The Art of Caught Light

Conjuring Calm

—Poems and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

TRAGEDIENNES

Mademoiselle at her balcony would look out over the city
with its far away lights and windowed sky around her
and soft music coming through the doors.  She
was always lovely and lonely, wearing
a long clinging dress and perhaps
setting a drink on the railing;

she would sigh into
the night and lean her head back
and close her eyes

and never know how I was watching
from my front row with my candy bar
and mesmerized attention as she flickered
before me—reel after reel—the music telling
me what she was feeling so that I felt it too, though
the end of her story always gets lost in my remembering.

___________________

THE CONJURED MAN

he is in his room
waiting for some soft dreamer
to call him

then he sidles forth
under the tall bldgs…
under the muted trees…
sliding against the walls…
pulling his slow shadow
after him

he will be what she wants :
her dark betrayer
he has practiced himself for years

 Dream Within the Dream

GIRL WITH GUITAR IN LATE WINDOW LIGHT

The day evolves to twilight.
Light goes dim.

The late sun makes a path across the floor.
The window fills with flickered leaves.

The girl indulges a twilight mood—
strums a soft music on a sleepy guitar,

leans her head back—closes her eyes
and hums.

The leaves diffuse.
The gold path widens until it’s gone.

The music mesmerizes all.
Night plays with shadows on the wall.

_________________

THE YOUNG MAN PLAYS HIS FLUTE IN
THE SUMMER GARDEN

At various stations of listening the listeners pause
in their musings and conversations to hear the

lyrical notes of the flute carry and dwindle. The sad
girl leaning against the tree on the shady slope that

goes down to the pond simply sighs and closes her
eyes. An animated couple on the veranda look at

each other and smile then stare off into the quiet
distance. An old woman at her watercolors suddenly

dips her brush into orange and draws a flower. And
the one who is mesmerized by the flautist falls in love.

 Wheel of Many Chances

CLUSTERED
After Figures in a Setting by Henry Moore, 1942

They smear in the gloom-light that follows fear
in some cave of thought expanding around them;
even the children look toward the nameless mood

that mesmerizes;  something listens for them
at the breath-held edge—a pending realized—
a white diffusion that begins around them

and spreads to their last denial and waits.
Soon they will close their eyes and let
the smudging darkness win—the last of the fates.

_________________

CONJURING UP MEMORIES

Oh, broken childhood,
full of places and fears—
tears and forgotten

faces—who,   
and who,     and who,
are these others flowing past,

forgetting you—
you who are so small
and must go where life leads,

all the ways toward the center
past the quick
forgotten friends,

you who promised them
forever :  goodbye,    goodbye,
and more goodbye.

Now you spiral back
and arrive where you are :
questionless,   

and answerless:
everywhere is here,
has always been here,

moment upon moment,   
hour, and year—why grieve
for what you cannot know.

A seagull appears in your dreams,
and another,    and another—
those old cries.

 Leftover Childhood

MAKING YOU UP

Look, look, look at all this.
I am telling you.

Listen, listen, listen, and tell me
what you hear beyond my telling—

Nothing enters that does not leave.
Nothing, nothing, up my sleeve;
all the sorrows now believe
there is nothing left to grieve.

Somewhere in the city, somewhere in the
city—long screech on wet pavement—
who is awake now—who knows all this—
hollow as aftermath—a completion.

Now the promised rains begin
sounding distant, sounding thin,
and a patient wind
signs of winter, giving in.

I have wasted my words once again.
It was not rain. It was not wind.

It was never the named thing.
Nothing was as I said it was, even you.

 Study in Pink and Green

WHEN I INVOKE THESE MEMORIES

You are to blame for them. You are
the veil that wraps around my mind—
smothering thought—the suffocation

of your eyes—the way you died.
Gone to your death, your presence is
within me where I grieve and try

to separate myself from you.
Layers of life (we called them years)
have found their place to be. My heart

contains all this, symbolically,
my heart, too frail for love, my heart
that breaks in symbol, as hearts do.

This also is a myth—but words,
for those who can articulate,
are only words. Emotions rule,

and memories—too few—too dim,
to find their own reality, too quick
with pain.  It is no use—they’ll have

their way—guided by you, my ghost. 
How can I be the self I own
within my mind, haunted by you,

held in your aura, which is black—
black and passionate with death,
this new design by which you rule?

 Ways In, Ways Out

STAIRCASE WITH CONJURED FIGURES

And now, these long stairs—this last poem—the
    lovers halfway down, their shadows falling ahead

of them. The stairs are as wide as two distances,
    there is no top or bottom to them, they are merely
   
steps toward a metaphor. What is the metaphor!
    What must I discern from this : two lovers moving
     
down the stairs without a sign of apprehension.
    Why am I afraid for them? The stairs are half-toned

with shadow and dull sunlight, rock texture in relief;
    and they, themselves, diminished against the length

and width of this stair-path that is so steep, with no one
    else going up or down. They are so trusting of

these lines that writes them there. How long it takes
    to reach to one stone from another, the same slow

motion that is felt in waiting for what one can never
    face. I make them mysterious. I give them choice,

a way to alter fate’s design : they are halfway up and
    halfway down : time to go on, time to turn around.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

PATTERN IN MESH

that  curve  in  the  window-
screen — a gray finger-wave
against  the  pale  skull  of
the  sky — such  a  precise
pattern — caught  on  the
morning  window — at 
just  the  right  angle —
I  turn  my  head  from
side  to  side  to  make  it
move — the  art  of  caught
light — a  falling-into-place
of  things — I move  it  back
and  forth, staring, mesmerized.

—Joyce Odam

___________________

Thank you, Joyce Odam, for conjuring up some magical poetry and artwork for us today on our Seed of the Week: Conjuring! Our new Seed of the Week is super easy: Halloween. Send your poems, photos & 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 of others to choose from.

And don’t forget to send your poems about Sacramento Poetry Day to kathykieth@hotmail.com by Thursday night, so we can post them on Friday, Oct. 26. Think loosely: rivers, the Capitol, the Kings, trees, the Zoo, fine poets, Farrell’s Ice Cream…

—Medusa

—Anonymous Artwork

 Check out abc11.com/society/why-do-we-celebrate-halloween/2584493

for some thoughts about Halloween.
(And celebrate Poetry!)

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

Dancing Faeries & Disappearing Dwarves

—Photos by Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

TOWER OF BABEL
—Caschwa

Current events so extraordinary they
just stun reporters who are normally
never at a loss for words

now we hear them assembling a hard
puzzle, starting with the straight-edge
pieces to form a predictable border,
then working inward from there

throwing normalcy up in the air, they
stack the border pieces several layers
high, unwittingly blocking the other
pieces that belong in the middle.

ultimately, mating pieces can’t mate, no
recognizable image can form, and total
confusion reigns while the reporters’
trusty diaphragms keep pushing air up,
up, and out, like airplanes taxiing with
no runways to guide them, until our
civilization crumbles to dust.

BAG A—DON’T ASK, DON’T—TELLE
—Caschwa

We might as well just
put old Vladimir Putin
on the Supreme Court

***

FBI’s so-called
investigation was just
a pompous no show

***

People offered good
evidence, only to be
denied audience

***

Witnesses afraid
of the police will stay in
the shadows for years

***

In high school we learn
to celebrate our very
worst indiscretions

***

Throw the man in a
Mexican jail to enjoy
walls they paid for

***

We need to see those
tax returns before hearing
“No collusion!” claims

HOUR-GLASS ECONOMICS
—Caschwa

There is plenty of money
   buy some real estate
        funds run low
            Nothing
        flip the house
    take the proceeds
buy some more real estate

__________________

DAILY HISTORY TEST
—Caschwa
 
If someone asks me, I can tell them when
and where I was born, from memory

not my own, independent recollection, of
course, though I was certainly there

but drawing from the memories of other
people who came before me

people who rendered accounts of events
well before I was in a state to do that

The same goes for my motorcycle crash
that broke bones and left me in a coma

I can tell you now, over half a century later
that this event occurred on the same day,
in the same town where 2 famous music
stars were recording a hit song together

That is also not my memory at all, I looked
it up years later on the Internet to see what
else was going on while I was busy deep
sleeping…

A ONE-SIDED ARGUMENT
—Caschwa

(response to “Forest Murmurs”,
 
a cinquain by Claire J. Baker, 
Medusa's Kitchen, 10/05/18)

Where the texture of trees
is replaced by an
artificial sheen,
at least the north side should
be colored green.

APHRODITE AND THE DISAPPEARING DWARF
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA
 
I eat these things that are no good.
I know it.
They know it.
They do not stop me.
I do not/cannot stop myself.
Everything is broken.
The bottom is on top.
The last is first.
Things are getting Biblical
And I hate that.

I hate Biblical!
I like ordinary.
Maybe I should go for a walk
And stop thinking?
I think things that are no good,
Things that are useless
And spoil my mood.

Aphrodite regards me with eyes-crossed,
Lips pursed and shakes her head.
She knows the kind of man I am.
She’s been around.
What could I possibly say to her
That might interest her, like
“Come here often?”
I, an ephemeral, disappearing dwarf!

DANCING FAIRIES
—Joseph Nolan

I wish the sundered autumn leaves could say
What springtime feelings let them give away
When all was new and green and water, pure
And dancing fairies shined a brave allure
Above the landscape, cast at dawn in gray,
When fairies must fast make their getaway
Into the shadows of the farthest glen,
To keep unto their own and linger there,
When Autumn breezes blow the leaves away
To leave the world stripped naked in the day. 

THE STOP SIGN
—Joseph Nolan

The street sign
Stands in silent opposition
To the progress of time.
“Stop,” it says.

But time does not obey.
It just goes on and on,
Moving in loops
That circle in,
Like sharks,
For the kill!

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A BETTER MAN
—Joseph Nolan

If I could just cruise through this day
Make my way through traffic
Get back home
Put work away
Play with my children
Be nice to my wife
With a kind word to say,
I’d be a better man
Than
I
am.

___________________

Our thanks to these fine artists for today’s poetry and photos! Poetry events in our area begin tonight at 6pm at the Placerville Sr. Center in Placerville, with the Poetry in Motion read-around. Then at 7:30pm at the Sac. Poetry Center in Sacramento, Beth Spencer and Mary Mackey will read, plus open mic. On Thursday at 8 pm, Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento presents featured readers and open mic.

Then this weekend, Speak Up: The Art of Storytelling and Poetry presents poets and storytellers on the theme, “Holy Ghosts, or NOT!!” on Friday at 7pm at the Avid Reader in Sac. On Saturday morning, Maceo Montoya and Javier O. Huerta read (plus open mic) at Writers on the Air at Sacramento Poetry Center, 9:30am-1pm. Saturday afternoon, Poetic License poetry read-around meets from 2-4pm in Placerville in the Sr. Center lobby, 937 Spring St.; the suggested topic for this month is "embroidered garden" but other subjects also welcome. And in the evening, 8:30-10pm, Three Men & A Mic will feature poets and comedy at Magnum Opus Studio of the Stars in Sacramento. 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.

Cynthia Linville writes that the Fall issue of convergence is now available at www.convergence-journal.com/fall18/.

And don’t forget that this coming Friday is Sacramento Poetry Day! We here at Medusa’s Kitchen are celebrating the day with poems about any and all facets of Sacramento. Send your poetry, photos and artwork to kathykieth@hotmail.com/, and the sooner, the better! For more about Sacramento Poetry Day, see Patrick Grizzell’s article at www.facebook.com/patrick.grizzell/posts/10208638162724506/.

—Medusa

 —Photo by Katy Brown, Davis, CA
(Celebrate Sacramento Poetry Day Oct. 26!)

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

Like a Wandering Ghost

—Anonymous

NOT GOOD ENOUGH
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA
 
Always a servant
On the back doorstep
Begging for crumbs
Like a hungry squirrel.
This game—
It’s called
“Not good enough”.

It goes from room to room
Like a wandering ghost
That cannot find its home
In this world
Anymore.

It carries unlit candles
In the dark,
Sees only shadows,
Can never repent
Its imperfection,
Its insufficiency.
It starves slowly
In the cold.
It’s not good enough
To come in.

It sits at family gatherings
All alone.
People seldom engage it
In discussions or arguments
Or anything meaningful.
It harbors vague resentments
Against the prevailing wind,
Wishing for the lee
Of a towering cliff
On a lonely beach
To let its being leave
Across the sea,
Out of reach.

_________________

Our thanks to Joseph Nolan for today’s evocative poem! Don’t forget the two readings in our area today: Poetry in Placerville, featuring Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol, plus open mic, at Love Birds Coffee and Tea Co. on Main Street in Placerville, 1-3pm; and Davis Arts Center Poetry Series with Dorine Jennette and Phillip Larrea, 2-4pm. 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

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

A Day Spent in the Heart

The poet, before dawn, time for zazen

—Poems and Photos by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA

Let this day be spent in unity, not divisiveness; a day spent in the heart, not the mind. May there be safety and kindness. If there is victory, let it be in not needing to win.

______________________

And when I am blessed,
It is often with the smallest of things.
My grandchild's laugh.
That first glimpse of the sunrise.
A perfect apple.
And then again, perhaps
These blessings are not that small
After all.

 Christian Mosaic at St. James Church, Davis, CA

Walking under the tall pine trees in the moonlight;
Who needs those fools and all their politics?

_______________

I walked through the rattlesnake mountains
Paying little mind.
White boulders, white clouds.
A patch of grass, a patch of snow.

 The poet makes pinto beans and smoked ham hocks

I was brown, so they shot at me.
I spoke a different language, so they jailed me.
I was not born here, so strangers cursed at me,
Some of them hit me.

Being brown, speaking another language,
And being born far away, across an invisible line?
I have no business existing.
                                     
Right?

After all, this is America,
Land of equality.
And that's not for just anybody.

 Two Pastas with turkey meatballs and creamy Alfredo sauce. 

Cabbage, carrots, and carmelized sweet onion sautéed

in extra virgin olive oil.

The hermit doesn't sleep much at night, 
In love as he is with the empty blue of the moon.
And there is that sweet rustle in the pine trees,
Just a little breeze. The hermit listens
The same way a man listens to a woman sing,
Entranced. Enrapt. In love.
A night so lovely.

_______________

I found the storm to be truly frightening,
But the rainbow that followed it
Called me a fool.
My storm seemed to me to cross the entire valley,
Like a young athlete leaping a hurdle.
Perhaps to you, it was like a young child
Skipping down the sidewalk to school.

 The poet heads off somewhere.

My life is a fast horse, and I am pulling the reins back hard. But he doesn't stop. He doesn't even slow down—his stride is my heartbeat. I live in the microseconds between each of his hooves touching the ground, and I exist in the spaces between his breaths. Dropping the reins entirely, I let him carry me where he will.

__________________

The moon pulls up the edge of the ocean
          the way that you and I pull up a blanket.
You and I call it "high tide,"
          but the moon just says "good night."

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

The clouds pass by, they are
But an entertainment for the sky—
—And for you and I.

—James Lee Jobe

_________________

Thanks to James Lee Jobe for today’s fine poems and for his tasty feast of photos! Tomorrow, he will be hosting Dorine Jennette and Phillip Larrea at the Davis Arts Center Poetry Series on Covell and F Sts. in Davis, 2-4pm. And don’t forget his blog for Yolo County poets, at yolocountypoems.blogspot.com/.

And today, if you’re down by Angels Camp, stop in at the Hoot and Holler Cowboy Poetry and Storytelling Contest at the corner of Raspberry and Main, from 12-1pm. 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

 The moon says good night.
—Anonymous
(Celebrate poetry!)

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

Sometimes Won, Sometimes Lost

Innersmith

—Poems and Photos by Smith, Cleveland, OH

FLAVORIGHT THINGS

I stroke the cat's fur to hear her purr.
I love the sound, that and rain and train,
the water rush of wind in trees
their leaves rustling in relief,
brooks babbling, creeks bubbling,
rivulets running, streams sighing,
children playing, laughing,
lovers murmuring, friend's hello,
wife's I love you with bonus hug,
distant drone of airplane and buzz of fly
on hot summer day while lying in high grass,
church bell and Buddhist temple gong,
Westminster clock chime,
gospel and doo-wop harmony,
the drone of an old car on an older road,
bee buzz, surf slap,
me and you, baby coo,
bird chirp, cow moo,
your basic please and thank you,
most of Miles Davis,
and the silence of morning dew.

 Sign of the Times

FLY ME TO THE MOON

Do you suppose the moon howls at the wolves,
and they're only answering?

It whispers to me, the moon,
me a man who would be known.

No, a mutant who would be known by man,
as if that would soothe the missing.

To thine self be known.
There is no other answer.

If you return without the answer,
they send you out again.

 Anguish

      
They
wing word round
in classic clown
till dry discourse
rues rule
courts gesture
recourse
of course
lambs lame lions
and liars lie down
in one main line
of fool

 Contemporary Manners

MARRAKECH XPRESS

Walking warm air purple petal street
in Marrakech dusk
beneath red flower trees
and black hash stone,
an open carriage with four white horses
and brown Berber driver trots past,
its four coach Caucasians pointing,
surprised to see us alone,
hand-in-hand and white
in unwhite part of town.

Lady looks back at them, softly says
"How colonial."

 Null-Void

SAINT PETERGATE

"Here's your bill, sir"
For what?
"Services unrendered."
I didn't order.
"Pay anyway."
For?
"Being. Nothingness."
Ah, of course, original sin.
"Sign here."
Thought the crucifixion took care of that.
"Just the tax, Jack."

 Pappy and Son

MY SCARLESS LADY

My woman has been with many men
Before coming with me
Her her makes her she
Her she wishes me
Our now exoskeleton her then 

 My Night With Elvis

COUNTING COUP

Satan thinks he owns my soul
but with each foto I take of myself
I retake a small slice,
and I've taken thousands
stealing my soul back
one sin at a time.

I have touched the Devil's hoof,
fed his horse balderberries,
and dulled his tempting knife,
so wear the eagle feather in my hair
and paint red his wife.

I won't count coup on you though
because we burn same blood,
walk same rain,
so your loss would not be my gain,
just extra pain.

 Spooky Action

RESPITE

Two-dimensional shadow
climbs three-dimensional bark
in rise and fall of back and forth
as setting sun slants golden leaf
with dance of quantum light

a soft pause
in land of tooth and claw

 The Wizard of Smith

Today’s LittleNip:

PHILOSOPHY 174
—Smith

Moon blood comes, moon blood goes,
moon blood stops, moon blood flows.

Life goes on, life stops,
sometimes won, sometimes lost.

__________________

Many thanks to Smith (Steven B. Smith) ‘way back in Cleveland for today’s fine, musical poems and his visual treats!

Tonight at 7:30pm, you have your choice of the new Munyori Literary Journal’s fiction reading at Sac. Poetry Center, featuring Terry a O’Neal and Kakwasi Somadhi, or The Other Voice Poetry Series in Davis, presenting Jennifer O’Neill Pickering and John Bell, plus open mic, at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Patwin Rd. 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.

Hey! A week from today (Friday, Oct. 26) is Sacramento Poetry Day, as proclaimed by then-Mayor Anne Rudin in 1986, making this the 32nd anniversary of her proclamation. Several years ago, SnakePal Pat Grizzell wrote a wonderful synopsis of the day, its history, and what it’s all about; see www.facebook.com/patrick.grizzell/posts/10208638162724506/. This year, I’ve kept next Friday open for Sacramento poems, so whether you live in Sacramento or not, please send me something you’ve written about the city, or camellias, or the capitol, or trees, or poetry, or Landing Signals, or Luna’s, or Anne Rudin 😁 or…  and photos, too! (There’s plenty to shoot around here!) Send it all to kathykieth@hotmail.com/—and the sooner the better.

—Medusa

 Look, Mom...!

—Photo by Smith
(Celebrate poetry!)

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

All Things Ornery

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

OUT OF CONTROL
       an unruly sonnet

Ornery is the word for ground-squirrels.
They consume our garden, under-
mine our fields and pebble-deck. Famished
and ornery, skittering across landscape
then zip! down a tunnel, gone into labyrinths
of g-squirrel metropolis underground,
thumbing their rodent noses at us.
My dog, generally obedient, goes berserk.
Deaf to my call, blind to the upper-world of
light. Look, she’s stuck her nose
in a burrow, she’s excavating, buried
head-to-shoulders, digging ever deeper.
Small chance she’ll catch a critter.
Might she at last become one of Them?

ORNERY

a found poem from “Bison Gone” 

         from Mountain Democrat

Beneath Bass Lake Grade, a window
into the past, children on the fence gaping.
Beautiful site of buffalo roaming the hills;

a series of belligerent majestic
prairie creatures, an alpha bull named
“Ornery.”

Force Ornery into the trailer?
Transporter with too much attitude—
Ornery threw that know-it-all cowboy

in the air/on the ground.
Magnificent bison,
a love affair with the rolling hills.

WOULD I KNOW HER IN THE DARK?

In front of the library in last-light, the path’s lit
just enough to outline the contours of a pull-cart
with constricted human form sitting against it.
Surely the same woman I saw once not counting
calendar, reading her book open-air in front
of this lending temple of words. So colorful
by daylight, almost tapestried she was; now in
twilight, honed down to essentials, monochrome,
bone. How can she read with no illumination?

a bat zig-zagged past,
self-guided in its knowing
between dark and light

ADVICE FROM AN EXPERT

I’m on the phone about tech
problems. Internet’s down, I’m cut off
from—what?
Flutter against the window, a small
brown bird, long curved bill
for snatching insects out of sight.
House wren cocks her tail, says she has
no connectivity
issues; the world is fine. I end
the call and walk outside.
Cool sunny morning, a stiff breeze
rising.
The wren is right.

OH, IT’S PRETTY

Embroidery of palest jade green,
the volunteer vine taken root
in our garden, our pasture; tiny leaves
heart-shaped on knotted tendrils,
unbreakable thread. What is it?
Nobody seems to know. Sheep won’t
eat it. Mowing brings it back
ornerier than before. It’s come to stay,
like a decorative Welcome, a Home
Sweet Home needled to cover
the floor. What’s wrong with bare
soil sprouting plain, edible grass?

HIGHER DESIGNS

Do we go with the fortune cookie
or the mandala? We’ve left the comfort
of coffee shop for October twilight, veering
into a back alley where you almost trip
on cobblestone. I think of frozen nights
to come, the orneriness of weather;
the folks who sleep behind hedges for lack
of a roof, regardless of regulations
against illegal camping. Overhead, stars
line up in patterns we name for old myths—
those stars long burned out, for all
the light they give us.
I still like to gaze at stars.

Today’s LittleNip:

RUSTLING IN THE WOODS
—Taylor Graham

Wind walks the October woods
rattling leaves of buckeye and oak.
Someone has made a forest trail
of spooks, skeletons, ghosted stones.
The autumn woods are haunted,
our old dead dogs chasing the wind.

____________________

Many thanks to Taylor Graham for her fine poetry and photos of the darkness of those haunted woods, commenting on our recent Seed of the Week: Ornery (which of course includes computers).

Today is a busy day for poetry events in our area, with Third Thursdays at the Central Library at noon in Sacramento, and a choice of Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento at 8pm, or Leanne Grabel at Poetry in Davis, John Natsoulas Gallery, also 8pm. 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

 Bull bison at Yellowstone, similar to “Ornery”—

and probably just as, well, ornery.

—Anonymous Photo
(Celebrate poetry!)

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

Tropical Forest With Apes And Snake (and other stuff, too)

Bouquet of Flowers With an Ivy Branch

—Paintings by Henri Rousseau

—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

EMILE: OR, ON EDUCATION

Rousseau, your voice is penetrating, tart.
Your heart a voracious void, you learned to feel.
You give the natural man his boyhood start.

Spurning the silver dish from the gold cart,
You plan each move: who next will be Emile?
No artifice; two hands that do their part.

The stick that breaks as the water will distort:
You’re mute, you withhold the scientific spiel.
You give the natural man his boyhood start.

It’s not that you hold the savage close to heart.
You want the boy to know, do, honor what’s real.
No artifice; two hands that do their part.

We wonder only how you knew to dart
Away from wigs and salons, the rich canaille.
You give the natural man his boyhood start.

What happens next? Life mutilates the chart?
Will Sophie capsize your boy’s even keel?
No artifice, whether two hands or four take part.
You give the natural man his boyhood start.

—for Viviane Ritzi-Marouf

Carnival Evening

HARRIET COHEN, COMPOSER MANQUÉ

Your hair was only sometimes bobbed.
More often you preferred it lissome and long.
Your Jewish schoolgirl costume: that hair sang dark song.
Then, you were bold; you hadn’t hobnobbed
with Great Ones of the artistic earth.
At the Royal Academy, you won the prizes,
the medals. Your dainty hands were dismal surprises,
not pluses, to Ferruccio Busoni. Worth
could be found in composing, not just performing.
Where now is your Violin Concerto? Gone,
scrapped from the hour you judged conforming
was your lot as a woman, devoting aplomb
to voicing the works of others on the keys?
Your sensual nature—earned via creative deep freeze?

Said Bax, you give Mozart intensity unmerited.
What of your melodic voice—all yours, rich, true, unparroted?

 The Boat in the Storm

YOU, ROBINSON JEFFERS

should be the god enthroned on the California
state seal. In your Selected Poetry’s cover

photo, you sit stoopshouldered,
your profile a Macedonian crag.

The small of your bent back
refuses all help from the ziggurat

step-stone pier compacted of rock
you hoisted to rest atop Hawk Tower.

But it’s your informality, plain
in the worn trouser crease,

that most becomes your godhead.
You may look majestic and tough—

lips parted, jaw hard—but the dreamier,
loftier half’s best feature is a benign

prow of nose. Ample for breathing salt.
What though your funerary cake of ash

broke long since against
the granite-rough underpinnings

of Tor House? Free from the copper urn,
something akin to your image

rills, deep black, under an oceanside
yew tree. That solemn furnace dissolved

your neural typeface along with your bones,
yet you exist. To warn: We humans

are not needed. To prophesy: Nothing
will stop our seeding development’s poison,

splattering whole oceans with bitters
of oil and chemical stain—so many rotten

broken yolks. To console:
A California will abide, empty

of sea-watching houses, insect-eating bats,
white priestly egrets. To pledge:

The rock will keep its shape uncrushed
through the last noxious clouds. In

your photo, a Pacific fogbank brushes in
faint hillstrips of coastal smoke. That blackened

band, an ocean wholly of onyx, can still
set you musing upon saline crystal realities.

Your right hand holds its wonted scepter,
an unopened pack of cigs.

Trace remembrances,
like mist, soften your sunned face.


—Published in Medusa’s Kitchen; also in Fire and Rain:
Ecopoetry of California, edited by Lucille Lang Day and
Ruth Nolan, Scarlet Tanager Press (2018)

 The Dream

ANNOTATING “YOU, ROBINSON JEFFERS”

No line to match “And here, face down beneath
the sun,” but yes, a swipe from that much-read
“You, Andrew Marvell”: Archibald MacLeish
found fame in these lines, most unlucky dead
fame as is all fame. But I read it now
in this poem written to Jeffers across the years.
He sits on what might be the bridge or prow
of S.S. Tor House, facing a sun that sears
away the fog for a small warm interval.
His world therefore is blue and green and gold.
My black-white view of that world, cramped and small.
Robin’s picture: by Una? No one told
the editor of The Selected Poetry.
As Jeffers floats, thus the photo: cosmic. Free.

Scarcely a slice of that picture comes clear white,
nor should it, were it Ansel Adams’s.
He leads simultaneous lives: diurnal light,
and this bleak wash of pitch black lapped by grays.
As if embalmed—death, rendering life correct—
all lines that were sweet softness of man-skin
turn rictus, rigor, stone of the architect.
In literatures like his, instinctual Sin:
is that what animates us unredeemed
to move in packs, crowds, shadows in pursuit
of shadows, negatives of ourselves, as themed
by Jeffers’ much-loved Shelley? Go the route
of all the extinction-bound, he says. High nest,
his, wind-whipped, no less securely facing west.

How long it took for me to know the night
in that famed old poem, and mine, is Jeffers’ night.

 Tropical Forest With Apes and Snake

FRIEND LIZARD

Friend campus lizard, out from under stairs.
You always come out, just as rattlesnakes
come out. The sun. Sheer sun. I have no cares
or fears that you should sting, though fear breathtakes
each time the rain-stick sound in tail-beads issues
and then the open mouth, all tongue and fang
just under a bush on warm days. All one’s tissues,
blood, skin, flesh, turn to liquid. Different tang
you, little lizard, give to morning light.
One must remember your aggression works:
a student told me lizards do pushups.
It’s dominance. Territory-radar lurks
in reptile skitters, reflex-triggered stops.
Yet I prefer to like us, sharing the bright. 

 Tiger in a Tropical Storm Surprised

MONITORS

Hydraulic mining with the monitors.

Monitor: diversely understood;
to the miner, a rock-splitting stream
meant as guidance for the gravel spill
to wetly pass through sluices, planks of wood.
To a more Latin-speaking world, the word
means someone, something, tasked to warn of ill.
From mountaintop to holding pond the swell
builds infill, human tsunami, coming scream
through lengths of canvas or through crinoline
to pound, beat, slice or sluice away hillside.
If downstream Marysville flooded from the ride
of mud, sludge, silt, that even choked faint gold
flecks left unfiltered in the huddled slime…?
Concern, swept up in the hose-and-nozzle hell…
One monitor more, the shepherd Law, made bold
to pen towns in its sheepfold,
        against the unnatural crime.

 Surprise

MICHELANGELOLOGY
for our Folsom Lake College librarians

The pedants disliked how all that grime came off
The Sistine Chapel ceiling. Ashes of roses
Was not the lone shade against which those nude poses
Faced censure from clothed Sibyls. Yet they scoff,
Old critics, that ever Day-Glo was invented here.
Shot silk, lit up with lavender tinged sunset
In day-dying gold. Green verging on blue clear
Or beetle-shell purple. I’d be willing to bet
These ones don’t like things cleaned. Clean surfaces,
Preserved from death-by-candle-smoke, much the same
As death by a thousand snide-voiced nuances.
Now those same bright critics who thought tame
The Julius the Second monument must think
Better. When gently cleaned, not just the Moses,
But all the despised small sculptures little ink’s
Been spilled on come to grit-free lightness, doses
Of visible claw chisel by the Master. Signs
Of care everywhere to make this “compromise,”
This “Tragedy of the Tomb,” show forms and lines
And volumes worthy of the great artist’s eyes.
Recumbent Julius hoists himself by elbow
Back into brooding reality—he might snap
At the sculptor any second—yet the mellow
Hypnosis of Death inveigles him back to nap?
Rachel and Leah were always simple, pure,
Defined as are all Michelangelo’s figures by
Rock-cylinders from which their marbles writhe secure.
(It’s left to Bernini, years later, to defy
The near-nuclear-containment sense of core,
Make startling theatrics poke through the force field.)
We see now the crisp details in the strange herms,
Satyrs, grotesques and river-god serpents. Peeled
Of all the dirt and grime layered in berms
Of candled throng upon a worshipped floor,
This is the failed Façade of San Lorenzo:
That project whose abandonment by a pope
Was to the outraged sculptor a vituperio
Grandissimo: the grossest of insults.
Deprived of his lustrous-shining stones of hope,
Denied that chance to create the School of Italy,
In Sculpture, Buonarroti—does he exult?—
Brings that same façade right here, admittedly
Reduced. Not all exultance: this great work’s
Been whittled from Pyramid, nude Heroic Slaves,
To this lawsuit-endangered/engendered quirk
Of a wall-monument—and yet it braves
All the violences against decorum
That ever Rome rejected for its Forum.
Yes, Moses is still the poetic-wrathful heart
Of the whole enterprise, and yet there’s art
In the seashell-curvatured lesser figures, chalices
Offered to clinging drapery. Rose-calyxes.
Watch, though, each indecorous decorative touch.
The mischief of Michelangelo (rarely are such
Whimsical bas-reliefs treatised in treatises!)…
Winged Ichthyocentaurs with lashing tails cavort.
Small odes to Censorship, in mocking sport?

—After leafing through the magnificent Michelangelo’s
Tomb for Julius II: Genesis and Genius, by Christoph Luitpold
Frommel, with Maria Forcellino

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

HAIKU
—Tom Goff

Not sense global warming?
Like fire damp deep in the earth.
Missed—then the mine blew.

__________________

Many thanks to Tom Goff for today’s fine, ambitious poetry, and for an excuse to post the colorful Rousseau! Tom’s first full-length poetry collection, Twelve-Tone Row: Music in Words, has been published by I Street Press. His wife, Nora, did the cover art. Congratulations, Tom!

—Medusa

The Tiger Cat 

—Painting by Henri Rousseau
Celebrate poetry!

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