Kaylynn Parkinson, one of the featured readers
at Sac. Poetry Center last Monday night, Dec. 16
—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
WANTING TO BE A MYSTIC
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
If this poet only had
invisible wings,
to hide in buttressed nest
reflexive as a sparrow
on this season's edge,
these cold breaths of love
meant years of Latin training
reading Ovid and Virgil
and the Saints,
yet always running for his life
as a scalloped shadow
along snow stretches
on fifty-mile marches
to escape his real love
wanting to be in a retreat
as a mystic
with a backfire of memory
of his hidden words
on note papers
at St. John's Abbey
in his thin coat
under the sky breaking
the echoes in the last
lines of his poems
a century's wounds
in love's absence
belief will complete him.
______________________
WAITING TO PLAY JAZZ
—B.Z. Niditch
Waiting for magnetic sunshine
on deck to play
in my first jazz band
yet feeling like
a joker in my hand
meditates under
the sound system
when a sudden rain
like pawns
on the chessboard
of my life invades
like liquid solitude
sings its vaporous solo
over a wave of sensation
at our trio's recital,
jazz opens up for me
in an open space
and my flesh murmurs,
the sax is ready
a firestorm of song
dissolves conversations.
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
If this poet only had
invisible wings,
to hide in buttressed nest
reflexive as a sparrow
on this season's edge,
these cold breaths of love
meant years of Latin training
reading Ovid and Virgil
and the Saints,
yet always running for his life
as a scalloped shadow
along snow stretches
on fifty-mile marches
to escape his real love
wanting to be in a retreat
as a mystic
with a backfire of memory
of his hidden words
on note papers
at St. John's Abbey
in his thin coat
under the sky breaking
the echoes in the last
lines of his poems
a century's wounds
in love's absence
belief will complete him.
______________________
WAITING TO PLAY JAZZ
—B.Z. Niditch
Waiting for magnetic sunshine
on deck to play
in my first jazz band
yet feeling like
a joker in my hand
meditates under
the sound system
when a sudden rain
like pawns
on the chessboard
of my life invades
like liquid solitude
sings its vaporous solo
over a wave of sensation
at our trio's recital,
jazz opens up for me
in an open space
and my flesh murmurs,
the sax is ready
a firestorm of song
dissolves conversations.
Caroline Swanson, one of the featured readers
at Sac. Poetry Center last Monday night
—Photo by Michelle Kunert
SONG FOR A TIME
—B.Z. Niditch
Trying to write
a hit rock-and-roll song
but down on his luck
(this being off the record)
with only this one hit
played at local clubs
teenage years ago,
called "Chic"
the poet wrote
it on a jagged napkin
over a paper plate
this hot vanilla tune
created a local sensation
on the local radio station
for a whole December,
but the big shot executives
from the Big Apple
said I was too hungry
for an easy success
because I would not change
the unfaltering words
of the tune
about someone close to me,
and was literally beaten up
like an omelet
in a New York minute,
yet "Chic"
was on local charts
for a frenzied season
which my classmates
danced to at proms
on windy street corners,
yet this emerging poet
was poor-mouthed in subways
old coins put onto his eyes
waiting to die for a song,
"When there was time to live
and love,"
it spoke to some in my lyrics,
when no one watches me
at this lame adolescence
red-eyed and out there
as a four-seasoned refugee
no one recognizes for a Beat.
—B.Z. Niditch
Trying to write
a hit rock-and-roll song
but down on his luck
(this being off the record)
with only this one hit
played at local clubs
teenage years ago,
called "Chic"
the poet wrote
it on a jagged napkin
over a paper plate
this hot vanilla tune
created a local sensation
on the local radio station
for a whole December,
but the big shot executives
from the Big Apple
said I was too hungry
for an easy success
because I would not change
the unfaltering words
of the tune
about someone close to me,
and was literally beaten up
like an omelet
in a New York minute,
yet "Chic"
was on local charts
for a frenzied season
which my classmates
danced to at proms
on windy street corners,
yet this emerging poet
was poor-mouthed in subways
old coins put onto his eyes
waiting to die for a song,
"When there was time to live
and love,"
it spoke to some in my lyrics,
when no one watches me
at this lame adolescence
red-eyed and out there
as a four-seasoned refugee
no one recognizes for a Beat.
_____________________
POETIC JUSTICE
—B.Z. Niditch
Catching questions even on days
when I was school-silent
all sentences
were convictions
now in disbelief
after courting poetry,
astonished, you ask
with a fixed stare
lingering on
my once loveless words
divorced of reason
that lead to writer's block
and unbearable answers
of public opinion,
to split proverbs apart
and run for cover
when time falls on you
leaving you hanging out
in the salty air, seasick
and feeling alone.
Sandy Wasserman reading at SPC open mic last Monday night
—Photo by Michelle Kunert
EXPERIMENTS THAT FAIL
—Michael Cluff, Corona, CA
Paprika on raspberries
singing Elmer Fudd style
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"
drinking real wine
on stage
to equate method acting
in Fontana or Moreno Valley.
Washing three day's dirty dishes
in an old machine
without soap
jumping from the second-story roof with wings
done the exact same forty minutes later
without wings
trying to remember Katherine's face
that first love
after thirty, nearly forty years ago.
______________________
EXPERIMENTS THAT FAIL 2
—Michael Cluff
Trying to be a three-piece
pin-striped-suited
accountant who always had
to keep his tie tight against
the white shirt collar
his wingtips on
even at three in the morning
during tax week.
Reporting on Chamber of Commerce
in republican-run mountain communities
on shaky earthquake fault lines.
Following foolish
and self-centered bosses
claiming the public good
over their own
in theory only.
Being happy with the status
others are always
trying to lay marmalade-thick
upon my ersatz busy soul.
___________________
FAILED EXPERIMENT 3
—Michael Cluff
Ivy, holly
and mistletoe
intertwining
my near-orthodox
Great Grandmother Mina's
menorah
in 1961.
—Michael Cluff, Corona, CA
Paprika on raspberries
singing Elmer Fudd style
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"
drinking real wine
on stage
to equate method acting
in Fontana or Moreno Valley.
Washing three day's dirty dishes
in an old machine
without soap
jumping from the second-story roof with wings
done the exact same forty minutes later
without wings
trying to remember Katherine's face
that first love
after thirty, nearly forty years ago.
______________________
EXPERIMENTS THAT FAIL 2
—Michael Cluff
Trying to be a three-piece
pin-striped-suited
accountant who always had
to keep his tie tight against
the white shirt collar
his wingtips on
even at three in the morning
during tax week.
Reporting on Chamber of Commerce
in republican-run mountain communities
on shaky earthquake fault lines.
Following foolish
and self-centered bosses
claiming the public good
over their own
in theory only.
Being happy with the status
others are always
trying to lay marmalade-thick
upon my ersatz busy soul.
___________________
FAILED EXPERIMENT 3
—Michael Cluff
Ivy, holly
and mistletoe
intertwining
my near-orthodox
Great Grandmother Mina's
menorah
in 1961.
___________________
Today's LittleNip:
ONCE INCOGNITO
—B.Z. Niditch
Hiding under a woolen blanket
this young once budding poet
is asked to play a tune
on his first violin,
A song breathes on him.
___________________
A song breathes on him.
___________________
—Medusa