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Sunday, September 26, 2021

Hanging Ten on the Left Coast

 
 —Public Domain Photos Courtesy of Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

 

CALIFORNIA COAST 
—A Poem Suite by Gerard Sarnat, San Francisco, CA
 
 
i. Annotated Coast-To-Coast “Garbage Time”* Hourglass

Last year gotta headache
which ain’t goin’ away

so some hospice doc
came to my studio

apartment because
what with falling all

the time I have not
been particularly fit

and there’s no one
to drive me in.

She examined
real quick then

bit her tongue
to say, You

must come
for tests


which I
don't

soas
after two

months more
they send out

a nurse to urge
this here GOMER**

but after whiffing
the kitchen, he says

Mr. Sarnet, your pain
in the head is just from

smelling rotting trash golly
we must deal with that now!



* term allegedly coined by legendary Los Angeles Laker broadcaster, Chick Hearn (1916-2002), to describe one-sided basketball game blowouts when the outcome has already been decided, and the coaches of one or both teams replace their best players with substitutes.
** Acronym for Get Out Of My Emergency Room, from the novel,
House of God (1978) by Samuel Shem, pen name for a fellow internal medicine house officer at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital. GOMERS are defined essentially as sickly old people who now, because of dementia, have lost whatever quality it is that makes someone a person. Female GOMERS were always admitted to The Rose Room where all the wilted Jewish Roses chanted Oy!Oy!Oy! in unison.
 
 
 

 
 
ii. Northern California Coast

Clear sunny windswept reality
the day after a week
of straight-on rain

deep rocky gray swirling
shitty toilet bowl of
stinking sinkholes

in some from gray hostile
Pacific in all its black
blue blade steely

slate cold majestic bluster,
will I really truly will  
to recommit to you

on our anniversary when
we return to Mendocino
next Thanksgiving?
 
 
 

 
 
iii. On My California Coast Men’s Group

Six of us left entering our second quarter century
together, a few already lost to dementia
plus death, we are a fluctuating
multi-cellular organism
that undergoes natural human aging.

Lower testosteroned biologic shifts
both costly and evolving
may be experienced as psychological sea changes
—even occasional apparent fruition
some uncontrived connectedness, intimacy.

At times I am just this bitty cork
bobbing on a less than pacific ocean
whichever way currents dictate.
No longer young palm tree fronds
hula in synch (or not) to the humid breeze’s song.

Aloha means Goodbye as well as Hello.
 
 
 

 
 
iv. West Coast Summer Funk Haiku

I felt so sorry
for Manhattanites during
Corona splurge there

confined to their small
apartments dead of winter
but now that wheel’s turned.
 
 
 

 
 
v. Third Coast

Discarding “see me” THC cartridge pen,
instead pen put to parchment paper,
much more measured
than if attempted in person

I raise questions whether
after so many years, we two have
a forthright friendship or are still
simply coasting acquaintances?

Do both pull our own weight,
don’t flake while the other
waits half an hour on a corner
outside chosen restaurant once again?

This dunce has been harboring discomfiting
implicit bias not yet front of mind
which feels like you sometimes violate
my personal trust—plus probably vice versa.

Waves of conflict ringing in ears
after summoning such courage to write,
will each of us step up to offer self-disclosure
and emotional support, or drift apart?
 
 
 

 
 
vi. Our Surf Town Haiku

Buddies are dopers
who also use hybrid five
milligram gummies.

The bus leaves each day.
If you have the willpower,
make sure to take it.

______________________
 
Today's LittleNip:
 
San Francisco is poetry. Even the hills rhyme.
 
—Pat Montandon 

______________________
 
Our welcome to San Francisco Poet Gerard Sarnat today, and thanks to him for this long poem! You can count on more to come from Gerard next Thursday, when he will be featured. Meanwhile, check out gerardsarnat.com/bio.html AND/OR www.pw.org/directory/writers/gerard_sarnat_md/. (Yes, he’s also a doctor.)

Gerard is the first of a new group of poets coming to us from Duotrope (duotrope.com), a resource that I become aware of last week when they wrote to me to notify me that they had just listed Medusa’s Kitchen. I subsequently have received several fine submissions, including Gerard’s. So put on your best manners—we’ll be seeing some new poets in the Kitchen!

Today from 12-2pm: William O’Daly will be celebrating the life and work of his friend, poet, translator, essayist, and publisher Sam Hamill, with several other poets reading poems for, or in remembrance of, or by Sam in this Writing for Peace event (writingforpeace.org/sunday-live-readings), “Of Cascadia: A Tribute to Sam Hammill”, hosted and curated by poet and artist Juniper Moon, the current Writing for Peace artist-in-residence. Zoom: web.zoom.us/j/82093325006?pwd=aUZYTzF1MWhNakIrWXRhQ0NTOG1aZz09  Meeting ID: 820 9332 5006 (Passcode: 212396).

______________________

—Medusa
 








 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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