—Photos from her “Picnic by the Pond” series
by Carol Louise Moon, Placerville, CA
WATCHING THE MORNING EVOLVE
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA
I shall linger
On this corner
A little longer,
Waiting for
Morning’s buses
To pass by,
Then wander
To a newsstand
And read the
Morning’s headlines
For free,
While coffee
Fuels the
Rushing bands
Of busy
Worker-bees,
Who live
Check-to-check.
If they don’t
Make it on time,
They’ll be
Burned alive.
For them
There’s no
Security.
___________________
BIOLOGICAL CLOCK
—Joseph Nolan
Eggs are cooking.
The heat is on!
They’re made to sizzle.
Workers whistle
When they go by.
Eggs are cooking.
They’re getting hot.
It won’t take much
Just a boom-boom shot.
She’s messing
In the kitchen.
I hear her banging pans.
Is she asking for attention
From me or another man?
WHAT’S FOR DINNER?
—Joseph Nolan
I was thinking of getting a dog,
But afraid that the dog might get me.
You have to communicate with your dog
If you are going to own one.
You can’t just ignore your dog all the time.
It would get so bored!
But if you want to communicate with a dog
You can’t go into high-brow discussions
Concerning apples, serpents, the Fall of Man,
The Immaculate Conception,
The Ascension or the Assumption.
You have to communicate with a dog on
A dog’s level.
Dogs like to think about what’s for dinner
And what, if anything, they have to do to earn it.
They are perfectly willing to do all kinds of tricks
To earn the complete satisfaction
That a belly-full of food provides.
Just be specific. Tell them what you want
And when you get it, feed them!
That is the most important thing:
Rewarding what you want,
But it gets so tedious trying to control another
With rewards all the time.
It can turn even a good dog
Into a greedy bastard.
A dog’s hunger is eternal.
What’s for dinner?
___________________
AVOIDING ORTHO SURGERY, 101
—Joseph Nolan
The time to strengthen connections
Is before they have fallen apart.
We don’t want to have tendons flailing
And retracting, muscles failing,
The only way to get another start—
To sew it back together
In a work of art,
Under a surgeon’s blade
A new connection, made,
So painful to the heart!
A FAINT LIGHT AT THE END
OF A DAMP, DARK CAVE
—Joseph Nolan
The faintest light
At the end of a cave
Is someone’s ideal of perfection,
Through which they seek salvation,
And struggle all their lives
To approach.
So don’t
Encroach upon it
With your
Vain solutions.
Their answers will
Come to them,
In time.
It’s not a train
Running toward them
At full-speed
To run them down.
More likely
It’s an aphorism,
Wrapped in a poem,
Inside a koan,
Unintelligible
To all
But a few,
Who have the inclination
To explore
A damp, dark cave
At noon,
For the benefit of shade.
A DEBT OF GRAVITAS
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
(Response to “Fourth of July at
the Mall” by Kathy Kieth on
Medusa’s Kitchen, Sunday, July 7)
stray Roman candles and pizza
amber waves that missed the pot
attractive store fronts aplenty
fraught with stuff you haven’t got
a great community costume party
one movie that sends you “reeling”
at least you have a plastic card
to deal with what you’re feeling
___________________
SUMMERTIME
—Caschwa
Boomer alert!
Watch for a surge
of receding hairlines
to overtake our
inviting shorelines
the one place where
daringly bare ankles
can finally displace old,
dingy socks that keep
falling down anyways
beware those container
ships inching across
the bike path, a true
balancing act of
fats and rats
the lifeguards pretend
to just look away
admiring palm trees
that bend and sway
but remain standing
How deep is too deep?
said the wave to the tide;
seven chances later
none got on for the ride.
SPOILER ALERT
—Caschwa
Don’t look a gift truth
in the mouth of babes
Week after week
Julie and his Orange
color the news
No info is too private
to make public,
we gotta have it
all right now!
As long as someone
stamps it “Certified”
and it doesn’t sting
our eyes, it passes
the muster gas test.
_________________
FORGET THE LAWS
—Caschwa
First and foremost we are a nation
of devious snake oil salesmen
It doesn’t take a particularly high IQ
to identify areas where the countless
laws we labor to sustain fail to meet
the needs of all the people
So then we get dozens of candidates,
each offering their own brand of
snake oil, which sells like pancakes,
to people whose needs have not
been addressed by our national
leaders
Buyers line up, from Confederate
soldiers who will never admit the war
is over, to any other citizen who insists
that the government put their personal
interests above those of anyone else
Do wear gloves when you cast your
vote, because the ballot will be reeking
in snake oil like never before.
MINE, ALL MINE
—Caschwa
The New World was soon
overcome by heatwaves
of royalty, out-classing and
out-performing any human
sweat or natural tulle fogs
This land is my land, set
foot on it and you are mine
as well, my lowly subject
with no predicate because
I own all the words and all
the language rules along
with all the land
My ownership is eternal,
passing from one generation
to the next, surviving any
change in government or
constitutional law that bans
titles of nobility
Kneel before me, peon, you
are worth less to me than
the most common letter in
the alphabet; I cannot even
sell or trade you for one
decent meal, woe is me!
THE TORNADO THAT RANSACKED MY TOWN
(about six, seven weeks later)
—Michael H. Brownstein, Jefferson City, MO
You can tell the health of a town by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens.
Roger: In that case, I give this town a D-.
Mike: If there is such a thing, an F+.
Bill: No electricity, no food. Yes, there is such a thing as an F+.
Lynn: And the rich people in this town, well, I always thought they were caring people, but now, now I know differently.
Six weeks after the tornado
raped and ransacked and traumatized
the poorest section of my town,
Stadium to the south, Dunklin to the north,
Lafayette to the east and Jackson to the west,
Annie Schulte opened her store
and began the beginning of making
everything that needed to be made right
right. We found a man living in his basement,
no running water, no gas, no electricity—
and she asked: What can I do for him now?
Suddenly boxes of food began to appear here
and there, flood waters not an issue, poison ivy
a small detail, a tree crushing what once was a wall
a slight inconvenience: Who else is hungry?
Yes, she fundraised, but she also shopped, helped,
got dirty, and still gives of her time and her money
and her prayers and hopes until—
Roger: OK, maybe a C-.
Mike: Poor as we are, what can we do?
Bill: Bring the food to us and we’ll distribute it.
Lynn: The town still failed, in my opinion, but this woman here, this Annie Schulte, don’t know if she’s rich or poor as we are—probably not all that poor ‘cause she does own her own business, Encore, it’s called—but anyway, well, she’s my hero.
Yeah, they concur, mine too.
___________________
Today’s LittleNip:
ALIBI THAT ALMOST NEVER WORKS
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA
I didn't
Do it.
Was one
Of those
Creation myths.
___________________
A big Monday-morning thank you to today’s contributors, as they sending us reeling into another week in July!
Poetry events in our area begin tonight with Poetry in Motion, 6-7pm, a poetry read-around at the Placerville Sr. Center in Placerville. Then at 7:30pm, two chapbooks will be launched at Sac. Poetry Center, featuring readers Bethanie Humphreys, Heather Judy, and Nikki Thompson (plus open mic), 25th & R Sts., Sac.
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 Patricia Wentzel.
Third Thursdays in the Sacramento Room of the Central Library, a poetry read-around, meets at noon this Thursday in the Central Library on I St. in Sacramento. That evening at 8, Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe and Juice Bar features Izzy LaLa and Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas plus open mic, 1414 16th St., Sacramento.
On Friday, Sac. Poetry Center will present A Special Random Friday Reading with Shaun Griffin and Tom Meschery, 6pm, at SPC in Sacramento. And at 7:30pm that evening, Katy Brown will read at The Other Voice in Davis (plus open mic), Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis on Patwin Road.
Sunday brings another poetry event in Davis, as Davis Poet Laureate James Lee Jobe reads at the Davis Arts Center Poetry Series, 2-4pm, 1414 F St. There will also be a Poetry in the Sierra Foothills readomg. 1-3pm, featuring Taylor Graham. That’s at Caffe Santoro on Pleasant Valley Rd. in Diamond Springs, west of Placerville.
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 picnics by the pond!
Summer Baby
—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.