Glitterers & Panther Caps

Baby Mushrooms

—Anonymous Photo

MUSHROOMS
—Mary Oliver

Rain, and then
the cool pursed
lips of the wind
draw them
out of the ground—
red and yellow skulls
pummeling upward
through leaves,
through grasses,
through sand; astonishing
in their suddenness,
their quietude,
their wetness, they appear
on fall mornings, some
balancing in the earth
on one hoof
packed with poison,
others billowing
chunkily, and delicious—
those who know
walk out to gather, choosing
the benign from flocks
of glitterers, sorcerers,
russulas,
panther caps,
shark-white death angels
in their town veils
looking innocent as sugar
but full of paralysis:
to eat
is to stagger down
fast as mushrooms themselves
when they are done being perfect
and overnight
slide back under the shining
fields of rain.

_______________________

—Medusa

Looking for Diamonds

Dragon Head Sculpture by Ai Weiwei

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

BECOMING A SONG



I will open my hand.

I will make the gesture

I learned in the lowlands.

It makes the world

Look like morning.



We can see the thin waist

Of last night’s fire find a

Way to the top of the

Oak grove.  It has
Rooms among the clouds.



You can come with me.

We know the names

And the saints of the air.



They call you goddess

For you were found asleep

In the forest, your hands pointed

Toward awakening.



You were listened to by

Peacocks who rustled

Their feathers for you;

That soft smoothing, the

Gentlest of branches.



I remember wanting to kiss you

Or wanting to return to the river.

The boat carried a reverie that

Understood how these 

Branches worked.

I dreamed I was home.



It was a blaze

I had never seen before.

A thousand tundra swans

Rising above the morning fog

Attempting the same sky

Over and over as in

A dream made of silver

When there had once been

A home.



I recall asking where we were.

You pressed your index

Finger across my lips

To silence me.



We are walking all the ways

Of the forest.  Listen for

The small animals, for talking leaves.

There is a calling that

Makes one want to stay forever.

But it is only one’s imagination

And we are only a song.

 Zodiac Head Sculpture by Ai Weiwei



PARC GÜELL



The high space of street

Just above Gaudí’s 

Parc Güell, at the line

Where one can see

The edge of the park.

Where the neighborhood

Begins again and the magic

Of the park leaks 

Back into the streets

And one can hear

The buses lean 

On their air brakes.



We leaned back against

A building and turned

Our eyes southward,

Looking over the entire

Landscape, down the high



Hillside, over the top

Of the place, and could see

All the way down to Las Ramblas,

To the Mediterranean sparkling

In the distance.



The air was thick with 

The end of Summer.

I left eternity and fell

Into my own mirror,

Not understanding why

I was there at all,



Except to echo the secrets

Collected here, except to know

That the Parc did indeed

Have an end and it showed

Itself to us as a memory

That would happen, but not

For a quarter of a century

Yet.  I could see each

Individual part.



It became difficult to stay

In the present for more

Than a few moments

And we hurried back into 

Gaudí’s parabolic arches

And gravel pathways

Pieced together by shadows.



We decided we might be hungry

And found our way back

Into the concessions

For coffee, some fruit
,
The sound of two men

Playing guitars and singing

Below the multi-colored

Terraces.  I loved you then

But could feel the coin

Spinning as it hit the table.



We were running out of 

Words and it became

Difficult to hold your hand

In my own as we made

Our way past the giant 

Ceramic lizard covered with children,

Past the dragon gate,

Through the narrow street

And back to the waiting bus,

Where we sat for almost half an hour



In its cool air conditioning,

Not quite believing in the moment

As more than a single instant

Unencumbered by the event

Of our being there, not to be

Recalled for many years.

And you, now dead.



Still trying to explain

The arc of our journey

Using only our breathing

And the elements

Of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.



Allowing them to enter 

Our blood as the cosmos

Does, finally being lost

Until this moment in the 

Noise of the bus filling up with people,



The big diesel engine 

Hauling us up the street,

Down through the city,

Accumulating all it could

To build itself into these

Years of stars and light

And Barcelona alive again.

 Intersection, Key Street, Locke

THE DIAMOND

Harvesting water.
Wrapping ourselves in ghosts.
We are the star-forming region.
We are struck by lightning
Even as we believe ourselves
To be protected by a roof of desert,
Of mystery, or years of dreams
Covered with the fingerprints
Memory coats every night with
As it shrieks past the evening
Thin with shadows and a castle
Built of bones that can speak
When addressed as a god.

I had a nightingale that displayed
Itself before me like an actor paid
To look like a dream, to ejaculate
Syllables that rang with clear water.
Always alone, no matter how lewd
Or how possessed with claws,
With a crippled moonlight that
Was somehow lost in the street
Looking for diamonds, even the myth
Diamonds carry in their fountains.
I’m not kidding you.

Come here, close to this window,
The one near that fountain,
Look how myths burst into flame,
The children of nightmares
Locked in the pressure of deep
Carbon.  Eventually so smooth
There is no longer room for air
Or imagination.  The entire thing
Has become a pointless blue
Or yellow, even violet but without
Anything that is other than diamond.

And so I drag it over to you
Hoping I have found a universe,
Knowing I am forgetting the dream
Even as I bring myself to dream it.

Iris, Locke

THE SOLDIERS



And I thought of the flowers

That held the guns

And opened the yellow moon
To conflagration 

As they marched

And marched

And marched

Giving the single

Gift of their death

As they were picked

For bouquets.  The pretties

Given to the short edges

Of the memory of death.



Spirits all.  Clouding 

The skies with 

Tumbling light 

And thunder

And rain.



Day after day of rain,

Fields in flood and mud

All memory now.



And memory itself

Has so little self

Or, from our brief

Waking, none at all.

 The Storm Above My House

Today’s LittleNip:


As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

—N. Scott Momaday

____________________

Many thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's fine poems and pix! Next Monday (2/22), 7:30pm, Sac. Poetry Center presents D.R. Wagner, Patrick Grizzell plus open mic. 25th & R Sts., Sac. Host: Tim Kahl.

Today at noon,  Sac. Area Youth Speaks (SAYS) will host finalists in the first Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate contest. Sac. Public Library, 828 I st., Sac. Free. Info: www.says.ucdavis.edu/student-poet-laureatte/.

For more about Antoni Gaudí’s Parc Güell (and the lizard!) in Spain, see www.barcelona-tourist-guide.com/en/gaudi/park-guell.html

For more about Chinese sculptor Ai Weiwei, see www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-ai-weiwei-chinas-most-dangerous-man-17989316/?no-ist/, and his exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum at www.crockerartmuseum.org/exhibitions/ai-weiwei-circle-of-animals/.

—Medusa

Coaster

Sweetening the Wheels

—Fungi Photos by Sam the Snake Man

—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

DESIGN

As one who skims and rejects designer cards
with sap that drips from each word, every line,
I want to belong, in love at least, with bards,
those boys and girls of words whose linings shine
by the light of their muses, goddesses and gods
with noses for barbecued calves whose smoke you’ve breathed,
as humans drink hookah dreams that turn fantods.
How oft are the wreath-deservers rightly wreathed,

as you should be, live shrine, my ambling altar?
Ripe plaits of vine and fruit need to embrace,
not trap, your heavenly rose hips, your plum-
and pomegranate blush. Their dungeon’s lace
of flowery effusion lies light as Gibraltar;
it wants to arouse yet operates to numb.

Let words recast love’s curvets in clear design:
your influence, helping strange planets—our lives—align. 

EARLIEST AIR

You bring both force and sweetness to my need
in this life’s hour. That sharp, tart concentrate
you pour into my drink just edges my greed
for earliest air. This time, the dawn’s lent great
strawberry blushings, replete with hairlike seeds
that lightly grain sunrise—now, my unspent fate,
burst through these broken gates. Now daylight bleeds;
its blanched, strained aspect mirrors my wrung, bent state,
all radiance, no clarity. I sense
hurts I can’t place: come press me with your gaze.
Late morning sifts through river mist; intense
through folds of brumal glare your face allays
all fear, you charm away worse than what portends
where noon’s blue glass lies shattered on alien bays.

It may well be…that [Hamlet] is attempting to hunt down and bag Claudius’s shabby morality in order to expose it on a public stage. But it may also be an attempt to engage Claudius in a more creative conversation through play (or, to be specific, a play—)...
                               —Salley Vickers, in The New Statesman
 

OPHELIA WAS RIGHT!

The scholar, athlete, accomplished in statesman things,
the son whereon heaven seemed to set its seal
—notice how she speaks of him: it rings
of every praise the Prince himself can peal
for dear old brutal Dad who sliced the Norwegian;
and how can H2 surrender himself to vengeance
(she knows it without knowing), one-man legion
both NCIS Elsinore and engine
of stab-and-pour-the-poison anointing union?
What of the non-lethal juice he might impart?
Can he not lop the Danish rot just living
for her, for siring princelings of the heart,
not sword? What solo man thrives by forgiving?
Or do only coupled ones press toward communion?

The whale he seeks at best thrashes big white flukes;
he harpoons his lover, her father—freak rebukes?  

DEPTHKEEP

Life startled you into pursuit of some deep dream,
something, for all that you tell me your night visions,
eludes most humans, constant as a stream
in winter, yet incessantly in retraction
at the least summery touch of light through blinds.
Oh, the sweet-flowing run of the river wet,
self-refining, self-renewing, finds
ocean it ties to its origin end, that net
of snow it licks its way out of. Yet do grasp
—for we’re still speaking of dreams—your dreams, like soap
they slip, like June-simmering soft creek they shrink.
The touch of dream-hunters is harsh; it is a rasp;
guard vampire-like the dream-darkness; that’s your ink.
Bright light with its friction can’t chafe away your hope.

  

SWEETEN MY WHEELS

Safeway parking lot.
I pull into a space: run over a light-brown spill,
chocolate ice cream or caffè mocha clot.
Life behaves, yet it has its own will.
I want to sweeten my wheels.

What sweetens these wheels fattens
or flattens, I’m not sure which,
the spill, as a poem battens
on its own flow, till that spill fills a niche.

In revolutions per minute,
from one to four tread-spins can thin it
and spread it,
that mocha-or-chocolate liquid.
Life rolls cocoa-treaded across our desires.

But gourmet-dipped eighty percent dark Desire
making a mess on the pavement?
Some steer around, some plow through. They forget it.
I’ll keep right on sweetening my tires.

Today’s LittleNip:

WHEN CATS DISAPPEAR

When cats disappear, the heavens blaze forth their claws;
no spurs, no talons convene for the deaths of dogs.
Yet don’t cats and dogs alike upon their launch
from sweet ground to plump cloud sense
their sinews relinquish…as if converting their tense
wary habit of bunch then pounce
to deeper sweeter release? Isn’t the haunch
of sundown outlined a bit redder—just an ounce?

___________________________

Many thanks to Sam the Snake Man for his fine mushroom photos (including the creepy one with our stone lizard below!), and to NorCal poet Tom Goff, whose work appears in the new issue of WTF which premiered at Luna’s Cafe last night. For copies, see editor frank andrick or get a free one at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento before they’re all gone! You can also order them through rattlesnakepress.com/wtf.html ($2 for postage and handling). If you’re a contributor, you’re entitled to a free copy; write to me at kathykieth@hotmail.com

—Medusa

Black Tulips

—Anonymous Photo

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
 

A RECORDING

Clearing out old 78's
and jazz
in the company
of Louis Armstrong's voice
for the gazebo bazaar
near the serene waters
off Cape Cod
the North wind
brims me over with tones
of a past musical circumference
a local poet reaches
for the diving board
with silly snorkels
to be a spy for 007
among the blue fish below
now by the yogurt stand
and lingering
to narrate the day
with a local action painter
once playing in The Mikado
who exhibits himself
in a fresh-tanned face
with an excessive compulsion
of constantly washing himself
feeds the grackles and sparrows
goes to his Vineyard shrink
then slips away
holding his toy poodle
in his flailing arms
when my life cannot part
with Armstrong.

___________________

BY A FARMER'S MARKET

Poor frazzled square
of beggars
waves us along
the ancient streets
near the canal
identical twins
of hunger and rage
curse at a farmer's market
by the tables of honey
with the loss of their footing
on a ground of stones
hearing a call-out to God
in the midst of songbirds
with aromas of spices
and different accents
the sounding trumpet and guitar
mired in a lyrical voice soars
out of lamentations
as coins suddenly fall
out of a solitary poet's pocket
of verse and everyone
in the power of my voice
is translated.

 Farmers' Market

—Anonymous Photo
 

AS AN UNDERGROUND POET

You first read in the subway
the open sea still inside you
with its salty brine
in a subterranean approach
at the primary abyss
of a mike's unexpected voices
by the bandstand and gazebo
fountain by a myriad of tulips
and radiant lilacs
here in leather gloves
opening unruffled pages
my voice communicates
through long-suffering history
to an attentive crowd
presented at a pallid wall
of city graffiti at your back
under lantern lights
a skittish beer
spins on my tongue
in a nostalgic adolescence
my fans’ and unknown friends’
daily disguises are removed
under the motioning wind
an underground poet
wanders off alone
still hearing streetcars
in the subway homeland
being driven by memory
in a language inside ourselves
covered by an hour of words
to capture a whistling myth
of metamorphosis in a funky way
after the bandanna is put on
your auburn hair net
we found at the bazaar
along with my blue visor
taken along the park
now removed from us
you sing out as my sax moves
along with you on the dance floor
remembering my poem
you left in the cloakroom
and recognizing enchantments
rescuing us in a later-than-
you-think Manhattan moment
in my mobility of riffs
a thousand sounds
in luminous hands
of reborn black tulips move
in a nocturnal laughter
to watch the sparrows
in Central Park
they stir their wings
expecting tomorrow's beat.

 Cat in Black Tulips

 

ONE COOL CAT

All night
trying to scat
the music of my sax
does not rise up
the way it should be
perhaps this one Beat
of a once-cool cat
has grown too warm
as I sit by the bed
with a perfumed scent
of old Valentine lyrics
leaving me indifferent
after all the storms
of his rage and fury
at this closed door
not wanting to go into
a long corridor
of romantic memory
feeling in a candle's glow
after trudging in the shade
feeling like an exile
over the sun's passing
covering its white shadows
meeting me alone
with my last prayer card
enlightening on my desk
in a snow globe's
silent greeting
in the form of an obelisk
of my abstracted notes
sounding past midnight
before the dawn in Boston.

__________________

KAZIMIR MALEVICH'S ART
(Born February 23, 1878)

A wall mural elaborately
breathes out
its artistic calligraphy
by the floral studio hallways
as we are pointed out to view
a visually daring span
and sensory painting of quality
Kazimir Malevich's Red Square
with its modernist panorama
of human potentialities
with an emphatic composition
from a Russian abstract painter
who knows his geometric facts
on the cross-cutting edge
of a blistering visionary's canvas
dropping patinas and auras
from his angular colors
upon prolific cloths gesturing us
to many hectic liberating shapes
that regenerate our imagination,
discovering a charming subtlety
and wisely unique chasm
as if a poetry's phantasm's lore
of ambiguity directs us into
his drawing trimeter measures
in a surpassing critical technique
of all who came before
Kazimir Malevich's
Cubo-futuristic part
of the avant garde's pleasure
in vector of great magnitude
with a critical character
and sense of oeuvre in his art
as Moscow's emerging complicity
in a new modernist century
from a creator's spacial segments
which imparts marginal outlines
as our aesthetic eyes widen
from a wise pollinator
featuring a dramatic nature
of an authentic sculptor
with an unexpected varnished
and polished painter's surprise.

 Red Square: Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman

in Two Dimensions

—Painting by Kazimir Malevich, 1915

TAKING ADVICE

Now we think twice
in taking advice
when we compose or chant
our cantos, rants or odes
from ancient legendary fare
in lyrical poetic documents
or in prose narrative
writing in our honor codes
through purgatory's spirit
the glory of a poet's creations
as in the Latin of Virgil
or in modern translations
in public library revisions
from Pound on Baudelaire
or in Eliot or Auden's comments
which enfolds us this dawn
at the country fair,
listening to a matins church choir
with musical sounds in French
sitting on a bench with Nicole
a student and actor of literature
here amid the icy air of Montpelier
listening to her thrilling solo
then her reading of Portia's words
at a Shakespeare folio
from The Merchant of Venice
wanting to plant a laurel
of recognition on her head,
instead of feeding a few birds
while I have a repast
of potato skins and bread,
now reading to console her
having to face an audition
she is needing for her exam
after her hour poetry slam,
the snow still blowing its darts
as St. Sebastian's arrows land
on the narrow cold flagstones
when comforted on a hammock
by our arty tomes
at a windy garden party
near the riverbed
once filled with garlands
in spiced amphora jars
of camouflaged flowers
by a slippery bush of junipers
where sparrows abide
now standing by her snowman
with a rose-red tie on his chin
a carrot on his nose,
as a deer waits for hours
by the bird feeder
near the water fountain
by the flora and fauna
now filled with black ice
where neighborhood cats rest
and relax like the poet Durrell
after an Artesian wellness drink,
we listen by a wellspring ground
for a chirping sound
of three squirrels up the tree
I'm thinking in conversation
are also busy on vacation
making provision
when two tiny children
named Dora and Victoria
accept a skating invitation
with their kitten Yuri
trying to converse and say hello
from their Russian
with a temperamental fellow
who must be their daddy
at this February hour
who puts on their heavy clothes
with bonnets and mittens
to play on the icy field
and eat cookies and brownies
by their bay windows,
while Howie, a friendly neighbor
ends up from the duck pond
with his macho brother, Joad
a lucky race car driver
whom the local yokels
claim is like Groucho
by his funny sporting sessions
who teaches soccer and hockey
and asks to have freaky fun
by reaching out
to the younger townies
as if on a mission
who years ago use to work
in a now-empty brewery
inventing his own ale and beer
from the hip buzz of happenings
of the transitional Sixties
born in New Haven
near Yale University
who can still quote any passage
from any sonnet of Shakespeare
as an intellectual maven
with notes in his vest
he is a frostily bearded Yankee
with a white goatee visage
he acquired from the Village
in smart yellow pants
yet who is brilliantly intelligent
not a throaty ranting sycophant
wearing almond-colored shorts
in this frozen weather
who use to play soccer and rugby,
now even at an eccentric sixty
he still fixes vintage cars
running best in every marathon
when he is light as a feather,
rumor has it he was in Swan Lake
when he was at eleven
studying at the Boston Conservatory
yet once madly slid
from his slippery ballet toes
from the ski slopes
dashing his university hopes,
now baits to switch on his rod
as he hopes to ice fish
on the local pond for cod
wanting to feed on manna
quail and venison
for his ninety-year-old nana,
walks the wood forests
breathing heavily by his cat
to take our snowy picture
from an on-point camera
under the Elm tree’s nest,
taking more winter photos
from a storm's interlude
as a flock of guest eagles
rock the open Arctic breeze
of the White Mountain Ski Resort
at ease in Vermont
assured by the South
to get warmth,
while I want to play
an étude from memory
Chopin's B Minor Sonata
indoors on the piano.

ALBERT EINSTEIN'S JOURNEY
(1879-1995)

A kindly neighbor handed me
an Einstein sweatshirt
along with my Valentine
as today his theory of relativity
has now been confirmed
without great consternation
how he created it
a century earlier
Albert with a comical face
yet a theoretical physicist
he who barely escaped
so many hurts of the human race
and bravely made his way
from Germany to the U.S.A.
who admired Mahatma Gandhi
in his demonstration for peace
and Isaac Newton
he inspired Princeton
backed up our nation
lost in calamity and war,
no matter what yahoos say
he is a hero who saved the day
with his detection of vibrations
of measured gravitational waves
from faraway stars and galaxies
covering his black hole discoveries
he is treasured for eternity
for how science now behaves
and proves that divine miracles
are wrought from our angel refugees
who left their country of poverty
with mind, sense and body
like Einstein to serve,
who taught us to give a chance
toward all human kind
who survive our memory
with a sense of generosity
deserving of our thanks, sympathy
and a symphony of poetry
in ranks of our calendar annals
from a traumatic five-star history.

______________________

FRA LIPPO LIPPI
(1416-69)

With a fiery wind of poetry
cast on the paint
to Robert Browning
in his middle ages
among the saintly picture
he draws Fra Lippo Lippi
at his crowning glory
with a priority
of a monk who blessed
as their sin is confessed
sunk in poetic languages
of Greek and Latin
in the satin background
as the choir alights in
and engages
in a Florentine cloister
from the Carmelites’ sound
singing by the orchestra
with wine and bread
of the sacrament.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

IN THE LIGHT

In the light being mistaken
for a distinguished stranger
or even a mild shadow
of a poet man
in a surprised view
at an old church manger
as we pass
by the hay-and-straw crib
assured of God's love
after Christmas is over
yet images of life's rib
of Adam and Eve
are still alive as stars
of Bethlehem arriving
in the Common green
to cover over the clover
in the wellspring land
as the light of the world
is not extinguished
but shines, as arrows
of St. Sebastian
are sent into space
tomorrow in a day's time
as capsules to Mars.

______________________

Many thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today’s potpourri of poems! For Rbt. Browning’s poem, “Fra Lippo Lippi”, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/173011/. To hear a little Louis Armstrong, go to www.louisarmstronghouse.org/louie_armstrong/multimedia.htm/.

—Medusa

 Albert Einstein

A Time Traveler’s Maintenance Guide, Sent to Us on His Birthday

 

—Poems by William S. Gainer, Grass Valley, CA
—"Locke" Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

A TIME TRAVELER’S
MAINTENANCE GUIDE

Old age flaring up.
I've had it
a while now,
got it bad
everything
hurts—

The kid says
I should get
a prescription
he’s got a friend.

Yeah,
for now
I think I’ll just
stick with the bourbon.
See what tomorrow
looks like.

It’s only time.
I’ve done a lot of it.
Both kinds
young
and old.

_____________________

THE WHO I WAS

The weight loss
program
is working.
I’m down 45
and counting.

You should see me
now,
there’s almost
nothing left.

By this time
next year,
I should be
completely
gone …

 —Photo by Cynthia Linville

SOMETHING GOT PAST
THE QUALITY CONTROL PEOPLE

There was something floating


in the Top Ramen.


Not sure what it was 


a sample


a mistake

a test marketing ploy—


a piece of a finger?


Regardless


I ate it.

___________________

THE SCREAMS OF THE OLEANDERS

The Oleanders
have once again
been butchered.
Their skeletal remains
a tribute to my mastery
of residential yard care.

__________________

THE SOUND OF SNOW

It’s hard to hear
the snow.
Sometimes
you think maybe,
but no.

The wind spitting,
the trees cracking,
the splash of the tires,
but the snow
no.

It’s mostly
a gentle whisper
a cold kiss
something
to wipe from
an eyelash
sometimes
a smile from a lover
a friend.

Never a long
goodbye
a voice
raised
or a hint
of tricks
to be played. 
Only the roar
of the quiet
and the snow.

 —Anonymous

ONE WISH—

I wish
dogs could talk.
Cats, not so much.
They already have
a thousand ways
of telling the world
to fuck-off.
No need
for another.

____________________

THE QUIET OF IT ALL

Looking
out the kitchen window
I mentioned
I just raked the back
Rose (the dog)
is out there
making a mess.

Kae St. Marie
stirring the soup
answered with,
now you know
how I felt
when the kids
fucked-up
the snow.

She’d told me about it
before
how she liked to sit
with her coffee
look out
at the snow
and just listen
to the quiet of it all.

It seems
so much more
sinister
when told
today—
kids
fucked-up
snow.

I thought it best
to just compliment
the soup—
good,
very good.

 Henry Cowell Redwoods, 2013

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

THE PEAR

I was saving the pear
for tomorrow’s lunch.
It’s gone now.
No evidence
it was ever
there,
or if it was
what happened.

I have suspicions
but don’t want to make
accusations.

She’s sleeping comfortably
on the couch.
I think I’ll cover her
let her rest.

There’s a crumpled
napkin
on the coffee table,
hers
I suppose.

 Santuario de Chimayo

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

LATE NIGHT FLYING

Went flying last night,
late.
The moon was great,
I could see everything.
Was going to come by
peek in your window
but it was so
goddamned cold
I cut the trip short.
After all
the bed was warm
and I really
wasn’t dressed for it.
Flying
that is.

____________________

EAST BAY COFFEE SHOPS

Ice tea
and yoga pants.
One gets me
in the door
the other
keeps me there.

And oh yeah
there’s the company
of strangers.

But
if you want to
place a bet
go with
the yoga pants.

 —Anonymous

A ROUND OF HASH BROWNS

What do you do
when it’s late—
and lonely
brushes your cheek?
Listen to Tom Waits
think of all the women
you’ve loved,
you love.
Hope one of them
loves you back.
But hey,
who knows.
Sometimes
it’s just about
how much
money you got
how many drinks
you can buy ...
and maybe a round
of hash browns
after—
a cup of coffee.
Who knows?
Who cares?
You need
somebody
to talk too
and tonight,
she does too,
you both do.
Anything else
is just a morning
with a stranger ...
everybody
trying to make
a clean getaway ...

___________________

TAPED TO THE REARVIEW,
PARKED IN FRONT OF THE SILVER CLUB,
A COLD FUCKING NIGHT—
A DAMP COCKTAIL NAPKIN 

Christ I love you
even god knows it
why don’t you ...

 —Anonymous Photo

TODD’S OBITUARY


            (a friend in New Orleans)


I know
he ain’t dead.

But someone might ask


so I thought I’d get

a head start. 
Be prepared.


It’s almost finished—


short, to the point.



“He drank in the afternoon


chased women all night


and died in a red dress.”



You can fill in the blanks.


There’s nothing too unusual


about the guy.


Nice smile


friendly sort.



Did I mention 


he wrote poems?


Yeah—he wrote poems.


That’s probably 


what got him in all that 


trouble


but we don’t really wanta 


go there.

Not in a guy’s obituary.


Not good.

Not good at all.

Let’s just 


get him in the ground


hand his Jolly-Roger


to his mom


and try to get to the bar


before Happy Hour’s

over.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

SHANNON’S BABY BOY—

became a Marine today,
graduated from boot camp.
I hope we can keep him
as safe
as he hopes
to keep us.

___________________

Happy birthday, Bill, and thanks for the poems! William S. Gainer, Cynthia Linville and Sandy Thomas (see below) appear in the new WTF which premieres tomorrow night (Thursday, 2/18) at Luna’s Café in Sacramento.

—Medusa

 WTF Editor frank andrick hosting his radio show,

Pomo Literati, at KUSF in Exile, San Francisco

—Photo by Sandy Thomas, Sacramento

Pages of White Birds

—Poems and Zentangles by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

LATE NIGHT MIRRORS

I thought it was the night, but it was only
the very late way
words stood in the way of clarity.

So much went by me that I should have
caught: the innuendo, the smirk,
the sarcastic line I laughed at.

I’m not cut out for complexity.
Everyone went home drunk.
I teetered at the door

of maudlin goodnights,
vowing love to everyone,
and meaning it for awhile.

Of course I love them—
and myself—
my tipsy self, grown sober

in the late night mirrors
that do not look back at me.
I hope the celebration was enough

to last till the next reunion
of all who spend their needs on each other,
each with a deeper loneliness.

______________________

COMPROMISES

The large-bodied women are in love with the tiny man.
See how they herd him wherever his impulse takes him.
They make a huge cluster of protection,
leaning into him like psychic listeners.
See how they smother him with their tenderness,
wounding him in amongst them
till he becomes their pressed flower.

All the while they touch and touch him
with their soothing fingers,
telling him not to weep, that there is no answer.
When he is tired, they bathe him in deep communal water
then beg him with lotioned hands to shine for them.
All night he shines, dreaming,
the women like warm blankets wrapping around him.

                                                                     
(first pub. in Eliot In Celebration: An anthology of Contemporary Poetry
on the Centennial of His Birth, 1988)

COSTUMED FOR GRIEF 

they wear veils
they wear chains on their ankles
they wear black fingernail polish

they have painted scars on their
foreheads and cheeks
they have drawn blue tears
under their eyes

now they are dancing
together and apart
moving slow
bending and winding themselves unattractively
then reaching upwards and swaying
their wide sleeves falling
about their faces
                                              

(first pub. in Celebration, May, 1991)
 
______________________________

MERRY-GO-ROUND

The dark horse whirls. The lovers cling.
     Forever is a game they play.
          The other horses blur in tune.
               The children seem to disappear.
                    The lovers grow too old to care—            
                         they’re drawn too quick to be aware
                            of all but holding on to time—         
                             in rhythmic pull the horses lift           
`                           and try to win the fastened race.     
                         The platform strains against itself.       
                    The colors fade to black and white.
             The time is day. The time is night.
          The horses creak, and rear, and bring
     the circles back to where they were.                
The dark horse whirls. The lovers cling.

   


NOTATIONS
After “Vowels” by John Ashbury

What was this thing that happened before I looked?

The edge was crumbling, even the shadows recoiled,
even the mirrors, too, from my face.
The alphabet squirmed outside of language.
It was low-tide.
The shoreline withdrew. I was on an island.
I could not bear the sound of the echo.
Glances confirmed the fragments of dissolving light.

Darkness was next, and a gasp. Horses galloped by.

_____________________

THE BLUE DESIRE                                                                   
After Blue Mountain by Wassily Kandinsky

Something about a mountain when it’s there,
horizon-filled—beyond eye-reach—wider
than arm-reach, and from the distance,
higher than your head—and blue.

That is what compels you—
from afar—and from a time
beyond the now of this perspective—
knowing this is your mountain to assess.

First, the distance—growing near,
and feeling nearer as you contemplate
this feat of your imagination
that bedevils you with dare.

Perhaps if you could tame a horse . . . . .
and you note those climbers, half in shadow
near the rim—their frantic horses rearing—
how valiantly they fuse together in the blue desire.

THE PATH

So vague, with only twilights now—no grand
announcement—no noticed entrance hanging
to an edge which is growing cold with shadow.
Bent years are turning our corners. How we envy
them, laughter behind us, weeping ahead—or is
that so? Is it weeping behind, and laughter ahead?
I don’t know.

_____________________

TUNING UP
(A Steinism)

Let the blue begin, Maestro of the blue fugue. I feel you
shudder the blue notes into silence. Let me hear the blue
fugue follow the flow of curtain that flutters its hem at
the stage where the lights release the shadows to dance
around the legs of the chairs where the sad musicians tap
their feet,—not in unison, but in private throe,—just as
you, Maestro, raising your blue baton over the air to
memorize the grief and weep onto all your music which
flutters to the floor in pages of white birds that escape
now in their own discord.
 

YOU ARE THE ONE

pale down into haunted dark.
mark its edge.

press soft with your finger and thumb.
feel it resist.

grope past this flaw.
repair it with a shatter.

arranged and true,
like a bone.

you are a mender.
feel the power.

all breakage comes to you,
great hand and chance-giver.

all who are lost return their terror,
thin and difficult to measure.

do not be sad—all mockery is eager.
you are the one who will never.

yes, you are the one
who will never, never, never.

                                    
(first pub. in Celebration, May 1987)

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THREE MONDOS

How does that grief go?
The drums beat sadly, softly.

Whose lies are believed?
One shadow steals another.

What is surrender?
The wind blows. The flowers bend.

_____________________

Our thanks to nonagenarian Poet Queen Joyce Odam for the tasty soufflé of poems and photos that she has whipped up for us this morning! For more about Gertrude Stein and steinisms, go to ellensplace.net/gstein6.html/. For more about mondos, see www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?/topic/1139-katuata-mondo-sedoka/.

Our new Seed of the Week is Nesting: birds or newlyweds or that guy with the gleam in his eye—’tis the season for nesting. Send your poems, artwork, photos on this (or any other subject!) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWS—it’s never too late to rummage around in Calliope’s Closet at this top of this page for past SOWs to stir up your own soufflé!

_____________________

—Medusa

Spring Procession

—Photo by Taylor Graham

SPRING PROCESSION
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

Down Main Street, everybody’s
sandwiched between curb and storefront,
elbows and boots, blaring bands,
hoots and hollers.
But driving down the hill I saw
our creek after rain, late winter sun spark-
spangling silver sequins, water
giggling secrets too quick to celebrate,
gone like it was already spring
without my noticing.
Miner’s lettuce taller than an elf umbrella,
every heart-shaped leaf green
as a color-blind valentine;
and, poking through mats of old dead leaves,
a mushroom golden-red as a heart. 

 Miner's Lettuce

—Photo by Taylor Graham
 

FAIRY-CATCHER
—Taylor Graham

      on a drawing by D.R. Wagner
      and lines by Loch Henson

Our old cat lost her touch with fairies.
She, who used to fly from roof to wind-chime
and leaped the van to catch a piñon jay
in flight. Cat chittering, a siren language
beckoning bushtit through window-glass, magic
akin to a wood-sprite’s. Was it in Nevada
she snagged a fairy? evidence scant
as a translucent cross-veined wing on desert
sand. A human can only hypothesize,
and say the old cat lost her touch. In later
lives, she took to tucking lizards
and deer-mice under the bathroom mat.
Barefoot, you’d find the corpses
in the morning. Was she waiting for us
to scream? Language has its limits. Species
to species, images that never convert
to words. A scribe does his best
in the dim before dawn, before coffee.

____________________

KING OF BIRDS
—Taylor Graham

Back then, we lived with the king of birds.
We never saw him, he was elusive as royalty
in exile where used to be his realm

a forest we were helping to unravel.
On quiet mornings I could hear him beating
a deep tattoo with beak and heartbeat

against a dying tree. Flashes
of light. Red black white his colors,
and the crested crown.

We scattered ashes of our ancestors
homeless among lupine so it bloomed blue-
lavender again in May. Then we left.

We hadn’t heard the king of birds
for years, but I believe he’s still there,
outlasting us humans.

______________________

ELEPHANT PARADE
—Taylor Graham

        big and gray and slow—
       “The Circus Parade,” Katherine Pyle

The circus shut down or moved on years ago.
Or maybe it was the movies. Only these animals
left behind without a job. No more parades;
super-annuated. We were supposed to do
the story, with pix of this refuge for the once-
wild stuff of a child’s imagination. You pointed
your SLR into a tiger’s open mouth. I looked
past empty eyes. In the distance, a wrinkled
caretaker led two small elephants. The younger
rummaged his back pocket with its trunk—or so
it seemed from my vantage. Without thinking
I aimed & shot. There was no time. The photo
black & white, grainy. The man looked
like a pachyderm’s brother. Jobs quit or go
somewhere else. No matter how slowly
elephants place their huge feet and lift them up
again, they’re gone before you can focus.
In their stead, something paces through the mind
slow and gray, to develop years later without 

words or fanfare.

—Photo by Taylor Graham

BITTER WATER
—Ann Wehrman, Sacramento

the tired sales girl at Ross
brims with unspoken curses
begrudges me a smile when I confide
that I’ve blown money
painfully saved for a vacuum cleaner
on a rose and cream lace bra
that fits perfectly

trying it on before my mirror tonight
I think about my sister
who hasn’t called me back
since our last phone conversation, months ago
who stopped eating when Mom died
food won’t appease her real hunger
too many days lost to vomiting and diarrhea
she cancels her housecleaning gigs
somehow finds cash
to feed her cats
keep herself in cigarettes

___________________

FROM ABOVE
—Caschwa, Sacramento

It was a half moon tonight
One half shining the light of truth
And the other half slyly eavesdropping
Over everyone’s back yards

A quiet ant trail
Programmed to survive without caring
About being thought of as pests
Healthy without funding from PACs

Propane barbeque grill
Side shelves down
Draped like a handcuffed prisoner
Blindfolded to the knees

Folding chairs with generous cup holders
Clean and dry seats at last look
Now gathering leaves, silt, and moisture
To complicate the easy motion of sitting down

Dandelions yellow flowers
Bragging about being somehow overlooked
During the last weeding parade
Gotcha!

Angular shadows of a garden hose
Advertised as “will not kink”
Do I still have the receipt?
Too much bother

The family dog bathing in half moonlight
Faithfully doing its business outside
A neighbor’s dog barks
This time ours chooses not to join in

Apricot and plum trees
White blossoms, green buds
Tricked into thinking this was Spring
Peeling-bark young apple tree just a ghost of itself

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

THE GREAT BISHOP HILL, ILLINOIS
FOURTH OF JULY CALLITHUMPIAN* PARADE,
CIRCA 1975
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

The parade steps off promptly
At noon in the little former Swedish
Communal settlement, led by
A line of ancient farm tractors,
Repainted, retuned, polished:
John Deere Green, International
Harvester Red, Ford Tractor Blue.

They are followed by the junior
High band, kazoos, combs and
Tissue paper, sauce pans and sticks
(Music and arts budgets
An issue even back then).

Behind them, every
Other kid in town
On a bike, streamers,
Clothespins and baseball
Cards in the spokes.

Next, a variety of candidates,
Congressional, statehouse,
County board members,
Looking sincere on backs
Of Mustangs and
Thunderbirds you
Wish your grandfather
Had owned, and never
Sold, trying hard
Not to sweat.

Finally, the county sheriff,
Either on a dark, heavily
Silver-caparisoned stallion,
Or the back of a fifty-nine
Red Cadillac convertible,
Either way, looking like
Broderick Crawford
With a hangover.

The little parade went
Around the tiny town
Square once, twice, again.
People finally realizing
They’d seen it all before,
Ambling off towards
Dorothea’s Colony Inn
With the growing heat.


*In the Midwest, a loud, discordant
Parade, largely for and by children.
And the child-like.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Our thanks to today’s fine contributors, starting the week off just right! We’re headed for a very busy one, poetry-wise—especially next Thursday, when you’ll have to make some hard choices between the Art Mantecón tribute in Davis, the Beat reading at Crocker Art Museum, and the release of a new WTF from Rattlesnake Press at Luna’s Café (Ann Wehrman will be one of the poets represented in this latest issue). Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box on the right) for more info on these and all the other wonderful readings happening in our area this week.

—Medusa

 —Photo by Taylor Graham