The City of Lost Love

—Poems and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, 

Sacramento, CA

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE NIGHT ROOM
After Leonara Carrington, Self-Portrait (II)

"A L’Auberge du Cheval d’Aube", c. 1938

The room has blocked me. The curtains are a white frill
draped at a dark window, night crowding in. I press my-
self against the shadows and become the wall. Dreams
engage me. I am wearing my riding costume to ride the
white horse of night, though it is rocking on its wooden
rails and stays aloof from me. I let myself go wild—
wait for the mother-beast to give me her instructions.
She appears and prowls the expanding room, then
hunches back and sniffs at the air to warn me. Every
night is like this: I stiffen on the ruffled chair and brace
for transformation, dare not look at myself, though
there is no mirror here. The horse is a wall-shadow
now and the mother beast is gone. My crib stands
empty on the other side of the room. The dream chair
holds me in its satin arms. The window floats off into
a dreamy distance of its own.

_____________________

THE LONELY CHAIR

What is so lonely as a chair
in broken light by a cold window,

a chair that rocks
or stays still in the settling dust,

a chair with a rigid back
and no arms—

maybe a curtain blowing back
and brushing its legs.

Let the dark corners brood—
there is enough light

for the chair—
even if only moonlight.

MAN AT WRITING TABLE IN THE DARK
After “Man at table” by Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins

The man at the table in the dark is counting his sorrows.
His life has not been fed. There is no one to serve him. His
heart has fallen from his sleeve to the disconnected floor.

He forgets to breathe. The shadows leave his shoulders and
float around him. He cannot trust the light to return. There
is no path to his eyes. We are free to surmise which way

his life will turn. He does not wonder aloud. He has drifted
inward and taken the dark with him. Only now do we
begin to realize how long he has been gone.

__________________

CROSSING THE LIGHT

Pure lines of blue moon shadows
on the road—crossing the light—
the dark.

Trees
imaging horizontal,
stillness moving in optical illusion.

Nothing unsettling :
this is road, mysterious;
here is silence made, of beautiful light.

Dark remembers this—
is fortunate for timelessness
caught by moon-shadow on the road.

YOUR OWN DIMENSION

     Take a list of words—any
          words. Run them down the
             page.  Force a connection:

red rim in winter
water over leaves
hallucinations in glass

     Now stare away, toward light
            or toward dark. Open or close
                    your eyes. Force a connection.

wild willow weed
grope of envy
hollows in the woodwork

     Play the shadow game. Enter   
           and become, or pull away and
                  disappear.  Force a connection.

a singing in the shadows
a bell distortion
the howl of a monkey

     Now wait for the mother-bird.
           Listen to the flying.  Feel your
                  heaviness.  Force a connection.
                                  
Red rim in winter, water over leaves—hallucinations
in glass. Wild willow weed, grope of envy—hollows
in the woodwork. A singing in the shadows, a bell
distortion, the howl of a monkey: force a connection.

SOMETHING ABOUT DROUGHT

In the garden, O fated one, I sit with my cup
     extended and empty, waiting for the wine
     of rain to fill it to the brim and overflow.

I wait until nightfall. I wait until dawn. I wait
     through all the promises with my waiting.
     And my hand does not tire, O fated one.
                  ~
My face is serene, O divine one, waiting for
     the expression of your approval—the
     dark mirror of your face into which I stare.

The twilight shadows creep across
     the ground, and up the hem of my robe,
     and even myself, to conceal the waiting.
  
O, I wait forever, with patience, which is all
     I have, and in which you are timeless.
     Even so, the dawn brings more waiting.
                 ~
My loyal cup waits for the rain, O fated one,
     empty and thirsty and sure of patience,
     though my hand now trembles
     as does my mind in the concept of waiting.

What do I see in the shadows that touch so
     lovingly around me;  what trembles there
     with confusion and brings no news of rain?

RAFAELA
After Beautiful Rafaela, 1927 by Tamara deLempicka

How round she is,
contouring herself among the shadows,
arching into the light that is so aware of her. 

How easily she poses in her roundness,
distorting for the artist
who exaggerates her further—

intent on the position of her arm,
the fingers of her hand,
the twist of her body—

the way
the calf of one leg
presses into the other leg to round her hips. 

A scarf of red silk slips from her lax hand
as she turns her head
and closes her eyes against her upward arm.

The attentive light moves
underneath a swaying ceiling bulb,
though the dark stays still—

still, she makes no indication
that she is
being observed : she knows she is beautiful.

___________________

HAVING DANCED  

Cacophony now.
Deep thrill.

Dark in the shadows:  Source.

And I, pulled in,
dance there,
whirl in black-sleeved arms,
catch under red light.

My white blouse burns.
The sweat on my body gleams gold.

I am changing as I dance.
Blue faces love near to kiss.

I gasp from the drumbeat to the soul.

I am shimmering in the
dark—part of mirror-blur.

Mosaics watch with broken faces:
Discordances of motion.

In the glass distance
I dance miles . . .

timed to the shadows . . . looking back
from heart pound center
with no pain . . .

guided and tireless in
black-sleeved arms.

GETTING ALONG
After “Wearing the Collar” by Charles Bukowski
 
Black apples, Love, is what we share;
black seasons, Dearest, to compare

with who we were and who we are,
black reasons that have left no scar.

You sit quietly by the cat.
Dearest, I admire that :

One for one, and two for two.
That is me and that is you :

black cat purring at my hand,
nothing to misunderstand.

Darkest shadows to embrace
the walls, the room, each other’s face.

How we love our dark tableau,
neither one now free to go,

I with apple, you with book,
each of us with tranquil look,

now we’re married, with no ring;
we with only love to bring :

Black polished apple, sleek black cat.
Dearest, what is wrong with that?

____________________

THIS POEM ABOUT LOSS

Now I feel distance settle between us.
I have won the drift.  Birds enumerate,

their dark gold eyes struck by light.
Wires hold their shadows and extensions

of shadows that loom into evening.
The day’s length is over and night begins.

We have taken another path from each other.
The word I am after

still eludes me.
I cannot put it in this poem about loss.

Perhaps you are saying it to yourself.
Somehow we still receive light

from a flurry of birds
that take to the gray air from the high trees

and thrum over the house to dot the field
with their complexities—

enough diversion for us to leave our quarrel
and exclaim our marveling at this. 

EXPLANATION

I could not take love apart like that—wrist by wrist,
and sob by sob, into eventual silence.

I could not bear its shadow in my arms toward my
own shadowless dark.

I could only make it suffer within me like that stone
I used for my beginning.

My heart weighs deep with grievings—I am so old,
and memories lie—

like a terrible map over my sleep. My dream worlds
are the landscape for my stories.

___________________

IN THE CITY OF LOST LOVE

In the city of lost love there is only one blessing and
it is yours. Even the shadows will coil softly about you.
Flowers will ignite at your watching; their petals will
swell and fall; your breath will smother when you try
to speak. Do not speak. There is no way out but through
the mirrors—the mirrors will resist you. The walls are
but thick draperies that rustle and murmur in the moist
background. The lost ones who find you will bring you
with them into their desire.  You will not remember
them, but you will sob to find them, leaning against you.
Nothing will last here, though it will all begin again—
exotic as guilt. In the background, a Dark Being with
frail unfolding wings will fly out and hover above you,
and you must protect it from leaving here or it will
lose you.

                                                        
(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen,  5-17-2013)

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

GATHERING UP THE OLD FRUIT       

Gathering up the old fruit of those
delicious trees . . . Scattering
the bird shadows before they form
their own starvations around us . . .
Hunger is not the only message here.

____________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s fine poetry and original art! And the rain goes on… Has it been 40 days yet?
           
Our new Seed of the Week is, in spite of the rain, “Finally, Spring”. Send your poems, photos and artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty from to choose.

—Medusa, checking in late today due to Internet problems.
                     
    
      

Celebrate poetry! 

       
       
Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

Fireflies and Star Debris

Suns in the Dark

—Photo by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

TURNING BACK
—Taylor Graham

Mormon Emigrant Trail

How many days of moving away from
their own shadows, following the sun west
over mountains, crossing the same river twenty-
seven times with loaded wagons (even
a horse can count such travail). And now,
against the sun, but again into a great Unknown,
it seems a retreat, one shadowed hoof
in front of another, a horse’s life. Climbing
wooded ridgeline forever in the blessed shade
of cedar and pine, until they leave the trees
behind, their own shadows bare on granite,
on snow. Ever closer to the sun, air
so thin it tingles the nostrils, snow taller
than two horses. The master scoops snow
with his guiding hand, picks wildflowers
with the other. The sun casts horse-shadows
before them as it sinks behind mountain.

______________________

DARK RIDDLE
—Taylor Graham

It grew tumescent under foundations, finding every crevice, sliding between books on the shelves. It lurked under letters waiting to be stenciled on the side of observation cars, and made remarkable the single pimple that bloomed overnight on a pretty girl’s nose. It danced a freestyle shiver under the ladder of an old lady picking peaches. It would not be underrated. It was what gave form and definition to whatever sunlight touched.
 

 Raven

—Photo by Katy Brown
 

A BREAK BETWEEN
—Taylor Graham

The Fairgrounds Crows were restless,
spreading their news of Storm:
the tallest Ponderosa on the ridge leaning
over its precipice, waiting for Wind’s other boot
to drop from heaven; a Ghost-pine quavering
in its departed-yet-still-present way.

Then silence. Then one Crow rose
circling into the eye of Storm—there!
a Hawk in trespass like bad weather. Territory
is territory, even if it’s about to blow
or wash away. Crow circling screaming,
and the Hawk was gone.

 Raven Profile

—Photo by Katy Brown

SPRING PISTONS
—Taylor Graham

You stepped outside into a riot of insect
murmurings; frogs in every damp spot. Weeks
of rain. Mud. The buckeye’s exploded
into leaf and suddenly everything has sprung
into song. Wing-strumming and clicking,
pond-booming, peepers in the higher
registers. Tiny green LED lights in the dark—
glowworms? The whole province of life
bursting out unexpected if not
abnormal. Weather’s been a rush down-
heaven down-creek boiling flooding
as if all at once in a hurry back
to join the great sea.

Inside, she was wiping a porcelain
bowl fragile as spring blossom,
when from the driveway
you shouted, “Fire-
flies!” 

 Raven 3

—Photo by Katy Brown
 

AT RATTLESNAKE BAR
          the American River at Mormon’s Ravine near Newcastle
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

Death’s a fierce meadowlark.
                        —Robinson Jeffers

And life’s an even fiercer meadowlark,
straining on against death’s overbearing.
So soft mergansers ply their mighty kicks
against the spring-thaw’s juggernaut current. Sparing
no one, river. Yet the mighty life.
Frightening, how it breaks out, fern and bush
sprouting their Green go the Rashes, O!
Smooth twigs defaced with infant leaves like hives,
green tender yet edged to scratch or sting a foe,
the beelike martyrs. This near-rosacea bursts
so breathtakingly verdant, bud and bole,
we think each thrilled-alive offshoot will worst
that nemesis, torrent, who downs us one and all.

Barbarian verdure thrusting spiked and raw
from each green mace and cradle—this we saw.  

_________________________

SHEER WHITE LIGHT
—Tom Goff

O lyric love, half angel and half bird…
               —Robert Browning

This poet, the man-half of that couple blamed
for love in defiance of parental hate,
for flight to Italy, invoked and famed
where love and poetry strive against sure fate,
this man wrote eloquent poem-song upon song,
yet deprecated the rainbow hues that tint
his largest and smallest works as if it were wrong
to aquarelle his paper with soft hints:
he ached to speak out in a great glare of pure light
so made up of all the spectrum it would paint
eternity with its iris-transfiguring white,
so white that Poetry, if not the Lord, would faint.

Well, I too wish to speak in sheer white sounds,
tell you of your honest self and forthright life
whose beauty is genuine and whose truth no bounds,
not even of pain to you, detain the white knife
that never wounds except to help and save
as doctors do. You always guide my aim
to center on human, fundamental, brave
grasp of the realities. All slips, my blame.
But you are not only the realist. You dream,
create, yearn long in manifold colors of paint,
think white or subdued words on the page in schemes
which manifest in signs, however faint,

that you, like Mr. Browning, yearn for all white,
that which comes only midsummer to northern Riga,
tinting, expanding auroral sky with eager
unbroken bands of star-banishing light: White Night.
Are my eyes wrong to discern in the snowy glows
dim shadows, palest orange, diaphanous rose? 

 Napa Bull

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento, CA
 

AT THAT EDGE

—Tom Goff

Sometimes each ecstasy life can offer riots,
runs Pamplona-chaotic into streets
darkening, narrowing with disputes, disquiets;
black as eyeliner, running gutters meet
and mingle their bleak streams. But then again
rough alleys give upon sun. This touches shadow;
where absolute light meets absolute dark, then
that spinal porcupining, De Chirico.

We live and work at the edge of that bristling square.
Love is still love that flares or shrinks at that edge.
Let not released words firework their noise
into the subsurface harmony we pledge,
amphibians of ambivalence. What buoys
us, drags us through checkerboard Sargasso fears?

King-Lear-in-the-storm-worthy dissonance, whipcord sounds
in Moeran’s Symphony, agonizing rapture,
agony, brimming over forgotten bounds,
bliss filling floodplains. Ambivalence be our captor.

____________________________

UNIVERSAL INTELLIGENCE
—Tom Goff

[Bax’s Sixth Symphony] makes me think of Sir Fred Hoyle’s latest lecture, the Fremantle lecture, about universal intelligence and whether composers who have gone through their romantic states have not reached out for the influence of universal intelligence drifting down through the atmosphere to us.

                —Conductor Vernon Handley

It is and is not the intelligence of us,
dusting us with pulverized star-debris.
Immediate as your fingers light on my face,
brushing with giddy sensation, oddly free
of the personal, pouring on us dark spaces vast,
this chrism whose sifting began so long before birth
that nothing of its traversal comet-paced
knows us or denies, light striking across light-years.

Yes we are it and it is us. Reflect
how different you and I are at work in art,
how strangely blended yet separate we are,
all near-harmonic-convergent meteor specks
rolled into one body compounded of all heart,
yet widening forever driftwise, far, far.

Diverse and divergent, mingled and dispersed,
we never need lose faith, keeping radiance:
events in a life, specific gravity’s versed
forms binding us fast, unburdening soft as chance,
rose-shaped, rose-colored vibrations expressing the distant dance… 

 Welcome

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

EVELYN
—Tom Goff

Such silences, such low clouds mist her—
we see her violin to shoulder
in an old photo.
What mischief, sprite behind a boulder,
shrinks her name as if by spell?

This is Arnold Bax’s sister.

Another shirtwaist-and-skirt figure,
more shrouded than Mozart’s Nannerl.
Is she not that one left in Connemara
when Arnold must rush off to capture
the Unattainable One of Ukraine?

Half dissolved in gouts of rain,
or, better said, in sepias,
tones brown under glass and framed in brass,
a gift ex voto
left to an idol unknowing of her.

Who can say if true genius teemed
in her quick woman-mind: demon-themed,
multicultural multicolor
stream of insatiate dreams and dolor?

She seems a girl who loved ignored
or, worse yet, lived admired by fits
among the small bits
of family lore, foil to you, feral
and fiery brother—at your peril
she languishes, flame nullified
in the house of never.

I put it to you in terms of tide.
Can your oceansurge’s throbbing diastole
pulse without that same comber’s receding systole?
Her ebb was forever.

All seawave green destined to fade by prejudice of your times,
yet emerald as a grove of lindens—named, in England, limes…  

 Mannequin 

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

FEMALE GOVERNMENT
—Tom Goff

He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.
                        —Samuel Johnson, Life of Milton

Loving Eve as Milton seems to have loved,
the poet nevertheless awards the Sin
to our first woman: even the man who’s roved
from truth and limps beside her to begin
the rough long journey holds no special guilt:
in Milton’s patriarchal eye the fault
is that his gentlest rebel who unbuilt
our place in Paradise seems to have taught
Adam the role of Eve’s subordinate.
This dread reversal of the woman’s part
as second fiddle, granting it to the man
who goes along, seems Milton’s take on Fate.
But you and I, in this fallen space that spans
all sin, know we are equal, blended at heart.

Whether you eat my shining apple, or
I try yours, what matter? You are Eve,
I, madam, I’m Adam, sharing with you one core
of sweet strong love through trials that jar and grieve.
Who knows what female government can do,
having for centuries tried rage and war
by masculine paradigm? The proud, the few,
should they not submit? You prove your daily worth
to me…remake this world of sand and tar.
Our home for a pattern, you may yet deliver our Earth.

________________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A light exists in spring
  Not present on the year
At any other period.
  When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
  On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
  But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
  It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
  It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
  Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
  It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
  Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
  Upon a sacrament.

—Emily Dickinson

________________________

Our thanks to today’s contributors as spring stirs on this Presidents’ Day, with daffodils popping up and blossoms on the trees. Tonight will be an inaugural reading at Sacramento Poetry Center by Indigo Moor, Sacramento’s new Poet Laureate, along with outgoing PL Jeff Knorr, as well as Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Gerry Pineda, and open mic. 25th & R Sts., Sac., 7:30pm.

On Friday at the Parkway Theater (5051 47th Av., Sac), Women’s Wisdom Art poets will read from their new anthology, Lift It Tenderly, 7pm. Then on Saturday, the Poetic License poetry read-around in Placerville will take place from 2-4pm at the Placerville Sr. Center, 937 Spring St. The theme is “phone calls”. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

 —Anonymous Photo

Celebrate!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa. 

Somehow Thunder and Lightning

Michael H. Brownstein, Townsville, N. Queensland, Australia

NIGHT BEGAN THIS WAY ONE FEBRUARY
 
Dusk, a mascara sky, its eyeliner running,
And he can barely see the purple of his hands.
Then the rains fall, heavy and hard, like pennies.
Somehow shadows jump. Somehow thunder and lightning.
Somehow every breath taken is another break in day.

When the clouds move to expose the white skin of the moon,
He is still there, a silhouette against dirty gray snow,
Color building on his cheeks, smoke, thin vapor.
Silence sleeps into space, fills it with nuance and sleep,
Rain an open wound bleeding. Snow slips into translucence,

A thinning of self, and shadow eats itself away.

____________________

POVERTY

I have run away from money
every penny jumping from me
through open windows like a scream.
Some things are that intense:
A hole in my back grows larger,
blistered pink, its edges raw with redness
I cannot purchase at a store.
When all of your blood leaks from your wrist,
all of the blood money, greed money,
easy living money, slippery and greasy money,
slides away, a gasp of air above the water,

everything filling with something else.

___________________

THE ONE THING YOU DO WELL

When carbon monoxide spills into the house,
The crack in the boiler warns them.
Thick black water tars the breaks in the floor
And he tastes the stagnant breath of stale life in his lungs.
So much easier to squeeze until it is squeezed away.

Some tasks are easier than others. Some skills
Swing to a levity of lighting, a need to stay awake
Until dizziness takes over, a deeding to the dark,
The panic that comes with the closing of the door,
The last residual gas straining air.

He holds onto her, touches her hair, lightly
Takes a breath near her left ear, wishes to kiss her.
He will not let go until she is ready
And even then he will not let go.

Everyone should be good at one thing.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

POEM OF THE ONE WORLD
—Mary Oliver

This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water

and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to

where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.

__________________

In the spirit of One World Through Poetry, Medusa welcomes Michael Brownstein from Australia this morning. Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011). Welcome to the Kitchen, Michael, and don’t be a stranger! For more, see thesouthtownsvillemicropoetryjournal.blogspot.com/search?q=brownstein

—Medusa

Celebrate poetry around the world! And don’t forget that 

Mosaic of Voices in Sacramento presents Traci Gourdine 

and Patrick Grizzell today, Avid Reader at Tower on 

Broadway, 2-3pm, and Poetry in the Mine features 

Stanley Zumbiel and Patricia Wentzel in Placerville today 

at Love Birds Coffee and Tea Co., 

2021 Smith Flat Rd., 1-3pm. Scroll down to the blue column 

(under the green column at the right) for info about these 

and other upcoming poetry events in our area.

Something We Can Call Morning

Selfie on a Rainy Day as Lemon Meringue Pie

—Poems by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA
—Artwork Provided by D.R. Wagner

CHINESE SUITS

We were invited to the trial
But somehow the children got confused
Or were unable to handle any information
That came from the world outside
Their heads.  We were sorry for them.

The entire field became transparent.
There were guardians dressed in Chinese
Suits and carrying huge swords.
They probably wouldn’t have hurt
Anyone, but there was no way to be sure.

Headlights flooded the sides of the road
Near the bridge.  Even this far back
We could hear the tires squealing and
See the blue smoke.  The sound of metal
Crunching sounded like someone eating.

Reflections began popping back and forth
From the shields carried by the servants.
They had their own concerns and we were
Just as dreamers to them.  Whatever
We did, whatever we decided, would
Seem as nothing to them.  They gave
Us jobs to keep us busy.  The children
Sat and watched us as if they could learn something.

______________________ 

BAD WATER

We didn’t realize the rage of the river
Until we climbed to the high bank.
Looking down we saw the rapids
Going on and on as far as the eye could see.

Why this insistence to hurry back to the sea?
A nightmare where one holds on with fingertips
To what is left of one’s mind while still
Being able to see shadows as belonging
To all other things but not to oneself.

A direction in the middle of the air.
An atrocious fabrication compounded
By perception and remembrances,
Not necessarily coming from ourselves.

Evening was very near.  Even from this height
One could hear the great waterfall leaning
Over the edge of its precipice, cursing
With its language of horror and splendor.
Crashing into the rocks far below.

The river was the only way to proceed.
All else was endless plains, rainstorms
Boiling in the distance, purple clouds,
Lightning and the calls of frightened birds.

Every step we took elicited  more questions.
Our memory became crystal, then dust and years.
Which is life?  Which is dream?  Which is death?

  Portrait of D.R. by Hilary Krzywkowski

CROW VISION

And the crows flew.
There were ten or twelve,
But one came back toward me
And I became afraid.

But it circled me slowly
And made me still.
Then, landing on my shoulder
While I quivered in fear,
Spoke in a crow voice
Saying:

We saw your face below the ice,
Looking at us as we gathered
For the night.  And then you
Walked across the frozen
Field and we saw you
As star light, but closer,
And knew you could hear
Us talking of masks
And flaming ropes
And the precise qualities
Of the wind this drear
Evening and wondered why
You chose to come to us now?

Are you a portent?
What have you seen?

I have known you all my life,
I said, and have found
It unbearable that you crows
Still feel I am less a bird,
Perhaps a madness, to you.
For I am trees and weather
And feathers and spine.

But now I am not
Alarmed, no, not at all.
I do gaze up at you
From below the ice
And now unfold as leaves
To you and your clan.

And in the morning
I will be gone again,
Lying in my bed, waking
Gazing across the winter gardens,
Listening to you talk.  But I
Shall no longer know the
Language of the crows.

Yes, this is so, he said, and lifted
His wings and became
The night once more.

 Main Street, Locke

THE OTHER RELIGION
                      for Robert L. Wagner

Forty-four coats of Coronado Red,
Rubbing each coat out in-between.
Smoother than lipstick and butter
To look at, gleam in the night when
The garage door is popped open.

The air is a cloud of lacquer spray.
There must be no wind.  Nothing
But air gonna touch this car.  My,
My, my, how it shine.  Only thing
Better is a Fender guitar lying in
Its case.  Only thing sweeter is
Everyone just standing around
Waiting on Summer midnight,
Smoking cigarettes and looking
Deep into the paint, seeing their
Lives in there, reflecting back.

So many of them could never get
Over how it was, being there,
How it felt, how everything looked.
So that stayed.  For more than thirty
Years they continued to talk, to smoke,
To paint the cars, work on them, transform
Them so that they matched a single moment.

_____________________

ONE-NIGHT STAND

Come with me now to the thrilling days of yesteryear.
The streets of Aberdeen are full of water.
The Wolf Moon eating the hills all through the night.
I see you when I look to the North.  I remember
The lavender you sent me when you wore lamb’s wool
And leopard fur.  I could feel the sting of the weather
Even then.  I said, “What do you think of this?”

A thick sunset crackling like a fishing boat
Full of the silver of fish bodies.  Use your own
Body to do to me again what the light does to my lips
Tonight.  Harvesting words out of the East
That cause illustrious dreaming on a night such as this.

The flood waters spread out so wide.  Do not use
Your thoughts.  Do you know how much I love you?
You are my misfortune, an inexhaustible flesh that reaches
The limit of what I can understand, fragments of angels
Not made of time as we are, instant after instant.

I disappear into the small hands of the rain that I had
Heard tell of.  Darkness closes in.  It wears goodbye
Like a cloudy mirror, constantly jumping off myths
Of ourselves, stories we have become even as we
Become the fish in the boats, the hollow of the Wolf Moon,
The torn wings off fairies barely able to contain light.

Come with me now.  We will shake the mountain.
We will climb one into another again and again,
So what is the good in talking about it any longer?
Mirrors pulling the sky over us, helping us to a season of infinity,
Or, if we are really lucky, toward something we can call morning. 

 Mouse

THE PARTING

We will wait for the moon tonight.
It is not only the moon.  It is full
And we can see it through the rain.

It is not like you are a child.
I will put the moon in my mouth
And we can stay in bed.  I will
Pass it into your mouth when we kiss.

I will tell you a story of a warrior I knew.
He used a rabbit skin to make a beard.
We lost him in the famous snows
That winter.  When we found his body
In the Spring he was in full armor
And looked more fearful than a trap
Set to catch a tiger that terrible Winter.

I am going to continue North.
Meet me under the trees
And you can use my heart
As a pillow all the while I am gone.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

FIREFLIES

I meant to say something
Completely different
But I kept thinking of your eyes
And what your neck must
Feel like if I found the right
Place to place my lips upon
It so you could recognize
What I was doing was kissing you.

I could have thought of the puritanical sky
But you would not have
Recognized any sky.

I had to imagine our tongues
Intertwining and fields and streams
Coming to tell you that
I was loving you.

That all these words
Were not fireflies.

__________________

Many thanks to D.R. Wagner for today’s fine poems and visuals. About today’s poems, D.R. writes that “Bill Roberts is currently reading my manuscript for Towards Love and has committed to publishing the chapbook at Bottle of Smoke Press. It should appear sometime this year.” Today’s poems are from that manuscript.

—Medusa 

Celebrate poetry!

 

 

 

 

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

Blue Jays and Calico

Where Fences Were

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

—Photos of the American River by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

BLUE JAYS AND CALICO

They've been here for years
two blue jays who live in our yard
year round.

In winter they’re silent
at the feeder but screeching
announces when spring is here

and continues through summer
because the jays have babies
two or three times a season.

The calico likes the tins
my wife puts out for him
and the jays gobble the seed

she puts in the feeder.
She was surprised however
to hear the jays screeching

on a raw day this winter.
Then she looked out the window
and saw the calico climbing

into the spruce where the jays
had babies last year and
spend time in the winter.

The Farmer’s Almanac aside,
perhaps the calico believes  
spring will be early this year.

 Bank to Bank

AND GO FOR A BIRDSONG RIDE

Spring will eventually arrive,
Tom tells his youngest daughter
looking out the window at the snow.

Take heart, he tells her,
and listen for the blue jays when
they build a nest in the sycamore

and chase away the other birds
that fly unwelcome into the tree
hoping also to start a family.

He tells his snowbound daughter
once she hears the blue jays' ruckus
spring will be here and she can wear

her jeans and pretty yellow jacket,
get on her tricycle with the other girls
and go for a birdsong ride.

___________________

A LITTLE BOY WANDERS AWAY

A little boy from the city
down on the farm for a day
wanders away

to look at the sheep
and finds a bull
penned up to go

to the county fair.
The boy loves
the big Texas Longhorn

quietly eating his hay.
The boy smiles at him
admires his beautiful horns

thinks they're handlebars
the biggest he’s ever seen.
So over the fence for a ride.  

 Flying Water

ANCIENT OLGA AND HER SNOOP

Our house has a garret
I never went up to until I retired.
Now I’m up there almost every day
unless I have to stay in bed
until another spell passes.

When I feel all right
I’m at the keyboard
in the garret writing
looking out the window
one eye on the neighbors.

They’re all doing well
except for ancient Olga
who’s on crutches now
and has a difficult time
getting to her Buick
especially when it snows.

She knows I’m usually
in the garret watching
and if she falls I’ll call 911.
But on days when I’m in bed
with another spell, Olga
has to be extra careful.
She thanked me once
for being the only snoop.

__________________

BIRTHDAY FOR AN OLD-TIMER

His wife takes him to dinner
as she always does
on his birthday wearing

bright red lipstick, a color
she detests but he likes.
He knows this means

when they get home
bright red panties will call
like a beacon in the night.

 Rapid Water

SALLY IN THE ALLEY AND JOANIE IN THE WEEDS

Sarah makes sandwiches all day,
piling meat and trimmings high
on pillowy bread she spreads 

apart before her customers' eyes.
Hardworking men love her sandwiches
and sometimes date her after work

but none so far has mentioned marriage.
This confuses Sarah who’s as open
as her bread in satisfying men.

That’s not too wise, says Ethel,
a granny clone Sarah chats with
after lunch-hour rush.

Ethel says when she was Sarah's age
women demanded a wedding first,
except for two legends she remembers:

Sally in the Alley and Joanie in the Weeds
were consumed by many men, Ethel says,
then tossed aside like sandwich wrappers.

______________________

A SPIDER IN THE SINK

It’s outpatient surgery
and she’s running late
trying to catch a spider

in the kitchen sink.
Wants to carry it outside
before her boyfriend wakes

and crushes it.
Then she has a long drive
to the clinic and hopes

this will be her last visit.
Her boyfriend lied
about having

that procedure.
She found out the hard way,
shouldn’t have let him back in.

 Roiled

A LEGACY IN BRIEF

The media is brimming with reports
about the legacy of Barack Obama.

He’s accomplished so much
it’s tough for experts to name
his signature achievement.

But the 2016 election said it in neon
blinking in Times Square: Trump!

____________________

AMERICA WILL DISCOVER

If the goal of business
is to make a profit
and it is—and if

the goal of government
is to take care of people
and it is—then in 2017

America will discover
if skills in business
can be transferred

to government.
Even atheists pray
that they can.

 Sharp Things in the Water

NIGHT AND DAY HE WAS THE ONE

There’s a glorious sound system now
in the restored train depot where recruits
from all over the nation once took a 
train to Camp Breckinridge before
taking a plane to Korea.

A fellow who came back from Korea
stopped in at the depot on one leg
recently for a moment of nostalgia.
A burger and fries cost him 20 bucks,
up from the two bucks he paid in '51.
And the music was not quite the same.

A waiter in a bow tie and derby said
they still had the old juke box,
the big Wurlitzer, in the basement
under a sheet or a shroud.
Plug it in and give it a quarter
and he said old Frank would sing.

 The Wide American

SPAM IN MY INBOX

Fancy spam emails
I don’t mind nor the ones
cobbled in broken English

from someone who says
he’s with a bank overseas
and is holding money for me

if I will send a small token
to show my good faith.
No, the spam emails

that bother me
are the ones that use
the names of people

I know well, like my daughter.
Those emails I’d like to answer.
We were close before she died.

__________________

RINGING IN THE EARS

Ringing in the ears
has no cure.
It’s called tinnitus
and you can pronounce it
the way it looks or the way
your doctor says it.

Today I discovered how
to turn the ringing off
and that’s to take
a phone call from your son
who says your daughter
died last night.

She won the first
and second match but
lost the last to cancer.
An hour later you realize
the ringing in your ears
has stopped but there’s
no silence in its wake.

A train of memories
chugs by and stops
and then chugs on again.
You want the ringing
in your ears back again.
You can live with that.

 Fearless

Today’s LittleNip:

AN IMAM SHOULD SAY
—Donal Mahoney

(a senryu)

An imam should say
eternity lasts too long
to sit by the fire

_________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Donal Mahoney and Katy Brown for today’s fine Friday fare!

 Celebrate poetry tonight in Davis as The Other Voice 
presents Barbara West, Jennifer O’Neill Pickering and 
open mic, 7:30pm. Or head over to Elk Grove 
for the Love Poem Competition at Pins N Strikes.  
Scroll down to the blue column 
(under the green column at the right) for info about 
 these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—

and note that more may be added at the last minute.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

Hanging Out

Le Métro, 1943

—Artwork by Jean Dubuffet

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

WAKING UP WITH SEA GULLS

Waking up with sea gulls
departing the sky
in a profusion of clouds
along the Cape Cod beach
the noon air is cool
as a beachcomber walks
glaring along the sand
tells me his name is Ned
and is a runaway
entangled in seaweed
tells me he is needy
on a winter February thaw
and draws me a landscape
in an epiphany of nature
peeks at the waves
under the sun rays’ shadow
and picks his way down
to the shore
bathing in frozen water
after a week.

__________________

IMPROVISATION #233
PROCLAMATION

Hinting more days
 of winter
  the groundhog
 in the underground
 by bog and in silence
  comes out
 like a Beat poet
after a slog of winter snow
goes up to the hinterland
and country hill
in the rucksack of meadow
shouting out\side
words we not know
in tongues of
  the groundhog
who decides  to  head  back inside
       from his  shadow  to proclaim
to the media
it is the sunlight
for more days of the season
  for   Puxsatawney Phil
in   Pennsylvania.

 Swindler

IMPROVISATION #252
READING REVERDY

Reading Reverdy
 pausing on the beach
      in blankets
another is drawing
 a mural in a color field
in canvas covering
   over orange and red sponges
on the sea coast beds
     to astonish us
 we reaching out for shells
among the shore's seaweed
 stones of Provence
   yet finding whale bones
   by a diary of influence
from a politician
as we read French quatrains
   and hide out
from shields
of hail and rain.

__________________

IMPROVISATION# 240
AIRPORT OUT OF MIND

They said
   over the intercom to land
  in Cincinnatti
     go on the ramp
 check your passport
   and stamp without spam
as you head
      for the Rocky Mountains
to the port of San Francisco
 in a shipping container
   by way of Chicago
   that   your suitcase
  in your retainer
by way of an extra
 experience
     to be absorbed
 into your poet's
     diary tightly bound
with personal cargo
  when there is a reaction
 to your superego
in the underground
of satisfaction.

 Lili By The Window, 1935

IMPROVISATION# 238
ON FRENCH POSTER ART

If from the start
   in Cubism
    from prisms
of surrealism
into poster art
 and neo-Realism
by Albert Glaziers
my staring at
  The Bathers
at my satisfaction
  at Jean Metzinger's
 Tea Time
at noon
 in my attraction
or in the graffiti
of Jean Debuffet's
cartoons.

__________________

IMPROVISATION #225
OFF OAK BLUFFS

The breeze
   off Oak bluffs
as fishermen
when visiting from Lisbon
      listen
  to the fragmented
churning sea
  with a voice in shadows
  by the trees
 hears us in echoes
 by flakes of the snow
       in local field
  of local colors
as fishers by river banks
shielded   from the sun
  far out of reach
 salmon on the blue surface
    with its complicity
  of nature.   

 Protestator, 1973

IMPROVISATION #239
HANGING OUT

Hanging out
    as a Beat poet
 in a justice
by curiosity
  with an intense
   sensitivity in the modernist
 museum
    at a first light
  phenomenon
 by you showing me
 a first peek at
       Russian and Greek
 sleek icons
drawing   in the balance
 pressed by turning
    out of a crusty critic
on a tripwire of intelligence
 in the emergence
       to make a trustworthy
from  the  presence
 of perplexing primed here
over an index of things
 leaking a deflection
into mechanisms
    of wonder and sensitivity
of   several centuries
 at artistic evidence
transfixed under the prism
 cover from an interior outing
 into a convergence
at the audacious influence
   of a resigned punctuation
 and signature and signed
  in a Kultur
that is passing.

 Jazz, 1943

Today’s LittleNip:
 
IMPROVISATION #243
WHEN A POET SPEAKS
—B.Z. Niditch

When a poet
or artist draws us in
on canvas
or speaks in outlines
     under  cover
  in  profiled times
of shadows
 in its eccentric settings
   dreams in alarms
    track us down
  from a network of access
 in a metaphoric process
 of a  geometric charming
   us in
oversight.

_________________

Many, many thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today’s fine poems and pix! Head on down to the Central Library in Sac. (828 I St.) at noon for Third Thursdays at the Central Library poetry read-around—bring poems, preferably by someone other than yourself, about love, or to celebrate Black History Month. Then you have two choices of poetry readings in our area tonight: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe features Tom Goff celebrating the life of Iris Rinehart, 8pm; and Poetry in Davis, also at 8pm, features James Lee Jobe and Dorine Jennette, plus open mic. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

For more about artist Jean Dubuffet, go to www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/dubuffet-drawings/.

—Medusa

 Celebrate poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.

Small Kindnesses

Ancient Orange Tree

—Photos by Stacey Jaclyn Morgan, Fair Oaks, CA

—Poems by JD DeHart, Chattanooga, TN

MOUTH OF MOUNTAINS

The mouth of mountains
speaks in rusty water,
cleaned by flowing over leaves,
the dogwood blossom,
the sound of mother and father.

The mouth of mountains
gave me a name,
taught me to dance quickly
when bee stings came,
taught me not to quiver
at the sound of buckshot,

taught me how to be on
my own, a voice
not confused with fitting
in to match the rest,
standing up straight.

The mouth of mountains
taught me the song of high winds
moving through creaking trees
and the hammering of bird wings
with autumn scamper,
the sound of my own people.

_________________


NEVER READ


This is the poem
never read, like the box
of photographs
that will never be passed on.

Some people I have
forgotten, the others
forgotten soon
.
This is the sound
of no sound at all, the space
of a cave where light
and music could have been.

 First Daffodil

BOX OF BOOKS

Dad's mystery box
of books he brought
to share with me.

The first place I found
Steinbeck, and a book
about Tracy and Hepburn.

How I would stack up
books to hold up my summers,
how I would never get
as far into the pile
as I wanted by August.

____________________


DRASTIC

I am nothing if not drastic,
the darkest end of the shaded
spectrum, the word livid
as opposed to the phrase
mildly ticked off,

the elective surgery,
the all or nothing kind of guy,
the absence at offense felt
or casually ignored.

 Bumphill

COFFEE CANS

Smell of a coffee can,
shine of the metal interior
reminds me of rains
at night when we would go out,
earth worms laying left and right.

The key is not to shine
the flashlight directly,
they will slip back into dirt.

Grab, pull, drop into the can
for tomorrow’s fishing trip,
dad and me.

_________________

LITERARY CAUSE

In these digital landscapes
we trickle and tickle with words
etched in glowing cursor

Sounds meet and merge
in bound affinity spaces,
one would hope packed
always with friends

Gathered around a literary
cause, assembled by love
of writ and lit, always
submerged in the latest story

Always drafting the next verse.

 Revolver
 

SEPTEMBER

There is an infusion
of creativity that happens
when September arrives;

perhaps it is the death
of leaves that makes me
want to reproduce thought.

Perhaps it is a subtle change
in the atmosphere, opening
vessels, allowing oxygen in.

Perhaps it is the academic
crisp sense of another year
of classes, texts, and authors.

_________________

EARLY RETIREMENT

It’s not what he thought it
would be, these hours at home
with no gravel sticking in his
back; sure it was cold and difficult.

Sure he worked long hours.

But the useless drawl of daytime
personalities and the arranging
of pieces on the checkerboard
hold no fire for him these days.

 Ook book
 

MODICUM

I’d like a small amount
of kindness. A silver dish
of helpful offerings from a place
that’s humble. I grew to understand
that shoulders are made for lifting
up the young. I am not accustomed
to begging. We help each other.

The sight of chopped wood
in the back of a pickup trucks reminds
me of the warmth of a potbellied stove.

Shards of kindling in the floor, being
careful of the splinters.

I grew to understand that small
kindnesses are what life’s built on,
that holding on to past bitterness
poisons the spirit, drags down the
face, lays sagging on the talk
like a tired dog, long baying,
now hoarse, at empty wind.

_________________

Today’s LittleNip:

LIONS
—JD DeHart

A stretch
of untamed grass
with cattails
rising high
on a freshly mowed
surface

“Perhaps that’s
where they keep
their lions,” I say.

_______________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to Stacey Morgan for her photos, and to JD DeHart for sending us his poems, all the way from Tennessee! “Coffee Cans” was previously published in Dead Mule. “Literary Cause”, “Modicum”, “Early Retirement”, “September” and “Lions” were first published in The Poetry Community.

 —Anonymous

Celebrate poetry tonight in Sacramento at the 

Squaw Valley Community of Writers benefit reading, 

Sierra 2 Center, 7pm. Scroll down to the blue column 

 (under the green column at the right) for info about 

this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—

and note that more may be added at the last minute.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.