It's the Ants, You See...

SEPTEMBER AGAIN
Despair has its own calms.
—Dracula by Bram Stoker

Morning light changes, takes
on greys, fog lingers over
asphalt, just the slightest
gauze wavering. My daily
hikes slow to weekly;
instead of vertical climbs,
(gorging on stolen
blackberries), I’m sleeping-in,
reading a mild novel about
vampires. I’ve never liked
being bitten against my
will, new friends with long
canines; even staying up all
night has lost its appeal. Too
little daylight brings all the old
sadnesses foreword, lined in
pairs and marching past like
trained monkeys. My animal
body, autumn’s disinterested
limbs, all wrapped with yesterday’s
newsprint, the words left blurred
in fog’s settling. So little desire
to be touched, for breech of
skin, for immortality.

—Colette Jonopulos, Eugene, OR

______________________

Thanks, Colette! She took mercy on Medusa and sent in a poem, as did Brad Hamlin. Together, the two poems bookend the shifting of the months:


GHOST WIND
—Bradley Mason Hamlin, Sacramento

In Sacramento
October creeps in
with the best weather

finally not hot anymore
and not yet too cold

orange & white
pumpkins laughing
against your door

red, brown, yellow leaves
crisp
crunch under
rake

giving way to the chill
that's coming—

you've got your coat on again,
feels fine to have that force field
as the autumn brings
the urgency

of other people's thoughts
the whispers
inside your ear canals
and it's okay

you know
it's all right, you're haunted,
but you've always
been that way.

____________________

Thanks, Brad!

Medusa will be taking a wee break; it's the ants, you see... [see below]. In her absence, you have some assignments: (1) send poems; (2) sign up for the Sac. Poetry Center Writers Conference Oct. 7-8 (write to Robbie Grossklaus at dphunkt@mac.com for a form); (3) send more poems; (4) go through Rattlesnake Review #7 and get responses ready for some of the columns in there, like Taylor Graham's and Katy Brown's; (5) send even MORE poems. And maybe go to a reading, too:

All are invited to come hear Indigo Moor, featured poet at the PoemSpirits’ first fall reading this Sunday (10/2), 6:00 pm. A true bi-coastal poet, Indigo has become known for his writing and his presentation, both in Northern California and along the Boston-New York area. He was a 2002 recipient of a Cave Canem Writing Fellowship, a finalist for the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize awarded by Truman State University, and the 2005 winner of the Vesle Fenstermaker Poetry Prize for Emerging Writers. Co-host Nora Staklis will offer a brief presentation on Enheduanna, a Sumerian princess and the earliest known author in world literature, some of whose writings survive on cuneiform tablets. Stay for our open mic and refreshments. We invite you to bring a favorite poem to read. Location: Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento; 2425 Sierra Blvd., Sac. (This is 2 blocks north of Fair Oaks Blvd, between Howe and Fulton Avenues.) Info: Tom Goff, Nora Staklis (481-3312) or JoAnn Anglin (451-1372).

And Monday (10/3), Ilya Aminsko will be featured at HQ (25th & R Sts., Sac) at 7:30, hosted by the Sacramento Poetry Center.

Medusa will be back Wednesday (10/5).


MEDUSA
—Kenneth Fearing

A man is a maze of ants in dark endeavor.
What did the ants do with Medusa's head?
They stood on her brow, sweating beads of lead,
And pried up her nose, with their need for a lever.
The way an ant is valorous and clever
Is in his deep bowels; they never get fed.
And a maze of ants in the dark fields of dread
Are eating their Medusas down forever.

There may be one exception to that rule.
In vines of crooked lightning a hushed fool
May see lost roads that skirt his memory.
He hears old portals vibrate windily,
And listens back to them, locked as a vow.
This is the time he hears them shut...now, now.

______________________

By the way, the October Snakebytes, if you got it, has a mistake: littlesnake broadside #16 is by IRENE LIPSHIN, not Lynn Lipshin, as it says. Arghhhhhhhhh...

—Medusa (here we come, Sammie! Hang onto your wigs and keys!)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Like a Leather Mini-Skirt

SHE PUBLISHES HERSELF

with shameless effrontery: flaunts
her naked scribblings

like a leather mini-skirt: long red
nails: publishes raw words about

her ex and her step-kids and
that aging hippie next door: favorite

addictions and how her mother
wouldn’t let her shave her legs: pays

for the paper and cranks up the copy
machine to show herself off without

the benefit of cheesecloth: no censor
here to blue-pencil her meanderings,

her random ricochets—reckless
flashing of those sharp red nails…

—Kathy Kieth, Fair Oaks

_________________________

You might as well change the dial if you don't want to hear about Kathy Kieth today. Since nobody else will send me poems...

Today would've been my dad's 95th birthday. Our relationship was mixed, but we did spend one good night together in the hospital shortly before he died, him stoned on legal pharmaceuticals, me stoned on lack of sleep:


WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT
—Kathy Kieth

Addled by drugs, my father is
a handful for the night
nurse, but settles when I sit
with him. Still, he fiddles

with tubes, tries to re-arrange
the imposements of a hospital
bed. Hoping to distract, I trigger
old memories: it works; nurses

withdraw into their own shadowy
midnight of charts and carts, slick
dark hallways... He points out
a big black dog on the foot

of his bed: visitor I'm not ready
to see: hound that waits with us
for tomorrow, for the decisive
scalpel of daylight, for bright sun

to flood this room with his new
family. Meanwhile we hold
hands, talk about our old life,
about the three of us before

my mother died. And the black dog
listens, waits with us: now and then
lifting its huge, dark head...

(Previously appeared in Poetry Now, October 2003)

_______________________

As I mentioned before, Medusa and I have been dealing with burn-out issues. Yesterday was therapeutic: saw several poetry friends, who soothed the beast with the panache that poets sometimes have, whether they know it or not. Plus the Snake won his wily self an award from Sacramento News and Review! Last year those folks were kind enough to crown the wee Snakelets "Best Poetry for Children"; this year we got "Best Small Poetry Press". Just because I'm so indulgent today, I shall reprint the description here:

"Just as there is no shortage of fine poets in the area, there's no shortage of small poetry presses doing quality work; among them are Penn Valley's R.L. Crow and Stockton's Poet's Corner Press. But first among equals is the incredibly, impossibly active Rattlesnake Press, headquartered in Fair Oaks. In addition to publishing Rattlesnake Review, a literary journal; Snakelets, one of the nation's few poetry journals for children; and Vyper, a literary journal aimed at teens, Wrangler-in- Chief Kathy Kieth and her staff manage to turn out a couple of well-made poetry chapbooks every month. Although we're not really fans of the "spiralchap" format (using spiral binding and full-sized pages), the smaller books are lovingly designed, artisanal books worthy of becoming keepsakes. They showcase some outstanding local poets. Watch for chapbook-release parties and readings on the second Wednesday of the month at The Book Collector, 1008 24th Street, Sac."

This is most excellently cool; thanks, SN&R!!!

Back to my friends:


MURMURS IN THE KITCHEN
(for Frannie-Alice)

Yellowing windowshades muzzle
a hot summer day: muffle
brassy July sun that slants against
peeling linoleum. Two grey heads

bend over knife nicks in a wooden
table: murmur the worn-out secrets
of old women as stiff fingers curve
around chipped cups: grasp at

the soft flesh of each other's words:
embrace the slim gossip of this
gathering twilight... Yellowing
shades fold the room in liquid

amber: wash faded tile bronze, as
the murmurs scatter across crowded
drainboards: bounce with a ping off
the cooling stove: roll along base-

boards and under dented pans: finally
come to rest: curl up in the china
cabinet alongside those few choice
pieces left behind by somebody's

grandmother, somebody's mother,
somebody's aunt...

_______________________

Deadline for Snakelets has been extended to OCTOBER 10; please see what you can do to get more kid-poems to me by then (ages 0-12).

I see Molly Fisk still has openings in her Internet October Boot Camp. People speak highly of this chance to write like a dervish for a short period of time: "The October Boot Camp is coming up, October 16-21, in case your fall schedule has room for a harvest of new poems. Space is limited, so let me know as soon as you can. (http://www.poetrybootcamp.com)"

SnakePal Irene Lipshin of the notorious Red Fox Poets in Placerville sends me this link to Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac website, which posts poetry on a daily basis: writersalmanac.publicradio.org.

One final whipped-cream/cherry-on-top indulgence for kk: I have two chaps available at The Book Collector, and a new (free) broadside: Way Too Much Sky.

Here's me in burnout:


WOLF-CHILD
—Kathy Kieth

She has two tiny fangs embedded
in her jowls: sharp little needles

that sink into outstretched flesh, leave
bloody tracks on unsuspecting

hands. Raised by her wolf-mother,
she can't trust bare hands: snarls

against the perversity of humans: their
naked reachings and their strange pink

hairless bodies. So, one by one, she
carefully unwinds her days, dressed

in her apron, pacing her suburban
house: listens to the aching in her jaws

as the wind howls someplace faraway,
over the snowy mountains...

___________________________


—Medusa (and thanks, Colette Jonopulos, for the kind words on the Tiger's Eye blog August 27—click on link to the right to see it)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Dragons & Drunken Flies/Poets

RAIN
—Kenneth Fearing

Dragons love the world in rain.
They crawl among the watery feet
Of its sheered cliffs in coats of chain,
Catching glimpses of blazing scales
Through shifting pockets in the discreet
Grey rain. They love to stand and look
On Saracens locked in holy wars,
Waving crimson scimitars.
More do they love to twist their tails
And stare in through a window-pane
At a man bent over a printed book,
Drinking from a crystal flagon.
But nothing is like the dragon's joy
At seeing a portrait of a dragon
Crawling in rain, catching sight,
Through mist, of blazing scales that stain
The watery cliffs, watching the fray
Of Saracens with scimitars bleeding,
Staring, in ecstasies that pain,
Through blurred windows on a man reading,
On portraits of dragons who crawl away
Helpless with wonder in the rain.

________________________

Just a reminder to get signed up for the Sac. Poetry Center Writers Conference Oct. 7-8 (the weekend after this one!) at HQ, 25th & R Sts., Sac. Handy sign-up forms are available from Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus (dphunkt@mac.com). Sacramento does not have enough day-long workshops, to my way of thinking, and this is definitely a step in the right direction! Hopefully, we will have more of these in the future.

I don't know how many cyber-journals are based in Sacramento, but here's one: LitVision, "the free-range rooster of creative writing", edited by Patrick Simonelli. Lively, colorful, it's an interesting combination of prose and poetry from around the country. Check it out.


BRACELET
—Kenneth Fearing

Return to me now,
For I am a thousand arms
Spread out to you like an open fan;
A thousand gargoyles whose stone mouths
Will twist into shadowy smiles
When you return.
Walk in my night,
Far among the taut strings
Of my veins, that will tremble with sound.
And in my brain, panel'd with broad mirrors,
Be blood-red sparks by thousands
That walk and walk.

_______________________

THE DRUNKEN FLY
—Kenneth Fearing

Sounds at night
Are only bats that fly
Among the lofts of darkness
Through broken rooms
Where stars are chips of fallen lime,
Bleached and dry.
But sounds are nothing:
Old drowned boats
Crawl around the harbor bed
And go up the sky,
Barking, with throats
Choked by fog and dread.

Only silence lives at night,
Silence and fear,
With something warm as melody
Ringing through distant streets
I cannot go near.
Cannot, for the winds that play
Around and through and over me
As though I were a shred of straw
Blown down an alley-way.

Then there is nothing, any more
But rags and bits of glass in corners,
And the sound of dust
Softly raining on an iron door.
Then there is nothing, and no one,
The people are gone
Like an army that has rolled on
Over deep canyons choked with men.

________________________

BUSINESS AS USUAL
—Kenneth Fearing

This is the poet
Who wrote the sonnet
And was paid three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

This is the artist,
The man who has drawn it
(For twenty-five bucks)
A margin of nymphs—
The nymphs in the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

Here is the printer
Who published the page
(Clearing upon it
A hundred or so)
Of nymphs, and the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

This is the empty
Bottle of gin
That cost three dollars
And sixty-five cents
That enabled the poet
To write the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

_________________________

—Medusa (who dearly wishes she could clear a hundred or so a page...)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

I'm Afraid You'll Find Me Out...

HENRY BY NIGHT
—John Berryman

Henry's nocturnal habits were the terror of his women.
First it appears he snored, lying on his back.
Then he thrashed and tossed,
changing position like a task fleet. Then, inhuman,
he woke every hour or so—they couldn't keep track
of mobile Henry, lost

at 3 a.m., off for more drugs or a cigarette,
reading old mail, writing new letters, scribbling
excessive Songs;
back then to bed, to the old tune or get set
for a stercoraceous cough, without quibbling
death-like. His women's wrongs

they hoarded and forgave, myterious, sweet;
but you'll admit it was no way to live
or even keep alive.
I won't mention the dreams I won't repeat
sweating and shaking: something's gotta give:
up for good at five.

________________________

Hidden Passage Poetry Reading is coming up tomorrow (9/28) from 6 to 7 p.m. at Hidden Passage Books, 352 Main St. in Placerville. It's an open-mic read-around, so bring your own poems or those of a favorite poet to share, or just come to listen and gaze at the skeleton under the floor. We hope to see you there!

In the mood for a longer road trip? This coming Thursday (9/29) is the monthly Writers Read Poetry Reading in Ukiah. This month we are honored to have poet Cynthia Bryant here, Poet Laureate of Pleasanton. The location is new this month; it will be hosted at Colored Horse Studios. For those of you inland who haven't yet had a chance to visit Colored Horse Studios, here's how to find us:

780 Waugh Lane, located midway between Talmage and Gobbi (on the Gobbi side, turn at the intersection with the Kelly Moore Paint Store). We have a six-space parking lot in front, park there till it's full, then there is street parking. The driveway is lined with wine barrels, an easy visual landmark. Phone: 707-462-4557.

Featured Reading starts at 7 pm, open mic is at 8:15. Suggested donation: $5;
supported in part by Poets & Writers. Info: Theresa Whitehill at theresa@coloredhorse.com, or www.coloredhorse.com/WritingPoetry/Writing.html


OLD MAN GOES SOUTH AGAIN ALONE
—John Berryman

O parakeets & avocets, O immortelles
& ibis, scarlet under that stunning sun,
deliciously & tired I come
toward you in orbit, Trinidad!—albeit without the one

I would bring with me to those isles & seas,
leaving her airborne westward thro' great snows
whilst I lapse on your beaches
sandy with dancing, dark moist eyes among my toes.

______________________

Howzabout some Berryman Dream Songs?

14
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights and gripes
as bad as achilles,

who love people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself and its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

__________________

101
A shallow lake, with many waterbirds,
especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,
An extraordinary vivid dream
of Betty & Douglas, and Don—his mother's estate
was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.
He showed me around.

A policeman trundled a siren up the walk.
It was 6:05 p.m., Don was late home.
I askt if he ever saw
the inmates—'No, they never leave their cells.'
Betty was downstairs, Don called down 'A drink'
while showering.

I can't go into the meaning of the dream
except to say a sense of total loss
afflicted me thereof:
an absolute disappearance of continuity & love
and children away at school, the weight of the cross,
and everything is what it seems.

_______________________

365
Henry, a foreigner, lustful & old,
bearded, exasperated, lay in bed
cursing his enemies.
He loved his friends with a thick love, them to hold
to him in all his bad times, which were rife.
Henry living & dead

was full of friends & foes: he had no team-spirit.
He lashed the lapses of those who were to inherit.
He sank back exhausted.
Grimy dreams wore him out. He woke half-sane
& screamed for stronger drinks. Open the main!
Pour, if necessary, drinks down him.

I, Henry Pussy-cat, being in ill-health
& 900 years old, begin & cease,
to doubt.
When my old friend complained to my older friend
'Why don't you come see me more often?'
'I'm afraid you'll find me out.'

__________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Happy Birthday, Tom!

MORNING AT THE WINDOW
—T.S. Eliot

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

_______________________

Today is Thomas Stearns Eliot's birthday. I spent part of the summer reading Painted Shadow by Carole Seymour-Jones, which is mostly about Vivienne and Tom's marriage, so the Eliots are very much on my mind. It's nothing like the movie, by the way...

Tonight Stephen Sadler reads at HQ (25th & R Sts., Sac), 7:30 pm, hosted by Sac. Poetry Center.

Thursday, the Placer County Clay Poets (Clay Poet Rodney Mott and others) will showcase their text/spoken work/ceramic work at Luna's, 1414 16th St., 8 pm, hosted by frank andrick. Info: 441-3931.

Saturday, head on down to the gorgeous California Palace of the Legion of Honor to attend the Dancing Poetry Festival, 12-4 pm. Hosted by Artists Embassy International, this annual event features dancing and music and poetry and is very colorful. Poets are chosen from contest winners: local poets who won this year include Laverne and Carol Frith, Allegra Silberstein, and Jeanine Stevens. Info and to purchase tickets: www.dancingpoetry.org.


CONVERSATION GALANTE
—T.S. Eliot

I observe: 'Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prestor John's baloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress.'
She then: 'How you digress!'

And I then: 'Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine, music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity.'
She then: 'Does it refer to me?'
'Oh no, it is I who am inane.'

'You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—'
And—'Are we then so serious?'

___________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

The Dance of Affirmation

HIDING PLACES
—Jack Micheline

There are hiding places in my room
where beautiful poems are hidden
Poems hidden away in boxes
on sheets of brown paper
Poems of spirit and magic
workers hands hidden in boxes
beautiful thighs
there are blue skies hidden in my room
dolphins and seagulls
the heaving of breasts and oceans
there are skies in my room
there are streets in my room
there are a thousand nights hidden in boxes
there are drunks in my poems
there are a million stars on the roof of my room
all hidden away in boxes
there are steps down side streets
there is a crazed eye of a poet in my room
there are old Arabs exploring the desert near Escalon
there are sparrows and bluebirds and wildcats in my room
there are elephants and tigers
there are skinny Italian girls in my room
there are letters from Peru and England
and Germany and Russia in my room
There are the steps of Odessa in my room
the Volga river in my room
there are dreams in the night of my room
there are flowers
there is the dance of affirmation in my room
the steps of young poets carrying knapsacks full of poems
there are the Pictures of an Exhibition in my room
Moussorgsky and Shostakovich
and Charlie Mingus in my room
Composers and painters all singing in my room
all hidden away in boxes
one night when the moon is full
they will come out and do a dance

________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Ah, Youth!

SLAMDANCING TO THE BLUES
—David Lerner

there's a sadness that's
better than love
it fell in the air
the other night

little girl face
with a mind as wild as Egypt

she reads all the high-class
sex literature
the pornography of Miller
even the later novels of Rechy
now into the novelization of
Liquid Sky
and The Apocalypse Culture

during the days she
takes off her clothes to
Tom Waits and the Dead Kennedys
at a theatre on Market
while the customers finger their crotches
and tip paper money

she said, "How do I look?"
and I told her she looked like
a 14-year-old beatnik with an
IQ of 200

she wasn't sure she like that
she has invented herself so well
she's not sure she can
escape

I know that song

__________________________

Today and tomorrow (9/24-25), Sac. Poetry Center will have a booth promoting poetry at the Reading Celebration at Fairytale Town, 10-4 pm: Local authors, illustrators, theatre performances, book-making and other crafts, and a children's book exchange. Admission is $4; free for kids 2 and under or park members. (Also free if you bring a new/gently used children's book.) I never did get an answer to my question yesterday, though, about whether FTTown was making an exception to their usual rule of no adults allowed without a child in tow, so be forewarned—you may not get in unless you can rent a kidlet.

Speaking of which—don't forget the looming deadline for SNAKELETS: OCTOBER 1 (a week from today). Send poems from kids 0-12 to kathykieth@hotmail.com ASAP. Next VYPER deadline, for young poets 13-19, is November 1.

Stephen Sadler will be reading at HQ (25th and R Sts., Sac) Monday at 7:30 pm for Sac. Poetry Center.


BLASTED YOUTH
—David Lerner

blasted youth in black
blasted youth looks good in black
hot black

blasted youth doesn't care in this special way
that charms you
only reads the obituaries and the
ads

blasted youth is cold with feeling
blasted youth is sexy
death dressed in the wind and
ready to go anywhere

blasted youth doesn't understand ideals
when it was born they were already
cartoons

blasted youth believes in
the paradise of the single second
the long night of the flesh
the terrible hunger for ecstasy

blasted youth is wild with fragile purpose

the way it moves with grace through
poisoned water
forgetting nothing

blasted youth will die trying
and there are
worse things to die of these days

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.