Sieves of Time

The Covered Bridge on Honey Run Lane

—Photo by Katy Brown

THE HONEY RUN COVERED BRIDGE

—Katy Brown, Davis

I find myself thinking
that I pass through or over time,
in one direction, like crossing

the old covered bridge on my way home.
But time flows
all around the bridge,

like water when the creek rises
—like sunlight and rain;
or the laughter of boys

swimming in the icy rapids.
Inside the bridge, creekflow
and the swish of wind

catch and echo against
cracking boards.
This bridge is a sieve of time,

straining the barred light
as it passes through deliberate
spaces in the siding;

capturing shadows of tourists
who wander into history
out of summer.

____________________

BACK TO THE CANYONS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

The sky is a different blue now,
but the same knifing wind I remember
off the high ridges, across alfalfa

fields…. No fields now. Just condos
impervious to weather. Freeway
where used to be the tunnel-road—

I'd canter bareback
after school, I was Lone Ranger,
last of my breed.

On the wind a scent of canyon.
Handful of hay for a big black mare.
Lost years ago.

____________________

STING
—Taylor Graham

So small a thing, just a pinprick,
but it itches like fate.
You have no memory of how it came

but it itches like fate—
a premonition, a shortness.
End of summer verging to fall,

a premonition. A shortness
of time, of breath. Could it be
the black widow with her hourglass

of time, of breath? Could it be
the bug that kisses men to death?
You've listened to so many stories—

the bug that kisses men to death…
a chill like winter in its sting.
Lie down tonight with your dreams:

the black widow with her hourglass.
You've listened to so many stories,
end of summer verging to fall.
You have no memory of how it came.
Lie down tonight with your dreams.

_____________________

NATURAL MAGIC
—Taylor Graham

This forest—do the trees shine silver,
or dying-leaf-golden
in a slant of light? Impossible to know,
as if monks were singing
in the language of another world.

I call, but there's no response—just
the image of you beckoning
as you disappear among trees,
oak leaves like gold coins, firebirds
in shimmer-flight.

As in cycles of dream,
I couldn't follow you. I search
my pockets for a fragment.
Why does light seem closest
just before it's gone.

____________________

Today I was walking through a graveyard and I discovered a tombstone shaped like a book

What a wonderful idea I thought this was, for what describes life more perfectly than a book?

Meeting someone for the first time is the exposition

general and vague

sometimes interesting and sometimes not

As you get to know them there is a sort of rising action

character development

internal struggles and antagonists

Resulting in a climax, the moment in which you love them more than any other

I believe this occurs with everyone we meet, even if we don't believe we love them

there is a single moment in which we do

Sometimes books have a happy ending

but sometimes they don't

They always end though

it's sad when they do

and it's hard to put a good book down

But that's the most important part, when the book in its entirety has become a part of you

and you are now free to read more books

and although those books will end

and the ending may be happy, but it may be sad

it will always

always

be worth the read
 

* * *

I sure hope someone is clever with my tombstone.

Not a book of course, that would be too obvious.

Something far more original.

Perhaps a stone toilet.

The lid can say “He was a tough one, but he finally dropped”

and as a footnote, “loving husband, always left the seat down”

and of course

bonus points if the toilet works

 —Dillon Shaw, Davis

_________________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

9/11/01-11
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

Towers can only completely contain
the bodies of people
temporarily

while
their souls
and spirits
outlive
the rise and fall
of such structures

and is
as it should be.

______________________

Thanks to today's contributors. Katy Brown has a new album about the Covered Bridge on Honey Run featured Medusa's Facebook page; be sure to check that out, along with her description of it. About today's TG poems, Taylor Graham says "this is where Brigit Truex's Tartoum led me," and about his poem, Dillon Shaw says, "Here's a matching pair of poems I wrote, partially inspired by the old SOW, 'Argument/debate/dueling poems: two poems w/contradictory ideas.'"


—Medusa

 Angles

—Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento

Buyers of TIme

Buck Moon

WAVE OF WAR

—Buck Moon

When the cry from the hills broke the stillness at noon
Like a scream piercing out from a blood-splattered wreck;
When the cry echoed down to the valley below
It was gathered like grain and thrown to the wind
To loosen the warning of doom’s early call.
When the cry sounded loudly over flatlands and farms
The chaos that followed was so like the danger
That none could escape the one nor the other.

As the water arose through the silt and the sand
And covered the ground with the blood of the land
The children were killed and the women were drowned
And none but the dead could remember the sound
Of the onrushing wave that again cleansed the earth.


(originally published in Santa Barbara City College
Channels, 1964)

____________________

BUCK MOON'S WORK BOAT
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

He's moving fast now
wheel spinning—
spin right, back left
back right, tight.

I see four cleats
like anvils on a large
boat-barge. Ropes.
He needs ropes and chains.
He's got a rope looped
on his anvil. He's got
his hands full.

Leaping onto the yacht
got caught up, or not;
tied up a neat knot
on the yacht. Then

Buck's back on the boat-barge.
Engine winds in reverse
to traverse the winding river.

He's doin' the math.
Ropes and angles, angles
and ropes, he hopes.
It's all by degrees.
(Speaking of degrees,

I hope he wore his
sunscreen.) Now I've seen
one more yacht he got unstuck
from the muck and the reeds—

too tight of a turn
with daylight to burn
on the Petaluma River.

_____________________

MIGRATIONS: PILLBUGS IN MULTIPLE PLEIADES
—Carol Eve Ford, Kenai, AK

Morning awakens each one.
murmuring gently, coaxing
merrily at its closed doors.
Muttering, each stretches, groans,
mumbling about aches and pains.
Mildly disentangling its
multiple limbs, each glides forth.

Moving pleopods wave like
mini-mustaches beneath.
Mouthparts tucked primly, he glides
methodically across the
morning blacktop, crossing roads,
marching forth to seize the day,
moving out, ready to roll.

Many wonder: why does the
modest pillbug cross the road?
Maybe he knows it will be
much too hot later. Perhaps
more danger lurks among the
mulch than the safe, empty road.
Most likely he seeks something.

More suitable digs, a new
mate, greener pastures, perchance
more roughage? Humble, stolid,
miniscule armored tanks in
multitudes, crossing both ways.
Mapping the commute, they
march on hair-legs. Vision quest?

_____________________

ADDENDUM
—Carol Eve Ford

Armadillidiidae,
also known as “Pillbugs;” Group:
Arthropod, terrestrial
animals, Isopod class,
and crustacean family, such
as, crawdads, crabs, lobsters, shrimp,
and water fleas. They roll up.

____________________

METAMORPHOSIS
—Carol Eve Ford

Morphing is commonplace now.
Most children have seen it a
million times, for heaven’s sake!
My word, people! Butterflies
may have invented it, but
modern methods far surpass
mere tedious miracle!

_____________________

INTERMITTENT BRIDGE
—Caschwa, Sacramento

It is just an ordinary bridge
Extending the highway over a river
To carry commuters from
Point A to point B

Though from time to time
It rises to yield way to traffic
On the waterway, going from
Point C to point D

It is someone with their ears plugged
Talking, texting, dialing, selecting,
Almost looking in your direction
When it is your turn to speak

It is a collection of musicians
Each playing their separate parts
Reaching the section that takes them all
From one chorus to another

It is that part of the neighborhood
Outside the family, outside the home
That provides a village of experiences
To move one from childhood to adulthood

It is everything a blind person “sees”
Through their other keen senses
And it is the first turned page of
Music, art, or poetry.

And then it is gone again.

_____________________

OF MENTAL BALANCE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Ah the world and its languages ripe for misreading,
where “At the mercy of” means No Mercy,
beautiful saber edge of a place where to live
is to cast Virgilian lots with every message.
I trailed a truck whose rollup back door read
Time Buyer…until the elaborate curlicues
resolved into Tire Buyer. Oh well, if all this
truck has to teach me amounts to how the world
tires the buyer of selling and being bought…

But I was once a buyer of time, and would love,
would ache to purchase just a wee bit more,
clean or begrimed. Buy me some time, I’m gonna,
and once I’m a famous Buyer of Time, I can

once again stunt-ride my high flyer, my beloved
Schwinn Timecycle along Time’s birdwire.
Slide me wheelwright along that orange-red
sling of a Golden Gate cable, Enabler Time.
I’ll take my Brodies off the acrobat’s thin slick
longcopper, bounce right back up undead,
ready for one more singing wire, one more,
one more, one more shuddering, quivering
test of mental balance…

______________________

TELL ME
—Tom Goff

Birdsong wing of a woman in life,
Tell me you have not gone far,
My silent once-comfort in all strife,
Tell me why now, quick as a knife,
you’ve bladed your glide toward a darker star.
Birdlong wing of a woman in life,
Tell me you have not gone far.

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

THE GLORY
—Gene Avery, Sacramento

that will be the Story
when all is said & done
that will be the Glory
when all of us are gone

______________________

—Medusa

...with thanks to today's contributors. Buck Moon is Sacramento Poet Carol Louise Moon's brother; Carol Eve Ford is her childhood friend, and they now correspond between Sacramento and Kenai, Alaska.

Humboldt Bay, Eureka

—Photo by Jane Blue, Sacramento

Firebirds and Moonshells

Tapestry by D.R. Wagner
 

MORNING DANCES
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

There is little left of the
Night, a few stars still caught
In the dark blanket, the moon
Doing its best to remember what
All the sweet magic was
As we looked from the high
Balcony, out across the lawns,
Telling the tales of olden times,
When that magic itself had strong legs
And could run with us all through
The silver forests, a silver breath
The water and the river moving
As thoughts do, unwinding memory.

I will wake up alive again.
These words will seem like I have
Dreamt them except that they
Remain here. I will trust them.
I will believe you truly were here.
I will believe.

___________________

SLIPPING IN THE BLUES
—D.R. Wagner

There are two trains leaving and I
Folded up my arms and quickly
Walked away.

I was leaning out the window
Trying to make her hear that
The red light was my baby
And the blue light was my mind.

I was born under a bad sign. If
It weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t
Have no luck at all.

I took her to a nightclub and the whole
Band knew her name.

I’d better ride away in my Terraplane.

                        *

When I woke up this morning
The blues was walking around
Just like a man.

This has to be the worst old feeling
This boy has ever had. I’m sorry
You’ve ever been born.

I folded up my arms and I quickly
Walked away.

______________________

CHANTING
—D.R. Wagner

I woke up in hell and did not
Recognize it at all. This must
Be a dream. The edges of the room
Curling slightly. The blur the objects
In the room had when one looked
Directly at them made the same noise
Lucid dreaming does as it empties us

Or contains us in that special way we
Recall upon waking. This place was
A neighborhood and I was compelled
To search my pockets. I felt I must
Deliver some serious message. I was
Confused. I did not know the why of
Anything I found myself concerned with.

I put my feet on the floor. I was
Growing fear as if it could be harvested.
This was dissolute. I must be here forever.

                           *

I woke up trembling.
I could hear the faraway sounds
Coming from the chapel. The monks
Were singing in Latin, call and response.

I was visiting this place. Hell was
A course of action left over from
Some reading about an argument.

I listened to the chanting for as long
As I was able. Gradually clusters of angels
Began to promenade and seek color.

_____________________

SNOW AND MAMBO
—D.R. Wagner

Broken like promises trying
To dance while the snow
Makes it near impossible to know
That this is happening,

The dark, with its thin legs
Travels across the room
Where the light is unable
To follow. It is, perhaps, a cat.

Cats too are doors, places between
The way we see and the deeper mysteries,
A crucible compounding all 365
Heavens, pulling at the garments
Helen of Troy wears as she appears
Then reappears in reading after reading,
In the Gnostic, to the tales of seventy
Rivers, to the crossing of the great
Seas from Carthage to Cuba.

A cat or a sword? It is impossible
To tell in this snow. It moves with
A flame-colored skirt
Wrapped around its fine mambo.

____________________

THE ROAD BACK
—Katy Brown, Davis

A quality in the land—the scent of minerals, a slant of light
—something imprints on us when we are new
and calls us homeward when we age.

Landscape, the canted tower of memory,
shifts so much in sixty years: ridges flatten under roads,
creeks and streams hasten, tamed, in galvanized conduits.

Good maps may point you back toward where you began,
but you will need a lot of time to just search.
The air may smell different. The trees will all have gone.

You will need to stop every now and again to remember
the wildflowers and insects you knew by name long ago.
You will need to feel your way back over volcanic rock.

If you listen for that distant beacon, an imbedded keening,
you may come upon a half-remembered path, slip back in time,
and find, revealed again, after all these years—Eden.

____________________

EMERALD AIR
—Katy Brown

Below the dirt road, a stream fills
the emerald air with sound
like a constant sea—in the stillness

of a too-warm afternoon,
light—pale green here
—cast through pines and cedars.

We sit at a concrete picnic table
in the Potato Patch Campground
eating little spinach and cheese pies.

The creek and breeze fill the forest
with sound that hushes voices.
This light passes through

the tattered lace foliage
like light through stained glass—
everything, a pale shadowed green.

_____________________

A ROUNDED FRAGMENT
—Katy Brown

I hold a small object in my hand—
a twist of blue from a jay’s feather; or
something I found hidden in a doorway;
or a sound, perhaps, of cello and bells—

a small thing I meant to give you.
But seeing you in the garden again,
I know you are complete without tokens—
complete and fulfilled without any part of me.

We had a conversation once
—do you remember? By the ocean.
Firelight on the beach made you
look younger and more vulnerable.

I don’t remember the words,
but I recall the sound of your voice
resonating near your heart. I’d have
followed you anywhere for that sound.

You dug in your pocket and transferred
from your hand to mine
the rounded fragment of a moonshell
which filled me with inexplicable joy.

_____________________

OF FIREBIRDS AND GEESE
—Katy Brown

Such is the life-cycle of dreams
that one can reach for something
with the determination
of migrating geese—

and not be strong enough
to finish the flight.
I left this dream long ago. Yet,
the Firebird sometimes whispers

to me when I sleep—not of ashes,
but of the pure fire of the long leap and
turning jumps, of floating on my toes.
Such is the cycle of dreams . . . .

______________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

WHERE I’M FROM
—Kevin Jones, Fair Oaks

                 The stump jumpers
                 Begin south of the 80.
                             —Mike Royko

Central Illinois
Was rural,
Conservative.

We preferred
To burn our bridges
In front of us.

Never know who
Might be
Coming at you.

_____________________

—Medusa

Weather

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Memory and Other Spells

St. John's Bridge, Portland, OR

—Photo by Janet Pantoja, Woodinville, WA

BRIDGES
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

Above the freeway
Calvin pauses
poised delicately
over the west lane
staring down
towards the pocked concrete

then towards the rising sun
just above the jagged line
of electricity in the sky
he turns
smiles somewhat
until he sees Noreen

his face moves
as does his cane
his heart stays still
until the rain relaxes
and passage to the other side
is more assured.

_____________________

NIGHTSONG
—Ann Wehrman, Sacramento

I am your secret admirer,
at midnight, alone, freely
uplifting my voice in duet
with Netrebko’s shimmering soprano
in Song to the Moon.

Loving you from afar,
unexpressed to the world,
my fingers touch you
in dreams, ache for
the texture of your hair, skin,
movements of your body
within mine, your caress
as you utter my name.

______________________

SPELLING IT OUT
              thanks, John Fogerty
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

hey, daddy,
look what you did
you put a spell on me
making me think it’s love
the yearning, the craving
all mine
the moaning the howling
all mine

you put a spell on me
breaking me
tearing me
teeth of a wild dog
devouring me
made me stop runnin’ around
foolin’ around
doin’ the thing that I did

you put a spell on me
cuz I’m yours it never stops
the yearning the craving
for the hands that undo me
the fingers that hustle me

you put a spell on me
the craving the yearning
the howling the moaning
your mouth at my throat
making me think it’s love
teasing, cajoling
your growl pitched low
and thick with lust
grows deep inside me

spelling me
cuz I’m yours till I’m sick of you!

______________________

THE DECLINE OF COMEDY
—Caschwa, Sacramento

I used to love to hear the
Notoriously funny standup comedy
Of Don Rickles
Who unapologetically poked fun
At everyone.

Then he was overcome
By a nation of laws
(no relation to Indian tribes)
And started adding in
Scripted disclaimers to his jokes
Thus diluting the humor
Till it vanished.

As the infamous Charles Swartz was heard to say:

It is okay for tightrope walkers
To have a net hanging far below,
But don’t give them more feet to stand on
Or else no one will watch the show.

______________________

HERE, NOW
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

She stirs flour into the starter,
already savoring the bite
of sourdough—remembering
Kenai, that long northern summer.
But this is here, now—even as
September sun casts sudden color-
bridges from the stained-glass
pendant at the kitchen window.
Why do those shimmering
reds and blues make her think
of Caribbean sunsets?
Memory bridges—so many
far-off places, long-ago times,
all with their portents—if
she could read them—of this
here and now.

______________________

SOLECISM
—Taylor Graham

He took a trifling fancy to extreme,
imagining that he was Everyman.
Quite unyielding but to his self-esteem,
he took a trifling fancy to extreme—
that all was fair and legal in this scheme:
to grab and not give back all that you can.
He took a trifling fancy to extreme,
imagining that he was Everyman.

______________________

A BRIEF LOVE STORY
—Taylor Graham

Una and Eduardo—who can they be?
these two who met by hazard in the dark
and drowned together in a starry sea.
Una and Eduardo, who can they be,
who woke up the next morning shocked, alone, free?
Be careful how electric glances arc.
Una and Eduardo—who can they be,
these two who met by hazard in the dark?

______________________

HARD-ROCK MINERS: A PHOTO, 1850
—Taylor Graham

Each man with his lunch box looks straight ahead
into the lens. It's dawning, above ground.
Why think about a sweetheart still a-bed?
Each man with his lunch box looks straight ahead.
They're going down. Lost daylight like the dead
who never rise. Their pay is pick and pound.
Each man with his lunch box looks straight ahead
into the lens. It's dawning—above ground.

____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, some of them dabbling with recent Seeds of the Week, and didja notice Taylor Graham's triolets? That's a fun form because you get to repeat so many lines! I say, the less work, the better. See the green board at the right for more about them.

This Sunday (9/18) the Sac. Poetry Center Team will walk or run a 5K race to benefit AIDS/HIV treatment, prevention, and awareness. Meet at the North steps (facing the Cathedral and Crest Theater) at 8:15 a.m. Please be on time! Accept the challenge and also write or bring a brief poem about AIDS/HIV to read on the walk with fellow SPC'ers, if you wish. Let Frank Graham know that you are walking or running (916.606.4303). Log on to the Sac Valley Aids Walk Registration page at www.sacvalleyaidsrunwalk.org to register online—OR print and fill out the registration form and send it in snail mail. Select Sacramento Poetry Center Team in your registration—or write it in.

Rae Gouirand always has lots going on, workshop-wise, including the tenth anniversary of the Cache Creek Writer-in-Residence program. See allonehum.wordpress.com.

____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Patience: The open door that allows the world to enter.

—Stephen Dobyns

____________________

—Medusa

Our condolences to Sacramento poet Douglas Blazek on the passing of his son, Nathan.

—Photo by Katy Brown

I Take My Women Any Way They Come

Belly Dancer at Jodette's, 

Second Sat. in Sac., Sept. 2011

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

 EDGES OF DESIRE
(After "Square Limit" by M. C. Escher)
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

Braid of woven silence and sound—coil
of lines bent according to the weave
—a complexity of pattern and

the materials that work with pattern
intention obscures thought upon
thought that holds the secret:

white is relief—
as black and gray are relief
to white—center is always reached

—as are the edges.
What is first: Idea or result?
Bind the edges. Let nothing out.

____________________

SELF LOVE
(After "Self Love" by Winslow Homer)
—Joyce Odam

It’s not the curious self-deep mirror now,
or this wide field that’s yours for the scything,
it’s more the vast expression on your face,
the way you pause and seem to listen—

knee-deep in daisies—wearing the sky
like an inner movement
as you lean from your shadow—
it’s more like that: you, absorbed

in a moment of self-admiration,
proud of your thoughts, of your grasp
upon the infinite, and the power you think
you have—it‘s more like that.

____________________

ADMIRER, ROSE, AND RAIN:
A Triangle
—Joyce Odam

She is bending to smell a rose,
will it allow her nearness . . .

which is the most beautiful
to any admirer—

self to self—
or rose to rose . . .

does the rose open fully—
do her eyes close . . .

will it dare to rain
and ruin her hat—fill the rose

with sudden raindrops
to hasten her away, splat, splat . . . ?

____________________

DETAILS
(After "Portrait of a Woman" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
—Joyce Odam

A comfy chair. A dark room. A piano. The corner of a picture on a wall cut off by the frame of the formal painting. Centered on the oval red rug, she turns to look at you, holding her skirt back with one white hand, delicately posed, with a motionless white fan held open in the other, caught in mid motion. And what is her expression? She seems to hold her breath—she is that still—that practiced of restraint, not one rustle of her voluminous gown. Her face is strong with silence. The patient shadows darken. Her face glows like a secret.

____________________

ON THE WINDOWSILL AT MIDNIGHT
—Joyce Odam

In the middle of the cat
sits the night
staring out upon the lovesongs of the dark.

                ~~~

Her yellow eye is like the sun.
The dark falls through
and ignites her purr.

____________________

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN
—Joyce Odam

How easily she slips through all those who
talk and move around her though she speaks
between their words, and sits where they sit,

and stands where they stand. Her opinions
get lost in rhetoric of others, their strong voices.
Her invisibility protects her from too much

scrutiny, saves her from cameras and admiration.
Eyes glance over her to rest on the reciprocation
of other eyes that connect in instant recognition.

____________________

THE MYTH YOU TRY TO LIVE UP TO
(After "Unconditional Love" by Sarah Descallar)
—Joyce Odam

Hope wears a blindfold so you can grope
toward the brightness of your desire.

It is the only way to earn what you want.
It is its own guarded secret.

It will tell you, and tell you to follow—
follow. And you will follow

and not stumble,
though there are pitfalls everywhere.

Your heart is pure and your
want is sacred.

You will never fail yourself,
and someday hope may reward you.

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

POEM FOR EVENING
—Joyce Odam

Evening
is the soul
of the long day.
It is lost
for awhile
in half dark
and half light.
It moves through a time
of forget and remember.
The sound that it makes
is shadow.
The place where it goes
is night.

____________________

Thanks to Joyce and Michelle for today's offerings!

Two items of note: Our Seed of the Week is Bridges, either literal or metaphoric. Golden Gate or holding hands? Solid steel or shaky rope-bridge? Making a phone call, or Katy Brown's mysterious covered bridges with their dark shadows and weathered wood (more about that later)? Send your poetic thoughts or photos of bridges—or art!—to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. Take your time; no deadline on SOWs.

The second thought is our new form to fiddle with: try a triolet. See the green box for a description, or go to Calliope's Closet under the Snake on a Rod in the green box and check out the new list of form-sites. Here's an example from Lewis Turco:

JASPER OLSON
(from Bordello)
—Lewis Turco

I take my women any way they come—
I'm Jasper Olson, brother, hard and fast
I play this game. Though some folks think I'm dumb,
I take my women any way they come,
and come they do. There's no time to be numb
in this life—grab it now and ram the past.
I take my women any way they come.
I'm Jasper Olson, brother, hard and fast.

______________________ 

—Medusa

 Ballet Folklorico costume

display at La Raza Galeria Posada in Sac.

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

Criminently!

 Covered Bridge

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

WHEN BIRD SHADOW CROSSES THE GLASS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Wasps scale the slippery pane of the window.
Down below, students, lightly dressed girls, pass;
Morning shadows and birds (crows, sparrows, swallows)
glide, every kind of silent thing across the glass.

So rapt upon what they’re doing, shadow and bird
alike evanesce, their natures crossing, interdoubling:
the shade the bird’s alter ego, the bird the shade’s.
Not one whit of all this is troubling,

save when bird-shadow so crosses the glass
as to implant shadow in the glass itself,
the effect of dolphins at flow, when they pass
just below surface-skin, visible only one slim water-shelf

absorbing, assuming, their rippling back-formations.
Thus might the spirit, the calmness, the logos
first float over the void, all essence prior to creation,
god skimming by the weight of a sublime scant smile
             over the new topos.

Here I am floating mid-office, Kellerian vibrascope
to the sweet land, parking lot and college park,
and the glass that I look out quite lookout in hope,
for the morning that street-sweepers away dark

revives me, consoles me. Despair was not far,
but that was the night, and this is the light.
I have with me Edward de Vere’s letters (true Shakespeare),
drinking down all powers of his fit for a frame so slight.

But his words are not mine to inherit, and so I retreat
into my slender stock, my glazed-over cave
with the scrabbling wasps, the glass bird-shadows, the seat
of lore and language and what brains my good genes gave.

The natives here distinguish no levels of air and cloud;
             they’re birds.
I drift shapeless and adrift as the air, wind, cloud, awaiting
             the spirit of words.

______________________

LANGUAGE OF THE SMALL
—Brigit Truex, Placerville

He thinks he knows it all, won't
wait for the ending, to sweep me up
with his sickle-moon scythe.

Wait! For the ending to sweep me up—
I am still writing it as I lift each leaf
and measure its shadow, its meaning, while

I am still writing it. As I lift each leaf
there is yet another line to be heard,
a green-veined vocabulary where

there is yet another line to be heard,
transposed into tongues that speak
to the heart, without cautious translation

transposed into tongues that speak
the language of the small, unfurling
bud I hold in my hand, each word a seed.

There is yet another line to be heard,
the language of the small. Unfurling,
I am still writing it as I lift each leaf,
wait for the ending to sweep me up,
transposed into tongues that speak.

______________________

ELECTRONIC INTRUSION
—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

From West Virginia
she still intrudes
into his life
periodically and unwanted
unnamed
via the cyber world
and at regular intervals
like a dentist appointment
that he cannot control
or cancel
if needed.

Still Steve is intrigued;
at this point in his life
he takes any attention
he gets willingly
no matter how
personal, bawdy
or foul
it makes him
feel.

Yet distance
makes the heart
unresponsive
with eternally unalterable
disgust
contempt
and then
the blocking device
the delete key
is gleeful
and passionately employed
on his eager part.

_____________________

HAND PRINTS
(last journal page)
—charles mariano, sacramento

with every ending,
each last page
duly noted,
dated,

inevitably
i think of age
a mind-numbing total

not so long ago,
i considered a person
my age
dead

age
as in all the years
that came before,
and how i managed
to squander it

corny cliches like,
time is precious,
life is short,
now
have a scary,
resounding tone

somewhere back there
in between all the
wreckage,
a slight miscalculation

age
as in appearance
that scraggily mess
staring in the mirror

no longer
coming to get me,
it's got me

so i crawl
to another last page
try not to get
emotional
or down

just a date
damn it

last pages
marking posts,
duly noted

"on this day
January 23rd, 2002,
some old bastard
scrawled this note"

signed, dated,
preserved

_____________________

THE BENEFITS OF INSANITY
—Dillon Shaw, Davis

     it's true
     i'm always frightened and nervous
     afraid of everything from germs to heights to people
     too high above the ground and i feel gut-wrenching terror
     surrounded by strangers and i can't breathe
But no one can face fears like I can
I can climb trees and stand on a stage
I can do anything, no matter how frightening
     because i'm always frightened

     it's true
     i'm always sad and lonely
     i hate so much about myself
     perhaps for no reason at all
Yet I have learned to see through the fog
Not merely the fog of depression; the fog of existing
     without living
I can see the world in all of its forgotten splendor
Feel the coarse bark of a tree
(Which doesn't feel how you think it does, by the way)
I can run and yell and pick flowers
In my glorious insanity life is beautiful and free
     i wasn't lying about the loneliness though
     i am surrounded by beings too sane to join me in living

     it's true
     i'm in denial about the harshness of the world
     i refuse to accept that everyone lies
And I love more truly and freely than any other

_____________________

If I ever had or have a "secret admirer"
he or she didn't leave me anything
but probably got something I've lost or been missing
perhaps being like a John Waters movie kind of creep
who just collects stuff to hold on to obsess
That includes once when I had a blue-striped cap
I swear I know the boyfriend at the time grabbed
Oh yes among unsigned notes I've ever gotten someplace like school
never poetic words of admiration or sketched work of art
(Oh didn't you wish for letters written with passion like Napoleon Dynamite
who declared, "there's a lot more where this came from...?")
but instead say something like "I like your boobs..."
and I felt these whacked-out guys were watching me unaware
even peeping and looking around perhaps while I'm at home
Maybe that's why for all these years since
I've been careful about not hanging my bras outside...

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_____________________

Thanks to all of today's contributors, including D.R. Wagner for the LittleNip (see Medusa's Facebook page for his Photo Album #1)! About her poem, Brigit Truex writes: I was kind of intrigued by the scary figure in the SOW and that idea of death being a secret admirer; of course I had to tie in with the form of the week (tartoum) too, you know! More challenging than one might think.

This is a very busy week in NorCal poetry; on some nights you're going to have to make tough choices. See the blue board for details.

Charles (Caschwa) Swartz writes: After setting my flag to half-mast and displaying it out in front of the house, I took a break from 9/11 TV coverage and looked in on Medusa. I was browsing in Calliope’s Closet and found the term, “fer cryminentlies” which I Googled, and that brought me right back to Calliope’s Closet. Maybe that was put there to inspire those who are moved to initiate a creative spark where none existed before, to advertise with neon lights on the backside of the Moon. Or maybe it’s one of those things, “If you have to ask, I can’t tell you.” Either way, I felt more alienated than inspired. Or is that just me?

My bad, Caschwa. I should've spelled it criminently, not cryminently; when I googled it with a "y", they suggested I try it with an "i", though, which led me to some links to help you and others who might be bumfuzzled (—now, that's REALLY a made-up word!). Interesting you should bring it up last week (Sunday), which was Interjection Week on our Word/Day link.

What's the group-think on this one? Is it fair to make up words, in our poetry or in our daily life? Or will it just unnecessarily bumfuzzle the reader? Anyway, here are the criminently links; the last one is for Criminently, the band:

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/criminently
www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question108585.html
www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5641
askville.amazon.com/SimilarQuestions.do?req=DEFINITION-TERM-BLACK-DUTCH
www.englishforums.com/English/JiminettyJiminetlyEtc/kdcwv/post.htm
www.last.fm/user/Criminently

_____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.

—Leo Rosten

_____________________ 

—Medusa

 Light

—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

Tread Lightly

Art by Dave Boles

GOD KILLER
—Dave Boles, Grass Valley

when you run with evil
shifting through gears with
your fingers
in the sockets of a skull
you learn a bit
about demons

not the fantasy demons
of hollywood fame
all
disney cute
and ending up
loveable
or horror movie
grotesque
spewing blood
and gore
as they tear through
hapless
victims
in their
rampage

no
i mean real demons

not the
biblical
slayer of Josiah
or some
other
erudite
Jew

i mean the demons
that grab hold
from deep within

the ones that
caused you to
beat
your lover
over a glass
of spilled
milk

the ones that come from
the deeply entrenched
rage
that festers
over a lifetime
sitting
rotting
exploding
with the
slightest
provocation

i know
a thing or two
about demons

it’s why i avoid
the taste
of gin
or the smooth
touch
of a needle
against my vein

i’ve learned to tread
lightly

once you run
with evil
you are never
without its company

the best you can hope for
is to avoid
all known triggers
and to keep
a god killer
handy
for when the demons
rise.

____________________

—Medusa

Art by Dave Boles