64 And Other Dinosaurs

Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

FRIENDSHIP
—Paul Lojeski, Port Jefferson, NY

Envy is my best friend.
She laughs in my ear,
tugs at my heart,

pulls me under big,
blue waves.
Look at his gold teeth

his halo of pearls, she
coos. Hear the crowd
call his name and lust

drag him down.
She makes my heart
ache, tells me to covet

till it hurts, till pain
becomes joy. She
teaches and cares,

my envy, my shelter
and warmth, my best
friend.

____________________

WHEN I'M SIXTY-FOUR
—Paul Lojeski

Well, today I’m 64.
When I was 20, living
in a little house in Oberlin,
I played When I’m Sixty-
Four the day Pepper
came out and I was
high and there was war,
of course, and injustice,
naturally, and my youth,
coincidently, and that
house rocked as we all
sang along, wondering
what the hell sixty-four
was. Well, today I’m
64 and now I know,
now I don’t have to play
that damn song anymore.

___________________

RETIREMENT
—Paul Lojeski

For years, the old man wrote letters to the worlds’ most famous
newspaper. Mostly about economics and the failure of policies,
they were never published. He’d call family and read them, his
voice booming and righteous, the pain of rejection flaring over
the line. How could he be so ignored? Isn’t my analysis correct?
No answer assuaged his rage. He’d sit in that desert house at 
the table piled high with letters, staring at the blue sky for
weeks, while others played golf or wove baskets and, then,
another idea would hit and he’d begin writing again with a true
and steady hand. He couldn’t help himself. It was all he had.
They had to see he was worthy, that he was one of them.
Before I die, he thought. Before I die.

_________________

ALCOHOL WAS OUR BEST IDEA
—Paul Lojeski

I heard the sirens last
night. Seems there're
always more in the dark.

Fleets of cars crashed,
a guy gunned down
his family, a neighbor

plugged a neighbor over
some wandering roses
and on it went till dawn

rescued the rest of us.
Funny how we're
always going on about

the beauty of life while
working so hard to end it.
Drink?

____________________

2/23/2011
—Paul Lojeski

I’m reading William Stafford,
listening to Trixie Whitley sing,
I wanna live where love lives.

My daughter’s on the couch,
eating a sandwich and Seinfeld’s
on TV. My last breath’s outside,

playing with the children next
door, sure I don’t know it’s
there but I’ve seen it coming

for a long time, that and the sun
gone black in the blink-of-an-eye.
You understand?

____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

When you're through changing, you're through.

—Bruce Barton

____________________

—Medusa (with kudos to Stephen Colbert for reading poetry on last night's show with Caroline Kennedy to promote the new anthology she has edited, She Walks in Beauty. See www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-april-14-2011-caroline-kennedy for the complete show; their moments together are at the end. Poetry on TV? Yikes—what a concept!)

 D.R. Wagner and his daughter, Annalesa, at 

The Book Collector for the Rattlesnake Birthday Bash.

That's Maggie Frost in the background.

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

House of Madness

Kevin Jones at last night's Rattle-read at The Book Collector.

That blur is his yo-yo. Yes, yo-yo...

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

DESPERATION HOTEL

that summer.
broke in New York
where to stay
try the Martha Washington between Park and Madison
tiptoe down Fifth at midnight
hushed as death, facing shadows

$20 a day, can’t be choosy
can’t have an ensuite bathroom
so what if a woman is screaming
on the street at 3 a.m.
someone running through the halls
banging on doors
a voice on the phone:
I know who you are! You can’t fool me!

massive building has two entrances
one on 29th St, one on 30th
where welfare mothers huddle with kids
up the street the church
where Mom and Dad were married…
you could weep for their sweet hopes
you try once again
to position yourself in the world—

in that dry white room
you remember trees, purple sky
summering grapes on the empty road
the neighbor’s horses
fireplace deep and wide
yet wherever you live…
it’s the house of madness
someone screaming


—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

____________________

LEAVES
—Patricia Hickerson

nothing better to do
sit here, watch the gardeners
the lawn mowers, the hedgers
leaf blowers
what a noise
cleaning up for Spring…

dozing:

we are driving through dense Autumn woods
on a worn dirt road
under an overhang of branches
through a litter of fallen leaves
to a curving side ride
where you turn suddenly
where there’s a precipice
where I’m frightened we’ll plunge

wait, this will get us nowhere

downward slope
border of intensely gilded leaves
I see the coming brilliance
we’re going over
you skillfully avoid the plunge

why have you made this abrupt change of direction?

you back up and we continue our journey
along the worn dirt road
littered with leaves less golden
branches overhang
this road is dimmer
fewer leaves, drabber leaves
it seems familiar
where we’ve been before

wake up
still sitting here
leaf blowers roaring

__________________

PIECES
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

I.

bonsai tree
centered in mid-museum
grows alone.


II.

main thoroughfare
a tennis shoe equilateral
to staring headlights


III.

a bit of brick
embedded in tire tread
and burqa now slightly moist.


IV.

a pepper switch
behind the diploma
Junior never displays


V.

jacaranda shits down its flowers
onto my freshly pressed suit, cleaned car,
I will chop it down with relish.


VI.

plywood tree house
draped in flag
confederate in nature.

____________________

OUT OF THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Mourning the Kings,
Mourning the Kings,
we will build a living monument
of eyes and eyes tearing in the winds
here, where our purpleblack valley equals Egypt.

Let the final Arco horn
grind out its desperation three-point knell.

We’ve cowbelled our last.
Let them pass,
let them transfer their regal house,
their full-court press,
leaving distress, from our riverbank Thebes,
our immemorial streamclad Memphis
of Sacramento.

Let them join those other spent embers,
the lady pentimenti of fast break, pass,
and dribble. Who, long after us,
will remember the Monarchs,

Hatshepshuts holding sceptered their halfcourt?
Where are the layups of yesteryear?

Long live
the already Royal, tan, embalmed, and Tyreked
potentates of Anaheim.
Hail these freshly kingnapped new rulers.
Fate, for all that we deplore it, not
one whit nicer or crueler.

___________________

Sing we now of the great Walter Pater,
who found vividness in a potato.
Proclaimed Walt of the spud,
“What a hard, gemlike bud!”
As it passed julienne
                         through
                         his grater.

—Tom Goff

___________________

“STRANGE DYES, STRANGE COLOURS, AND CURIOUS ODORS”
                                                          —Walter Pater

Odors: the smell of apprehensive
con men running a nude
loom; the emperor’s loom,
the emperor’s already empty
robes and the parade not even
yet.

Colors: the underside, delicate
crinkle brown, shriveling the Easter
lily—what writing on this onionskin,
and must the lemon juice arouse it
like blood to the stung surface?

Dyes: the faint-lit dainty taint,
fecund scent, of a spent tampon
or condom—what tumescent song,
what twilight musk-secret
pressed into each
little Turin Shroud?


—Tom Goff

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Chairman Mao
had a cow
when he heard Ho Chi Minh
was without sin

—Michael Cluff

_____________________

—Medusa (with thanks to today's contributors, and to last night's readers and photographers at The Book Collector, as well as the ever-ready Hansens for their graciousness and good will)

Pat Grizzell and Annie Menebroker at last night's reading.

That's D.R. Wagner in the background.
Annie will be reading at Luna's Cafe tonight, and at SPC on April 30.

—Photo by Katy Brown

Trying To Hold On

Carl Schwartz is one of the many SnakePals 

who may be at the Rattlesnake Press

Lucky Seven Birthday Bash tonight! Will you?

—Photo by Trina Drotar, Sacramento

STUFF
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Americans generate more waste than any other
nation in the world with 4.5 pounds of municipal
solid waste (MSW) per person per day.
—“Cashing in on Climate Change,” IBISWorld

Four and a half pounds a day, Monday
through Sunday without a day of rest. It boggles
the mind and clogs the landfills.
Our lovely green earth littered with rusting,
decaying, unbiodegradable junk that festers with
noxious gases. Our littered lives.

Didn't I just read about another little old lady
found under an avalanche of old magazines,
margarine tubs, shoes, and broken radios?
She wouldn't give it away. One evening,
fixing dinner, I heard a skreek of metal against
wood, bolts tearing loose, overloaded cupboard

wrenching from its wall. I tried to catch it.
Plates and glasses in smithereens on kitchen tile.
That glazed ceramic aubergine, dark grape-
purple with fired sea-foam foliage—heirloom
from a grandmother's house—I swept it up
in shards. My arms ached from trying to hold on.

_____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, including photog Trina Drotar and poets Taylor Graham and D.R. Wagner. Trina and D.R. will be at the Rattle-read tonight; Trina has consented to be part of the open mic (a rare event at Rattle-reads, and I still have one opening; lemme know at kathykieth@hotmail.com), and D.R. is, of course, reading from his new Rattlesnake Press release, A Limited Form of Expression. And Taylor Graham? She'll be holding forth at the Poetry Off-the-Shelves reading in Placerville tonight—see b-board for details. Meanwhile, she's sent us poems about our SOW: I saw in the news... As she puts it, "What wonderful fodder the news brings!"

By the way, yesterday I said the photo of last week's baseball reading was by Katy Brown. That was erroneous information; will the real photog please step forward? This just in—D.R. done it! Come see him tonight and congratulate him on a mightee-fine foto.

_____________________

DEADLINES
—Taylor Graham

In the Lucky parking lot, a small dun mare
waits under saddle, reins looped to a light-stanchion—
sundial on asphalt as the shoppers come and go.
She flicks her ear, shifts weight from one hind leg
to the other, turns her head, gazing past me.
Waiting. The man who rides her is buying some
small item. Maybe the weekly paper.
He'll stow his purchase in a saddle bag, untie
the reins, mount with a hitch. He's no longer young.
Jacketed to keep out weather. I've seen them
on the highway shoulder, slowing rush hour traffic
as if they had no deadline. But now the County
is about to iron-bar a gate across the bit of scrubby
woods where the homeless keep their camps.
I've walked there, nodding at folks who used to have
jobs, doctor's appointments, soccer games.
Does the dun mare live there? By the 15th of this
month they'll be gone. Where does a homeless
horse find fields to graze? The mare stands
speechless as a history of horses.

____________________

THE WAGON TRAIN'S COMING TO TOWN
—Taylor Graham

1960, you paid 15 bucks in a Eureka pawnshop
for that old worn pair of chaps. Stockmen
on South Fork Mountain would see the new
District Ranger was no mail-order greenhorn,
he knew how to ride. Cowboy-chaps
to turn the brush. Rough-out leather pilled,
rubbed smooth in patches, no special color but
trail-dust. Later—you in an office-job—
those chaps hung useless from a railing. Now
years after your last range ride, here
you stand in faded Levi's, cowboy boots,
your old slouch Stetson. I'll help you
with the buckle on those chaps. You've
got your rhyme about a Roman-nosed
old sorrel, Blaze. It's Cowboy Poetry Night.
You've ridden miles.

_____________________

MISUNDERSTANDING
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

Somehow it got into my mind
That you meant something completely
Different than I had supposed you did.

Funny how that works. I don’t suppose
It happens all by itself. “Summer
Is a long way off now. I can’t remember
What the flowers looked like.”

We were staying at that hotel
Near the shore we liked so much.
The air was a curious color of
Red-violet and when we spoke
We knew what we were saying.
Love, that was the stuff. Parts
Of dreams caught in the trees,
Shaking themselves furiously
To get free of their meaning.

I dressed slowly and kept looking
Over at you. Your shoulders, your
Fine hands, the way you gazed out
The windows toward that golden light.

There were many small fires that night
All along the beaches. They were so beautiful.
And your lips. Your lips.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.

—Emily Dickinson

_____________________

—Medusa

Self-Portrait

—D.R. Wagner

Yellow And Blue Conditions

I saw this pharmaceutical ad in the newspaper claiming
"Citrus fruit may irritate your bladder..."
Oh yeah—attack the food God created in nature
growing free for us to eat from trees
Unlike modern chemicals brewed in up labs,
it's poisoned no one from the dawn of time
along with giving vital nutrients that prevent diseases
Our very DNA and biology crave it
(and why was Eve in the beginning mocked for eating her desires?!)
But thanks to those multi-million-dollar corporations
that seem to hate anything that doesn't profit them,
my mom won't eat a neighbor's grapefruit
thinking its fruit is going to make her ill
She'd rather consume canned pork and beans
as well as her other processed "comfort foods"
which, like her prescriptions, kill good intestinal bacteria.


—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, including poetry from Michelle Kunert and Joyce Odam, and the photo from Katy Brown of last Wednesday's "baseball" reading at the Central Library in Sacramento. Michelle's poem gave me the idea for this week's Seed of the Week: I saw in the news... Of course, news isn't just newspapers anymore; it's radio, TV, the Internet—or just the grapevine! Send your SOWS to kathykieth@hotmail.com, either this week's or rummage around in Calliope's Closet over there on the b-board under the Snake on a Rod.

Davis Poet Laureate Allegra Silberstein has two reminders for us: Hope to see you this Friday [at The Other Voice in Davis; see b-board for details] and also hope you will celebrate Poem in your Pocket Day this coming Thurday. Davis Mayor Joe Krovosa will make it official for Davis tomorrow night. Cities across the nation are celebrating this day. It's simple: just carry a poem with you (your own or one by a poet you love) and share it with everyone you meet on Thursday. The Blanchard room at the Davis library on 14th street will be open from 1 to 5:30pm on Thursday for sharing poetry.

There's still one opening for an open mic reader at this Wednesday's Rattlesnake Press Lucky Seven Birthday Bash at The Book Collector, 7:30pm. Lemme know: kathykieth@hotmail.com

_____________________

AERIAL LANDSCAPE
(based on "Aerial I", oil on canvas, 2003, by Erin Noel)
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

From here, a numbered painting—
no detail—just circles and
squares marked with plane-shadow,
an unfamiliar landscape on a travel map.

To get there, one has to cross seven mountains,
three rivers made of winding and a much-used
sky-path—high enough for geese.

If you have come this far, you are homesick—
long for that small blue square to pull you down,

be a place you recognize—something to land for.

______________________

THE GODS, DEPRIVED
—Joyce Odam

Nothing here is familiar—
a land of whispers and sighing.
The sky has lost its color.
Rusty mountains guard its borders.
At night there is a crying.

Old dreams gather to escape from memory.
But memory follows them
like timeless travelers.
Giant flowers lean and murmur—
offer the gravity of answers.

Morning will be cold again.
The land will wake to loneliness.
The birds of sorrow
will return
but without their singing.

The spirits of love and loss
will resume their searching.
The moans will sharpen everywhere.
The mournful gods will say, not yet . . .
not yet . . . and speak of love to one another.

________________________

THE SERENITY
(based on “Loving Couple”, 1973, by Fernando Botero)
—Joyce Odam

Oh, here we are,
in the middle of a dream,
the day serene, the templed city blind.

One of us is nude,
the other clothed in rumpled blue.
Red fruit has fallen all around,

and is still falling
in a soundless fall.
We are not hungry now.

The mountains float behind us
in the bordered mist
blending into the diluted sky.

We’ve reached the stillness here—
the birdless air—
the trees that lean, asleep.

We lie, embraced, in mockery of love.
We’re simply here,
in the middle of an unremembered dream.

_____________________

DISPERSION
(based on "Melancholie Dispersion" by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau)
—Joyce Odam

Don’t sigh. You’ll move the universe.
Your chin in your hand will cause
the mountains to crumble.

Close your eyes upon your tears
and the seas will overflow with anguish.
There will be only one season.

Time will stop here. Your thoughts will
collide with reason and a great upheaval
will be felt. You’ll not get through

the debris. How can you be responsible
for such destruction, causing the end
of the world because of your sadness.

Everything is waiting for you to
release yourself. Hide among
the yellow and blue conditions

all you like, they are reminding you
of self-quake, earth that crumbles,
you sliding further into yourself.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

PANELS OF LATE AFTERNOON
—Joyce Odam

In three
sepia panels:
huts at the base of
mountains: tiny cattle
that graze: figures who tend to their daily toil
but look at the distance—
beyond the mountains—
letting their far gaze
travel.

____________________

—Medusa

 

"The Ball Team", 2011

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

This Week Is Plenty Wild!

Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

HARMONICS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

A spider's web resonates like highrise steel
inside its concrete. The web snaps as one man
steps under interlacing twigs of forest, not lost
but simply walking. A plate shifts under ocean
not intending much of anything, maybe
only stretching, and a wall falls down. Listen.
An old brown Navajo sings heaven and clay
as she weaves these colors into dust.
Creation's song is a trapped insect, imploding
stars or earthquake. We weave ourselves
into its pattern, wrong or right.

___________________

Thanks to Judy Taylor Graham for today's poetry, to Katy Brown for the pix, and to Pat Pashby for finding us our LittleNip. TG will be reading twice this week—at the Literature of the Wild reading in Placerville sponsored by Folsom Lake College on Tuesday, and in Lodi at A Starry Night Poetry Series—plus you can meet her at the Poetry Off-the-Shelves read-around in Placerville on Weds. night. A busy week for her, and for all of us, poetry-wise! Be sure to check the b-board for details of all the readings, including the The Practice of the Wild documentary at the Crocker on Sat. featuring Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison which I just posted this a.m. (Lots of nature art and poetry happening this week, due to Earth Week celebrations.)

I'm hoping that the wee Rattlesnake Press Lucky Seven Birthday Bash doesn't get lost in all the shuffle—that's Weds. at 7:30pm at The Book Collector, featuring the release of D.R. Wagner's new SpiralChap, A Limited Means of Expression. Our open mic (open only to Medusa readers!) will feature Trina Drotar, Sandy Thomas and Kevin Jones; we still have a couple of slots left, if you're interested. Lemme know: kathykieth@hotmail.com

___________________

AS THE RIVER FLOWS
—Taylor Graham

Remember moor and thicket, thorny gorse,
what everyone called waste-land. Profit? None
to travelers along the water's course.
It couldn't last. A nation runs on Time,
Utility, and Transit. Now it's done:
the moor is gone, a city's steeples chime.

And what's become, and what somehow got lost
are soon forgotten by the busy mind.
Those dark expanses now so quickly crossed
by street and rail beneath a gaslight glare—
who mourns the wildness left behind
when Commerce owns the common air?

Remember moor and thicket, thorny gorse,
and what's become, and what somehow got lost.

___________________

HOW THEY CELEBRATED IN 1776
—Taylor Graham

[Trees] tall and green, lining the streets…;
filtering with their wholesome leafage the air.
                                  —Elihu Burritt

What better way to declare
independence
than by planting trees?

To mark the signing, young and old
in a small Massachusetts town
took up shovel and spade,
and set out seedlings in double rows.
Trees to line the walk
from The Green to the church-door,
and along the public highway
for a mile in each direction.

By the time you passed through, Elihu,
most of those folks were dead.
But the trees they planted flourished.
Shade for the traveler. Solid trunks
of faith; green standing armies
with purifying leaves. The blessing
of independence, the blessing of trees.

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Neither mother, nor children, nor kinsmen, nor
dear familiar friends follow a man in death; he
departs alone. The deeds alone which he has
done are his fellow-travellers.

—The Mahabharat

______________________

—Medusa

Photo by Katy Brown

Waiting For The World To End

Halley's Comet

HALLEY'S COMET
—Stanley Kunitz

Miss Murphy in first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the stormtracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and if it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground's edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children.

"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably 

the last meal I'd share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

The whole family's asleep

except for me.
They never heard me steal

into the stairwell hall and climb

the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof

of the red brick building

at the foot of Green Street—

that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.

I'm the boy in the white flannel gown

sprawled on this coarse gravel bed

searching the night sky,

waiting for the world to end.

_____________________

—Medusa

Accidental Habitats

 Leopard Lily

—Pencils by Jennifer O'Neill Pickering

CONVERSATIONS
—Jennifer O'Neill Pickering, Sacramento

I asked the sky if it defined
the boundary of the barn.
Sky replied, "Trust what is seen,
answer all else with faith.”

The barn said, “I sit on the earth,
a shelter made from the limbs of a sister oak,
older than I and who once held up the sky."
The spirit of the sister oak said to the barn,
“The sky was never a burden
even resting on my shoulders.”

Her son called to the passing squirrel,
“I welcome you across my threshold
as friends do strangers, mothers their children.”
The squirrel thanked Father Lightning
for opening a door.

A hawk flying by called down,
“If you agree there are no differences
between endings and beginnings,
no boundary will define you.”

Then the wind came up, whispering,
“Listen to your breathing.
In each breath reside all answers.”

____________________

Thanks to Jennifer O'Neill Pickering and Phil Weidman for today's poetry and art. Jennifer is an award-winning artist, a poet, and teacher living in Sacramento. She’s taught art and poetry workshops at St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children, Art History at Cosumnes River College, and art in the Sacramento Public Libraries. Her poem, "I Am the Creek," is included in the Sacramento site-specific sculpture, Open Circle. She’s published poetry in many publications. Some of these include: Moon Mist Valley, Cosumnes River Journal, Sacramento Anthology: 100 Poems, Earth’s Daughters, Yellow Silk, Heresies, WTF, Poetry Now, and Munyori Journal. Her art has been shown in numerous galleries. She studied art and writing at the State University of New York at Buffalo, CSUS, and has an MA in Studio Art from California State University, Sacramento.

You can see Jennifer's photo over on the action-packed bulletin board (the skinny blue box at the right), because she'll be reading Thursday from 12-1:30pm at Folsom Lake College's “Literature of the Wild” reading to celebrate Earth Week, which will feature Jennifer plus open mic: bring poetry, prose, creative fiction/non-fiction or read a favorite “wilderness” writer. That's at Folsom Lake College Main Campus (Rm. FL1-8), 10 College Parkway Dr., Folsom. (Info: 530-642-5637 or 916-608-6711, or Kathy: lelandk@flc.losrios.edu or Tim: mchargt@flc.losrios.edu) For more info about Jennifer, go to jennifersword.blogspot.com  (There will also be a FLC "Literature of the Wild" reading on Tuesday in Placerville which will feature Taylor Graham—more about that later, or check the b-board.)

Speaking of action-packed: since Wednesday will be Rattlesnake Press's Lucky Seven Birthday Bash, we are inviting five poets to read for five minutes each. If you'd like to be one of those poets, let me know at kathykieth@hotmail.com/. The first five poets to e-mail me will be our open mic—and we still have room for more!

And be sure to head on down to the very very very bottom of the Kitchen for a look at the re-furbed Ticklers box!

____________________

AN ACCIDENTAL HABITAT
—Jennifer O'Neill Pickering

Two mallards, a husband and wife,
have taken up residence in the park
with the crows and hawks poised
in watchful grace.
What are the draws—
firearms-prohibited signs?
a concrete pond nobody is using?

We watch them waddle
toward the water
returning to the green
when the sprinklers shut off
and armies of angle worms
surface for air.

The couple rejoices
for this sudden marsh
flapping napkins of wings,
feast.

_____________________

FROM THE PORCH
—Phil Weidman, Pollock Pines

Wife hangs a hummingbird
feeder from a rafter
above the front porch.

I often sit out there
to read or search my
thoughts for something

worthy of sharing
and find myself watching
a colorful hummer, wings a blur,

hover and dart,
needle beak threading
a tiny hole in the red plastic

for sweet
homemade nectar.
Sometimes more than one

of these darters approaches,
and an aerial competition
erupts, reminding me of WWII

aerial dogfights I saw
on matinee newsreels
when I was a kid.

____________________

THANKS JUST THE SAME
—Phil Weidman

A man with unkempt
gray hair and beard sits
in the shade outside Safeway.
His soiled pack leans against
the store wall behind him.
He sits with legs crossed
and Ernie sees the sole of one
of his boots is worn through.

Need a lift? Ernie asks.
Naw, he mumbles, too busy.
Ernie gives him a quizzical look.
Pondering, he says, as if
reading my thoughts.

Ernie digs out a ten
and hands it down to him.
Can you use this? Ernie asks.
He takes the bill, studies it,
hands it back.

It won’t make no difference,
he mumbles.
Thanks just the same.

____________________

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN
—Phil Weidman

Keep getting letters
from outfits that
want to bury me.

Got one today from
the Trident Society.
They want to burn me.

If I had my druthers,
I’d have my wife
rent a backhoe to dig
me a grave in the High
Rock Desert big enough
to bury me and my
trusty 18-year-old 4X4.

Just prop me up
in the driver’s seat,
hands on the wheel
and throw in the dirt.

Let coyote scat
be my marker.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

The waters fade
    and the wild ducks' cries
        are faintly white.

—Basho (trans. from the Japanese by Janine Beichman)

_____________________

—Medusa

Wild Iris

—Watercolor by Jennifer O'Neill Pickering