Seasoning

—Poems and Photos by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

SEASONING

Late dawnings
Dusky days
Were I a bird
I'd south a-ways

Long shadows
Autumn haze
My dreams migrate
Toward yesterdays

_________________________

THAT LOVELY COPPER KETTLE
 
Filled I set it on the stove
A gift when we were wedded
While pruning the prune branches
In power lines embedded

A glowing orange puddle
That lovely copper kettle
Was what she found when she came home
I got to test her mettle

_________________________

chacun à son goût

I'm not a fan of apple pie
With cheese or à la mode
She doesn't like banana cream
(I guess I should'a' know'd)
And if we share a rhubarb pie
A rhubarb's sure to follow
But she can keep her apple pie
Apple donuts I will swallow

_________________________

PATERNAL HOMESTEAD

Hagerman
Idaho
Pump handle outside the kitchen
Washer with a mangle inside
Elda's jars in the cellar
Eeewwwww
Joe's chair in the parlor
Shhhhhhh
Grasshoppers in the berry canes
Trout in the ditch
Rice and milk and cinnamon
Breakfast
I miss you, Grandma
I love you, Grandpa

ONCE I WAS AWAKE

Morpheus comes visits me
Proceeds through Gates of Horn

I was here before in dreams
Before it was this morn

There is one common thread here
A theme I can't yet name

Each as true as true can be
Though none of them the same

_______________________

(DON'T DO THIS WITH THE ENGINE RUNNING, TRUST ME)

Take the distributor cap off
Then the rotor which probably needs replacing
The points are cheap so replace them too
Use a gap gauge and put the new rotor on
Check the distributor cap for cracks
Pop it back on if it looks good
Hook up the dwell meter to double check the points
Remove cap and rotor and adjust the points
Until the dwell angle reads 30 degrees
Hook up the timing light to the number 1 spark plug lead
Start the engine and aim it at the flywheel
If it is not stationary shut off the engine
Loosen the distributor mounting bolt
Then twist the distributor a bit to one side or the other
(DON'T DO THIS WITH THE ENGINE RUNNING, TRUST ME)
Restart the engine and shine your timing light at the flywheel
Repeat until the scribed mark stands still
(5 or 6 degrees before top dead center is what you're after)
Tighten the mounting bolt
Drink beer

_______________________

WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS
A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

She is not pretty enough
He is not smart enough
They are not cool enough
To think that the old have always been thus
That my parents don't understand
The unkind thought
The hasty word
The selfish deed
To think that those in pain deserve it
That the unbelieving are bound for Hell
My lack of love
My losing hope
My lustful eye

I have never wounded another
So much as I've wounded myself
Goddess, forgive me

_______________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

TO FALL

Northward Autumn winds
Green leaves die to gold to fall
Golden hills grow green

       *****

AUGURY

Hawks feather the sky
Wheeling, gliding, soaring high
Enraptured am I

       *****

OUROBOROS NOW

Time is like a snake
Devouring its own tail
Future swallows Past

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Robert Lee Haycock for his poems and pix! These photos may be enlarged with a single click.

The Splendor of Nothing

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch
[Click once to enlarge photo] 

NOTHING
—Julia de Burgos

Since life is nothing in your philosophy,
let's drink to the fact of not being our bodies.

Let's drink to the nothing of your sensual lips,
which are sensual zeros in your blue kisses:
like all blue a chimerical lie
of white oceans and white firmaments.

Let's drink to the touchable decoy bird
sinking and rising in your carnal desire:
like all flesh, lightning, spark,
in the truth, unending lie of the universe.

Let's drink to nothing, the perfect nothing
of your soul, that races its lie on a wild colt:
like all nothing, perfect nothing, it's not even
seen for a second in sudden dazzle.

Let's drink to us, to them, to no one;
to our always nothing of our never bodies;
to everyone at least; to everyone so much nothing,
to bodiless shadows of the living who are dead.

We come from not being and march toward not being:
nothing between two nothings, zero between two zeros,
and since between two nothings nothing can be,
let's drink to the splendor of not being our bodies.


(trans. from the Spanish by Aliki and Willis Barnstone)

__________________________

—Medusa

Living In A Tacklebox

Candy

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

LEMON

She secretes a lemon scent on me,
Tells me “Everything you want to feel
Everything you want to taste.”

I start the car.  There is a sticky substance
On the floor of the vehicle.  I am unable
To get my foot off the accelerator.
I hear the tires exploding and see
Showers of sparks fly up behind me.

A great silence.  I seem to be lifting
Higher and higher above the earth.
I'm not doing that at all.  There is
only the blank faces of the stars.
They reach down and squash
Lovers like mosquitoes, a constant
Buzzing in the ears.

______________________

LOSING A KINGDOM

Listen my children, but it is clear
That this no more can be.  To hear
Has slipped into a great web that surrounds
Our understanding, nails us to the ground,
Removes the carpet, then the floor
And no longer can there be a nevermore.

The kingdom collapses as the good king
Dies and his sons or daughters are cast
Into impossible adventures
Played upon a cell phone or
Just as suddenly lost before the cost
Of such a long and painful journey
Can be reckoned clearly.  Some guess
At how one might arrive at the door
With life intact and ready for
The happily ever after, except
The job has now turned to making laws.

The fairies with their gifts torn
Away are looking for quiet in distant woods,
While all the children cry and wonder
And without much question
Lose all the lore.

 

Two sections from Plump Poon Poems,
pub. by Runcible Spoon Press, Sacramento, 1970:

1.

speak gently lord or breast to breast
as viewed from far upon again the old
romance of baa the sheep-voiced maiden
stood erect them both a temple in the wood
around the body bent and took them in
as though fair air were bound to bung
and as if a wind were snatch they moved
in endless rhythm search beneath the fingers
on the flute the lady played as he did
diddle wantonly among such gardens fair that
hair he had but opened wide his mouth upon
when washed the sea upon and then was gone.


6.

frog foot and with much purpose
roundabout the deviled head
she sang a humming tune upon
the shaft of light protruding
from the velvet weave that both
surrounds them flicking at the
pods of sweet white rosebuds
gathered rather to the mouth
or moved between the hills both
near and fur all scent as up to
haven for the resting and arresting
of such a solid tool among the gardens
of the lady from the north so banged.

______________________

ICE CREAM

The ice cream was dripping onto the floor but
he was using it to make an elaborate portrait of
a couple not four feet away.  He kept trying to
make up some kind of story about them without
becoming bitter because the entire mess was so
self-defeating.  Someone would come along
within a few minutes and tell him his cone was
dripping.  He was trying to be gentle with the
entire idea.  A vicarious intrusion into two com-
panions who had no idea that he had found them
with a medium that allowed him to become loyal
to it, eat it, be the finder of what might have been
a great statement about relationships, being loyal
and still he felt he was acting as gently as possible. 
The man with the mop didn’t even notice that this
mess was even intentional.  He just wanted the
whole thing gone.

 

NOTES FROM A JOURNAL

Trails led out of her eyes.
People were walking on them.
A few of the people we thought we
Recognized.

The moon, crooked behind
The trees.

One man handles fire
With his bare hands.
He lifts it and puts it
Into baskets,
Sells it to ladies
Walking down the strand.

There was a blue cherub
With purple wings
Who never quite made it
Into a song,

We waited as he tried, and gave
Him our guides, so we may as well
Take him along.

He can ride in the carts that carry
The hearts, that bundle the darts
For the trade.

He can spot where the bridges
Have all fallen down.  He will
Tell us of what they were made.


II.

We stopped for the night beside
A stream of water just as the last
Light was climbing up the trees
To make its jump into night.

As it grew darker, the stream grew
Brighter and brighter and we could
See almost as well as in daylight.
The stream seemed to enjoy our being there.

No one had ever come this far into
The forest.  In the morning the stream
Gave us fish, dappled like sunlight,
Sweet of flesh and eager to join
Us in making our bodies work.


III.

When we reached far Marlee
We released many of the birds
We had brought with us from Gotburg.

They flew ahead of us, forming
The shapes of many creatures
As they did so.  The people of Marlee
Could see us coming for miles,
As if a cathedral were walking
Toward them, singing the while,
Telling the tales of our journey
In stories that are still told today.


IV.

Two giants, squatting, eating flowers.
In the next moment they had become trees.

_________________________

TACKLE BOX

The whole thing was a tangle.
Every time he tried to speak
Little flames would slink, almost trickle,
From the corners of his mouth.

He knew he had to find some standard
Set of lines he could use to address her.
She seemed so at ease.  It was difficult to pick
Out what it was about her manner
That had the excitement of ice cream
About it, the warmth a freshly dried laundry.

It was like watching dots of light,
Pancakes of light, all colors,
Float through the air fish-like
When she was speaking.  Her words
Advertised a sense of something daring,
Hot pants or a cheer rising from a crowd
To celebrate almost anything as a wonderful
Accomplishment.

It was too much for him.  He felt as if
He were living in a tackle box; hooks,
Sinkers, tangles of leader, swivels,
An extra reel, a variety of beautiful lures.
None of it in the least useful unless
One was going fishing.  He decided
To go with the little flames, see if he
Could be seen in the dark, flickering.

_________________________

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

Golden Calla Lilies

A Wandering Life

Mandalay Restaurant, San Francisco

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

WHEN THE PHONE RINGS
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

A minute is too short
when the phone rings
to settle an unloved moment
or make an appointment
for another date
or avoid a homeless hour
at a disappointment when you
are not out with me
we promise each other
not to hang up
but to hangout together
yet we are only a phone call
away from home
without your loss of face
we need to appear
to be what we are
to each other
hearing the old tapes
at midnight
remembering you
by what you called
your lip gloss mirror
beside the space heater
bought in the yard sale
or sitting on that cold pawned sofa
when we were by the fire
on your birthday
to watch the first snow,
an old sorrow still murmurs
with a prison and prism
of presumed thoughts
that will not overtake us
without a life sentence
in many poems and songs
I composed for you
not for another soul or body
thinking in our both heads
of making resolutions
at the same time
just when the phone rings.

________________________

TOGETHER AND ALONE
—B.Z. Niditch

My cell phone
is here by the sand
the ocean stirs
below my shadow's sun
on the dock
basked in a few Bay leaves
trembling and parched
by the sea-blue pier
waiting for a return call
if you will go out with me
at the harvest festival,
a pug at my side
with a Van Gogh sadness
because of my broken sunglasses,
the phone finally rings out
along the beach
and I'm ready for a hay ride
forgetting my allergy,
now with cupped hands
throwing pebbles
along the shore,
as a local fortune teller
watches me painting in oils
in the home harbor
as a swelling East wind
makes friends with a sparrow.

_______________________

LANA AND I
—B.Z. Niditch

Hating the cafeteria
with its noise
and egg-faced odor
with its delicious delivery
of humus and spices
where we practice for my gig
when a studio soundproof
room is available for us
and you, Lana, sing smooth jazz
by an Aladin lamp
of a thousand secrets
with no remorse,
my smart phone rings
but it's not a windfall
from the lottery
you dreamed about in numbers
numbering 10 17 2013
but my mother is on the line
offering us gingerbread;
from the holiday windows
we watch early Druid masks
on two twins
near the Santa Claus store,
then a guy in lederhosen
for an early Octoberfest
the beer is always on time,
but it's my bygone hours
at these rehearsals I regret
at least my mom
never forgets.

_____________________

THE RUNAWAY
—B.Z. Niditch

The runaway along the beach
asks to use my android
with a keen pirate earring
a chest full of tattoos
claims he's a spy
for the underground,
asks to borrow my sax
but I refuse
looking at his threatening lips
yet he is playing street devil
house angel,
tells me he hasn't eaten
for a week,
name is Robinson
that he's been shipwrecked
waterlogged,
living in cemeteries,
I tell him to call home
before the sky admits
him to a wandering life.

 

 Musee Mechanique, San Francisco

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

WHEN I WENT WEST
—B.Z. Niditch

Go West, in 1968
to the congenial air
of communal San Francisco
without a Kennedy half dollar
in my pocket
playing improvisation
and etudes on uncertain notes
bed clothed with losses
in the bleakest horoscopes
spoons, a diary, crosses
in transit of human memory
from dust baths in solitary rooms
away from Plath, Lowell, Sextant
and Bishop,
filling my desk with dominoes
my voice quivers on the guitar
from vertical roads
and rainy Bay windowpanes,
to horizontal cable visions
of a better alive poetry.

____________________

L.A. 1968
—B.Z. Niditch

A motel room
on the outskirts
of the City of Angels
by a Gideon, Playboy
and a Free Press
with torn covers
next to an emerging poet
for a believer in art
but not a puritan
meeting a disbarred shrink
and his belly dancer lover
in the lobby
and asking me
to swap identities
as an arm wrestler
and piano bar guy
wanted to trade stories
at midnight
and murdering a Mars Bar,
that first night
I hid crosswise
with nana's rosary
by my side
wanting to move
back to childhood.

_____________________

WITH THOMAS MERTON
—B.Z. Niditch

Not doubting, Thomas,
there would be a vacancy
at the inn and retreat
with expected recognition
of your poems
and lectures
wrapped in my boxes
at the prayer house
shadowing us
in the consumed sun
you accepted my words
as everlasting song.

_____________________

JUAN DE LA CRUZ
—B.Z. Niditch

When I drink in
your words
a flame envelops
a numinous of spirit
from rabbinic lore
in a Spanish robe
to wound the night
we are intertwined
in the same vision
sharing gestures
in the Carmelite sun
extending a wounded love
from Castille
to the new world
and all who dream
of a witness of dawn
imprisoned by
fortune or the void
of night
those without bread
or coin
dispersed without
house or shelter
will as angels
forever
in the mansion
and castle of earth
in a non-excluded sky.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

Language defines us but does not confine us.

—B.Z. Niditch

_____________________

—Medusa

Musee Mechanique, San Francisco

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

Daydreaming in Colors

Succulent

—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Locke

SKYWALKER
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

I too am a skywalker
but I traverse the skies
with only my eyes

and not to an anthem
of triumph and adventure—
moe a lullaby or nocturne.

My gaze tends to slow
at unnamed stars
and changing clouds.

______________________

THE WASHER
—Claire J. Baker

When tennis shoes
and a heavy blanket
made his washer shake
and clunk
the troubled man
sat on the lid,
balanced the load
with his weight.

He learned how smooth
changing cycles can feel
when buttocks tingle,
when gentle jolts
to the tailbone
stimulate...After paying

an analyist thousands
over the years,
six quarters and an
off-kilter washer
left him warm, aroused.

 Bromeliad

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

TRIOXIDE

—Michael Cluff, Corona

Life did not change
when the phone rang,
the daisies kept waving
at the rose-flaring sun.
The licorice still instilled
pimples on Honore's lower chin
between the dimple cleft,
and Paulette continued to store
nitro in the old space
once occupied by baking soda,
pumice stones and hairballs
braided to look like Walt Disney.

Only for Carrie
did the ringing
alter anything
since she could not
hear before today
when the winds shifted
from north to south
and marbles became pearls
and ratsbane in the most
deceptive and hopeful
of neutered eyes.
 

__________________________

Today's LittleNip:

NPR RADIO SNIPPET
—Claire J. Baker

"Butterfly larva
lives in terror
inside a cocoon."
"No!" I counter:
"larva in cocoons
daydreams in colors."
 

_________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to today's contributors and a reminder to check out coming poetry events in our area by scrolling down to the blue board (under the green board) at the right of this column. We have three today—two of which haven't been posted very long (Be Davison Herrera is down from Oregon)—and more to come this weekend!

 Joyce Odam won the Grand Prize

at the Ina Coolbrith Annual Contest this year.

Congratulations, Joyce!

—Photo by Bill Latimer

Now Flown, Not Gone

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

THE PHONE RANG
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

You sprint down the hall, catch it on the third
ring. Muffled voices, as from a great distance,
across oceans, unintelligible background
murmur, maybe another language. No doubt
someone wants to infiltrate/fix your computer,
the Windows PC that you don’t have. A stifled
sneeze. And then, more clearly, “Can you hear
me? This is George. We’re on our way by horse
and buggy, all seven of us crammed in with
the cat. Tippy runs alongside. Couldn’t afford
the train. We hope to be there by Saturday if we
have no accident. We rest on Sundays. They say
California is golden.” The line went dead before
you could ask. George who? From what century?
what state? which branch of a family that never
called long-distance nor told the whole story?

_________________________

OCTOBER CALLOUT
—Taylor Graham

The phone rang at midnight, a waking
voice at the other end, a summons
             to look for another lost.
An old woman went to pick mushrooms
in the whisper-woods
                        dark now, spiderwebs
glisten green by cyalume light-
stick. Webs hold every thing together,
connecting branch to vine to punky log.
                                      Silence.
My boot on dead-fall leaves. Twig-
crack. Remember. Tonight forest ghosts
trespass the divide. Are they searching
too?
                       Call a lost name; listen.
An owl. Green-wand lightstick
floats through the dark: my partner
in dog disguise.
            I in the mask of my self.

_________________________

TRESPASSING WIND
—Taylor Graham

When the government of the mind
shuts down, he goes wandering, remembers
an oilcan in a stranger’s woods he
happened into; goats on someone’s hillside;
stolen stars; a friend who found himself
in trespass on the People’s river
after they locked the gates, dead-bolted
the free-flow of everything
but wind and dreams; they’ll outlaw those
next session. He’s had too many
years of bills and phone calls to drive him
out of his domain, himself.
Today he’ll go wandering beyond
the posted fences, traveler lost to an outlaw-
wind lamenting the wild this morning.

_________________________

BLACK PHOEBE
—Taylor Graham

Yin-yang quality of light
just outside our window, tilting
a slightly crested head as if
listening to fluorescence here
at our computers; as if remarking
her own plain-lovely presence
in reflection, pressed into glass;
light returned gracefully to her;
as dark snow on a full-moon
pale lawn. Here’s time to study
each perfect detail of feather,
black and white habit of grace.
Now flown, not gone.   

—Photo by Katy Brown

THE SEQUOIA SHAPE
Calaveras Big Trees State Park

—Tom Goff

Cold groves of sequoias. Your hand in mine, ensuring
our icily spiral climb turns by slow footfalls.
Upended, the odd giant victim-tree, whose root-ball’s
all snowburst spike: can blasts freeze into enduring?

Truer, more secret endurance instills the live trunk.
A narwhal strength-of-tusk stability
(“unicorn” horn-swirl torsion) nulls fragility.
Sequoias in skyward spiral design can link

sunbeam to soil. Long thoughtlike chains, intrinsic
twists drink in a great dark that dispenses light.
O’Keeffe with her vulviform flowers, mystics, eccentrics…

such sequoia-like seekers envelop our quest for insight.
My whirling-out, restrained by your deepening-down
—the transparent aspiring kind of dark suction down.


(first pub. in truenature, Tom's chapbook from Poet's Corner Press, 2006)

_________________________
 

THE SEQUOIA SHAPE II
Calaveras Big Trees State Park
—Tom Goff, 2013

What to say of these rifled shapes
that ease so peaceably into the kingdom?

And what to say of you, who disappear
every time I ache to share?

If I fled all my work, all the lesser burdens
keeping me grave and rooted, would it be

among these clouds—among the sequoias
twisting like verses, torqueing and soaring

into the forests of the immortals—I might
find you, my brighter than June sky?

Scuffing red dust from sunlight,
as if we injured a moth’s wings, bruising

the gargantuan tree-sides just patting gently
where the orange bark is most sponge-tender:

is there anything that might distinguish
ungiant us from the “walk-plants”

eight-year-old Helen Keller termed all humans?
Right now, some walk-plant bellows echo: nice kids,

missionary clean. Just maybe not conscious kids.
Their voices too are forest. Listen: it’s thicket,

close at hand yet way beyond. And oh:
a branch-straddling raven sings: the clack

of two wet stones kissing. Drumsticks lightly
clip a temple block. Oh, you. Oh, you.

I try anywhere to find you. And see you
only in the gold motes the red dust raises.
 

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

Hanging from the branches of a green

willow tree,

the spring rain

is a 

thread of pearls.

—Lady Ise

(trans. from the Japanese by Willis Barnstone)

_________________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Katy Brown

Start of the Long Day

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

COME AT ME FROM THE MORNING

come at me from the morning
I will meet you like a
shawl

slip under my arm
I will tell you my heart lives
and you must
save it

hear me tell
of my beautiful lame life
that I am comparing
to this hard life that no life
can follow

you are in wonder-light
a real hero
such a long mountain away

but we will marry
I am the place you come to
I am not tired of waiting
you are faithful

______________________

AS STRANGE AS LIGHT ON A DARK
MORNING

I am unable to feel my shadow
on the white mirror.

I am wavering with movement not my own.
How cold I feel.

Death puts its arms around me and I weep
and am not comforted.

                                                       
(first pub. in Lines Against Death Mini-Chap, 2002)

_____________________

DECIDING THE MORNING

And who am I dreaming to become—
heaviest in sleep—lost in my own mind,
waking to a closet closing after me.
Where have I been,
and who,
and who were those others?

Start of the long day begins heavy
with a glance at the window
to see what sort of day I will enter.
What will I wear?
What will I do?
Which plan is more important than another?

____________________

IN THE MORNING

the sun will be lying
across the windowsill

and the cat will be
stretching herself awake

and the coins you left
on the table will be gone

for I am a thief
and poor as you

but you have given me
permission

because last night
you pressed my hand

that was still wet
from the tears on your face

SOFT RAIN POEM

Blue mottled street,
midnight
or so,
stars
smearing down
to the pavement
where
shadows
             tremble,
                       tremble,
till
the light
begins to shift into gray
fusing with the grainy dawn.

____________________

THIS DARK-SKY MORNING

wobble-voiced again—
old morning rooster

what does he crow about
—ruling the silence

—comforting
the sleepless

with his unmelodic and
somehow plaintive crowing

____________________

FOUR A.M. AGAIN

The intrusive cat—at my elbow, attentive to
my silence, filling my space, cleaning her fur.
                                 .
I must love what I love, but nothing fits—the
darkness has a crack of light, and the light has a
patch of darkness—fabric and thread, pulling
and holding.
                                 .
Nothing is mine. It all belongs to the figments
and the realities—like this invisible mosquito—
so intrusive, so intrusive—to my poem.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

DARK MORNING

The 6:30 bird
twirping nearby . . .

a late owl
with its mournful voice . . .

all so tentative—
all so brief and lonely . . .

___________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Joyce Odam for today's poems and pix! Our new Seed of the Week is "The Telephone Rang..." (Or should we make that smartphone?) Anyway, whether it's a text or an old-fashioned dingalingaling, some messages can still jolt us, for better or for worse. Send your poems/photos/artwork about this or any other subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs!