The Universe Has Everything

Butterfly Fractal

(from Piglette's Fractal Universe)

ON EXPLORATION

—James Galvin

A hawk drops to the treetop

Like a falling cross.

The haybarn is ticking.

The Universe has everything.

That's what I like about it.

A single chubby cloud

Beelines downwind

Trying to catch up with the others.

Yellow leaves plane across the water,

Drifting the inlet.

The pond is a droozy eye.

Details tend to equal each other,

Making decisions harder.

Is polio an endangered species?
The Universe is mostly empty,

That's important;

A fractal palindrome of concentric

Emptinesses.

Is there life out there?

Are there lawns?

Columbus is famous for discovering a place

Where there were already people

Killing each other.

Nothing missing. Nothing new.

Let's pick wildflowers.

Let's take a meteor shower.

Let's live forever and let's die, too.

______________________

—Medusa

Revising Our Needs

Neon Tree

Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

AND THE WIND SAYS SOON
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

The poor trees have forgotten
where they put their leaves

they keep shaking birds loose
and the winds says
soon—soon I will bring back
your happiness

and the trees smile
where the winter sun is lying
in golden positions
upon their branches

and the birds forgive them
and return


(First published in Portland Oregonian, 1970
then in Joyce's mini-chap, Frog Perspective)

____________________________

HIS UMBRELLA
—Joyce Odam

He needs his umbrella
because, if he has it, it will not rain.
It will not rain because he is ready for it.

He is impatient for rain—needs
to know he can flip open his umbrella
in case the rain comes suddenly upon him

when he is out in the open,
with no hat on, and lost from any
direction because he has forgotten so much.

___________________________

THROUGH THE OBLIQUE MIRROR
—Joyce Odam

Here is where it ends—this long corridor,
each step mysterious, like someone else’s

memory. Whose mirror is this, anyway?
—hung at the wall-end, where you watch

yourself approach—as from a forgotten
distance—farther than you imagined.

___________________________

STATISTIC
—Joyce Odam

(after The Old Beggar Woman, Barcelona 1901, Picasso)

All night she walks in her blue fur,
ice-light on her face, crystallizing
her expression. Her yellow gown trails
in the yellow reflections of the street.
She has forgotten where she is.
Her bare feet move in the direction
of rain. She catches herself in a
passing window. Light mocks her,
holds her fixed. She poses and poses
for the admiration of glass. Under
her coat, her hands hold her breasts.
Her blue fur slips from her shoulders.
She begins to undress.

__________________________

HER SECRET
—Joyce Odam

She buries the secret like some forgotten toy,
or one discarded in her mind—under
the busy thoughts that surface.

The secret sinks and sinks to the bottom
and settles there in the mud
of her existence.

It burrows deeper.
But there is no deeper,
so it nudges there—remembering itself.

But she will not
let it rise; it is her prisoner.
She’s afraid of it. She knows it can tell.

__________________________

UNTITLED
—Joyce Odam

just now
the dancer suspends in air
holding his leap
loving the perfection of it
he is almost a snapshot
he makes the music wait
the whole day falls around him
he does not move
spotlights of night come on
and he shines in his bright costume
he has forgotten how
not to be a dancer


(First published in Poet News, October 1988)

__________________________

Today's LittleNip:

HAPPINESS
—Joyce Odam 

What is it
we have forgotten
so we cannot praise it?

Did it not belong to us once?

Then let us praise our lack of it
to honor our endurance.
We must revise our needs.

__________________________

—Medusa

Photo by Katy Brown

How Sweet the Horror

Medusa II

—Painting by Josef Mehoffer, 1904

THE LAST PART OF GOODBYE
                        for Italo Calvino
—D.R. Wagner

Here, against the sea
To make the softest of beds, Perseus
Has strewn the sand with leaves,
Small branches of plants born under
Water and has placed Medusa’s head
Upon this to keep it from harm
Face down. The little sea plants touching it
Turn to coral and nymphs begin to gather

Bringing seaweed and sea plants to touch
The head and doing so make coral ornaments
Where there was but sea wrack moments ago.
How sweet the horror of this head
Becomes. Why even the blood of Medusa

Is of such lightness that Pegasus,
So beloved of the muses, springs from
Her blood and white and winged
Perseus rides off with the face of the
Gorgon hidden, carrying a reality that
Is invincible like a precious burden.

May the winds bear us too with our sight
That we may behold the world’s delight without
Gazing directly into its eyes but
Find ourselves reflected, alone and wondering
Rather than in the coldness of its stone.

______________________

Thanks to today's contributors! Big storms headed through this weekend; curl up with a good book and keep your powder dry. Write about the rain, then tell Mother Medusa all about it... And thanks to D.R. Wagner for his ditty about (and the cool pic he found of) the old gal.

SnakePal Sal Buttaci writes: The Poem Factory at sambpoet.webs.com invites you to submit poems for consideration in the Winter 2011 issue: 3-5 poems (24-line limit per poem) + a brief bio (up to 3 lines). Poems need not be about winter! Deadline: January 07, 2011. Send poem(s) in an e-mail (no attachments) to Salvatore Buttaci at sambpoet@yahoo.com/. In the e-mail's subject line, type: FACTORY POEMS.

________________________

HOW LONG FORGOTTEN
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

From time to time I am rewarded
with the mental images of my college
days at UCLA when I would venture
into the Papa Bach book store in
Westwood Village, sit down at their
old upright piano and play from
memory a couple of Bach’s easier
2-part inventions, very fast.

Today my 10 fingers can no longer
remember past the first 6 or 7 notes
which keys to press in which order,
at any speed.

I pick up my old trombone. Is it
wrong to ask the mouthpiece to
remember my lips? Do I have to
do all the work?

How wonderful the Internet! Just
type in one little shred of memory
and it responds with companion
data one may have forgotten.

_________________________

MICROFINE SPEARS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

At work, just out the window, on this blue day,
fruit filling squeezed into a sandwich of steady rains,
I see, just lifting their head-crowns over hill-ranges,
the Sierras, icy white packed down to stay.
This kind of sunlight ripens no harvest grain,
no grapes-on-the-upslope sensuous afternoons.
Who knows how quickly the night clouds come to estrange us
from the million million bodily tides that strain
guylike, tugging our skins toward bursts of moon
made most ferocious in their eloquence
by gusty cold trained on our upstraining faces?
Our eyes water; we think this means moonlight
has forged its halo into microfine spears
and stabbed at the pupils. But no, this is part fright,
part shame that cannot stand to have drawn these tears
of gravity, of lunar influence.
Let us bow down our heads in acknowledgment,
as odors rise from dark ground, like mud, like mint.
But all this is to anticipate the night.
Savor the day: the cold, the savage light.

________________________

NOTHING OF WHAT IS WHO
—Tom Goff

What’s best forgotten is nothing at all of you:
How can I not remember the call of you
without any sound or summons within my skin,
knowing wordlessly not to begin
to think why you are beautiful, but most
only to know you do infiltrate like a ghost:
you sway within your body inside mine
as giving throats declare soft long swallows of wine.
You’re richly laced and laden vintner’s juice
still soft in a glass unbending as blue spruce.
How do you know how to fill me spilling over
with light, or lift my awkward decorum cover?
I forget everything of who in me is who.
But nothing of what one other who? You know what who.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

COLD MORNINGS
—Ann Privateer, Davis 

Frost with a chance
of rain icicles

recall days
when grass

was green
instead of brown

and I could smile
instead of frown.

______________________

—Medusa

 Photo by Ann Privateer

Spilling the Moon

Illustration from Edmund Dulac's

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1909)

THINKING OF LADY YANG AT MIDNIGHT
—Anonymous, Korea, c. 1100-1150

Watching alone by the ancient city wall,

Thinking of one who was too beautiful,

What did I see? What did I hear?

Moonlight, quivering over empty courtyards,

A voice calling out of the midnight shadows.

One name, her name, echoes across the silence.

Light feet, her feet, in shoes of peacock feathers,

Dance through the empty halls. Will they never rest?

Thinking of joys that ended and sorrows which never end

I find my white robe spangled with tears for her.

(Translated from the Korean by Jean S. Grigsby)

______________________

FLIRTATION
—Attributed to Li Ch'ing-chao, twelfth century

After kicking on the swing,

Lasciviously, I get up and rouge my palms.

Thick dew on a frail flower,

Perspiration soaks my thin dress.

A new guest enters.

My stockings come down

And my hairpins fall out.

Embarrassed, I run away,

And lean flirtatiously against the door,

Tasting a green plum.

(Translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung)

______________________

MARRIED LOVE
—Kuan Tao-sheng (1262-1319)

You and I

Have so much love,

That it

Burns like a fire,

In which we bake a lump of clay

Molded into a figure of you

And a figure of me.

Then we take both of them,

And break them into pieces,

And mix the pieces with water,

And mold again a figure of you,

And a figure of me.

I am in your clay.

You are in my clay.

In life we share a single quilt.

In death we will share one coffin.

(Translated from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung)

______________________

EVENING ON THE MOUNTAIN:
SONG TO THE MOON IN THE WELL
—Yi Kyubo (1168-1241)

1

Blue water ripples the well at the corner of the mossy rock,

The new moon is beautifully etched therein.

I scoop out some water by only half a shadow enters my jar.

I fear I'll bring only half the golden mirror home.

2

A mountain monk coveted the moon;

he drew water, a whole jar full;

but when he reached his temple, he discovered

that tilting the jar meant spilling the moon.

(Translated from the Korean by Kevin O'Rourke)

_____________________________

Today's LittleNip:

MOON
—Jusammi Chikako (c. 1300)

     On this summer night

All the household lies asleep,

     And in the doorway,

For once open after dark,

Stands the moon, brilliant, cloudless.

(Translated from the Japanese by Edwin A. Cranston)

_____________________________

—Medusa

Illustration by Charles Livingston Bull for

Wood-Folk Comedies: The Play of Wild-Animal Life
on a Natural Stage 

by Wm. J. Long, 1920

Call It Something

Beauty peaks

The curiosity

Of man

Of beasts

—Poem and Photo by Ronald Edwin Lane, Weimar

YEARS FROM NOW

—Kim Sowol

Should you come to me

Years from now,

I shall say: "I have forgotten."

Should you scold me,

I shall say: "After much longing I have forgotten."

Should you persist in scolding me,

I shall say: "For lack of trust I have forgotten."

Not yesterday, not today,

But years from now,

I shall say: "I have forgotten."

(Translated from the Korean by Kim O'Rourke)

______________________

Thanks to today's contributors! Our Seed of the Week is "Things I Have Forgotten"—although, as Taylor Graham says, how could we remember them? Anyway, send your riffs on things you remember that you've forgotten to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 96726.

Call for Chapbooks:

The Special Collections Department at the University of California, Davis, seeks copies of chapbooks published by presses and poets in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Literary Watershed, including the Sierra Nevada, and in the North Coast region, Marin County to the Oregon border. Self-published chapbooks are also desired. The Library seeks a comprehensive record of press production and of the poets who live here, and seeks at least a representative collection of these Northern California literary landscapes. Well over 90% of the poets’ chapbooks held at UCDavis which are listed in the UCDavis Library HARVEST catalog are also in WorldCat, the international online library catalog.

Please send them to John Sherlock, Special Collections Department, University of California, General Library, 100 North West Quad, Davis CA 95616-5292. You may check the websites which list publications already known about or held at www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/specol/researchprojects/files/bib-sacramentosanjoaquin-2ed.pdf 

You may direct some questions to David Anderson, a Lincoln poet and a UCDavis Library retiree at rockydell@digitalpath.net. David can answer non-technical questions. Direct your questions about the chapbooks collection and bibliography to Sherlock at jasherlock@ucdavis.edu

Note: If you download the pdf of the UCD collection, you'll see that they already have all the Rattlesnake Press books and broadsides; no need for rattlechappers and SnakePals to send their work.

_______________________

MILDEW, MOLD, MEMORY
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

I’ve forgotten (if I ever knew) how to read
a fortune in tea leaves drowned at the bottom
of a cup. Likewise, the words to Un Hombre
Solo, and the name of the cinema in Freiburg
where I sat in the dark without subtitles.
I’ve forgotten the difference between mildew
and mold, but not the smell of books that lost
their stories to the flood. I’ve forgotten
the name of a little girl who was nowhere
near the dredger piles we searched; but I
recall she was found; not a little girl anymore.
And I remember how those heaps of rocks
grow glorious with poppies every spring.
Is this good fortune, tea leaves or not?
Shall we try to translate every tale to happy-
ending—even the words that wash away?

_______________________

GIFTWRAP
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

In the nursing home
among moans of misgivings
and odors of can’t get there myself

all the poetic images about
fields of flowers more delicate
than the dying poets themselves

are fused into cheery wallpaper
that is pasted so distant in time
and space behind the handrails

those annoying reminders of
immediate needs that drive a
weak body further and further
into the oblivion of helplessness.

If only I had been more careful
tearing the wrapper before
devouring that candy bar
I might be a millionaire…

If only I had actually read and
digested the books I bought then
shelved about how to better
manage one’s affairs…

If only I had properly anchored
those helium filled balloons we
could still celebrate childhoods
that have drifted away…

__________________________

AFTER DEATH IS DONE

And death is done with us
We lie scattered across the fields,
Oh lovely little flowers no longer
Noticed by even the swift birds
Gathering colors to themselves so they
May deliver songs to the trees,
The banks of the river. Hear. Hear.

I don’t know why they are here.
They have found something else to do
Now that death has slid its gray
Hands away from us, stopped its
Fear mongering and no longer plans
To show us what we were unable
To see before he showed up with
His lovely capes and shoes and that
Music we were attracted to despite
The entire artificiality of the set.

I’ll walk you to the corner where
We can find the teachers looking
Up the roads and down the roads,
Explaining how it all works.
They will not seem strange to us.

We are the strange. We have seen
The ice crystals in the air and have
Moved them into shapes we can
Understand but are unable to find
Words to describe. Offer to
Dance with them, play the
Pauses where there is breathing and
There is no longer breathing.

And there it is again.
Let us not suppose that things
Will always work out this way.

Call it something.


—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

___________________________

THE EARTH FORGETTING
—D.R. Wagner

We watched the earth forgetting.
There were animals no longer seen,
Gems so brilliant they could create
Silence in the mouths of great kings,
The humming across Summer of insect
Joy, drifting their song above flowers
No longer seen in the draperies
Gathered by the seasons. Whose
Smile was that? and it is gone
Down the street, not part of
Memory at all, a flash, then nothing.

The music of a piano and a concertina
Wrapped in late evening and dressed in
Sharps and flats has gone dancing.
It will not come back. Perhaps
It will be mined from a lost manuscript
Far from now and be seen at eleven o’clock,
But for now, the earth has forgotten.

It is busy counting waves against a thousand
Shores, finding them unspeakably beautiful.
It watches the moonlight on wheat fields
Ready for harvest beneath a full moon
Wondering what color they are, how it
Might be called, if at all. There is
Always more. It forgets the leaves of
A thousand trees and waits for us to
Notice they no longer have names.

Our families stretch their blood lines,
Their nets of living and dead upon the
Days, one upon one and suddenly one
Is forgotten, then two, then an uncle
Who was last remembered by a niece
Many years ago because he offered her a
Lovely glass he had found in a small
Store in the midwest. “I believe that store
Is no longer there. Perhaps you will
Like this glass. Look, it catches the sun
As if it being careful of the light.”

For now we will sit on the steps just
Outside the house and allow the moments
To come down around us without purpose
So we might better understand the earth,
Her strange habits, her long, long thoughts.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

Put your regretter on zero.

—Mervyn Hine

_________________________

—Medusa

Fish swim

Between the legs of men

Unaware

—Poem and Photo by Ronald Edwin Lane

Darkness Measured

Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

A NAMELESS WOMAN
—No Ch'onmyong (1912-1957)

I wish to be a nameless woman

way out on a small hillside.

With gourd-vines on the roof of my cottage, 

pumpkins and cucumbers in a hemp-garden,

the moon invited into my yard

over a fence made of roses,

and my arms full of stars;

the owl-hooting dark will not make me lonely.

In a village where the train never stops,

eating miller-cake soaked in a brass basin,

talking with a close friend until late at night

about the secrets of the fox-haunted mountains,

while a shaggy dog barks at the moon,
I shall be happier than a queen.


(Translated from the Korean by Ko Won)

________________________

My apologies to Bob Stanley for mis-attributing his poem about Richard Hansen that was posted last Saturday (see the "Imaginarium of Life" post); I said it was written by Tom Goff, who kindly reminded me that no, it wasn’t his. Sorry, Bob! And thanks to today's contributors, who really DID do what I'm saying they did...really........ Joyce is polishing off our Self-Portrait SOW, and D.R. Is reminding us that these dark winter days won't last forever.

Congrats to Victoria Dalkey for winning a lifetime achievement resolution from the Sacramento City Council, which she'll be officially receiving down at City Hall tonight at 6pm. Today's poet, Joyce Odam, received a similar resolution from the city several years ago, by the way.

Our Seed of the Week is "Things I Have Forgotten", an apt subject for rumination during this busy season. Send your poems/artwork/photos to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline on SOWs.

_______________________

I WILL BE THE CROW TODAY
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

i will be the crow today
i am already black-winged
and full of harsh utterance

i will separate the rain
i will go toward the
translucent darkness i can
feel in my mind

                *

i am many selves         all crow:
we enter the silver and gray,
perfect-eyed

trees are for disappearance
we possess branches
we gleam in the little bright
mirrors of the rain


(First published in The Cape Rock, Centennial Issue, 1972-73
then later in Joyce's chapbook, Lemon Center For Hot-Buttered Roll)

_________________________

I FIND MY CHILD SELF
—Joyce Odam

I find my child self in the same old hallway,
toys all over the carpet outside the door,

to watch for my mother to come home,
to guard the length of the waiting,

get lost in the play,
watch for her,       watch for her,

rearrange the toys,       be small and quiet,
I think I am eight years old.

_________________________

MIRROR-TALK
—Joyce Odam

I, being myself,
find again the stranger, saying,
who are you.

And the old dialogue is on again.
I say: I am one self, then another,
then another;

I say:
I have no more words
to questions made of words.

I say: If love is all you need,
you have too much and not enough.
Why can’t you be content with that, I say.

_________________________

TO MYSELF
—Joyce Odam

Who is Joyce, who is she,
with her stumble of words,
her clumsy language?

Look, she is all un-
gathered again,
mended so temporarily
in one first mirror.

Stepping away, look how she
stutters apart,
sending little nervous glances
in all that glass.

Oh, she has something to say.
Oh, she is opening her mouth.
Oh, a moth flies in.

Tell us about gray, then;
tell us about soft suffocation
on the tongue.

Well, her eyes are sufficient,
I suppose;
they are rather like candles.
But the moth has died.


(First published in California Quarterly, 1974)

_________________________

THE SELF QUESTIONS
—Joyce Odam

Where do we go now in the midst of ruin?
Who allows this?

What strange scent pours out of windows?
What flaw waits in the heart of perfection?

Whose rule is this?
Who cries with me here

in the immense shadow of self-projection—
loomed up the high wall

to be flattened into
this futile dance of exaggerated self?

_________________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

SELF HOLDING SELF
—Joyce Odam

dance now
in circle of self-watching

self holding self
mirror

all that darkness measured
and made easy to lead and follow


(First published in Blindman’s Rainbow) 

_________________________

—Medusa

Photo by D.R. Wagner

Living in the Same Sentence

Allegra Silberstein dances at Davis Art Center

at her 80th birthday party

—Photo by Trina Drotar, Sacramento

RIDING WAVES
—Paul Lojeski, Port Jefferson, NY

I could confuse you
as easily as I have
been confused
by songs sung
in treetops
and concert halls
in misty mornings
and disturbing nights
but what would be
the fun in that? when
we’re all living
in the same sentence,
anyway, letters
and punctuation
but boats bobbing
on these rough,
salty seas.

_____________________

Thanks, Paul for today's poetry, and thanks to Trina Drotar for the photo of Davis Poet Laureate Allegra Silberstein dancing for the Davis Art Center party and reading that was given in her honor last Saturday on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Trina writes: It was a lovely evening. Several people read at open mic, a tribute to Allegra, for sure. Her grandson, Harrison, read the final open mic piece of the night. It was really a lovely time, and Allegra was most gracious.

I see the Friends of the Packard Library of Yuba County read 180 of Emily Dickinson's poems in public on her birthday last Friday as a fundraiser (and consciousness-raiser). They read in a bar, a diner, a gas station, a shoe repair shop, a bank, a laundromat and on a commute bus carrying state workers to Sacramento. Bless them for bringing poetry to the people! (And bless Carlos Alcala of The Sacramento Bee for bringing it to our attention.)

_____________________

INDIVIDUALISM
—Paul Lojesky

I imagine a herd
of buffalo,
miles long
and miles wide,
grazing together
on moonlit
grasses, not yet
in the sights
of our slaughter.
Now we're
the herd moving
not grandly, though,
as one across
verdant plains
but as a sea
of tornadoes
each loosed upon
its own twisted
wreck.

______________________

HEROES
—Paul Lojesky

The kill team boys
took fingers
of their victims
home in calfskin
pouches to show
wives and girl-
friends back in South
Carolina and Illinois
what victory
truly looked like.

______________________

HOUSE ON A HILL
—Paul Lojesky

The blues stretched
blue across Monterey
Bay to Monterey,
with surfers and seals
off the crowded
summer beach
in blue water
through the wall
of windows at Tom’s
house, at Tom’s
house.

Oh, Joni would
loved to have
jammed in
this California
house and sad
Richard Brautigan
would’ve been
rescued and re-
inspired here
but now it’s just
three old men
staring at gulls
and kids running
the sand in blue
air by Tom’s
house, by Tom’s
house.

Maybe you’re lucky,
too, and you’ve got
your own Tom’s house
somewhere where
you stare in wonder
at the world and for
a moment breathe
safety and surprise
and know what
could’ve been
had we chosen
that blue, blue path,
the one dreaming
sweetly at Tom’s
house, at Tom’s
house.

_______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

PARADOX
—Paul Lojesky

Those who mind
least their living
wish most for life
after death.

______________________

—Medusa

Manhattan skyline taken from
Paul's old apartment in Hoboken

—Photo by Paul Lojesky