembled in decorous rows
like flowers outside a rich zoo. He
strides from the wings, the black aviator,
sits down and bats out a Concert Adagio
and Rondo! flailing octaves in a great
grill of black crosshatches across
the proscenium. Monkeys appear and
clamber seriously up this trellis of
atonal spears. Like tin-hatted hydrogen
workers, they clap, the dopy audience,
but he's not through. With a fierce glance
of irrelevance he jams his elbow up
the sounding box's warm dessert: a soprano
from his childhood screams with child
and dashes her brains out against
the sole of his foot that's pedalling
madly up hill! And while millions of
rosebuds fall from our pianist's aching
hammers nobody thinks of anything but
those clattering bleeding teeth.

__________________

In the pearly green light
of early morning when dread
of day and some distant event
is just breaking off my head

of dreams and the security
of nightmares where a note
of myself is always throbbing
its characteristic rote

of personal anxiety, I wake
to real fears of war and chance
and, worse, of duty to the dead.
Yet I never wholly fear the romance

of my interior self no matter
how asleep I am, how nearly dead.

—Frank O'Hara

__________________

A face over a book
and then parting.

The green roofs,
the stone lions,

a simple sentence
lingers on the streets

as snow comes
to the hushed ear.

Where am I?
A windowpane shatters;

the sun has never
come out for me,

and my books
turn red with air.

—Frank O'Hara

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

YOU
—Russell Edson

Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which is simply a path leading through an archway called adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.

Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you.

And it is here the future lives in the several postures of arm on windowsill, cheek on this; elbows on knees, face in the hands; sometimes the head thrown back, eyes staring into the ceiling...This into nothing down the long day's arc...

__________________

—Medusa

SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:

THIS SUMMER:

Now available: two new chapbooks from Joyce Odam:
Peripherals: Prose Poems (illustrated by Charlotte Vincent)
and Rattlesnake LittleBook #2 (Noir Love).
That’s at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento.

WTF!!: The third issue of WTF, the free quarterly journal from
Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe that is edited by frank andrick,
is now available at The Book Collector,
or send me two bux and I'll mail you one.
Deadline for Issue #4 will be Oct. 15.
Submission guidelines are the same as for the Snake, but send your poems, photos, smallish art or prose pieces (500 words or less) to fandrickfabpub@hotmail.com (attachments preferred) or, if you’re snailing,
to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 (clearly marked for WTF).
And be forewarned: this publication is for adults only, so you must be
over 18 years of age to submit. (More info at rattlesnakepress.com/.)

RATTLESNAKE REVIEW: Issue #22 is now available (free) at The Book Collector, or send me four bux and I'll mail you one. Or you can order copies of current or past issues through rattlesnakepress.com/.
Issue #23 will be available at The Book Collector the night of Sept. 9.
Deadline is November 15 for RR24: send 3-5 poems, smallish art pieces and/or photos (no bio, no cover letter, no simultaneous submissions or previously-published poems) to kathykieth@hotmail.com or
P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. E-mail attachments are preferred, but be sure to add all contact info, including snail address. Meanwhile, the snakes of the on-going Medusa are always hungry; keep that poetry comin', rain or shine!
Just let us know if your submission is for the Review or for Medusa, or for either one, and please—only one submission packet per issue of the quarterly Review.
(More info at rattlesnakepress.com/.)

Also available (free): littlesnake broadside #46: Snake Secrets: Getting Your Poetry Published in Rattlesnake Press (and lots of other places, besides!): A compendium of ideas for brushing up on your submissions process so as to make editors everywhere more happy, thereby increasing the likelihood of getting your poetry published. Pick up a copy at The Book Collector or write to me (include snail address) and I'll send you one. Free!

COMING IN SEPTEMBER:

Join us at The Book Collector Wednesday, September 9 at 7:30 PM
for the release of a new chapbook by
Susan Finkleman (Mirror, Mirror: Poems Of The Mother-Daughter Relationship, illustrated by Joseph Finkleman);
plus a new HandyStuff blank journal from Katy Brown (A Capital Affair);
a littlesnake broadside from Marie Reynolds (Late Harvest);
and a brand new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#23)!

_________________

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com). And be sure to sign up for Snakebytes, our monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on all our ophidian chicanery.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

The Great Swamp

Rainy Day Colors
Photo by Debbie S.

MARENGO
—Mary Oliver

Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.

When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain—
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.

And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,

and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.

____________________

—Medusa

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Teasing The Angel: What Do You Think You Are Doing?

Pt. Lobos
Photo by Bob Dreizler, Sacramento

THE POWER STATION
—James Merrill

Think back now to that cleft
In the live rock. A deep voice filled the cave,
Raving up out of cells each time in some way left
Huger and vaguer. There was a kind of nave

Strewn with potsherd and bone,
The tribe's offspring, converted now, rejoice
In our sane god. But, two or three hours south, not known
To them, the charge of the other's voice

Break into light and churn
Through evening fields. Soon a first town is lit,
Is lived in. Grounded. Green. A truth fit to unlearn
The blind delirium that still utters it.

__________________

Pat Hickerson writes: In response to BL Kennedy's review [Thursday] of The Trials of Lenny Bruce, I'm attaching a recent poem about the deceased Fred Haines, a former colleague of mine at KPFA.

SHAPE OF FRED HAINES (1936-2008)
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

tales of your pale-haired groin
spelled out a thousand smoky flights

Ulysses man 1967
you put Joyce onscreen
you an Oscar boy—I could well believe it

and all the time
at home between your Gypsy lips
a Gitane

I knew you before the Gitanes
you and your leather jacket in Berkeley
KPFA up the stairs downtown
broadcast Lenny Bruce at midnight
almost lost our license
yours and Dede’s flat on Wheeler Street
(walls painted black)
chess at the Steppenwolf
staff party at Gert’s
my Friday night blowout
you at the piano
black shades hid your fire blue eyes
dazzled by connection

I dreamed of trips-out in the dark
as if my earthy Fred-shaped path
could fit your jigsaw map
your traveled thighs outdistanced mine—

you left town
then I left town
my alternate route as crazed as yours

Gitanes finally got you
Venice on the Pacific
solitary cottage
lungs blackened

_________________

ANGEL
—James Merrill

Above my desk, whirring and self-important
(Though not much larger than a hummingbird)
In finely woven robes, school of Van Eyck,
Hovers an evidently angelic visitor.
He points one index finger out the window
At winter snatching to its heart,
To crystal vacancy, the misty
Exhalations of houses and of people running home
From the cold sun pounding on the sea;
While with the other hand
He indicates the piano
Where the Sarabande No. I lies open
At a passage I shall never master
But which has already, and effortlessly, mastered me.
He drops his jaw as if to say, or sing,
'Between the world God made
And this music of Satie,
Each glimpsed though veils, but whole,
Radiant and willed,
Demanding praise, demanding surrender,
How can you sit there with your notebook?
What do you think you are doing?'
However he says nothing—wisely: I could mention
Flaws in God's world, or Satie's; and for that matter
How did he come by his taste for Satie?
Half to tease him, I turn back to my page,
Its phrases thus far clotted, unconnected.
The tiny angel shakes his head.
There is no smile on his round, hairless face.
He does not want even these few lines written.

__________________

CHILDLESSNESS
—James Merrill

The weather of this winter night, my mistress
Ranting and raining, wakes me. Her cloak blown back
To show the lining's dull lead foil
Sweeps along asphalt. Houses
Look blindly on; one glimmers through a blind.
Outside, I hear her tricklings
Arraign my little plot:
Had it or not agreed
To transplantation for the common good
Of certain rare growths yielding guaranteed
Gold pollen, gender of suns, large, hardy,
Enviable blooms? But in my garden
Nothing is planted. Neither
Is that glimmering window mine.
I lie and think about the rain,
How it has been drawn up from the impure ocean,
From gardens lightly, deliberately tainted;
How it falls back, time after time,
Through poisons visible at sunset
When the enchantress, masked as friend, unfurls
Entire bolts of voluminous pistachio,
Saffron, and rose.
These, as I fall back to sleep,
And other slow colours clothe me, glide
To rest, then burst along my limbs like buds,
Like bombs from the navigator's vantage,
Waking me, lulling me. Later I am shown
The erased metropolis reassembled
On sampans, freighted each
With toddlers, holy dolls, dead ancestors.
One tiny monkey puzzles over fruit.
The vision rises and falls, the garland
Gently takes root
In the sea's coma. Hours go by
Before I can stand to own
A sky stained red, a world
Clad only in rags, threadbare,
Dabbling the highway's ice with blood.
A world. The cloak thrown down for it to wear
In token of past servitude
Has fallen onto the shoulders of my parents
Whom it is eating to the bone.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

—Thomas Mann

__________________

—Medusa

Friday, August 28, 2009

From The Land Of Jacarandas

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza

SIGN OF THE TIMES
—Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Zimbabwe

Red sunset over a purple haze
Of fierce jacaranda blooms
A dying friend walks

I can feel the cold dark night
Descending over his soul
In the ever fading light
Of his young life

I shake his hand as if nothing has changed
I pretend not to notice the sores in his mouth
His voice is a hoarse whisper, an old man's mumble
His wasted body stands reed thin

But I talk to the friend I used to know
The one I used to play with
—marbles, cops and robbers, hide & seek—
Yet I cannot shake off the wings of guilt
Flapping in the secrecy of my mind
Do all survivors feel like this?

But am I really a survivor?
Just haven’t been tested, that’s all…
Ah, we play hide & seek with our consciences now…
In this place, very few of us dare confront the dreaded monster
That prowls in the dark chambers of a past we think sordid
For now, I just reach out for my friend’s hand
Squeeze gently…

In the fading light, the jacaranda leaves
Bloom a fierce purple haze
I know this is how I will always
Remember him…nature’s gift that shines
In our midst but for a short while….
When their season is done all jacaranda leaves
…simply wilt away

We bid each other farewell
He shuffles away
…he has begun his slow, painful journey home
Under the fading light
Beholding the glorious sight of the purple haze
I wonder if I'll ever see him again
I sigh...

__________________

Thanks, Ruzvidzo! Born in Zimbabwe in 1971, Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza developed a passion for the art of storytelling and a love for the written word at a tender age. Long before he was literate, he would gaze with fascination at the beauty of the written word on scraps of paper, old magazines, newspapers, books, et al., and by the time he was in the third grade was a passionate, wide reader, whose reading material was more often than not ‘way beyond his scope.

It was also at this time that Ruzvidzo started writing his own stories, spurred by a vivid imagination and his already entrenched reading culture. After studying Literature in English at the University of Zimbabwe, he worked for eight years as a high school English Language and Literature in English teacher before moving to Zimbabwe’s national television broadcaster, where he worked as Chief Producer of Social and Cultural programs for children. After that spell, his perennial wanderlust saw him move on to the world of advertising, where he worked as a copywriter for a local advertising agency. It was not long, though, before he packed his creative bags and joined the mainstream print media as an Assistant Editor, specialising in feature writing and covering the arts for a Zimbabwean daily and weekly paper. He eventually became the Acting Editor of the weekly Sunday paper until its demise in 2007. Since then, he has survived through the benevolence of friends, his art, freelancing and doing consultancy work in the world of media and advertising.

Ruzvidzo's poetry, essays and short stories have been published in Zimbabwe and abroad. His early poetry started appearing in the University of Zimbabwe English Department’s literary magazine, The Bloom, national and international magazines, as well as on the poetryinteranational.org- zimbabwe website. His stories appear in the following anthologies: A Roof to Repair (Harare: College Press), Creatures Great and Small (Gweru: Mambo Press 2000), Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver Press, 2003), Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver Press, 2005), and Dreams, Miracles and Jazz: New Adventures in African Writing (Northlands: Picador Africa, 2008). A story has also been published online by SABLE Literary Magazine, and he has been interviewed on: “Conversations with Writers” at http://conversationswithwriters.blogspot.com/2007/04/interview-with-zimbabwean-author.html
Kubatana - Archive - "Inside/out with author Ruzvidzo Stanley" and Mupfudzahttp://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/artcul/081218kub.asp?sector=ARTCUL
He also occasionally, when the spirit moves him, blogs on www.zimbablog.com/.

We are pleased and honored to feature Ruzvidzo in what is becoming a series of spotlights on Zimbabwean poets, both today on Medusa's Kitchen and in the upcoming Rattlesnake Review.

This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Fri. (8/28, and every last Friday of the month), 8-10:30 PM: TheBlackOutPoetrySeries inside The Upper Level VIP Lounge, 26 Massic Ct., Sacramento (located inside of Fitness Systems Heathclub, by Cal State Skating Rink; exit Mack Road East to Stockton Blvd and then make a left on Massie, then right past Motel 6) features Hip Hop superstar Ambassador, vocalist Cheryn Yancy, poet Supanova plus vocalists Derick and Andrea Moore—and open mic. $5.00. Info: 916-208-POET or fromtheheart1@hotmail.com/.

•••Sat. (8/29, and every last Sat. of the month), 7-9 PM: TheShowPoetrySeries features Bob Stanley, acclaimed teacher and Poet Laureate for the city of Sacramento. Bob has written poetry and volunteered in poetry organizations for over three decades. President of the Sacramento Poetry Center since 2006, Mr. Stanley also served on the board of Alameda Poets, and he has led workshops and readings all over Northern California. Also featuring are super talents poet Anna Marie and vocalists Lynn Fleury and the award-winning Mae Gee. Wo'se Community Center, 2863 35th St. (Off 35th & Broadway), $5.00. Info: 916 208-POET or fromtheheart1@hotmail.com/.

__________________

CATACOMBS OF THE HEART
—Rizvidzo Mupfudza

There's secret place
Where all things unsaid
Lie buried

There's somewhere
Not faraway
Where feelings unspoken lie hidden

All songs unsung
Poems unwritten
Are in limbo there, waiting to be found

There are dark lands
Full of monsters, myths and legends
Waiting for the sun of love to shine

Ah, love, the ultimate dragon slayer
Unlocking closed doors, the eternal prayer
Of the heart that reveals and frees all

…and throughout the ages, I wait
For my chance to finally leave this place
Unearth all words, feelings and songs buried

I know, one day you'll come to me
Together we'll travel across the universe
Two souls, hand in hand, until we become one

___________________

YOU
—Ruzvidzo Mupfudza

Wings of the imagination
Soar on warm winds of desires
Crossing oceans of time and space
Seeking showers of your heart to put out these fires
Travelling, travelling…only to be with you
In this land of dreams
Winged visions and sweet songs
Between the sharp intake of breath
In that moment our eyes meet
When time stands still
Both of us waiting to exhale
Inhaling long and deep our souls' fragrances
Fingers gently stitching together time's fragments

Finally, it comes, that deep awed sigh
And I know, at last, the reason why
I was put on this earth

Lost, lost in the depths of your eyes
Only then do I realise
That all this time
All the roads I’ve been travelling on
Have been leading to this destination
All the rivers of my dreams
Have been flowing, flowing
… to you

All these years
Wandering through time’s alleys and byways
I have been seeking your heart
Mine confirms this with each poignant beat
Now I know why birds welcome dawn with sweet song
I know, too, why jacaranda leaves
Burn a purple haze when they bloom
I understand, now, the true meaning of resurrection

After all, today, I'm as new
as morning dew
… thanks to you

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza

_________________

Today's LittleNip:

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

—Henry Ward Beecher

_________________

And finally, my apologies to Carol Louise Moon for my error in her poem yesterday. I misunderstood the word "cinder" and replaced it with "cylinder". Here's the correct version:

WHAT REMAINS
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

the last cinder as blood and flush are falling
through my father’s face,
gauzy sheet of death
folding over
I know that I have lost him:
his sorrow... his joy
his fire gone out,
leaving but one cinder
on the Victrola.

__________________

—Medusa

Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Memory Of Light

Stonehenge
Photo by Katy Brown

WHAT REMAINS
—Katy Brown, Davis

Not plans for monuments;
not the prayers of the men
who raise the stones;
not fires nor the smoke of fires;

not the stones, however big:
in graveyards, in marble halls,
in pyramids, in circles—
not the men themselves.

Not moons or planets or suns.
At the edge of time,
nothing solid remains:

only dust,
the spirit of dust
and the memory of light.

___________________

HIGH DESERT VALLEY
—Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Tehama

Wind shadows spill
across high desert valley
where surges of habitation
deposit their spoor.

Circles of stones, knapped
flint mark the first ones.
Then came the pioneers' path—
rotted wood, spent bullets,
graves unnoted for decades.
Miners stripped land, left
rusted metal, decayed streams.

Clapboard skeletons,
steeple, bell
towers show
when women came and stayed.

Near springs and willows
windmills, broken corrals
cluster
around today's aluminum, boxes
breath-gusted,
filled with the next
wave of hope.

(First published in Tule Review, 1999)

___________________

WHAT REMAINS
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

the last cylinder as blood and flush are falling
through my father’s face,
gauzy sheet of death
folding over.
I know that I have lost him:
his sorrow...his joy
his fire gone out,
leaving but one cylinder
on the Victrola.

___________________

We're still contemplating What Remains; never too late for a Seed of the Week poem. Katy Brown has sent us several, in fact, from this week's SOW and weeks before, and of course a wonderful photo of Stonehenge (which has, so far, remained...). Join us on Wednesday, Sept. 9 at The Book Collector for the release of Katy's most recent blank journal: A Capital Affair. That's 7:30 PM, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. The reading is free!

RD (Raindog) Armstrong writes: Bill Chinaski is looking for a few good men/women for his website. Here's his info:"Poets Corner at alternativereel.com is finally moving forward with the poets’ section. I set up a test page for Ben Smith at http://alternativereel.com/includes/poets-corner/display_review.php?id=00004 just to give you an idea of the elements we're going to need for each poet. Basically, just a headshot, brief bio, link of your choice and four to five representative poems. I'm going to launch when I have about five pages ready and then recruit other poets to participate..." Contact him, if you'd like, and just for the helluvit, mention RD's name! And check for new Lummox Press titles at www.lummoxpress.com/.

And while you’re 'Netting, don’t forget to look at Sacramento Poet Laureate Bob Stanley’s featuring of local poets. You can see them listed at SMAC: http://www.sacmetroarts.org/PLcountylines.html/. At the bottom of the SMAC entry, there is a link to the archives to see the previous five Sacramento poets, most recent of which were JoAnn Anglin and Josh Fernandez.

B.L.'s Drive-Bys: A Micro-Review by B.L. Kennedy:

The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
Performances, Interviews and Commentary on Audio CD (Narration Nat Hentoff)
Authored by Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover
Sourcebooks Inc
557 pgs and 1 audio CD
ISBN: 1-57071-986-1
$29.95

Words, words, words, and more words: that was what Lenny Bruce was all about…words—words that we use in common, everyday life; words that describe our daily experiences. Lenny Bruce committed his life to telling the truth and paid dearly for it. At a time when society so took for granted language and the secret meanings behind language, Bruce put his balls on the line. Think of it: the First Amendment pretty much tells us that we have the right to say our say, and the battle has been fought many times through the words of such luminaries as William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, James Joyce, Hubert Selby Jr. and countless others. The Trials of Lenny Bruce tells the story of this subversive comic genius, the battles he fought and the price he paid for being a unique American voice. Do I think you should buy this book? Yeah, I think it’s an important book. I think it’s a book that should be read again and again and again because one never knows, even in a country like the United States of America, when the shadows will appear to steal your voice.

—B.L. Kennedy, Reviewer-in-Residence

___________________

RAYNE
—Katy Brown

A recurring dream—
innocent as a kitten's purr,
pervasive as a silent meow;
a sour snake coiling
through my intestines,
working its acidic way
back toward my heart:
how many days
can it live unexpressed?

Nine pounds of fur and bone
filling my house
with her absence.

___________________

CHATTERING LOVE KNOT
—Katy Brown

Two pewter squirrels weave
a chattering love-knot
around the gnarled trunk

of an old walnut.
They ascend
into leafy branches,

emphatically declaring
their mutual intent.
If only all love

were so straightforward:
one running,
the other chasing,

each noisily stating
obvious delight
of chase and catch.

Later, when pairing
is complete, the game
shifts to hide and seek.

No more chatter;
only silence in the
passageways.

Only furtive glances
and the danger
of a sudden drop.

__________________

CONJUGATION OF THE POSSESSIVE
—Katy Brown

We are born into the world, connected,
then severed from our source.
Our mothers teach us words
for important things:

one of the first one-hundred:
mine declares our infant world.
Soon, we learn the fact of others and
add the less self-centered yours.

The more compromising ours
comes much later. But somewhere
in our deep remembering, we recall
our blood mingling,

our hearts beating together.
We come full circle in this
lexicon of development:
ours, mine, yours, ours...

_________________

Today's LittleNip:

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found out what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

—Ernest Hemingway

_________________

Thanks to Katy Brown for finding us this photo!

—Medusa

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

We Live It For Them

HubbleSite Picture Album
Massive Star VY Canis Majoris, Polarized Light
Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Humphreys

THE NISENAN CALLED IT CULLUMAH
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

And what of the Gold Rush park,
the old smithy with bellows and forge,
the treadle grindstone, where iron turned
tools for working a future?

I read in the paper, the park is closing.
No money to keep it open.

And the school kids who came to see
the Chinese general store, the smith in his
wreath of coal-smoke; millrace dreams
of panning gravel to a fortune?

Is there still color in these dry hills
beyond belief in gold rush?

(on the proposed closing of the
State Park at Coloma)

_________________

Thanks to TG and our other poets today for their comments on What Remains, our Seed of the Week. It's never too late for SOWs; send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726.

Katy Brown writes: I noticed that Medusa was down for a few days, so I wrote this note to her (and added my photo of a brooch from the British Museum):

MEDUSA, YOU'RE LOOKING POORLY:

snakes all in a tangle,
wings askew.
Your stony eyes look pinched and troubled;
are you having trouble sleeping?

It's hard to be the mortal one
among the Gorgon sisters:
You'e the one they'll come to kill
when only blood will pay the price.

You really are quite beautiful—
except the snakes, which are alarming—
and the tiniest of flaws:
your gaze that turns strong men to stone.

But you simply are not looking well, dear;
you seem a little pale and troubled.
My advice is not to bother
checking lipstick in a shiny shield.

—Katy Brown, Davis

Thanks, KB!—I seem to have
my snakes in a tangle a lot, lately!

___________________

HERE AND NOW
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

What remains
When the roadblocks are gone
When the battles are fought and won
When I can see clearly
My path ahead
Random thoughts no longer
Running through my mind
When I don’t have to make up stories
About what should be happening in my life
When I don’t have to care
About what others think
What remains
Is just me

_________________

NAMES, PLACES
—William Bronk

For a few, otherwise unknown, we have
their names cut in a stone slab, we have
someone's reminiscence, questionable,
or we have a page-thin transcript of a voice,
sometimes the look of a face on paper, in paints.
For the rest, the uncounted rest, we don't have
for many, even anonymous bones except
as we are the rest so that they need never have lived:
we live it for them. What little they knew
we know for them as they knew once for us,
knowing their own names, unthinking what names
we could have were we ever to be. I acquiesce
in forgetting, am the forgotten though I have a name,
a place. It is such as names and places are.
They are always such. What do they signify?
Nothing of themselves, the forgettable,
the soon forgotten. As we are, that is not what we are.
They signify an arbitrariness
of themselves and we are the nameless ones who have
no place; and we are known and we are there.

_________________

Today's LittleNip:

SHELLS
—Donald R. Anderson, Stockton

Shorelines formed of coral—
hollowed remains of life.
The beauty
makes me not alone.

_________________

—Medusa

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