The Blessing of Gratitude

Charlotte's Flowers

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

THE WAY

How may we go—slow
as mules—soft as sorrow,
singing our night songs
to each other?

How long must we travel
when the way is grief—
and I, your thief of happiness,
you, praising your emptiness?
             *
I saw a flash of bird so rare . . .
and you disbelieved me. 
Here is its song.
I have learned it for you.

________________________

ALL NIGHT THE FREED BIRD SINGS

All night the freed bird sings of the empty cage
while I—bereft of song—press hands to ears.
Though shadow comforts me, I close my heart,
will not believe the touch I cannot feel.
My eyes are hot with sorrow, tears refused.
What do I want? I do not seem to know.
Now rain beats at the window. Ah, that’s good;
I understand the rain, the streaming glass,
where something begs at memory like a wing;
I am the glass—I am the beating wing
that tests illusion. Now the rain has stopped.
The shadow has not left me. It is love.
At last I cry. I ask love where it’s been.
Am I the cage that love finds comfort in?


(first pub. by Poets' Forum Magazine, 2006)

 Dandelion, Half-Hidden

COME, THEN, SADNESS

Come, then, Sadness,
let me take you to my bed.
I will rock you like a child.
I will hold you like a lover.

You know me, too.
You have
not forgotten where I lived,
though I have moved and moved
to lose you.

You come out of these new shadows
to be near me.
We are both so cold
we are
beginning to look like winter.
If we
are all there is,
must we love?

Sometimes I tried to run off
with that sweet child Happiness.
But you hung around with your
pained look
till I was yours again.

Come, then, Sadness.
I will tell you all my news.
I will put on my dark-gown-mood
you love me to wear,
while you
with your faithful touch
stroke your happy tears
into my wet hair. 

Dandelion

DUSTY BLUE

Today the fog
takes on that shade of blue
that makes me feel a little sad—

softened by a tone
of happiness
that takes me back

to the dusty blue
of my mother’s shiny
evening dress that I envied so. 

Pink and Grey Rock on Red

BLUE CAT

Here is where it begins—the room with its familiar things; I
suddenly discover—see for the first time—how things connect
in a pattern: I stare at the blue cat in its blue-cat pose on top
of the TV and note how its very roundness solves the room, how
its enigmatic face with its closed eyes and its paws tucked under
seem a grace of contentment.

I bought it because it was blue.  I note how often it pulls my eye
to it; how easily it belongs where it is—under its dust—under
the slow creep of time that drifts everywhere.  I connect it now
to other blue things of the room: shifts of color to emulate the
mood. Even the shadows are blue and grow round.  And I think
how blue is a comfort, and a blue cat, however rare, is perfectly
reasonable.


(first pub. in Red Owl, 2003)

________________________

DEAR SLEEPER

I am just the rain, come to waken you from your dry-
eyed dreaming. Wake easy. I am at your window—
streaming like summer tears, erasing the grime that time
likes to leave. Look how I shine as you peer through—
our transparent reflection in mirrored rivulets between.
If you wonder why I am so familiar—why you love me—
let me lure you outside. Leave your umbrella. Let it be as
it was the first time we walked together—all wet and
glistening—in mutual happiness. 

 Shale Rock, Leaf

THE PATIO TREE

The
small
patient tree
grows
up
through
the narrow openness
of the lattice work
wending its way
up
and
through—
its
trunk
growing
sturdy—
its leaves
taking in the light and
fluttering in old happiness.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

LIKE THE SINGING OF MEADOWLARKS

Where we are rich is where some happiness
fills a particular moment without reason or
specialty—only its little change of light
that makes its point at some lift of darkness—
and allows the blessing of gratitude . . . .
 
_____________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's delights in the Kitchen, and a reminder to check Medusa's Facebook page for our new photo album from Katy Brown. Also checkable are some new items on our green board at the right, including a Webilicious link to Krampus (something to scare your kids into behaving). And our Seed of the Week is something for the season: Friendship. Send poems about that or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com/—no deadline on SOWs, though.

—Medusa

Orange Petals

Something Like Contentment

Christmas Swag

—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Locke

EARLY MORNING DOGWOOD TRAIL
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Quiet except for the back-and-forth
of our voices working out the climb. The trees
in winter. Listen—
silk of horses’ ears to whispering of the woods.
Breath visible against cold.
A glint of sun still rising in the creek.

_____________________

EXISTENCE
            after Walt Whitman
—Taylor Graham

While I was reading the philosophers,
and trying to digest the heavy sentences, the black words,
wind came up and then the rain.
I shut my book and walked outside
to see what the storm left. I found an old oak fallen
across my path; against dark woods
a wild plum dancing in its yellow leaves,
its autumn kimono, its joy.
That’s the way the wind blew,
that’s all there was except for metaphor.

____________________

SOMETHING LIKE CONTENTMENT
—Taylor Graham

The beaker of barium almost drowned me but I got to its bottom and lo! illumination of the nether regions, a twisted staircase blocked; pressure burning memory blue as black. Earth’s muscle fiber sliced by a midnight blade until the under-world began twitching, rumbling to erupt its wastes, replenish the soil for a landscape vivid and varied as a box of crayons. This morning I sit at a courtyard window between walls, hooked up in a maze of tubes to my life. It’s raining. What comfort to know that weather still goes on.

outside the window
how many shades of green on this
gray hospital day

 The Season

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

On cold rainy days I miss my grandma’s delicious borscht soup made from scratch
It was something she cooked right, besides pickle beets
I still can’t seem to duplicate the recipe to make it taste the same
(I don’t think she used meat for it after seeing a slaughterhouse)
and some store-bought borscht now has to suffice
Some is too sweet with sugar while others taste too much like a can
However some Wild Veggie brand beet soup I found seems just okay...

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_______________________

Let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain!
Oh the weather outside got stormy wet
But we should be thankful in Sacramento it doesn’t snow
So off to work I go
to see drivers forget to increase their stopping distance 
I fear a rear-ender
as I hear wheels behind me screech
When I reach my destination
the adult ed students complain—
such as they can’t go out to smoke
or the rain is the excuse why they’re late
Oh let it rain, Let it rain, Let it rain!

—Michelle Kunert

Christmas at Pier 39

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

BENDER
—Lelania Arlene, Sacramento

Easily deterred by the lure of something more,
Greedy for deeper, faster further from shore.
Seeking true union, escape from hearts so sore.

It used to be buts, now it’s all but what’s
Used to be groove, but now it's bell ringers
Used to be smooth, now it’s dead fingers
Used to being nuts, now what’s, what?

Hasty Approach, eyes spark, space clears, it's echo time
Magnets, air sucked out of the room, buzzing and rhyme
Suede soft skin, greedy lungs and tongues, foil and chime.

It used to be buts, now it’s all but what’s
Used to be groove, but now it's bell ringers
Used to be smooth, now it’s dead singers
Used to being nuts, now what’s, what?

Approach, reproach, pumpkin turned coach, hey my buddy bender
Stripped ego, vapor bond, booze trumps daylight robbery
Encroach, Poach, wanting, not wanting, hey my buddy bender
Eye sting, wedding ring, vanished not missing, misery
Hey, Hey My Buddy Bender

________________________

OCCAM'S CHILD
—Lelania Arlene

Always eyed by the entrapped,
Heirloom from the starved before you.
Fervor to bound is seen as attempts to flee.
There must be a guardian.
You are sitting on a gold mine Gal.
Chattel does not fly.
Soon secret caves are torn to gobbets,
Unsteady islands barren of joy.
Learned helplessness,
Bitter as the dregs of your instant coffee.
Rancid as the coffee can of recycled lard.
Smoke to breathe,
Lungs filled with resentment.
I bash at the constructs, creep and excess.
Carve at my skin,
Razor stuttering.
I have made it mine, your words

________________________

WHISTLE ODE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
—Lelania Arlene

Whistle 


I lost my whistle.



Scar tissue built up from too many other mothers' sons……



But my eyes still sparkle with mischievousness



My back is still straight...



I do not hide my breasts in shame



My lips still red



Clit pierced, staking a claim on that which is MY gift to bestow



No bitterness



And no envy



This is how you build wisdom one blow at a time



Defiant like Whoopi in The Color Purple



The color found in labia



My superwoman laughter leaves you cold



I won, Cocksucker.

________________________

LIONS IN CARS
—Lelania Arlene

The Moke, The Moke… the sky is on fire.
That’s my car, that’s my car.
I count 14 flags, how many you got?
Indeed my Brother... The sky became fire.
All of the wet in the world could not quench the double-
breasted sorrow.
They said your hair was messy and they combed it in grief’s
tomorrow.
How many strokes?
How many lashings to the center of the pain.
All of the cars to you, I’d give them all to you to drive
your heartbeat again.
The flags whip like your lion-headed curls, tenderheaded
boy.
Take them all and take the snap and sting of loss too.
The oatmeal stared you down and won.
Well done, hot dog bun?

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

WHO IS HE?
—Riddle by Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

He who is partial to all needy children
He who is immaculately and warmly dressed
He who is, secretly, not so convivial
He who is his loving wife’s husband
He who is generous… and much to a fault
He who is a lover of domesticated pets
He who is bundled in quilts, two nights before
He who is quite round-about-the-middle
 

_________________________

Our thanks to today's contributors of tasty hot toddies in the Kitchen (Trouper Taylor Graham is recovering at home and sent us a haibun about her surgery!), plus reminders that there will be no reading at Sac. Poetry Center tonight, and Placerville's Poetry in Motion read-around at the Placerville Sr. Ctr. has also been cancelled. Details of upcoming readings and other poetry news are on the blue board (under the green board) at the right of this.

I hope you're watching both boards for news, local and otherwise. I've posted a link to Poetry Foundation's seasonal poems that you can get to by way of the red spiderweb's Webilicious feature, and a particular link to Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". I used to read this poem at every December Rattlesnake Press reading at The Book Collector, and I always used to cry. I have no idea why, but the idea of "miles to go before I sleep" touches something in me. Things left undone? The difficulty of the road ahead? I dunno….. Anyway, there are SO many wonderful links out there to poetry adventures on the Web, and I'm trying to change our Webilicious link almost every week in order to take advantage of some of them. Don't be shy about suggesting links, either—either poetry- or writing-related: the Kitchen is always open at kathykieth@hotmail.com/. Come along for the ride, won't you? We have SO many miles to go before we sleep…….

_________________________

—Medusa

Barkley Moon

—Photo by Carol Louise Moon

The Toss of a Coin

Goddess Kali Temple, Lumding, Nagaon, Assam, India

—Poems by Pujish Kanti Deb, India

THE VERDICT OF A COIN

A catapult comprising of two fingers—
representing my lustful beckoning of eyes
and your passionate crawling
down to my unexplored mine
without any valid permit,
tosses a coin up
engraving me in one side of it
dancing with some blissful blossoms
and mirthful peacocks,
and leaving me alone in the other side
amid a dreadful desert
quite abandoned, ashamed, and injured.
The uprising coin flies up
to the Heaven and the Hell as well,
consults with the super authorities
and starts its inevitable downfall
confirming my fortune of tomorrow
and rushes down towards the land of reality
whereon I stand with my three trembling entities—
body, mind and soul
waiting for the unalterable verdict of the coin.

____________________________

A DEVOTEE OR A BEGGAR

It’s not universally applicable
but some devotees of the divinity
seem to be gentle beggars
in the guise of humble devotees,
become shameless flatterers
throughout their devotion to the God
as they keep oiling him again and again,
dropping their crocodile’s tears
in begging for their self-centered circle
of all-around earthly happiness
but drop neither tears
in showing their true love for the divinity
nor their selfless formal inquiry,
"How do you do, my God?"
 

 Goddess Shitala Temple, Lumding, Nagaon, Assam, India

   

SHE AND MY BELOVED WIFE

On the way to return to my sweetest home
tired and exhausted,
a sweet passionate voice flew in my ears
"Have fun with me."
a commercial solicitation of a line-girl
with an erotic embellishment
and a youthful gesture of submission.
I had never been to their parlor
where injured and abandoned hearts
rush for a little plaster and shelter.
To my dormant lustful instinct,
it seemed to be a passionate summons,
or an inquisitiveness for a new thing
which slowed down my stepping ahead
and I stopped and looked at her.
Was it a miracle or the spiritual power
of a God-fearing who ruled in my
body, mind and soul
resisting any beacon of hell?
I looked at her
but witnessed surprisingly
the sacred face of my beloved wife,
on her face and those blue eyes too,
where my dreams bloomed.
A wave of shamefulness
floated my shameless instinct away
and rejuvenated my trembling honesty
to show my back to the black passion.

 

Kamakhya Temple, Assam, India

PRAYER OF A CONFUSED LIFE                           

Look, a life walks on
carrying the God and the Devil
on its either shoulder,
remains ever-confused and hesitant
as the inspiration and the temptation
both flow into the cavities of its sensation.

Feel the thrill of a tug-of-war
played between the God and the Devil
making a life as a rope 'round the clock
and pulling it towards them to own it.

But a sacred life is blissful and fearless
to show its back to Devil in bowing down to God
and prays generously from the depth of heart,
"Let our smile be bloomed on others' lips,
a hut be built in others' heart,
comfort be felt by the plaster on others' wound
and a life be lived with all sacrifices
to compel God to smile on our lips."

It looks at the Devil and continues its prayer:
"Let our selfishness be handicapped
in sharing the causes of smiles and enjoyments,
the flames of anger be extinguished
before humiliating the respectful and useful,
lustful passion be arrested in a moment
before biting the soft skin of honor
and a life be lived with all cleanliness
to compel the Devil to maintain
a million-mile distance from a sacred life."
 

 

 Immersion of Goddess Durga

SIMPLICITY

Ought not to take advantage
From the
sacred simplicity
Or not to cross over the edge
Of its
patience or dignity.

Simplicity is the divine
identity
Of honesty in
earthly paradise
A stout, ethical quality
And blissful with
virtues to colonize.

So open and vast is the heart
That the
universe gets into it
The holy soul may construct
A home for God
to inhabit.

The warning is to be
remembered,
Ought not to
play with simplicity,
It is to be respectfully
spared
To evade the
judgement of divinity.

_______________________

—Medusa, wishing you a happy solstice tonight, and thanking Pijush Kanti Deb from Nagaon, Assam, India for today's poems and photos about his faith as we celebrate the spiritual lives of people around the world during this, our own season of meditation—whatever our spiritual roots—and, hopefully, joy. (Pijush was featured on Medusa's Kitchen on November 28, 2014.)

Goddess Shitala Temple, Lumding, Nogaon, Assam, India

Lost in Ink

At the Garden Gate

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke

“It is difficult to draw away from the face of God—it is like
 a warm fire, it is like dear sleep, it is like a great anthem; yet
 there is a stillness all about it, a stillness full of lights.”
                         —Lord Dunsany


We watched them from our towers
and they sparkled like a first morning,
their hands held perfumes of deepest
rose and their eyes were full of
the sound of birds in jasmine.
Extending their cool hands to ourselves
they bade us "come in, come in."

Crossing the room he saw three flowers
dangling from a broken vase.  Someone
had left them for him to see, he was
sure.  It was morning outside and he
looked past the flowers, the disordered room,
and there were small animals playing in the snow.
They tore at each other with tiny teeth and
became red on the snow.  Whispering.

The game was too old.  He reloaded his gun
and sat down.  Eventually they would come and he
would be ready for them.  It had been many years.

The sun set.

“You are like a maiden who is sleeping.”  The
voices walked 'round him and the night wore its
long coat and walked quietly on the hills.
“You are like a wanderer from Kyfouth and your
shoes show the desert in a perfection of sand."

He moved.

The guns came up and spilt their terrible seed
upon him.  He moved and the dream went deeper.
There were paths filled with things he did not know,
like Christmas.  He became himself and the snow
showed a small group of men with hands like dogs
running in tight file across a field.  Even then
he didn’t stir or wipe the redness from his eyes.
A fine lady with night wound in her hair
bent close to him and said words in his ear.

”What is that way?" he said, half-rising.

“The changing of the seasons,” someone answered.
“I am moving then?”
“Yes.”

Outside, the small animals had slowly moved away,
crying softly and licking their soft bodies.


(first pub. in D.R. Wagner's The Dimensions of the Morning
by T.L. Kryss, Black Rabbit Press, San Francisco, CA 1969.
In 2009 the book was reprinted in a facsimile edition as 

Rattlesnake Reprint #1 from Rattlesnake Press, Pollock Pines, CA)

 Delta Landscape

DRIVING IN THE RAIN

I was standing out in the yard.
The lights from the windows were dim.
I could have helped myself out
But I just didn't want to come in.
Sometimes the rain feels so good
On my skin I could cry
And sometimes the rain
Makes much better sense than goodbye.

I walked up to Main Street.
The shops were all closed up
Except for the bar.
I didn’t want whiskey,
I just need the keys to my car
And I’ll open the night up
And drive but I don’t know how far.

There are times when I can’t
Find the words to explain
All the things I am doing,
All of them push me too close to insane.
I know that it will pass,
That the sun will come out big and bright,
But I’m lost in a heartache and all
I can see is the night.

I‘ll drive up to Auburn, stop by
At the house of a friend;
Maybe he’s not asleep
Maybe he’ll know I've got to come in.
If we talk for awhile I’m sure things
Will turn out all right,
I’ll find where I smile before
I want to turn out the lights.

I start humming a song
But the words, they don’t make any sense,
Just noise in my head too hard to explain,
Too hurt, too intense.
So I roll down the window, let the rain
Get all over my face.  If there are teardrops
Mixed in, their tracks will be too hard to trace.

 Statue of Nikola Tesla, New York

ANTHRACITE

In the basement with its special darks
My grandfather would bank the furnace
With blue coal, anthracite from Pennsylvania.

Ir was beautiful stuff, hard and black.
It would not leave coal dust
On your hands when it was handled.
It burned slowly with great warmth,
Little ash and with a low mysterious flame.

It was Winter in Western New York.
The world was white.  The small
Patches and copses of woods along
Niagara Falls Boulevard had
Snow all down one side of the trees
Because of the prevailing winds.

The roads were icy, sometimes
With ice as black as that coal.
It could take a vehicle and set
It spinning out of control,
Across traffic lanes and it didn’t
Matter what you did as a driver.
The vehicle would spin until
It could no longer do so,
Hitting a ditch or a snowbank.
Winter was in control here.

But not in the basement,
Not in the cast iron firebox
Of the furnace below the stairs.
It was our servant and we were
Its servant; at least twice a day
The fire called.

In tectonic plates, in places where
The pressure was most intense,
The anthracite was born.
It was of the forests before time
Was required to mark the
Swirling of the planet.
These forests had become thick and black,
Become the glittering of ancient
Circumstances.  The black hat
Of the darkness.  The black
Voice of the stars became a low
Warming glow as it burned memory
From behind doors so tall
They could not be filled with emptiness
As in dreams.

 Mushrooms

THE FROZEN LAKE

The door was much higher than imagined.
Green and bound 'round with carved decorations
Made of finest alabaster tipped with gold,
It was as close to the heart as it was possible to come.

I stood like a wasp waiting on a wall, fascinated by a fan
That was the wind across the water.  It climbed across
The waves, naming them.  There are so many dead.

I remember being born and the lake in November,
Gray-green and stark with all the waters of the Great Lakes.
What will disappear?  One breath moves toward another.
The minutes tremble and cower until it is their time.

Then they are bright with promise or torn apart with deep
Sorrow.  We allow them to slide over our selves if we are able.
If we are not, a great noise rises through the ice and the world
Is learned, sun, moon, stars, rain.  “Wish by spirit and if by yes.”

The chains come in, not standing still.  The mind moves,
The ice breaks apart and the water begins its insistence.
Desire seems a reason to get anything done at all.
The Buddha desired to become enlightened and when
The lake froze over, there was a stillness upon everything
That we can hear and we can see and we can feel
Even if we never touch it, made of finest alabaster
Tipped with gold.  As close to the heart as a door might be.

 On Top of the Public Firehouse Box

OAKUM AND KEROSENE

If this dream had an axle I’d put a wheel on it
But it doesn’t.  It just screams as it tries to move
Ahead to do its dream stuff.  It gets caught on
A bit of railroad track, tearing a hole in its story.
A school of bright fish swim out and flip around
On the ground.  They begin to blink on and off like
Lights in a store sign.  The dream says open.

I come to realize there is little I can do anymore
About the way I understand these kinds of things.
I could be getting a call from an old friend when
Leaves begin to tumble from the phone and pile
Up around my legs.  I reach into a cupboard for
A box of cereal and suddenly I am holding you
Very close, we are kissing.  You pull me toward
The bed.  The gangplank is pulled up.  I hear the
Wind catch the sails.  My hands smell like oakum
And kerosene.  I am helping an old man through
A door hatch.  He holds my arm tightly and stares
Into my face.  “You have lived with animals,” he says
“Be careful what you touch.  These people have no
Idea of unstable seas or that the jungle is not chaos.”

I turn and find the inscription on the stone
Almost impossible to read.  It talks about circular
Time, how much a sword weighs, why particular
Clouds look the way they do.  There is a room
Quite near here that leads to an affirmation that time
Will make to us, right after we enjoy this lunch
We are having, fish and chips.  You begin
To tell me a story I think I have heard before.

I close my eyes and listen to your voice.
I begin to recall what a gift Paul Verlaine
Was, what places Kenneth Patchen could
Bring to us with only a knowledge of heaven,
The light at sunset, the clanging of trolley bells.

 Sunflower

CUTTING THE CORD

Spun out into the evening, rain doing most
Of the talking, I try to tell myself I’m only along
For the ride.  The wind holds a fine mist between
Showers and I’m covered in moisture before
I even get to the car.  I pretend that it is a message
Somehow lost in the night that I have walked into
By mistake.  My specialty is wandering far away
From the body and finding its forms in a kind of sleeping
That makes the moon sing, unlocks desires that come
Of pressing my forehead to that moon, taking the skin
Off of stars to show what they are really about.

I’ve seen the hearts of these stars, felt their flesh
As a child feels its mother’s flesh against its mouth.
Here I am free to speak to you, illimitable in my
Understanding but not graced with a language
Stable enough to touch with my hands.  I must
Hold you close to my body, feel your breath
Upon this same evening, trace my fingers
Across your breasts, up your thighs, touch
Your lips and still I will find myself lost in ink.

I will cry and I will laugh and I shall steer
My fragile boat into the unkindest reef
Only that you may spare me this moment
Where we might stand together watching
The whirling of the universe, going to where
No bird can sing, where you can breathe for me.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

And there, with their gables lifting into the sunlight above deep hedgerows beautiful with spring, he saw the cottages of earthly men. Past them he walked while the beauty of evening grew, with songs of birds, and scents wandering from flowers, and odours that deepened, and evening decked herself to receive the Evening Star.

—Lord Dunsany

________________________

—Medusa

Not a Though Street...

The Camber of All Things

Another Long Day

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

LIPS MOVING WHILE READING
—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

Ancient report cards before my mind's eyes:
"Bobby continues to subvocalize"
This was thought not good for young Bobby Lee
But I have read since then (and yes, silently)
That until the middle of the Middle Ages
Everyone mumbled while reading their pages
For what it is worth (since my mind is in motion)
I'd like to extend a zoological notion:
Ontogeny will repeat phylogeny
In culture as well as in biology

 Locke and Back

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock
 

ROBERT LEE HAS RABBIT'S EARS

—Robert Lee Haycock
 
Overlook it. Besides, you knew the job was dangerous:
No phones, no lights, no motorcars, not
A minuet, the Ballets Russes and crepes Suzette.
The one who ran, what do you do when you're
Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork?
Please, won't you be my neighbor?

 There Goes the Neighborhood

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock
 

up a cloudy draw

Robert draws closer 
Robert draws the curtains 
Robert draws the Ace of Spades 
Robert draws his gun 
Robert draws a bead 
Robert draws flies

Robert leaves you to draw your own conclusions

 Reno's Tommyknockers in Nevada City

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
 

CHARGED SWEETNESS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Something within you draws on a charged sweetness,
sweetness hungry inside you, a starved-child need.
Needing substance to gorge on till repleteness,
you fasten on anyone’s heart till your rose lips bleed,
bleed from that bitter acid disappointment
scarring those soft pink crescents as if bitten.
Till, when you kiss, this transfers that dark ointment,
that peppery oil to one more stranger smitten.
To love someone born with your charged strangeness blisters,
like fruits of southern plants corrupt with spice,
so that my touching you can’t be bare-handed,
yet I must take the burn of you, as sisters
lashing out when elsewhere reprimanded
twist their beloved knives in each other twice.

My angel of honey, my devil dressed in snow,
your inward self’s all cinnamon, sag paneer,
mouth-searing cayenne, a heat I have to slow.
That’s when you apply word-syrup,
    too warm, too thick, too clear.

___________________________

THE CAMBER OF ALL THINGS
—Tom Goff

I’m caught in a strange arrhythmia of time.
Here, both the clock hands and my heartbeat skip,
triphammer, judder ahead. Vibrating tines,
tuning forks, twinge as unbidden my fingers flick
(“My eyes are shaking,” says a trombonist done playing).
I’m E-string-atonal with shivers, demon-ridden
as was a British composer I’m weary of hearing,
my tympani skin a trampoline for dragons.
Mornings, though, I look up from books and view you
parsing cloud down to its hummingbird-wing nimbus,
an intenser rain-vibrance than incense from a swung censer.
Remind me again how your skin’s just-the-same-as-
mine sensitive to the seen, sung, touched candescence.
You had me seen sharply through erelong I saw you.

Mere crystal lenses warp the worldly scene;
your diamonds camber all things their own sheen.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

TELEOLOGY
—Tom Goff

All dwellings are haunted during these ends of years.
I saw you just now, love, ghost yourself through walls,
translucent, a holograph of strength and youth.
Most spectral the beings adrift on icy fears:
for somehow the air envenoms,
        somehow it frosts where it galls.
One hundred forty-five Pakistani dead,
teachers and children, hecatomb to what ruse
of adipose holiness battened on young bread?
What martyrs whisked up to a paradisal zed
of grapes and figs and houris? We may bruise,
but down on the floor lies open-hearted truth
soaked with the stain of sweet children,
        for only these ones have bled.

________________________

Our thanks to today's contributors, and a note that Snake Pal Taylor Graham is recovering from emergency abdominal surgery, so there will be no Poetic License read-around in Placerville on Saturday (tomorrow), and no Poetry In Motion read-around on Monday. Thankfully, she is doing well, and is able to receive emails. 

Note also today's Sac. Bee article on The Souletics Experience with Rafa Selase at the Brickhouse Gallery tonight: www.sacbee.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/article4577746.html

—Medusa
 

(Anonymous Photo)

Immutable Latitudes

Snow in Massachusetts

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photos by Denise Flanigan

  

DECEMBER'S EXPECTING

Hoping after the weekend rains
for a respite filled with expression
daydreaming of the Swiss painter
Jean-Etienne Liotard's
"Still life" of tea time
in disarray, with tongs
vase, bowls, butter plates,
for our December holiday's
wish list but it is early
for effortless premonitions
under the tree, wreathes, lights
on our freshly showered
Cape windows
bathed over Saturday's respite
as blue jays head skyward
as magic dishes
from my neighbor Galina
are left for a weekend
on the back screened-in porch,
fresh-baked New England Cod
spinach quiche Lorraine
and for dessert
a Finnish bread called "Pulla"
with honey raisin
and almond cookies,
yet always starved for words
I've closed up a few framed poems
as my gift to my friend Igor
next door
who sends his Labrador Retriever
in his big yellow coat
to keep a language poet
from being lonely
watching the last Poplar leaves
clumsily fall to the woodland field.

 B.Z. Niditch, missing his summer kayaking

FIRST SKI REPORT

These who are young, athletic
radiant as snow birds
upward in the grey sky
sneak away
before the holidays,
we watch them
through coffee house windows
carrying their gear
and sleepwear
some already in their cars,
here on the deck
there by the tourist traps
to gab or grab a latte
promising us all postcards
or a quick email
or out-of-pocket calls
as they head up North
in a hundred directions,
praying for their safety nets
in the dark and cold resorts.

TWO IN DECEMBER

Deciding to travel
cross country in skis
choosing their naps
and maps of silences
to set out
on a departure date
to climb the peaks
with excitement
of flailing and climbing
out of their crisscrossed paths
which are out of the slough
of invisible borders
without poster beds
and to embrace nature
watch inaudible stars
wander though wind gusts
explore the sunsets
unnoticed except
by the others
wrapped in arms.

AT MY URBAN RECITAL

An encircled crowd in a gig
as the piano player
behind the bartender
helps the checkroom guy
to open the last unbroken
frozen glass stained window
in a rainy wind
hearing me play alto sax
as icy G-major riffs arm
me with tuned-up
turned-around courage
after a rough, numbing season
from my patched-up vest
trying to fight through this life
discarding resigned expectations
all downcast attitudes
sleepless nights
forgotten explanations
which may burn out memories
and to look with favor
at tonight's floorboards to rock
regardless of the rain
swimming away in my boots.

GETTING THROUGH

Getting through
is not a speakeasy
time for a Beat poet
or a jazz violinist
in his denim jeans
given by a store owner
in a random act of kindness
working all night
in the factory's western mills
near the Dakota Hills
living under window sills
in unfriendly cities and towns
with a history of cold chills
yet he with smooth jazz
soothes his world
with love, nibbles on a cracker
here at the free tar bar's
red wine tasting night
in a green light survival
of a motorcycled Ulysses
expecting the barefoot dancers
to explode on the floorboards
with his movie revival posters
of James Dean put up on the wall
and even expecting Penelope
to show up.

NOONDAY STROLL

Hearing a love song
from Salazar the cook
checking menu and payroll
who makes each passerby
hungry to enter into his cafe
and try his gazpacho
as the doors shut
and a former weight lifter
named "big-eyed Rob"
having just returned
from his agent in San Francisco
is back here,
having moved on
from being in soap operas
the time almost hidden away
four seasons ago
with his once trendy winter
silver blue tapered fitting jacket
from the local thrift store
says hello to a newspaper reporter
whose camera man takes a picture
motioning to Rob, this once
all-American high school athlete,
great star quality expected
from his 1970 yearbook photo
now in a snapshot visual
almost levitates his girlfriend
Donna sandwiched to the counter
with her piano hands
tucked in behind her back
after strolling by the ocean
showing off his own swan pictures.

DOCK, STILL LIFE BY STUART DAVIS

At the Cape Ann Museum
enjoying the Stuart Davis
ink drawing

Dock, Still Life
my breath is enlightened
by the stretched-out four winds
and again passionate for the sea
as in a depth of stymied wish
to travel on the ocean
as of twenty seasons ago
as you, Stuart Davis,
pop artist of jazz and ashcan
bring me back again
to anointed sailboats
over the bluest waves
in your travel landscapes
brushing world-wide archives
of my imagination
suggesting ports of call
over the sounds of gulls
from long distances
in a now-remembered language
of immutable latitudes.

Today's LittleNip:

ROUGH DRAFTS

Nobody but scholars
and critics
wants rough drafts
of paintings and poems
or music compositions
yet we are renewed
as the skyward birds
retracing their skyward
wintry routes South
flying past islands
and the mouths of home harbors
as their voices disappear
for new expanded locations
in a clearance of season
all needy for a winter vacation
within an essence of daylight time
in a newly translated
reason for creation.

_________________________

—Medusa, thanking B.Z. Niditch for his poems today and for these photos of his East Coast winter and his trip to the museum, and also reminding you to check out the new photo album on Medusa's Facebook page: Twisted Holidays at SPC by Michelle Kunert.

B.Z. and his snowy East Coast Christmas

Clouds of Possibility

Toward Disappearance

—Painting by Sam Francis, 1973

—Poems by Neil Ellman, Livingston, NJ

TOWARD DISAPPEARANCE
(after the painting by Sam Francis)
                 
For an instant we are seen           
struggling to hold our shape
like warm breath on cold glass
then disappear without a trace

                   *
steam from a kettle
the smoke of smoldering fire
until we vanish
into the bloodless clouds

                   *
a specter, a phantom
a shadow of a former life
foreshadowed in the fading colors
of our lives

                   *
being and becoming
this world to the next
the eye blinks once
and darkness descends.

_________________________

SLOW SWIRL AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA
(after the painting by Mark Rothko)

Ever so slowly
at the edge of a boiling sea
without a face or feet
or swiftness of wing
they swirl in clouds
of possibility
too improbable to grasp
without any fingers
and minds of their own
they gather in the shallows
of the primordial soup
to begin their journey
to the promised land.

In the slow swirl of time
at the eve of creation
there is expectation
in a whorl of miracles
and promises to keep.

_________________________

SIMULTANEOUS CONTRASTS: SUN AND MOON
(after the painting by Robert Delaunay)

Like the understanding between
the sun and moon
an old man and old woman
married so long
that they know each other’s thoughts
before a word is said
we live out our separate, contrasting lives
alone, apart in orbits our own
our circles never cross—
ours the division of night from day
ours the journey that never ends.
 

_______________________

SOLAR ECLIPSE (TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN)

(after the assemblage by Joseph Cornell)

Reality hides on the dark side
of the moon
in the shadow of the sun
and, like a fox pursued
by hounds, in the hollow
of a tree

undetected
not even its feathers
make sound
when the wind comes near
to expose its presence
in the brambles of a field

nor when the eye perceives
a glimmer of its shape 
hidden in wavering flames
never the same
never as it was or will
always beyond our reach

it secrets itself
between alternatives, opposites
and the place between the want and need
what is and not
the hope of redemption
or disregard

reality is the dark side
of the moon
the shadow of the shadow
of a night-bird
hunted to extinction
by the sun.

 Maman

—Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, 1999 
 

MAMAN
(after the sculpture by Louise Bourgeois)
 
How I remember you, ma-ma,
crawling in my mind
clinging like a spider to its web
seeming so much larger
than you really were
becoming even larger
through my eyes
more menacing than when
you held me in your arms
and sucked the breath from me—
Oh, ma-ma, my mother
you made me more like you
than you could ever understand.
 

_________________________

CENTRAL PARK CARROUSEL, IN MEMORIAM
(after the assemblage by Joseph Cornell)

I almost lost my life
falling off a blue saddle
painted on the back
of a wooden horse
on a carrousel
in Central Park.
It cantered, it bucked
it breached as if it were
a whale
and circled as if it were
a shark around its prey
while the calliope played
a dirge for me
I caught my breath
held tight the reins
watching
my mother’s face
as her day rolled by
I almost lost my life
then and there
thrown from a blue saddle
painted on the back
of a wooden horse
on a carrousel
in Central Park
in its final turn
as I held on.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE LORD OF THE ARTICHOKES IS AN OWL
(after the painting by Arshile Gorky)

The lord of asparagus is a hawk
of broccoli a hummingbird
of carrots and corn a crow.

Arugula prays to sanderlings
follows the law of the gallinule
and knows the dowitcher way.

In the gardens of their faith
all vegetables worship birds as gods
but the lord of the artichokes
is just an owl.

________________________

—Medusa, thanking Neil Ellman for today's poems, and noting that Medusa has a new photo album of last Monday's Sac. Poetry Center reading, thanks to Michelle Kunert. Check it out on the Medusa's Kitchen Facebook page!

Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea

—Painting by Mark Rothko, 1913