Something to Keep

THE GIFT
—Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

_________________________

—Medusa, wishing you a happy Father's Day and noting that today is the Summer Solstice. May it be a long and edifying day for you.

Cathedral of the Heart

Glad 2

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

UNTIL THE LAST SYLLABLE

The agents of red reminded us
That we only had a short time
Left.  We knew these agents refused
To have any discussion beyond "a few minutes".

They would always say that we only
Had a short time.  They would not listen
For any footsteps on the staircase.

Every time I move I am
Filled up with years tied
To a history I am unable
To imagine.  This is unfortunate.
It is my own history.  I can tell
By the way my wrists are bound,
By room after room that
Smell of stars and freshly cut fields.

“Who are you talking to, boy?”
“You have no idea of yourself.”

I see the bees forming lines.
They fly 'round and 'round the house.

I hear the hollow roar of the blood
Rushing through its veins and arteries
Constantly searching for
Chemical information
That once was plants or animals.

There remain only streets
In a darkened
And closed system,
Ruled by breathing
And the chambered
Cathedral of the heart.

 Cyphostamia

TRANSFORMED BY INSECTS

He replaced his fingers with bullets.
His head was a cobalt blue.
Through the big windows he could see
The huge insects moving closer to the houses.

They looked as if they couldn’t be real,
As if their exoskeletons covered masses
Of circuits and flashing lights.  He wasn’t
Going to stay in this house any longer.

They had called the aircraft in.
Soon there would be fires below the ridge.
They thought it was possible to stop
The changes in the land.  Purple clouds,
Full of unknowing, a ruby gas leaking into
All their bodies, men standing in front of one
Another killing each other in the most obscene
Ways possible.  He packed up what little food
He had and climbed to the rooftop.
He could already feel the heat of the fires.

His wings felt comfortable on his body.
They glistened as he raised and lowered them
With his back muscles.  This was the time,
This was the last moment.  He leapt
From the edge of the roof.  He began to fly. 

 Stuart's Porch

WE’VE LOST THE SHIP

We saw it going down
From the bedroom
Where we had been making love.

You looked out over the trees
As you sat on the edge of the bed.

“The ship is going down,” you said.
“Look, its lights are rising
To the vertical, and the trees
Have white shadows.”

“This is terrible,” I say.
“Yes,” you say, “but it is very
Beautiful.”

_______________________

NO MATTER WHAT

I’ve burned all the maps
Telling others how to get here.
I want you to know that not even
The horses can find us.

No matter what direction
I look, I can’t see
Anything but you.

THE CATS IN LOCKE

Something broke downstairs.
I got out of bed and went downstairs
To have a look around.

There must have been
Seven or eight cats
Just sitting around
Taking bets on what
They thought I might
Be doing there.

______________________

APOLOGY FOR THE SEA

I made up these phantoms
And now they haunt me like
Coastal redwoods lifting from dark
Ravines and billowing high above
Our heads.  Oh, that dreams should
Wear such garments, that the wind
Should be hollow and play flute
Music on our bones.

The beautiful marks teeth make
On the dimmest of lamps,
Always calling for more light, another
Way to know the mother of it all.
The spinning of the days, the warp
And wefts opened up to reveal
The weaving, a random assemblage
Of parts pulled from the sea edge
And old magazine photos, from patterns
Of shells gathered between tides,
Mixed with plastic and that unmeasured
Sound the wind makes as it drags
Everything behind it, pretending
To be a parade of boiled stars and dawn.

 Buddha in a Window

AN ULTIMATE GOOD

An infinity of misery.
It has its own landscape and is bereft
Of people.  Cricket sounds,
A part of the night thrown
Across a plain.  Parts of the plain
Were dark, while others had light.

Haphazard contradictions.  A house
With its lights blazing and, four feet
Away, children swimming in a sunlit
Pond.  To inhabit this kind of place.

Imagination seems higher than anything.
Come here.  Sit beside me.  We shall talk
Of the shifting of the light
In this manner.  Imagine
An ultimate good.
We will call this our lives.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE ALL, THE MOON, THE VOID.

How about some chips
And a cold beer?  It will
Make this poem go by
That much quicker.
The little brunette
With the cute rear end
Will help too.
We have things to do.
We can’t sit around
All day reading poetry.
The next thing you know
You’ll be expecting the moon
To rise over an abalone shell.

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's fine poems and pix!

If He Were To Come Today...

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

—Photos by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch, CA

MEETING DAD AGAIN

Thirty years later, Dad came back
and we met for Ham and Yams at Toffenetti’s.
Pouring his tea, he told me he had
to restore power once
at a newspaper warehouse
and the storm broke again
and the lightning cracked his ladder.
He spent the whole day, he said,
sitting in that dark warehouse,
waiting for the lightning to stop
and for the truck to bring a new ladder.
He had a great time, he said,
sitting next to a flickering lantern
and reading for hours the Sunday comics
printed and stacked
six months in advance.

______________________

MONKS IN THE ORCHARD 

PICKING PEACHES

Young monk
and old monk
in the orchard
picking peaches,
sunny and plump,
ready for canning.

Carrying bushels
to the wagon cart,
the young monk
asks the old monk
what to look out for
when growing old.

The old monk
pauses and says
not much.
Life stays the same
for the most part.
Monks work and pray
but an old monk
works slower and
prays faster.

But not to worry,
the old monk advises.
He admits he's
going deaf
but that's just
an inconvenience
since God uses
sign language.
Peaches like these
have no need to talk.

NEW LIFE BEGINS

white hips a soft fist
for the wrist of your waist
black hair in a spill

on your shoulders
small whirlpools
your ankles

green streams ride
your calves
blue rivers your thighs

I finger the flute
on the back of your neck
rise and slip in

at that moment dawn
and new
life begins

____________________

SIGNS IN WINDOWS

In 1920 he came on a boat
from Ireland and found
his way through Ellis Island.

He found a room
in a boarding house
catering to his kind and

went looking for a job
but found instead signs
in windows saying

“No Irish Need Apply.”
A cemetery asked him to
dig graves and lower the dead.

In America today
there are no signs like that.
Black and brown

apply and whites
sometimes hire them.
My father was white.

But in 1920 his brogue
was a long rope that
almost lynched him. 

IN CHESTERFIELD AND SPATS

The father of the girl
I stare at now,
as we wait for our morning bus,
stands across the street,
tall and proper in his
chesterfield and spats.

He is waiting for a bus
that goes in the opposite direction.
He wears a derby,
swings a silver cane,
smokes a green panatela.
Suddenly he pirouettes

and smiles at my daughter.
She takes the same bus
to school every morning.
That night at supper,
I ask her about him.
"Dad, he's super!"

At 12, she knows.
"Dad, he rides the same bus
as me every morning.
He checks my homework
and I ask him questions.
Dad, he knows all the answers."

____________________

BEFORE MICHAEL BROWN 

AND FREDDIE GRAY

Who celebrates
the birthday of a tree?
Birds and squirrels, perhaps,
but not Michael Brown
and not Freddie Gray
and not Rufus Jackson, who was
hung from a weeping willow in 1863.

Rufus stole an apple pie
cooling on a window sill,
a farmer’s wife said.
She told her husband about it
when he came in from threshing.
An uncle found Rufus
and cut him from the tree.

His family buried him
behind a willow not too far
from a barn in Mississippi
where two men took Emmitt Till,
a boy from the city, in 1958.
Both men said Emmitt had
whistled at a white man’s wife.

The two men beat Emmitt,
gouged an eye out, shot him
in the head, tossed his body
in the Tallahatchie River, not far
from the grave of Rufus Jackson,
said to have stolen an apple pie, then
hung from a weeping willow in 1863.

CONCERT AT BERNIE'S

When Bernie wakes at 6 a.m.
there's a piano on his chest
and Erroll Garner's playing "Misty."
Sinatra's on the headboard
improvising lyrics
and Krupa's in the corner
painting on the drums.
The music is magnificent.
Once the song is over

Bernie chants his morning prayers,
shaves and showers and limps to work
for another day at the gherkin factory.
The foreman, Mr. Simpkins, is an ogre
nonpareil, a sumbitch unsurpassed,
who stalks the catwalk all day long
with megaphone and stopwatch.
At 5 p.m. the factory spits Bernie
and his cohorts out the door

so Bernie limps to the Hot Wok Shack
and buys a carton of Egg Fu Yung
and heads back home to wait for dawn
so he can hear Erroll play "Night and Day" 
while Sinatra does the vocal and
Krupa punctuates the piece
softly on the drums.

Bernie spends each day in hell but dawn
is always a concert from heaven.

STUMPS IN HIS CABBAGE

You would think you would
love a man who died
for you and for everyone else,
even those who will never
know that he did.
But you don't, not really.

The monks in the choir
you hear on Sunday
sing hymns from the heart.
They make fruitcake all week
stoked by the knowledge
he died for them.

They love him
in a way that you
can only imagine
despite much prayer.
You adore him, however,
as well you should.

You know he's infinite,
omnipotent, without
beginning or end.
You hold him in awe.
No one commands your
respect more than him.

You follow his will, mostly.
You tell others about him
but the love doesn't come,
gripped as you are
in tongs that have held you
since childhood

growing up in a house
where a man who worked
long hours, never drank,
put you through school
then went nuclear at dinner
with your mother 

when he discovered
"stumps in my cabbage,
lumps in my potatoes,"
a man whose roar rattled
the neighbors and sent
the dog under the bed.

You would think you would
love a man who died
for you and for everyone else.
But you don't, not really.
You keep trying to love him
and your father as well.

THAT DAY

If he were to come today
I have no idea what I would say
except to admit I have been

expecting him, just not today.
Then I would join the sheep
and the goats and wait for him

to point the way I should go.
It would be too late, I know,
but, yes, I would pray.

_______________________

THE CAPITALIST WAY

It is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich

to enter the kingdom of God,
Jesus told his disciples.
Centuries later Warren

an investor in America
heard about this and
asked Fu a manufacturer

in China to make
millions of 12-foot needles.
Then he asked Ahmad

a bedouin in Oman
to breed smaller camels.
Look for the IPO on Wall Street.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

MARRIED MAN SHY

Of her eyes
and of her hair
I have been
aware one year
but I have said
no more than
I’ll be gone
all afternoon,
take all calls,
all messages.

_____________________

—Medusa, thanking today's fine chefs for today's contributions, and reminding you that photos in this, the daily diary section of the Kitchen, can be enlarged for your viewing pleasure with a single click.

On Thursday

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photos/Artwork by Keely S. Dorran, Sacramento, CA

ON THURSDAY

The laundry done
under intervals
of turn-around washes
and now drying in the sun
near the tall dune grass
by tuft and cluster
with all the energy
we can muster
in this June mound
shining spoils
of cloth and clothes
in socks and hose
up to my knees
by a vast dawn of light
from scant clouds passing
in a luminous yellow
wondering if after this winter
in hibernation
we are deserving
of a bright chirping laughter
as a cardinal hovers nearby
covering an Evergreen branch
hearing a mother sing
a Spanish lullaby
by a wishing well
to her baby daughter,
the crickets sing a miracle tune
in never-ending perfect harmonies
taking water from the springs
drinking in the blue lake
by the waking morning
of two mourning doves
shouting about the dunes
near neon butterflies
a fellow bard motions to me
by his churchyard fence
of his corner ranch
tells me that a bee
from his hive
might sting him
on his pitching arm
if he can't pay the rent
offers to play cards
from his own solitaire
and recites to me
on a deeply flowered bench
French verses of Baudelaire.

A POET FISHING

Fly fishing with Carlos
and Juanita off shore
who hail from Buenos Aires
after a stroll by the blue hills
and a swim in the ocean
trying to have patience
doing exercise motions
with amphibian gills.

_________________________

PASSER-BY

Passer-by my city
a Beat poet with gentle proofs
welcomes you with a candle
returning to my past
half ghost voices going higher up
to his apartment for a reading
while resting in forgiveness
here beside a rock garden wall
near a sandlot playground
where the hounded
throw stones at the wounded
the night watchman arrives
on the fire escape
who barely catches sleep
in the deepest part of Babylon
where there are no hours
to stop the lights
between the taxi screens
and screams of cab calls
hailing its daily emergencies
near this poet's old hangout
in his adolescent years
outside a dance floor
as voyagers play jazz
on faceless Sixties nights
over the Brooklyn Bridge
quoting Ginsberg and Crane
on wisteria street walls
filled with young graffiti
as a Gothic young Edgar Poe
dressed up at carnival time
in black clogs
jogs by though the shadows
who refuses to pardon his past
putting his tongue out
as Oz's scarecrow
insists he is a futurist
as a breathless witness
of a world of art now gone
by summoning memory
which leaves you hungry
feeling in temporary distress
and powerless,
suddenly the big media sends
drones above us
eyeing a five-star actor
once in TV soap operas
who signs off
on his former contract
suddenly appears
for an outside audition
in a summer playhouse
of Shakespeare in the park
wishing for bravos
and autographs from a chorus
in radiant darkness on stones
like a loner Odysseus
returning home
having been in exiled perdition
after sailing the seas
now hearing an oboe wind
reciting life verses of Homer
about the human condition
awaiting his lover
and wife Penelope.

ON CRANE'S BEACH

Within reach
on the water
we run along the beach
as the sun watches
the lovers under wraps
take cover and relax
from tourist traps
composing an entertainment
on my sax
as it starts to gently
then pours out
in the vaporous air
over our rain wear.

________________________

LIFE CHANGES

Life changes
as a worm and stork
head for New York
in the rain and snow
washing out our drains
in the Big Apple,
day after day while sailing
on the South Seas
Melville after whaling
fishes for wisdom
ipso facto in a hymn
to freedom,
a stand up comedian
realizing we the spoken
hear the June bug crowd
ripping with laughter
all the way to Hoboken
like feathers from waters
then watches
the feeding of the birds
near St. Francis chapel
by Brooklyn's graffiti walls
and gently with a surname
enters a French bakery
where saint Henry James
lives on by Washington Square,
the poet- comedian buys
a spinach croissant from a tray
catches a dripping hot latte
in a drenched cup and saucer
says a prayer under his breath
buckling under his knees
asking the angel Michael
that he make the right choice
by not taking a wrong turn
or going the other way
in the dead-end alley by the bay,
he wishes to visit an art arcade
with the exhibition's consultant
and a friend of his great aunt
Gertrude, full of Kultur
with her incongruent confidence
in her nephew
with inconsistent excuses
of his own critical indebtedness
to her back home in California,
her furniture always dressed
in Dutch laced doilies
who once taught
the Fifties expressionists
here on a park bench,
her nephew announces
"I'm here with her permission
filled with potential"
now a young poet
with existential nerves
like Hamlet
with adolescent inhibitions
in drawing lots with many coats
of multiple colors
covers the sunlight galleries
with his picture verses
and turning his life around
in creating a portrait of Gertrude
and her daughter on a napkin,
it's not enough to be merely good
in this artsy neighborhood
here after so many years spent
by Babylon's twin towers
now with the high buildings' rent
cannot hide any original spin
in any tree of life metaphor
as pastor James the lay minister
gives love to his neighbors
by the laying on of hands
from knuckles of his skin
once this morning
in a work-out at the gym
he trying to assure the congregation
as a priest returning from war
for he is a repentant chaplain
among the night sweepers
views the grim reaper
no longer as a stranger
at the lottery counters
giving out surplus food
to the multitude
meeting the former prisoner
and Santa Barbara gambler,
Tim, once a fresh captive
of Vegas's loser hell
in every show-and-tell
as in a wide screen personnel
who still hides out
but now arrives at church
to ring the bells
he returns the lector's pages
in a Latin-singing hymnal
Tim, once a former prize fighter
and champion of the flesh
as wrestler of his fate
once with carnal censorship
always passing on his plate
who now worships
in a new relationship
by the manger's baby creche.

ALONG THE DUNES

Shuffling a pack of cards
for solitaire
under the rolling sea shore
flowing near wild flowers
and olive trees
at morning's high tide
the sun on our backs
and thunder away on the hills
childhood memories
return to me as a Beat
wrapped in June sand
along tall grass dunes
the hours sinking in words
shadowing my veins
from an inkwell of verses
as unruly waves overpower
washing the Indian blanket
near groves at my feet
the red winged bird sings
and drinks
by those taking to the waters
planting me by tendrils
that curl about a girl's hair
as was the actor Delores
who sang in the chorus,
as my past leans on life
corner me as the waves
thinking of so many things
that a poet saves
in his memory
my early plays in laughter
and stand-up comedy
written in a fury of youth
in curious histories
of my friends in the rafters
and rival enemy critics
trying to be fair
kindled by the summer breeze
when the day wakes here
on the open-air original theater
aware of tragedy
after the troubling war
scouring along the boulevards
with my urban acting troupes
composing and performing
in a new time
of breakdancing in mime
and in the now suburban outback
reciting the protruding phrases
of the troubadour author Villon
with the fervor of Baudelaire.

D-DAY
June 6, 1944

In the Normandy trenches
and back benches
of parliament and House
there is an uneasy quiet
of a mouse that roars
in a mighty war
for Europe needs hope
and in 1944 to be free.

______________________

EXPOSURE

Watching a T.V.
with the memory
of sitting on a monkey
bar stool rocking on a roll
in a five-star hotel
somewhere in Manhattan
not knowing who you are
like the British poet Pope
here after the '80's Roxy spell
my knees are shaking
down by my feet
Hell, feeling like a fool
a Beat with his heart breaking
here after school
can't you tell how we survive
waiting without hope
or life taking its toll
eyeing a celebrity
of sorts so we can tell now
there is Christine
still alive
speaking English out of school
knitting a sweater
or writing a dear John
or Saint Joan or Jane letter
about her self-esteem
who should know better
of requesting a cash loan
while putting the cream
or milk in her coffee cup
along with her make-up,
going back in her memory lane
once palpitating in the corner
hiding out in her living room
feeling the pain and gloom
without much composure
of the world's disdain
once at seven dressed up
crashing at midnight
in her mother's Dutch hose
and patent leather shoes
putting on her perfume
of heavenly ambrosia
her henna hair up in a net
in interest of full disclosure
knowing she will always
be more than a headline
for a publicity jester
to nickel and dime her
for public exposure
in the Daily Times'
society register,
she wishing everything smaller
taking off her stiff collar
of her snow white suit
to put her hand on a guy
perhaps an athletic fellow
like Bruce Jenner
(now a woman called Caitlyn)
after watching eye-to-eye
the Olympic decathlon
wants to pick a winner in sports
and measure a Marathon's span
on a muscular man of sorts
as the T.V. spins
from the high alabaster table
her picture on the screen
knowing she is different
when searching for a gent
not wanting his cash
on the dollar
yet not able to pay the rent
but lets him makes her
a trust fund good offer
for an x-rated tryst,
with what credentials she prefers
in her own master bedroom plan
to be sent or represent her,
others outed her
outdated passport
he insists to surrender
in a former affidavit
she initially supported
and proposed a writ
on her understated gender
in her well-courted transition
that awaited for her,
here a young poet
offers her a Lisbon rose,
for it's not the dress of clothes
or length of hair
that make you a woman
or words that make a writer
merely aware in his metaphor,
nor strength that makes a fighter,
yet Chris cannot be indifferent
for her being different
or cast you as an actor or actress,
does prayer make you a lector
of the saints' Latin
just walking by a church door,
then why do publicists claim
you as a satin golddigger
it's to their own shame
as any foreigner
being blamed and accused
of being a spy
not understanding the "why"
of a political dissident
as a nice conscientious objector
is loosed from the service
or a poetical dissident
pays the sacrifice and price
from any government's
royal ranger,
a criminal may be a beggar
without any inimical crime
are you destined
Christine, to always be a stranger
in the long hallway's mirror
wanting to flirt
in a flared new cotton miniskirt
imported from Lagos, Nigeria
to reverse roles
in a situation comedy's date
or play-act in Shakespeare's
Taming of the Shrew,
Cymbeline,
Merry Wives of Windsor
or Two Gentlemen of Verona
needing her to be assured
from the umbilical chord,
yet you cannot share
her impressive secret
knotted inside
like a foreign war bride
in a far-off zone
not understanding
the meaning or hormone
or testosterone
others mocking you
as you hide out
in your cold silk stockings
or talk in whispers
for four hours
hearing your own blues
still fishing for a prom date
with a mandate to refuse
an engagement ring,
chocolate bonbons or flowers
wishing for an expressive lover
perhaps for a bridal wedding
on this bar "The Other Side,"
how jarring is this reporter
in the print business to sell
his yellow journals
fully worth investigating
as the vile goal of chit chat
on the newsstands
(remembering Irish Oscar Wilde
who landed in Reading gaolin
in London, and all that
for his understanding soul),
though you are old news
still the selfish camera guy
from the Big Apple
will choose to show and tell,
others still challenging you
of what is Biblical
right or wrong
hearing Judy Garland
in her "Over the Rainbow" song.

 
Our thanks to Keely Dorran and B.Z. Niditch for today's fine fare, and a note that our green box at the right of this column has many new submission opportunities in the "Submit, I Say!" section; check them out. Contests are always tough, and the ones that offer big money are highly competitive. But then again, NorCal poets (and others who read Medusa) are top-quality poets and have, of course, a good shot at winning.

Note also that, starting tonight, there is a lot going on in our area this weekend, poetry-wise, both in Sacramento and in Placerville. Scroll down to the blue box (below the green box) for all the info.

My apologies to James Lee Jobe for leaving his name off of his three poems yesterday. Since they came right after Jane Blue's, there was Facebook speculation that they were hers. But no, it was just my goofiness at 6:30 a.m. Apologies all around.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

JUNE BIRTHDAYS

Feeding the June birds and fly fishing
while reading Irish Paul Muldoon

enjoying Jonson's lyrics and plays
his comics of The Alchemist amaze

wishing for different states of mind
in W. B. Yeats we vent and unwind

offering a voice of quotes
a choice of Joyce Carol Oates.

________________________

—Medusa

Elvis Returns!

Paula Conant and Jane Conant Blue

—Photo Courtesy of Jane Blue, Sacramento

WAKING
—Jane Blue, Sacramento

He kisses me on the top of the head
before I am quite awake.
I hear nothing, my good ear buried
in the pillow. His touch is a little heavier
than a moth’s. I recognize it
for what it is: a blessing. When I get up,
he’s sitting lotus posture on the red sofa
with the green and pink afghan
draped over his shoulders. The cat
who mewls piteously in the evenings
is out back confidently scratching
his white paws in the dirt, daintily
covering his excrement. The birds are silent,
even the jay that harasses the cat in the evening.
He stands, the afghan dropping off him
like a molting life. We kiss
face to face. I can smell morning on him.
His breath is always sweet. The refrigerator
hums and gurgles, the freeway slinks
past the open window with the sound
of rushing water. It is my birthday.

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento
 

courage to change
—James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
 
             for d.r. wagner

these souls are transparent,
and one can see what is within.

through the hollows of night
many of us will look, just to see.

and then, next to the walls of day,
we will have to live with what we saw.

and what is there to see? just this;
what we are, and what we might be.

______________________

keep the fire burning
—James Lee Jobe

keep the fire burning for the gods you love the most.
the most private of prayers burns in the most quiet of hours.
you and the flame. faith and fire. the drumbeat of the earth.
the whispers of heaven in the quiet folds of your ears.
you have a secret name, and you speak it in the firelight.

_____________________

marriage
—James Lee Jobe

i love the fragrance of your tiny garden,
and I love those herbs that rest below your belly.

in your teeth, you hold the skin of my love
the way a hummingbird holds a single drop of nectar.

the winds of this valley furrow your brow,
and you sing whenever there is music.

the children are grown, and now their children come.
when heaven calls to us, we will sleep together.

if there is reincarnation, then let a day will come
when I breathe in your garden again.

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville

CALIFORNIA ROMANTIC

NMF

You rendered your suave ivory skin ashen;
not in the Rilkean way transformed your life,
but dissolved in a glass the bitter-almond passion
you chose, your chaser foam and fire. That knife
seawater cleaved & dispersed your cindered grains,
disbursed, that is, your maenad-scattered pieces
Carmel to Kyoto, in Orphic-lyric strains,
antiphonal contractions, tide-releases.
The day your lovers, mentors, scattered you
smoke-to-tidewater—trusting ebb-tide to take you—
that day shone blue, belying the gray mournful
silence, knotted & tough, in the shattered few.
They also trusted wave-shapes not to break you.
No one unstoppers a soul in one small urnful.

I know your protégé; her lifeblood flows
quite unawares in verse unknown as yours;
she aches for gold shores, and for the crystal rose
whose brittle mystic touchstone somehow endures
risen from chaos where fogbanks divide
revealing bared wolf-canines west of Lobos
red from the bitten skybloom oceanward.
Heart pulsing homage to the fear god Phobos,
still this young woman braves that undertow,
that rough surf, rushed into awkward rhythms fierce,
breasting her way to the Rose. Mysterious how,
granted fresh strong limbs and grace, she’ll pierce
the lonely dangerous watercourse she darts
where ruby distances fade to rose quartz.


—Tom Goff, Carmichael

_______________________

MY LAST MYSTERY
—Tom Goff

You were all mystery then.
I saw you slip out that door,
leave me in bank-vault-deep night.
Now clicks the timelock again.
Lostness and distance before,
you are now absolute light.

Shadow devoured that door.
Heart steeped in ink, drenched in night,
I looked and looked for you then.
Eyes I could probe with before
lost with the last stripe of light.
Dawn maybe never again.

I too dissolved in the night.
Palms, wrists, and fingers by then
thinned through one last slice of door,
scenting for you and for light.
Where now? My hands thrust again,
wanting the You of before.

Here is the mystery, then.
How did you find the one door
sealed in my absolute night?
What depths did you cross again?
What cold star-summits before
you came back streaming with light?

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville

CREATION MYTH
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

No Zauberberg; in the mountains
a landscape of animated dust, a man (call him
Stranger-alone-in-the-Cosmos but for
the dog scouting his way) set out
toward the Dunklerwald, dark line of forest
cloaking a ridge. Beyond that,
landmarks dwindling to a higher peak.
Along the path, granite eroded,
knifed by weather but, in the light before storm,
soft with lichen. Sky brooded thunder,
no birds flew. Woods-creatures stayed low
in their animal destinies—so thought
the man. Only his dog forged
ahead and the man followed as if nothing
could change his purpose. He meant to climb
the peak, achieve the sonnet, solve
the nth power, the quantum.
If sky gave hints of glower, it quickened
his zeal. Light froze then splintered,
the bolt struck elsewhere, a different page
in the dark hymnal. A spark, surge,
ion glitch pinged a heart-chord
or flipped a brain-switch, puzzling the post-
mortem. What was alive and present
became infinite and now – not lost, but taken in
by the closing of the book so it could open
somewhere else.  

________________________

UNDER THE DESK
—Taylor Graham
 
You thought the cat was tearing up drafts
of poems, stealing pencils, killing
rubber-bands and dismembering dust-bunnies.

But now the cat is gone. A baby rat skulked
in corners, but after pest-control it’s gone too.
No bat nor bird flutters against the pane.

No lizard in the closet. In short, no natural
creature at large. Where logic fails, we turn
to myth and legend. It must be a troll,

a small one—earth-tone hermit who wants
to magic your home into a mountain.
Better wait and see what comes of that.

______________________

TROLL’S TICKET
—Taylor Graham

Like a sentence of the dead: If Troll crawls
out into daylight, does he turn to stone?
If he stays where he’s kept, must he
live like his kin knowing nothing but dark?
New page of the same old legend.

From under the droughty bridge, tiny frogs
seek the only water they can find, a wet-
mop the old wife hung upside-down
to dry. In its dripping, tangled strands
are they caught, or can they leapfrog fly?

Sky breaks the trance. Imagine Troll reading
a thousand romances of desire and flight;
angels and dust devils, a language
of landscape windswept, the names of wide-
open places; sun that sets the heart on fire.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE FINAL JUDGEMENT
—Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

Elvis returns to earth:
a sleek space craft
with chrome fins

____________________

—Medusa, thanking today's master chefs for this tasty soufflé, and noting that Jane Blue (and her twin) have a birthday coming up this Saturday!

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

Desperate for Poetry

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

 

FIFTEEN
(1939—Long Beach)

At 39 Mermaid Place
the old whore
neighbor
in bed with another
young husband she
introduces
loans her detective-story
magazines
to the teenage girl
from next door
who looks
so shyly at them
in the bed
and wonders how
such a fat ugly
can get such
a good-looking
husband as this
his
naked muscles
showing
all the way down
to his waist
where the sheet
slips
as he turns
and looks at her
under the
distance of his eyes
as she backs out the door.

         
(first pub. in Rattlesnake Review, Dec. 2004)

____________________

I’M TIRED I’M UGLY I’M ALONE

Yesterday’s pretty face
is gone today.

My eyes have a grayness
at their deepest place.

I look at how
a sadness droops me down.

I fascinate myself.
How dull I
I’ve grown.

THE SEASHORE IDYL
(after “Seashore Idyll” by Heinrich Kley)

       On that god-forsaken, barren length of beach,
there was nothing left to do but make the best of
things.  He was ugly, but maybe she could make him
beautiful, for she believed in lies and spells.

       “If I love you, will you become beautiful for
me?” she would ask each time he came ashore.  And
he would say he would.  She was happy after that,
and each day at the same hour she would lean against
her lonely sea-rock, and scan the gray length of the
sea from one end to the other, and wait for him to
come out of the water.

       And he would lumber out and sit on the sand in
all his grossness and sing to her with his loud and
mournful voice which carried so far away it broke
beyond their hearing.  The sky would churn with stormy
echoes then settle back to the flat and desolate gray
monotony of this place.  And he would droop his head
again upon his chest in some old melancholy.

       She would listen until he was through, then ask,
“How can you be so sad when I love you—you who are
so beautiful to me?”  And she would turn aside and
weep at her own boredom and sadness.

       But he would sit on the sand in all his ugliness,
and he could not lift to her his heavy arms or his
massive head, and he would sigh from his heavy heart
and tell her that she must come with him, then, into
the weightless sea, if she must have an answer they
could both believe.

       And she would lean against her old sea-rock and
think of this and wonder how it would be if she followed
him into the wide gray unknown water.  Until the sun
went down she would think of this, while he would bask in
the low cold western light and make his impression in the
sand for her, which she would later curl into and sleep.

                            
(first pub. in Parting Gifts, 1998)

TIDE TURNINGS
(after “Riptide” by Heidy Steidmeyer)

All that is grim, caught here on this long and shining beach in
the warping moonlight—vague things gleaming in the distance;

a bird wing caught in the sand; the small look of something
made of string; the curve of the wet land where it goes on

and on past the following night; the old deliberate way you
glide along the water’s edge until you feel yourself disappear;

and why does it always seem at once so far away and so near—
as if time and distance can be traveled simultaneously.

_________________________

THE UNCOMELY CHILD
(after Soutine's "A Little Girl", 1920)

Oh, you who are yet a child, though dated by an old dead calendar,
your future cruelty already forming on your face, your hands

clenched together as if to trap yourself somewhere out of reach;
your eyes are the eyes of the oldest anger. The shadows behind you

press forward in a churn of discontent. The hour is sickly green;
it darkens down and wears the light out and grows too heavy for you.

For now you are grimly obedient, letting some brief eternity
name you important. But Soutine has found you out. He makes

the paint thicker, denser. You are stuck there forever; your face
in a pout, your orange dress wrinkled and soiled and your hair a mess.

Your angry mouth looks like it was just washed out with soap.
What ever did you say to make everyone so mad?

UGLY

These tight veins.
These bumps and protrusions.
These scars.
Come hold me while I tell you
how it was.

There were confusions
and wars.
There were stolen destinies.
I had to get even.

See this swollen body
that was beautiful.
I was never a child.
I was always an old remembrance.
No one loved me.

Why do you love me now?
I am cruel.
I am bitten through with
innocent confessions.
Keep the one you choose.

Now you must live with
its forgiveness.
Be its carrier.
Take it with you everywhere
even to the mirrors.

Come, let us touch our
frozen souls together
and weep
for all there is
to weep about.
             

(first pub. in Calliope, 1989)

FOR EVERY PERSON I SEE

I should write love poems
for every person I see.
Even those frowning,
ugly people
at the other end of the room
who quarrel with everybody
with their
hard, unhappy faces.

They are hurting themselves.
They are so desperate
for poetry.


(first pub. in Simbolica)

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

UGLY, I SAY

Truth and I
confront each other
in the glass.

“Ugly,” I say.
“You, too,”
it answers.

       
(first pub. in Portland Oregonian, 1971)

______________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's tasty breakfast, her riffs on our Seed of the Week: The Troll Who Lives Under My Desk. Our new SOW is for the season: Fathers—good, bad, short, tall, rich, poor—send your poetic or visual thoughts about them to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs, though.

—Medusa

Everyone Should Have One

Annie Menebroker reading at Red Alice's Poetry Emporium

Wednesday, June 10

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento
 

TROLLS.  REALLY?
—Katy Brown, Davis, CA

The house is infested
with a clan of trolls.

The elders have set-up
under the desk and work table,
stealing pens and paperclips.
They steal the jigsaw puzzle pieces
and swap them like trading cards.
They torment the cat and
startle the contemplating spiders.

Their Midwestern cousins,
in campy black and white vests,
sleep under the bottlebrush,
fling foul-smelling excrement
at the dog, and fade into the shadows.

They barbecue
the neighbor’s beetles
and sauté the sleepy snails
that hide under the gardenia.

We’ve tried commercial troll-spray,
turned the sprinklers
on the outside camp
and tried to vacuum
in all the dark corners.
The house trolls simply laugh
and tip over the kitchen trash.

We used to have ants.
We used to complain
about the neighbor’s cat
digging in the flowerbed.
We haven’t seen ants or the cat
since the trolls moved in.
Honestly, the trolls are worse.

 D.R. Wagner reading at Red Alice June 10

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

BUT EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ONE
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove
 
Got him at a liquidation sale.
They were relocating the bridge
And the trolls were moving on.

Got him for a good price though.
And they said he’d stay under
The desk and gnaw at my feet
When I was writing bad poetry.

He’s always under there with a
Kind of humming rather than
Trollish grumbles and mutters.
Doesn’t gnaw, either, just
Sometimes licks my toes.

Licks a lot actually.  I expected,
You know, a kind of troll-fetor.
But he’s always cleaning, paws,
Ears, whatever.  Come to think
Of it, the ears aren’t floppy
Troll ears either: they’re
Sort of erect and pointy.

Sometimes I think he’s actually
A cat and not a troll.  Maybe
I should have kept the receipt.

Josh Fernandez at Red Alice with Ezra, June 10

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

POEM 5 OF 5

—Richard Hansen, Sacramento

Original Star Trek Viewing Guide
Season One
Charley X
Dagger of the Mind

Balance of Terror
The Squire of Gothos

Return of the Archons
A Taste of Armageddon
Errand of Mercy
and
City on the Edge of Forever

OK now
Season Two
The Changeling
Friday's Child

The Gamesters of Triskelion

Bread and Circuses
Assignment Earth
Season Three
The Paradise Syndrome
breath
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
Wink of an Eye
Elaan of Troyius
then
Requiem For Methuselah
(this is the single best episode of
Star Trek
ever!)
The Cloud Minders
and finally

Turnabout Intruder

______________________

MRS. OBAMA
—Richard Hansen
 
Girl!
lookit
you and me baybuh
we can make it
I know
your husband is the President
and
...the Secret Service
'n everything...
I'm Sorry I blocked Your Pestering Phonecalls
I was wrong I know that!
Girl!!!

You and Me you know it...

 Martha Ann Blackman reading at Red Alice June 10

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

The triple-digit heat days are back

  The kind of days where I have to tell my Dad—
  Please do your outdoor jobs in the early morning
  and your indoor jobs in the afternoons
  because I see you do the exact reverse
  That means I don’t want to see you clipping bushes when it's 103!
  You break my heart when you do something like that
  because I don’t want to call an ambulance to rescue you if you pass out


—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

_______________________                  

Pop star Jim Morrison died at age 27 in Paris, the same summer of ‘71 I was born
  —the causes never exactly determined but speculated to be his drug and alcohol abuse
  Now supposedly the last poem Morrison ever wrote has suddenly appeared
  Handwritten on a piece of red- and blue-lined paper of a once-intact notebook,
  labeled "page 152" it says,
  “I have a vision of America 28,000 feet & going fast—
  I have drunk the drug of forgetfulness
  Leave the informed sense in our wake—You be Christ on this package tour—money beats soul
  Last words, Last words out.”
  As I write this, it is expected to be up for auction for $60,000 to $80,000
  which is a hell of a lot for something that appears not even to be suitable for framing                            
  Why doesn’t this piece of memorabilia go to a museum?
  Or maybe be put into a plaque at Morrison’s often fan-decorated, flower-covered gravesite?


—Michelle Kunert

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE TROLL UNDER MY DESK
—Loch Henson, Diamond Springs, CA

He’s almost harmless.

He steals my toenail clippings and
wears them in a locket.

He brings me bouquets of frogs.
(He doesn’t hurt them, but
there is not much for them to eat
under my desk.)

He gets jealous when I write.
Sometimes I have to go
to the garden to get away
from the grumbling.

______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors and noting that we have a new photo album on Medusa's Facebook page, this one by Michelle Kunert, featuring last Monday's Sac. Poetry Center reading. Check it out!

 Hemp Fashion Show Models, CA State Grange

—Photo by Michelle Kunert