Blindfolded Passion

Solitaire Face

—Photo by n.ciano, Davis

UNPACKING
—Shawn Aveningo, Rescue

What do I do with all this stuff?
This cornucopia of confusion,
a lifetime of emotion, mixed up,
logic thrown out the window
with the baby and the bath water.

I’m not even sure if two follows one,
or if one follows two,
and was I really contemplating a three…
Some
times I feel old
remembering when double fours stared back at me.

My friend that age
when death rescued her
and it’s funny how
I sometimes fear the loss of youth,
old age finding me,
more than I fear the reaper.

It’s over.
He’s made his choice
it was the obvious one to make
and I still try to reconcile,
conceding
I was really never an option.

But still,
these feelings,
they keep smoldering,
welling up, like an eddy swelling,
and let’s face it:
a lid put upon a boiling pot
eventually just leaves a mess on the stove.

So what do I do with all this stuff?

And a voice answered, “write a poem”.

____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, including Taylor Graham, who continues to talk about the Winds with D.R. Wagner (and n.ciano chimes in with a poem and sky photo) and Shawn Aveningo, who will be “unpacking” her poetry box (see her new website, ThePoetryBox.com) at Beatnik Studios in Sacramento (17th & Broadway) along with three other fabulous poets: Lara Kaapuni, Joyce Odam, and Ann Conradson, for this month’s Red Night Poetry Series tonight at 8pm. ($5.00; open mic to follow). Check our bulletin board at the right for details. And while you're scrolling down on the b-board, check out the events for the rest of the week, including the WTF release party at Luna's Cafe tomorrow night.

Our Seed of the Week is Magritte's painting, The Lovers, and apparently it has struck a chord; poems are coming in from near and far, and today's are a fine sampling. (You can see the painting on the b-board under the "Seed of the Week" heading in the green box, or go to yesterday's post with its presentation of the painting and Joyce Odam's poem about it.)

____________________

FLOATING
—Shawn Aveningo

He lightly traced her flesh
before each kiss.
In a furious frenzy, his grip
tightens,
ever so slightly at first.
Until their union pulse
interrupted.
His fingers unlacing,
to cover his face with regret.

The vase shattered.
I watched it fall
in      slow      motion,
unable to move or catch it.
Irises tumbling to the floor,
floating like lily pads
in a pool of jade.

I remember floating myself.
Wistfully, blissfully,
serene among sapphire
shards of glass
safe in my crystalline stratum,
sparkling against an endless,
ebony sky.

I think of Ophelia,
how Millais made her sing.
A voice in the distance
calling my name,
come back…
come back…
come back.

____________________

NAMING THE WIND
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

A sailor knows so many names for wind,
the way it flows down mountains, scrolls the shore.
Borasco, Brisa, Bull's Eye Squall that skinned
the coast of Africa. The tidal bore

off Portage to a Matanuska's roar.
Chinook, Leveche, with Sirocco twinne—
a sailor knows so many names for wind,
the way it flows down mountains, scrolls the shore,

then suddenly goes still; his sails are pinned
against the mast, the ocean dead before
his prow. Invoking mariners' old lore,
he prays, may Zephyros this curse rescind.
A sailor knows so many names for wind.


(first published in Rattlesnake Review)

____________________

CALLING THE WINDS
—Taylor Graham

In this house
no Waff or Cats Paw to ease
the afternoon and clear the air
inside papered walls.
No Shamal, Imbat, or Vento
Coado whispering
through petals of roses
in the vase. Cut crystal. Only
eddies of words, the same
syllables breathed in
and out again.

Come Steppenwind
or Purga, Cierzo, Papagayo,
Landlash, Buran or
Burster, a Chubasco,
wild wind to open doors.

____________________

BLINDING SILK SHEETS
(After Rene Magritte's Les Amants)
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

Faceless lovers
surrogates for the fearful
they serve the emotional side
while leaving the ego
safe and cocooned.

Reggie feels empathy
for neither
he has been
dead
long before
he will expire
a blank
that not even he
has tried to filled in.

Words have never left
his mouth
on such uncomfortable issues
and the extreme distance
but yet socially correct
between he and any person
any female
is granite, graded and
stolidly maintained.

Evelyn evenly
suffers in eyeless
silence
restraint
blindfolded passion
forevermore.

____________________

MAGRITTE’S “THE LOVERS”
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Just try to translate love
into love and you see the impossibility:
one term for complete self-leavetaking
and entering utterly into the other’s heartbeat,

but the same term for utter self-caressing
and shriveling up still red & wet alongside
your own pounding bloodstream…worse yet
if you abandon your birthright word love
in favor of a changeling: amor, liebe, m_la
(Latvian: just imagine discarding
even this for a synonym, like ekst_ze,
and there are no synonyms: Nietzsche)—

like tearing your own face off
before you know if the transplant will work…
these lovers, however, feel no qualm, kissing
through veils, which is to say shedding
a veil, a vow, for another veil, another vow,
as if all of life’s traildust, and at every step
a bramble-dangling cobweb to love your face
the instant you’ve brushed aside each last
clinging plea. Look how desperately, darkly they kiss
hoping butterfly tongues and salivas interpenetrate
the gauze overhanging each mouth-cavern…

Like wrinkled criminal stocking-masks: wrinkles
indicating her left hand, his right hand, insinuating
upwards past the bunch at each neckline, so each
blind hand yearns to root fingers in half a beloved’s face.
I wanted to retranslate “Girl from Ipanema”
so that laelia and brazilwood scents permeate
the English, transmit pure Vinícius de Moraes
unstained by Norman Gimbel’s priapics…no good,
unless this bossa nova blossom equals

the gropings of the lovers’ unseen other hands
below frame, navigating the heavy industry
of the pubic zone with such delicacy…

______________________

GIRL FROM IPANEMA
(“Garota de Ipanema,” Vinícius de Moraes)
—Tom Goff

Look at her go the most lovely
girl out of the many
more graceful than any
I’ve ever seen walking
in sweetness and balance
the road by the sea

Young one all golden in body
—Ipanema sunlight—
O let her stay balanced
better than any poem
keep on being the lovelight
I’ve seen passing by

Ah, how can you be so lonely
Ah, why must you be all sadness
Ah, to the beauty existing
to the beauty not only my beauty
passing right by us and lonely

Ah, if she only knew
that when she goes walking
all the world smiling
turns beautiful graceful
let the world stay lovely
because of love
because of love…


(freely transl. by T.G.)

____________________

And today....
I’ve always wondered about time and space
and today the sky looks so thoughtful
I can’t help but notice the serenity.
I’m going to relinquish control
and let my mind be free.

Like the clouds that come and go
not by chance but by choice
sometimes in a hurry
sometimes in no rush at all
just another passerby taking the wind for a ride.

I want to be that tree
letting go of wisdom by leaves
dropping them and giving back
only to return with a profound knowledge
but never knowing anything at all.

But I look at my hands
and see I am the clouds and the tree
I won’t last like they do.
I’m alive and dying at the same time.
I am passing by with a wisdom that grows.


—n.ciano, Davis

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

WE MIGHT HAVE LOVED

where we sat in the dark
on the verandah of a small café
a lamp glowed nearby
a rough hewn table laden with books
coffee cups

we sat trading ideas
my mind to yours and back again
ping pong
little globes of thought
bouncing off our brains
training one another
in the art of friendship
not love


—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

_____________________

—Medusa

  Serene Sky

—Photo by n.ciano, Davis

Theater Of Memories

Les Amants (The Lovers), 1928

—Painting by René Magritte

EACH VEILED KISS
(After Les Amants by René Magritte)
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

Veiled and forgiven, even now,
through dreams and deep imaginations;

from loves that never were—
veiled eyes and each veiled kiss.

What still vies between them
like veils of disbelief and loss?

What is the blessing—what the curse?

_____________________

Thanks to JO for today's poems, and for the inspiration for our new Seed of the Week: Magritte's The Lovers. What was he trying to tell us, and was he right? Is love truly blind, and isn't that a good thing? As always, though, the SOW is just the starting point; don't worry about being literal or even sticking to the theme. The point is to get that pen of your moving across the page. Send SOWs to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline on SOWs.

_____________________

THE BLUE FACADE
(After Piet Mondrian: Blue Façade, Composition 9, 1913-14)
—Joyce Odam

The observers sit apart
in two ways of seeing
The Composition:

           a large screen of squares and
           oblong shapes that exchange
           colors and recede;

the observers sit on a long green
shape—much like a bench—supported
by two columns of identical green;

           they do not move for fear of
           losing the inspiration; they
           do not explain what they see,

but allow themselves to become a part
of the green—becoming blue—touched
with gold light—and edged with black

          for a reminder of sadness. It is all so
          shifting and mysterious, and they wait
          for further, full-effect. And they wait.

____________________

BABBLE
(after The Conversation by Morris Davison
—Joyce Odam

How charmingly they swirl together
in abstract value, never quite defined,
seldom understood, word through word—

gesturing and shifting, meanings losing context,
thoughts losing their places, as plane after plane
of conversation takes yet another direction.

How cleverly they change the value
of light and shadow
as if being rendered into an impression

by some impassioned artist
measuring the complicated din
of his listening—

all of them talking
or none of them talking at once—
letting a gap of silence in

then rushing through it once again—
becoming a blur of exemplified meaning
which has no meaning other than its sound.

____________________

MUTED
—Joyce Odam

I grow into the cult of music
with my non-voice, misread the tune
with my deaf ear.

Once I was a singer—a mountain stream—
a spot-light target,
wanted for my fame.

I wore numbers to guide me through the hours
toward the white piano shining in the dark.
The cat purred in the tapestry.

I still sense the nearness of roses
opening
in the shallow arms of vases.

Something still reaches from the mirror—
looks past me to the blankness,
into which it stares, as if remembered.

Afterwards, there is only light,
pocked with winter,
cold light examining damp walls and faded rugs.

Or is it only the escape of windows
where some singer remains—
an old echo, fading in and out, losing hope at last.

____________________

PERSEPHONE, FORGETTING GREEK
—Joyce Odam

When she forgot her language she forgot
her love, though her house was brimming
with light in the possessible dark

where her husband kept looking through
all the bright rooms for what she forgot
and wept into the telephone his loss;

but she was away in her mind—
in a place without words—forgetting
her endearments, her lusty persuasions,

the laugh that scattered her opinions,
until he believed each one
and she ruled the new place of forgetting.

____________________

PASTEL
(After Mademoiselle Julie Manet, 1887 by Pierre Auguste Renoir)
—Joyce Odam

Girl and cat
in tranquility of pastel.
Girl day dreams. Cat purrs.

Her shadow against the couch
is motionless.
The cat allows itself to be loved.

Vague light in the room
stays soft. The walls diffuse.
Her thoughts hide in her eyes.

All is fading—
losing context
in tone after tone of quietness.

I watch for her breathing.
She does not know how I linger
over this moment she has claimed

for herself—
how even the cat
is unaware of my imposition.

___________________

CHOOSING
—Joyce Odam

There are two ways to look at this,
two poems to pull against you:
pro and con—
hither and yon—two points of view.

One is loud, and one is louder.
No listener for each. There will be
one force and one surrender.
Neither will win.

On one side of the face is a calm,
the other a cry.
Between them is the mirror.
The glass is the truth with two interpretations.

Light is what you see. Dark is what you feel.
You grope between. Outside this room,
the world is widening. There is no end.
The door is what you must solve:

Open or close—close or open.
The door is in the mirror. Hurry.
The world is losing this moment of you.
The moment is all. It is entering the wall.

You will be left where you are,
trying to decide—trying to find:
the right word, the right time, the exact intention.
The other is you.

____________________

OUT OF BODY
—Joyce Odam

Howl into light, holding yourself aloft,
mirrored, your mouth open on grief—

your own loss—singing into the wet air
of weeping, your other self beneath you,

feeling for your heart with fumbling hands,
your other arms opposite-moving.

How will you live apart from yourself?

___________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

UNSAFE TO OCCUPY 
—Robin Gale Odam, Sacramento 

she rested at the doorway of the building,
regarded the warning posted on its locked door,
took a photo for her friends...

she would not be alarmed—she could write
her own warning...

no danger within, only faded walls, quiet
home for scampering and crawling and nesting...

old perfume and cigarettes, worn carpet, ceiling
blackened from flickering lanterns, remembered
music of laughter and clink of ice in amber
liquid, hollow space now...

not to be condemned and stolen, old theater of
memories—like the Alhambra...

Joyce Odam

—Photo by Robin Gale Odam

________________________ 

—Medusa

3 Jacks & Gold In The Sky

Sandy Thomas

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

ANNIE'S POEM
—Sandy Thomas, Sacramento

If you happen to be playing
with the Poet’s Deck
you might draw the 9 of Hearts

she’s an Outlaw Poet
has committed
Small Crimes
but still wears
Sunscreen in the Fog
prefers Blue Fish to live plants
tagged with the moniker
“Meat” poet
convinced that
Routines Will Kill You
so it’s best to
live On the Edge
to build your own fire
even if something
is Biting Through [Your] Spine
with its tiny teeth

____________________

Thanks, Sandy, for today's poems! Sandy Thomas is a third-generation poet and San Francisco native. Her work has been published by Poems-For-All, Rattlesnake Press, and has appeared in WTF, on Medusa’s Kitchen, and most recently in Ophidian 1. Her chapbooks are These Stones (2009) and The Matchbook Girl (2011), published by Two Trees Indie Press.

And thanks to Carl Schwartz for Today's LittleNip!

____________________

MATRIX
—Sandy Thomas

she smiles and asks
will you read
in honor of women’s
history month

patiently waiting
in a conscious calm
she says you can
think about it

she laughs
but I’ve already
decided for you
the Matrix
on the first

____________________

3 JACKS
—Sandy Thomas

the sea wolf
the boxer
the dharma bum

____________________

GOLD IN THE SKY
—Sandy Thomas

On 49, the amber moon rising.
There is gold in the sky.

____________________

NOIR MOON
—Sandy Thomas

Dark moon, no moon
Black veil covers night.

____________________

OCEANS
—Sandy Thomas

I am
the sea below
the sky above
a body of water
in between
the streams surface
in my soul and
the river’s rhythm
runs through my heart
leaving the waterfalls
in my dreams
to remind me
of who I am
a body of water
within


(previously published in WTF #2, Spring 2009)

_____________________

SPIRIT
—Sandy Thomas

she wears
red corduroys
and red lipstick
her dreads
complement
her demeanor
she dances
with destiny
invites
you in
to a world
of sensuality
and exploration
of senses
she tastes
the texture
of thoughts
and reveals
her soul
with song.

_____________________

THE FINAL PITCH
—Sandy Thomas

Score 3-1
2 outs

bottom of the ninth
3 balls, 2 strikes
closer 38
pitches 90 mph

it's down the middle

a storm
orange and black
roar in
the stadium

Giants win
World Series

_____________________

VIRTUAL
—Sandy Thomas

she reaches out to me
touches me with her voice
I can hear the rain
I extend a warm embrace
she replies I felt that
thank you

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

I DON’T READ POETRY

any more than I listen to golf balls
rolling slowly.

No, instead of reading the words
I look at the brilliantly colored pictures that they paint,
and I dance to the visceral rhythms they embody
and I laugh and cry and feel the poems.

But I don’t read them.


—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

____________________

—Medusa

Martha Ann Blackman, Allegra Silberstein, Joyce Odam,

Trina Drotar, Annie Menebroker, Sandy Thomas

 —Photo by Katy Brown

In Beauty

EAGLE POEM
—Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear,
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

_____________________

—Medusa

Poems Guard Secrets

That rascal, William S. Gainer, Grass Valley

Taken at the May 2011 Rattle-read at

The Book Collector

—Photo by Katy Brown

Right in front of me in traffic
was a washing machine in a pick-up truck
sliding and bouncing around unsecured
Other drivers don't want to be the next of unlucky followers
I quickly merge into the next lane—
Risking a rear-ender or side-swipe
is better than a head-on collision with a washing machine
It reminds me of a T.V. a story of an Indian immigrant
who likewise didn't hire a delivery service
He forgot the laws of physics and gravity
packing his new washing machine into his trunk
While driving it flew off and crashed into the car behind
killing a thirteen-year-old boy's dad in front of him
This Indian immigrant hung his head in court
his "American dream" was now dead too
Even saying "sorry" to the boy wasn't good enough


—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_____________________

Thursday’s back! We didn't lose it, after all. Some of you may've noticed that Blogspot lost Thursday's post on Medusa's Kitchen (and all its other blogs) for a while, but now it can be found again. Just a wee Friday the 13th trick, I guess. And thanks to today's contributors, including Robin Odam's riff on my "lost in the ether" comment on Medusa yesterday, and for her sky photo. Maybe she and D.R. Wagner are having a "sky" conversation.

Speaking of D.R. Wagner, he has posted a list of all the names of the Winds on his Blogspot, drsspoon.blogspot.com/. You ought to download it; seems like it would be a handy thing to have—and a great poetry trigger, too.

_____________________

TRESPASSING THE LINE OF VULNERABILITY
—Gary Thomas Edwards, Gardnerville, NV

Dancing
devilish
dervishes,

hurling
orbs,

Winchester
cartridges
rise toward
a brilliant sun

gleaming
rhythmically
one-by-one,

randomly
rolling
dice
on the blot,

crumbling,
tumbling
prime
gammon's
lot.

Don't you see?

You
must fathom
the depth
of this
analogy.

Heaping
high
with heavy
sigh
the woes
of Job,

mudslides
of misery,

tsunamis of
adversity,

maladies
cascading
toward
courage's
ingress.

Whenever,
whatever
life slings
or catapults
this way.

I am shielded,
I'm exempt,

impenetrable,
invincible
quite
simply
unstoppable,

and unconquerable

as
inamorata's
breath
rests
upon this
epitome,

the very
essence
of what
I believe
to be,

her soul,
auspicious
soul
solidifying
me.

_____________________

REVIEWERS 1, GANDHI 0
(on Joseph Lelyveld’s “controversial” Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India)
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Attack we now in chorus Joseph Lelyveld
for looking afresh at Mahatma Gandhi,
depicting this transplant wrenched from India
to settle in South African dust and dung
mudrooted next to an ashram, who as lily, veldt
lily, grew stalk and petal. Nattily
garbed like a good flower, he has to unveil
by experiment and beaten pate and failure
the shaven head, the elastic if not young
gait through crooked and straight to swaraj and salt.

He drowns his lawbook Prospero’s Western magic
somewhere off Natal or in a lake of the Transvaal,
and, molting from suit to loincloth into tragic
epic, strides straight-backed through triumph and fault.
Lelyveld never forgets the young Mohandas
curled uncertain deep inside the grandest
man ever to touch the untouchable, or make salt.

But how to despise, and then distort, Great Soul;
fine points must override the central thesis:
a clutch of letters penned & kept indiscreetly
betrays a homoerotic Mohan sweetly,
prankishly lacking in sexual self-control.
And how the man prattles of goat’s milk, of spinning,
sees wheelbound India whirling free of Great Britain.

Dilemmas deep inside him make him India;
stripped of his earnest inconsistencies,
he’s coy, quite self-absorbed, and frankly devious.
Take Gandhiji cloaked in his mystery,
as Lelyveld aspires to, and he’s cunning,
admirably cunning, focused, principled, shrewd.

But, translated for those who read while running,
a risible crackpot, bladeless warrior streaking
through ahimsa’s nonviolent wars near nude.
He prophesies, he has his little jokes.

He vanishes in his charka’s flying spokes.

_____________________

THE DISAPPEARED ONES
—Tom Goff

Lost, Mom’s Mexico snapshots, and the album
that held them gone with its cracked fake
leather and brittle glue, and lost the Moctezuma
plumes, bacon-thick rashers of emerald. Gone
the incubator pictures of us little naked premature
chickens. Gone the guides expert in geology
from Shasta Caverns, and the smelly schoolbus
gasping up the incline to the dark entrance.

Gone the grandma Gammy in Phoenix, long
lost to that brickfront house. Gone the house itself
and all its December sag of oranges.
Scattered the grandkids who visited, two of us three
immured in board-and-care replacement homes.

Gone many more days and things than that:
where are the snows of ancient Sylvania TVs?
Gone Dick Van Dyke from all currency
in the culture, gone sooner than we know it
even Lucy and her splaining. Gone Jerry Van Dyke

with cagier eyes than Dick’s behind the glasses
and the anxious-fervent grin and the plaid jacket
and the wack-a-wack-a-wacko guitar. Disappeared,
our three rusty tricycles, lost the father
who pushed the triplet stroller.

Closeted far beyond reach the bridal gown
that clad Nora in stiff rich brocaded ivory
proclaiming her finer than a sea of Kate Middletons,
and the billow of that precious fabric the float
of our hopes and visions from that day
until the great Whenever death, yet this gown’s

memory of the milk-and-caramel girl inside
too will pass from comprehension
with the comprehenders, as surely as Billy’s
plume of a tail, lit whitegold on today’s morning walk,
foredooms him to be airlifted soon by a mother ship
masquerading as a rapture cloud
stuffed with radiant & airy good dogs forever.

____________________

THE ART OF LOSING: A PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT
—n.ciano, Davis

Let us sit here and start a conversation
as we begin to discuss the art of losing.

Losing is parallel to winning because

in both circumstances you are gaining.

Winning gains triumph.
Losing gains experience.
I am always losing
because I am an investor
and I invest in experiences.
Therefore, you may assume
that I am always losing.
But this is how the art of losing works
because in the end I am always winning.
I am triumphant.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip: 

LOST IN THE ETHER
—Robin Gale Odam, Sacramento

poems guard secrets, breathe behind
mountain peaks, watch as a playful wind
pulls through an early sky, remember
something about clouds loving, and
something about snakes of stone
lost in the ether  

____________________

—Medusa

Playful

—Photo by Robin Gale Odam

Friday the 13th! (Yes, we're late...)

Storm

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

D.R. Wagner says: Here is a poem about the sky trying to make the weather look like love. Why would it do such a thing?

NOT OF THE WEATHER AT ALL
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

We’ve never seen them like this
Coursing high above the stadiums
Crying loudly and enchanting
The landscape as if it were
Possible to raise hills and
Yes, even peaks into the early air
That would elicit cries of amazement
As the dawn trooped down the
Clouds and reached the earth
As sun, and hail and tossing
Clouds trying to describe snow
Or sleet as things not of the
Weather at all but rather how
Love would look, splayed out
In the gray afternoon, expecting a lover.

______________________

Yes, we're posting late today, Friday the 13th. Apparently Blogspot ate a bunch of posts, including our Thursday one, so they're trying to fix the problem and wouldn't let us post until now. I still don't see Thursday... hopefully it's not lost in the ether.

There's an editorial in today's Sacramento Bee that fully embraces all my prejudices: go to www.sacbee.com/2011/05/13/3623593/hip-hop-hurray-for-embracing-new.html to see it.

Meanwhile, thanks to today's contributors for musing on The Art of Losing (our Seed of the Week) and other subjects as well. And thanks to those of you who checked in to see if Medusa had finally turned herself to stone!—nope. Just stoned on cough syrup; chest fulla mewcuss up here.

Here are two from Don Feliz, who says they're about "mostly losing, with some winning..."

______________________

VESSEL OF LOVE
—Don Feliz, Sacramento

In January Death
shattered my heart.
Friends rushed
to save the shards.

In February I assemble
large pieces,
combine them
in my restored heart.

In March tiny fragments
challenge me.
By April I get
help from a specialist.

______________________

PATCHING MY HEART
—Don Feliz

Death tore our robe of love
when he carried you away.

Only embers of your essence
and the quilt of love patches

from family and friends
warms me at night

stitched to robe remnants
by hundreds of hugs

and embroidered with poems
you wrote in your final year.

______________________

PARASYMPATHY
—C. Piper, Napa

The moment of loss—
the momentum of it—
takes me against my will.

I have known of
the inevitability,
rationally assessed it,
but it takes me unprepared
candidly by some part of
the mind that stimulates
some other part of
the mind that constricts
all parts of the body—
the lungs, the heart, all parts
curling fetally for protection—
a not understood parasympathy.

My own dying will hurt less.

_____________________

THE ART OF LOSING
—D.R. Wagner

A few months before
She died my mother
Would sleep for up to seventy
Or eighty hours, scaring the entire
Family and then wake up, “just fine,”
Rested and ready to go do something.

We would tell her we were very
Worried about her, that we were
Afraid we had lost her for good.

“It will be like that,” she said
With great aplomb and grace,
“I will go to sleep like this but
One time I will not wake up.”
And so it was.
And so she did.

_____________________

A THICK WATER
—D.R. Wagner

The water here is thick and smells
Like Winter just as it loses its memory
And tries to move toward Spring,

Its sister, but even more insane,
His lover, again and again they find
The rush of water and the cool thickness
Of the snow, a brilliant connection that flows
Easily through every seed and breeds itself
Into the sullen needs of every day we call
Our own and walks within its halls pressing
Hard into each other to form the least communication.

I have found you here, far below the stairs
Crying for your mother with the same voice
The psalms have as they call upon the Lord
To find us here, huddled together and awaiting
A deep salvation, a rescue of which we are unable to speak,
A tower we are unable to climb, a sea we are unable
To swim ever again. I will greet you here my sister.
I will greet you here my brother and we shall manage
Our way home once again. We will see the wild
Animals. They will notice we are more mad than
They could ever be. That we too have a greater
Hunger than they could ever have and they will
Let us be and let us pass and let us finally see

The place where sea meets land and those
Who claim to be like you and me show us
What and where we shall truly be. Here in the
Hours, in the minutes, in the years, unable to move
Beyond our sparkling cages, yet able to understand,
To see, what is is we are and what we true may be.

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

LOVE AND REMEMBRANCE
                         (for Ricky)
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento

Forgetfulness and memory
meet daily
gently cradled in her mind
as she reaches
for the light of acceptance—
the art of losing
unfolding into the art
of loving
what was

_____________________

—Medusa

The Beautiful Sky

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

And The Three-Legged Dog...

Taylor Graham reads at the 

"Fog and Woodsmoke" reading

Sacramento Poetry Center, April, 2011

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

MY SECRET POWER
—James Lee Jobe, Davis

My power is this: in this life I am small,
but not small enough to be sacred or holy.

I live down low, under, beneath
the vision of the world.

You might not think that is much power at all,
but I wield it like an expert swordsman.

Watch as I slice one petal from the rose, just one,
and as it falls slowly to the stage you can hear the crowd gasp.

______________________

THE PRAYER BELL
—James Lee Jobe

What do I pray for?
Peace and plenty.

I pray that kindness
shall move among us.

And to whom do I pray?
That which lights up the stars.

I cover my head
before god.

I place my bare feet
on god's good earth.

When the prayer bell sounds
I will be ready.

___________________

YES, THIS SEAT IS TAKEN
—James Lee Jobe

Waking up from a thick sleep, I see
that I am a passenger on a ghost train.

For long hours through the night we rattle along rails
long unused, but we never stop at any stations.

Along the aisle, little ghost children play; the same
as living children, they are tired of being penned up.

In the dining car, fashionable ghosts are sitting down
for dinner, served by ghost waiters in white waistcoats.

A ghost porter hurries by, carrying empty suitcases
back to the sleeping car, which also is haunted.

We enter a long tunnel, and I look at the window;
the only reflection is me... then I fade away, too.

_____________________

FEEDING THE PUPPY
—James Lee Jobe

The coffin has legs
and a curled, wagging tail.

It follows my sister, Dorothy,
wherever she goes.

Friend, she doesn't
go very far.

Methamphetamine all day
and vicodin or oxycontin all night.

Her mind is shot
and her liver is weak.

After decades like this, the coffin knows
that Dorothy could drop at any time.

The coffin is a little puppy dog,
and my sister is a morsel about to fall from the table.

He'll wait
if it takes all day.

_____________________

A CONVERSATION ONE NIGHT
— Allison Ferrini, Davis

For centuries lovers have looked to the stars for romance

His story began, and who indeed can resist Ursula, Orion, Orpheus

And their stories of wanton passion and sacrifice

Love gained, love lost, undying and eternal?

We’ll be like them. I’ll love you ceaselessly

Don’t give me that shit, she said. I know how love ends

You’ll cheat, I’ll eat, we’ll both drink

We’ll live in a trailer in some dusty park, with a three-legged dog you felt sorry for

I see stars in your eyes! He cried. Your hair is a hieroglyph I am compelled to decipher! Love me back!

You’re being ridiculous, she said

Our story won’t end with us in the stars…together forever.

If I stay with you, you know what they’ll say about us when we’re gone?

Two kids got too caught up with fucking, lost their heads and got married, wasted away in this tiny town

They fought, and they cried, and one day they died

And the three-legged dog chased the beer truck out of town

____________________

FINER FEELINGS
—n.ciano, Davis

I remember.
we were lovers once lost
but only to find
that together we were secure and sound.
That was a fortnight ago,
and now it seems surreal
dreamlike for being so real.
And when our paths cross
the air feels like it used to,
tasting bitter and sweet
co-existing with life and death
unified into one,
we were two people but pertained to one soul
and the feelings never go.
Love is infinite.
These are my finer feelings
and I will always love you so,
but now we are in the same city but two worlds apart.

_____________________

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
—n.ciano

The wolves come out
only when the wind blows.
For the howl of the wind
is the howl of the wolf.

Intertwined.
Parallel sounds ring out loud.
It’s a moan and a whine
drowned out.

All you hear is the whistle of the wind.
Wolf cry, covered but not lost.
A reason why:
a message to be sent away

because the wind will deliver it
to the other wolves who
dance in the wind
with spirits of ancestors
who only come out when the wind blows.

___________________

THESE HANDS
—n.ciano

I was watching
those hands
they were mine
they were alive.
They crawled over my body
trying to shock me back to life.
I watched them
hurriedly and nervously
shaking with fear
they didn’t know if I was there
and they started to cry.
They grew tiresome
and so did I
and then when I looked again
I saw these hand,
these hands…
they weren’t mine

_____________________

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

on murder

think of an old man
white beard he fondles
fears the cold
wrapped in a blanket
wool cap shields his head
squats on the floor
watches TV
trumped-up image of himself
giving orders
fomenting terror, he thinks
narcissist some call him
CIA punk gone rogue
terrorist he might still be
it’s a question

sleeps in bed at 4 a.m.
like any man
assassins break in and kill him
assassins they call heroes

(say, we can break into any old place,
get rid of somebody, can’t we?)

his blood on the floor
wave the flag wait for the upshot
if any…


—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

____________________

SONG OF LIBERTY STREET
—Patrician Hickerson

war ends, oh say can you see
oh say, which war shall we sing about?

but say, there’s a ghost singing on Liberty Street
she’s smug and smart and 17
she wears a yellow autumn dress
she’s walking down Liberty Street
on a clear and sunny day
singing the unknown song of streets
that
only an old map can now sing you

song of Liberty Street

she still walks to her September job
sings all the way
from the Cortlandt Street ferry it rocks
on the Hudson chained to its dock
down the ghost of New York streets
to the old stone building at 1-3-6
sits red and squat and 4 stories high
on Liberty Street sing 1-3-6 Liberty Street
she types on a September day

song of Liberty street
1-3-6 torn down
made way for Twin Towers now smoke and rubble
the ghost still there she walks down Liberty Street
types all day sings her September song
in her yellow autumn dress
all fall down, say
another war begins, oh say

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Love is the crocodile on the river of desire.

—Bhartrihari (c. 625)

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to our contributors today, all of whom are from Davis—just a small smattering of all the talent over there. And apologies to Katy Brown and Bill Latimer for my having gotten their photo credits mixed up yesterday. Those are correct now... And go to jamesleejobe.wordpress.com for more from James Lee Jobe on his blog, "Putah Creek".

Susan Kelly-DeWitt

at the "Fog and Woodsmoke" reading

—Photo by Katy Brown