Silver Into Aqua Fortis

Alchemical Preparation of Silver Nitrate

—De re metallica, 1556 

A BEAT DREAMS OF ST. FRANCIS

On the second hand
of a third note laughter
by the fourth estate
near the fifth dimension
of the sixth day of media
reading aloud
by the seventh night
over the eighth star
crossing by the ninth circle
of the lyrical tenth kiss
washing the beggar's feet
after an eleventh ladder
drawn by a musical heaven
at the crossing of a twelfth abyss
from a Beat poet's alchemy
of silver into aqua fortis
born on November thirteenth
as of creation in awe
at the miracles of St. Francis
meeting at the Fourteenth station
at the fifteenth prophetic sound
from the sixteenth lost poet
who composes madrigals
of wonder in the underground.


[Ed. Note: In alchemy, aqua fortis (Latin for "strong water") is nitric acid (HNO3). Being highly corrosive, the solution was used in alchemy for dissolving silver and most other metals with the notable exception of gold, which can be dissolved using aqua regia or "regal water".]

 Fish (Poisson), 1926

—Sculpture by Constantin Brancusi

BRANCUSI'S SEAL AND FISH

With wet media
fingers set in bronze
with clusters
of fish and terrestrial mammals
at my daydream
set on the cold shore
in the harbor seal silhouette
features pedestals of birds
assured on my mind
in a motif of your sculpture
on a blanket canvas
of nature's exposure
by wishing an on-sight schemata
from the sensual culture
of motioning pinnipeds
of Brancusi's sculptures
as an underwater diver
in disclosures are swimming
at their ocean beds
of these ardor of creatures
by the color of my words.

 —Anonymous 

STEVEN'S ECHO

Missing pieces
asks the metaphor
to elevate lines
of space to ensure
a poem is finely drawn
in his armchair
feet flat on the floor
spies at a Hartford window
with a glare
like two weeks ago
as releasing a sky
when flakes of snow fall
awaking children's laughter
like rolling waves
as the wind breaks
on a winter afternoon
will show we are
but shadows and masks
of beauty's manifesto.

 —Anonymous Photo

ELlE WIESEL'S TIME

Words in whispers
that labor in the veneer
of war being benign,
caught up in tension,
shut up by memory,
worthy of attention
and humanity's cost
in an age of fear,
is not lost;
you who made us aware
to love our neighbors,
for a witness to care
about every holocaust.
 

 —Anonymous Photo
 

A STRAVINSKY MOMENT

Remembering each note
floating twelve-tone
sharps and flats
over the stage of the ballet hall
here at my tender age
dressed in a tux
wearing white short pants
asked to play first violin
glancing at the audience
with the harp of consciousness
of an utterance in a visionary
trance at tumultuous throbbing dance
with masked costumes of Bakst
as tentative lovers at last word
in their own witness of calling
on Stravinsky's moment
of his Firebird
desire in memory of romance
to discover a luminary's world.

 —Picture Poem by Kenneth Patchen
 

PATCHEN AND CREELEY

On the printed galleys
painted poems brush us
over the emerging galleries
covering extended lines
of an armchair length
upon new provocative language
dripping waters, colors, designs
of an interior stubble of spaces
in five-o’clock shadows
facing their underground memoirs
for chimeras and observers
by studio attic windows
on phosphorescent cameras
as we survey our arguments
of a dripping midnight ink
sounding out what we alarms
shutter our adolescent exposure
from patinas and impressions
and a venture of brave appearances
thinking out loud at the Louvre
unraveled in our nourishment
where living down of daydreams
from the posture of a Paris love
these much-too traveled voices
of canvas at the art of words
fairly wander over a continuous
alcove serving nomenclature
in repast of our culture
of double concave worlds.

 Scheherazade

—Painting by René Magritte, 1950

MAGRITTE'S TIME

Etches of red unravel prose
bathed in a revolutionary art
to a time of invention
covered in your pulse
rose on museum walls
bandaged with painted dreams
by the Paris windowsills
which spill ravishing flowers
the sky, grass and palm trees
in a yearning for daylight hours
to form the coiled tongues
of figs, clouds, oranges
opening in the courtyard
departing with a new creation
grafted as bardic images
from refugees hiding
in the markets and alleys
fleeing the Occupation.

 The Listening Room

—Painting by René Magritte, 1952

SAMUEL JOHNSON AT 75

With June allergies
or on his knees
or with the company
of Boswell's biography
or his own wise history
in business of a tell-all
he is melancholy
yet eats his veggies
at 75 will atone
yet barely alive
we have his wisdom
of freedom to survive
when reputations fall
his will rise.

 White Cliffs of Dover, Kent, England

—Anonymous Photo

THERE IS TIME

             for W.H. Auden

With my hand
here in modern London
reading Auden
here is an exiled time for
silence in the dawn
to reach out for pardon
among the shells and rocks
even to view the night squalls
in the home harbor's sun
at a park in an English garden
going over to Dover
watching the last white swan
over the waves appear
as a sea-voice bird motions
in perfect harmony and pitch
away from the ditch water
and I've done taking out the boat
into the Atlantic Ocean.

 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

—William Blake, 1908

BLAKE'S DOMINION

Like threads in the sunlight
of tapestries
unwinding on a visionary loom
a faint sunlight has shone
over an artist of skills
as we wander for hours
in the breezy poet's room
by the church's stained windowsills
over Blake's statue of dominion
in shadows of Westminster Abbey
as a mystic hears chants in the rain
by shadows of the twelve Apostles
who is continuously pencil-sketching
even through the last night vapors
leave us to search for your statue
on a summer's seasoned hour,
remembering his bold "relief etching"
from some papers floating in mind
imagining him in a dream vision
stretching his cosmic powerful words
hearing by blinds
the London showers
from the raucous thunder fog
listening to the wondrous chorus
on a branch of sea-bird wings
picturing him customarily awakening
hearing all of nature sing
imaging a potter's wheel
of Blake's endearing drawings
one by one on the high shelf
reddened by words of a cosmic rust
and weeping tears myself
William cannot forsake his task
to be done
as an enigmatic artist
whom we singularly trust
revealed in his Songs of Innocence
this Blake, an idiomatic artist poet
and solo visionary
offers a charismatic metamorphosis
splashes as his anointed oils glow
in appointed watercolor patterns
as a dynamo overtaking Romantic art
deposits his frescoes stretching
for his all-knowing eye gates
of his own inventive Inferno
in illuminated manuscripts
upon copper printing plates
beyond Raphael or Michelangelo
to illustrate a historic glorious verse
as in a luminary's dynamic break
with the shaky dust of the past
he blurbs in faint highlights
among angels which rose and fell
as a nature poet and an artist
in a loving second illustrious career
from proverbs of Heaven and Hell
who toils to be reviewed and outlasted
as he illustrates Chaucer
and Dante from tempera paint
with inundated different chalks
on a snow-white boned china
or an angelic saucer will not shock
as he traces a new sainted art
and talks like a renewed artist
going past us as a lone eccentric
to show us to walk a kindly peace
how a clever genius unleashes poetry
for he is still with us to sum up, to ask
our secret anthropomorphic wishes
never to depart in stone masks
as he will have vetted to fulfill
an increase of our own creativity.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

EMILY DICKINSON'S DAY

Sometimes on a day
an invasion
of her brave words
others momentary persuasion
rarely tongue-tied
only on occasion
for to be topical
is to be philosophical
in Plato's cave
from our lonely nature
saves our nomenclature
to carefully stow away
or abide.

_________________________

—Medusa, thanking BZ Niditch for today’s fine culinary fare and inspiration!

 Emily Dickinson

XXII

I HAD no time to hate, because

The grave would hinder me,

And life was not so ample I

Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love; but since

Some industry must be,

The little toil of love, I thought,

Was large enough for me.

______________________

Celebrate poetry with Emily tonight by heading 
down to Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café at 8pm, 

or over to Poetry in Davis to hear Will Greene and 

Jamil Kochai, also 8pm. Scroll down to the blue box 

 (under the green box at the right) for info about this 

and other upcoming readings in our area—and note

that other readings 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. 

We Are the River

Death for the Idea, 1915

—Painting by Paul Klee

—Poems Today by Neil Ellman, Livingston, NJ

DEATH FOR THE IDEA

(after the painting by Paul Klee)

 
                  I

It comes as suddenly
as lightning from a cloud.
Its spark ignites the mind.
Epiphany from a bolt of light.

The idea of an afternoon
along the river’s edge.
frogs jumping in the weeds.
the sun like shattered glass
through splintered trees.

                II

The idea of it:
You and I together.
our feet in the water
toes feeling the bottom.
We are in the river.
We are the river, an idea.

              III

Death comes too quickly
too much like
the first idea,
you and I together
gone as quickly
when the river stops.

 Machine V, 1960

—Painting by Hedda Sterne
 



MACHINE V

(after the painting by Hedda Sterne)

In its wires and soldered joints
the sputtering leaps of electricity
from node to node
across the barren spaces
between the eye and mind

it senses
it sees
it remembers
it feels
it knows
and always knew

that its time would come
when the connections would be made
the wish complete
to go its separate way.

Old Man, His Head Two Paces Behind, 1920-21

—Lithograph by El Lissitzsky 
 



OLD MAN, HIS HEAD TWO PACES BEHIND

(after the lithograph by El Lissitzsky)


To be old
two paces behind the rest
two seasons out of synch
winter where spring should be
a tortoise lumbering
along a narrowing road.

To forget
even the names of his heirs
the children he named
for his forebears
who barely remember
his name.

To be left behind
one foot at a time
with every passing year
remembering more of yesterday
and less of now.

To be old
his head two paces behind
the rest of him
on its way
to somewhere it has never been.

 Red Again

—Painting by Sam Francis
 

RED AGAIN

(after the painting by Sam Francis)


Red again
and again and again
repeating like echoes
on the walls of time
how many times I say
that I am red
and you are not
how many times
that I repeat my name
as many times
as red repeats
in the colors of the stars
and shades of earth
I am
as red as pharaonic blood
Proxima centauri
and columbines
as red as you
and the universe are not.

 Twittering Machine, 1922

—Painting by Paul Klee
 



TWITTERING MACHINE

(after the watercolor by Paul Klee)
 

Is it a bird?  A machine?—
A sputtering jay
its cylinders out-of-synch
with its wings
unnaturally aligned?

Does it walk or ride
on uneven rails
or does it fly
against a north-west wind
to rust and die?

What critter is this
with the DNA
of a Chevrolet
and the armature
of a mockingbird?

Does it cackle, gobble
and crow
or just twitter and tweet?

 The Way Into Blue, 1934

—Painting by Paul Klee
 

THE WAY INTO BLUE

(after the painting by Paul Klee)


Blue goes wherever it goes
In the blue light of a dimming star
along meandering rivers
ending in the sea
unnoticed through fields of anemone
horizonless against
the blueness of the night
merging on the blueness of the sky
filled with invisible light
so blue there is no color
other than of itself.

Everything of this world
is blue.
There is no way into
its blue geography
or out
no way to speak
in any language other
than of blue.

 When White, 1963-64

—Painting by Sam Francis



WHEN WHITE

(after the painting by Sam Francis)


When white was the color
of the universe
and then of wedding flowers
the world was new
even newer than the yellow sun
while children played among the clouds
as if the whiteness of their time
would never end.

When white was the sound
of falling leaves
echoing their whiteness
as they touched the ground
while children played
like invisible angels
making their outlines in the snow.

It could be touched, then,
cold, implacable, harsh
the way of whiteness
as it consumed the spectrum
of their days
the children played
as if tomorrow would never come.

______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?

—M.C. Escher

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Neil Ellman for today’s fine ekphrastic poems!

 Celebrate the poetry in art, and the art in 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.

The Hot or Cold of Life

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

AN OLD SUMMER

I am in the small sailboat on the pond,
one among many such boats.
It is late summer.

I am up to my knees in the pond,
gliding my boat carefully among other boats
that we not bump into each other.

Our parents sit on the bank and smile to us
so easily guiding the small white boats
around and around in criss-cross patterns.

I am so comfortable in the small boat now.
I simply close my eyes
and drift in my sleepiness.

The sunlight
sparkles the shallow water around me.
Sounds murmur away.

My parents also are napping now,
lying quietly together on the bank,
beginning to dream.

The day reaches its peak
and all at once I am alone,
pushing myself around in the small boat

that is drifting out and away
amid the sun-flickerings
on the smooth surface of the water.

_____________________

CHILDHOOD, LIKE A DREAM

My childhood is like a dream. I am found in the
youngest mirror where it is deep and murky. I will
not go there where everything shifts into shadow.
Hands grope through as if lost on the other side.
Mine are among them. Mother, I cannot get back,
I cry. Heavy bodies catch me with their dying, and
her worry turns to laughter. Touch silence with your
scream, I say, and my mouth opens into no sound,
being at the death-angle of the dream. I waken from
the arches of my curled position, and brace myself
beneath my own body that is falling.

THE DAILY GRIND RECONSIDERED
A Good Chord On A Bad Piano—Weldon Kees

On days like this, endurance is the test;
the hot or cold of life is what we blame;
the good or bad of it is much the same.
As long as there is time left to invest,
how we spend it, is what we should claim.

To change all this we might avoid the blues.
Familiar and remembered.  What we know.
So habit-forming.  All we have to show
for our misreading of life’s murky clues.
We always seem to find the undertow.

A downward drag is nothing but a drift
that takes no effort.  Energy is lost.
The sand grains of our falling merely sift
around us. We can still resist—can lift
to days of chances—find them worth the cost.

_______________________

DREAM COMPOSITE

Corridors. Trains.
Dead faces floating.
A spiral coiling over my face.
            ~
Murky streets
diminishing between dark houses.
Wading through effort of running.
            ~
The car that grew tiny under me
until I was trying to escape
in a toy car that wouldn’t run.
            ~
A slipping shore edge.
Too narrow to keep balance.
Must touch the awful lapping water.
            ~
The heavy weight of flying,
trying to get the right lift
trying not to fall into telephone wires.
            ~
The time you shoved a knife
into my belly
and we quietly stared at each other.
            ~
One mother trying to pull me through
a mirror while another weeping mother
tried to pull me back.
           ~
A vast, still body of water—everything
a cold blue—unreachable mountains—
trying to swim toward them.
            ~
The time I woke up, laughing, and you
tried to comfort me, thinking I was
crying, and it made you angry.

OF THE MOON


The gold water drowns into the night,

the light of the moon…


Save me, says the full moon,

orange and low.


I hold out my hands

to catch the moon…


The moon drifts into the water.

I am too far.


I follow the moon-path of the water.

My eyes do the catching.


My eyes

are full of the moon.


I close my eyes

and lose the moon.


I sleep and the moon escapes

into the sky on the water.


The light illuminates my wonder.

I am in my dream now—


the drifting dream,

the falling moon—


the moon-filled pond that is now

a shallow desperate river.

____________________

THE TRAVELING MOON

How is it the moon can hang so low    
how is it the moon can hang so high
how is it no moon at all will show
         in a certain sky?   
     
How is it the old moon tugs me so,        
how can the sea make such a claim,
and how could it travel all that sky
        with no sea to blame?

How would I want the moon to be:     
        forever low?   forever full?
forever magnet in the sky,
        with the sea at lull?

Oh moon, oh sky, oh moody sea—is that
why I can sometimes feel the same in me?

THE WHITE DREAM

In my dream again
I saw the two white egrets
in a pond making a quiet ripple among the lily pads
and the tall dark spears of listening grasses—

two egrets looking in the same direction
toward some sound or movement,
and I, caught there,
went still and listened with them.

What was it that I needed to know
amid this familiar tableau?
They always held the still pose
that transferred their instinct to mine.

No shadow moved upon the water.
No light shifted from the moon.
They would not cross again
 this dream dominion.

What could I learn from this—
this tranquil moment before some answer
drew me awake into the brimming silence
of the moon as a sound from somewhere
startled back into the white shadows of my sleep?

______________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for today's sumptuous fare! Our new Seed of the Week is Cool Mountain Lakes—the opposite of last week ("This Murky Pond"). Think clarity, cool water on your skin, maybe a deer or two watching from the banks... 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 more SOWs than you can shake a pencil at.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A SMALL REPENTENCE
—Joyce Odam

Two swans drifting by
the lake shore—though I

had no bread to throw
with nothing to show

for the sad guilt I felt—
my mood seemed to melt

for the marvelous sake
of two swans on a lake.

_____________________

—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. 

Celebrating Freedom

—Anonymous Photo

HOW TO CLIMB A MOUNTAIN
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

Mother averts her eyes, clutching
guardrail of a two-lane that snakes up
on switchbacks from the river,
while Father walks out on boulders
for a better view.
How to prepare a child
for when there isn’t a guardrail
at the dropoff?
A thousand vertical feet of sky.
Sun on bare rock blinding.
The cliff falling
to a murky pond for drowning.
Mother invokes every
possibility—just read the news
and figure the odds.
The child watches Father at the edge
of landscape moving forever
away in a bright blue veil of distance
yet every detail distinct,
etched in the brain like desire.

___________________

PASTORAL SCENE
—Taylor Graham

Below the house, those guys are talking
way too fast as they work. Are they making jest
of our sorry excuse for a fence to keep the sheep
in? Such back-&-forth as they tighten ends
with come-along and tie wire, laughing too much
to be really working but look how much they’ve
done in so little time, just like when they
drained our flooded driveway after the January
storm, they waded out in frigid murk of broken
branches dead leaves mud Styrofoam what-
ever came down the creek. And now it’s June,
and what they’re saying while they’re working
isn’t in my phrase book but the job’s already
done, while a bit of breeze comes breezing
through dry stubble riffing their words into
song I can only listen to and try to sing along.

—Photo by Taylor Graham

CLOSING, OPENING
—Taylor Graham

Night shuts down one world, light
opens another. And the pond wakes, rippling
blue on white, soft as glazed pate—
Japanese porcelain, Mexican talavera. Layers
of language on this land. The pond
knows no rooms, no boundaries of human
occupation. Vacant of ghosts, tales
of the heart. Who used to live here is gone,
even the ones who dammed the quiet
creek. Waking, the pond is an empty eye
waiting to be filled with morning,
a pledge to the swallows that will dart
and soar. Wild geese float
offshore, waves against shingle. Already,
sky spreads lofty as the egret
from a snag, before summer heat
presses down on landscape. Out of sight
almost out of hearing, the two-lane
hurtles toward river. Siren
heard for an instant, wavering, gone.
I scan for plumes of smoke—
it’s the season. No clouds this morning,
but a thin haze blue on white, soft as glaze
on clay. At water’s edge the wood duck
preens his plumage.

____________________

DANCING TOGETHER
—Taylor Graham

Remember the whirlpool that winter
when the sky came down to dance. Its joy
of running water—so much rain after so long
drought—swept down the creek to swirl its skirts
at our culvert. Moss sang green on the face
of stones, mouths wide open with praise
of the rain. Lace on black water. Great oaks
sacrificed their oldest limbs like first-born sons
for the joy of water. Every dead leaf fallen
revived in a sodden mass to join the dance at our
culvert. Such a huge gift, this water.
More than our culvert could swallow. I waded
out with rake and pole to unclog the flow;
tossing sticks and broken branches to the side
for my dog to carry away. Talismans of water,
its waves repeating downstream toward an ocean
too distant to see. I told my dog, in another
universe, an alternate reality vaster than
yesterday and tomorrow, he could fetch these
sticks forever. That was years ago. The old
dog has found himself in the sky’s flow.

 Whirlpool

—Photo by Taylor Graham

FIREWORKS AFTER VIETNAM
—Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

Joe went to the mall yesterday
and found a big tent pitched
at the head of the drive.
Someone selling fireworks.
The sign said discounts
for all veterans.

Joe thought of his brother Bob
after his return from Vietnam,
a victim of Agent Orange.
He would shake if he heard
sudden or violent noises. 
He got rid of his guns and
never went hunting again.

Bob didn’t want rifles
shot over his body after he died,
an honor some veterans prefer.
His wife wanted the ceremony.
Joe cried when the volleys were fired.
He could feel his brother
shake inside the urn.

____________________

EARTHQUAKE IN THE YARD
—Donal Mahoney

He’s a vet from Vietnam
who won’t say much about
what happened over there
except to say his problem
began with Agent Orange,

the breathing problem he has
cutting grass, raking leaves
and shoveling snow,
the only work anyone
will hire him to do.

The money helps him live
on what the government
gives him but that’s not much
because it’s obvious
the man's not living well.

Watching him mow grass
from an upstairs window
on a sultry day and have
him stop and cough so
many times, you want to
pay him not to mow but
know that won't work.
The man can’t breathe
but he still has pride.

So you pay him well,
force him to take a tip
and wonder if some day
he’ll fall on his mower
or maybe on the grass
and won’t get up at all,
the earthquake coughing
being what it is,
ripping him apart.

 Shopping Cart

—Photo by Rhony Bhopla, Sacramento, CA

TWO DREAMS
—Caschwa, Sacramento

It was a bright sunny morning
I was all of 4 years old
And strolled outside

Enjoying the warm blanket
Of air radiating from
The driveway

I lay down and stared
Up at misshapen clouds
Inspired to contrive

Some logical framework
Or explanation
To define their shape

And then a white delivery van
Pulled into the driveway
And stopped directly over me

I felt a gentle but insistent
Vibration on my chest
And another dimension of warmth

I shut my eyes, opened them again
And was staring right into
The eyes of my purring kitty cat

Resting on my chest
In the bed, in the bedroom
In the house

* * * * * *

I was standing at the box office
Contemplating buying a ticket
To a murder, mystery, thriller

And then it occurred to me
This was a dream, and dreams
Don’t let you finish what you start

So I declined the offer to buy a ticket
Not willing to part with the money
If I couldn’t stay to see how it ended

 Deodor Cedar

—Photo by Stacey Jaclyn Morgan, Fair Oaks, CA

MEETING RITA
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

          for Rita Szuszkiewicz

I met you, if the memories tell truth,
at Sac State, by the then Brutalist art building,
you, a perceptive, kind artist. My weird youth
was only music, but other arts gave gilding
to my breezeblock foundation. History
of Art, the dilettante’s survey course, was how
I came across you, or you me. Mystery,
how it could evade the so-called brain in my brow
that we were already connected, if not from
centuries previous, through close kin and kith.
At Zelda’s, soon or late, we had to meet:
lapse-of-context agnosia, then the strum
of recognition. It’s you! And, as in a myth
or mist—oh, you know Jerry! Ah life, how neat.

________________________
 
VADER’S DAY
—Tom Goff

Transparent, now that I look back on the words
I transmit to a masculine deity
of music, lines I loose like long-pent birds
too starved to fly far: though I’m laity,
nothing of philosoph or psychopomp,
it’s clear when I seek a guiding avatar,
a cicerone at my side—no mentoring fee—
to tour with me hell and the doldrums, never the star,
is this not my sole besetting mystery?
What reason, if not my quest for the father type,
even the Vader figure, evader by death,
all black-garbed, venting his weirdo techno-breath,
to adore and battle for right-of-way through swamp?
Is this ghost assembled to act more like him, or me?

 Nigella

—Photo by Stacey Jaclyn Morgan 

BEING BIX
—Tom Goff

           (a reply to Dana Gioia’s “Bix Beiderbecke”)
 
Your elegy to youth—and that ennui
a doomed cornet funneled for us to unforget—
reminds me of my jazz years: overlong spree
of sweet acrobatics, me, tyro trumpet, no net.
Our progressive-minded orchestra director
made himself over, a jazzman avant la lettre,
I mean pre-Tilson Thomas. Microfilm
the texture of celery without long strings
spooled genuine Paul Whiteman parts, all silm
under scantly rehearsed pop concert fingerings.
Violas might feign a Gatsby Twenties blues
inflection in their liltingly sawn downbows,
trombones and outré saxophones propose
a drone like stove-hot Gershwin’s rhapsodic news.

But only I got to play Bix! His solo part
swarmed tadpole across my eyes, glissando bliss,
blended with teen leg-twitch and lurch of heart.
All I must cope with was airstream; mouthpiece-kiss;
only connect ad-libs with Bixian style,
my tongue-stroke a replica clapper of his brass bell,
in “Singin’ the Blues,” “I’m Coming, Virginia,” while
wielding my own speakeasy wits as well.
Unready I was: the rhythms slightly jarred,
valves balked, barlines smudged, aims at overtones
shirked hurdles: it all went soft, not Beiderbecke-hard.
And yet, however I botched and bungled licks,
bluesiest remembrance can resurrect old tics
and aches. Wide-gaping destiny, bound up with being Bix.    

_______________________

ST. VINCENT’S DANCE
—Tom Goff

When I gave you that book about Millay,
did you feel twinges, tremors rise from it?
Or not yet sense that this mute gift might say
how keenly I felt you should keep her flame lit?
Her lyric flame, whose unseen sheath and point,
of diamond-shredding heat, would pierce through you
till pure injection into every joint
should numb each ligament, string by string undo,
trip, tumble you low, upend you, lay you lame?
No, your limbs limp, no puppetry of mine
could dance you loose-reined in my skeins of shame.
I wished you drunk enough with that raw white wine,
ripe from the roaring grape, to sing your wit
who spurn that dram (my dream) your own lyric fit.

 Oak Tree and Moonlight

—Photo by Stacey Jaclyn Morgan

PICNIC
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

Coyote
Would never
Want to seem
Cruel or impolite,
But aren’t  those
Ants crawling
Across your
Lap?

____________________________

the inside rush
—Martha Ann Blackman, Sacramento

why is waiting
different than
just free time
time we cherish
to locate our center

for the inside is
really no different
just the perspective
backing down from
expected rush

the sun is sinking low
delta breeze tickling
my skin
the night promises
open windows to
welcome the breeze

I sit quietly waiting for
the AAA truck rescue
two times in one day
a record

dusk is slipping in
shadows soft as silk
waiting
for the tender touch

a recognition of the
offering they
give the calm
of the day
being grateful

 Solstice

—Photo by Stacey Jaclyn Morgan

PALEOLITHIC
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole, CA

A woman
wearing animal skins
straw or leaves
pressed her hand
against a cave wall
waited as color
was blown through
a hollow reed
saw her hand
outlined in
umber-rose.

Who was she?

The imprint
still fresh,
mysterious,
beautiful.

___________________

LAND'S END
—Claire J. Baker

We drive south
across Golden Gate Bridge,
sky and water.

At ocean's edge
we cling
to platform railing,
imagine we are gulls
or sea eagles
electric with salt.

Spray stings eyes,
platform quakes; mist
plays tunes on our bones.

Tide-shadows shift over
autumn's gray-green expanse,
the horizon a silver streak.

We scamper back up, drive on
to the Palace of Honor and art,
delighted to hear a docent say:
painters of the ocean
stayed intimate with the sea
in all seasons.

______________________

Lots going on in the Kitchen today, more people lining up at our open mic than usual. Our thanks to today’s contributors for celebrating July 4th with us, and our freedom to write whatever is on our mind—or, as Tom Goff put it recently, “the work you daily post from so many talents with different views of beauty and truth”.

Carl Schwartz (Caschwa) begins his retirement on July 9. Congratulations, Carl!

Remember that there will be no reading at Sac. Poetry Center tonight; on Thursday, though, you can either go to Luna’s Cafe for Poetry Unplugged, or to Poetry in Davis to hear Will Greene and Jamil Kochai (plus open mic) at 8pm. Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box at the right) for info about this and other upcoming readings in our area—and note that other readings may be added at the last minute.

Lara Gularte writes that there will be a change in the monthly poetry readings at the Nello Olivo Wine Cellar in Placerville. For July there will be an all open mic this Sunday (July 10) from 2-4pm. Thereafter, the open mic monthly reading will be the first Sunday of every month. And information will be coming soon concerning a new reading series with featured poets and open mic. sponsored by El Dorado Arts Council. Inheritor, a beautiful new book of poetry by Sacramento’s Jeanine Stevens, is now available from FutureCycle Press; see www.goodreads.com/review/show/1662749663?utm_medium=api&utm_source=custom_widget

And Alan Lowe writes to remind poets everywhere that the deadline for the 2016 Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest is July 23. See lincolnca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/36/2267?backlist=%2fcity-hall%2fdepartments-divisions%2flibrary
 
_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

—Medusa

Be bold—celebrate poetry and the freedom to write it!

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.

Listen to the Muse

 (—Anonymous)

LISTEN TO THE MUSE
—Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO
 
Never engage
in conversation
a man with a beard
down to his testicles
talking to himself
under a viaduct
at midnight

if all the bulbs
under the viaduct
have been shot out.
Take notes instead
on what he's saying
provided he speaks
in iambic pentameter.

Take those notes home
and sit next to a candle
at the kitchen table
and weave a sonnet
and send it out
to every magazine
you can find

and then go back
under the viaduct and
take more notes and
sit next to the candle
at the kitchen table.
Weave another sonnet.
Pray he talks forever.

____________________

—Medusa (thanks, Donal!)

 

The Dreams of Angels

Roman Child, Cleveland Art Museum

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

CHANGING ROOMS

I keep thinking I am not dreaming.
That I just can’t get it right.
The person writing has committed
Himself to writing this poem
But it is a foolish endeavor.

The floor feels queer beneath his feet.
It is already much too late to be
Early evening any longer and he has
Barely awakened, or so he thinks.

There are people waiting in the next
Room for him to come out
To greet them, to thank them
For their screens, their fragments
Of sparks and bits of conversation.
They feel they have served him
Well and deserve some kind of reward.

He has decided he will stop
At the earliest opportunity
So that he might be inarticulate,
So he will not recognize at all
When sleep comes out of
Its room and stops making sounds
That he associates with darkness.

He refuses to be interested in any
Thing he might be writing.  That this
Way he can listen to anything that might
Trigger a recognition he hadn’t
Anticipated.  A quiet stream,
Some steam escaping from a radiator.

In the next room he can hear
The people begin to applaud.
He is much too tired to get up
And go see what is happening there.

He supposes it is just a dream,
Rolls on his side, lets his eyelids
Shut down one world, open another.

 Butte

THE SAND CLOSING AND OPENING

Kenny saw them riding down.
Down to the edges of the paper town.
And their horses, red and blue
And calico, like ghosts they flew.

Come lie beside me in this meadow.
We will listen to the gulls complain,
Hear the slap of the waves against
The shingle, chart the clouds as if they
Were tales of the heart.

A broken noise comes out of the air.
A kind of angel song that sings
In the mind as if about to make love.

There is no longer the sea near us.
We make love in the dreams of angels.

        *

That can’t last forever, not a
Bloody chance.  Smoke rises from
The forest over against the hills.

Soon it will be death’s turn again.
We watch the birds wheel
In the vacant air.

Tiny spots of blood begin to appear
On our clothing, on our naked bodies.

 Ridge

THE ARGUMENT AT THE GREAT ROCKS

There were great cracks in the rock.
Some of them were coming down
Out of the darkness.  It was
Difficult to keep from bumping
Into them.  Most of them
Have forgotten how to smile.

That’s the wind, said Burnham.
No, it isn’t, Jeb replied.
It is the room that
Makes the sound reach
Into Burnham’s throat.  There wasn’t
Much breath left.  I eased
His body to the floor and collected
As many of the young women as
I was able.

They can, at least, sing, Ramon,
I said.
Ramon smiled.  Teach them
The songs.
Teach them the talismans.

 Drifting Cloud

A KIND OF SINGING

The light beginning to crackle and glow
Around the buildings on the horizon.
In traveling through this place
We have no idea why such a phenomena
Should occur.  It’s rather like a
Small child being born and immediately
Becoming recognized as a great king.
What are the chances of such a thing?

The evening scoots down the low hills
As if it were another child, on a slide,
Being called to dinner just as he
Finally gains his spot at the top.
What to do?  Come home now?

Sit down, press one’s legs into the
Sides of the slide and take as much
Time as possible to descend to the ground.
Everyone will understand somehow.

When we reach the bottom of the hill,
The entire landscape looks embossed;
A storybook cover one could run one’s
Hand over and still feel the real worth
The story has to hold.  No one has
Visited this place below the hill
For so long, we have forgotten the songs
That used to be sung about it.
We believe we are making up a new song.

 Colorado

PRETTY BOY PRETTY BOY

Pretty boy, pretty boy
Sliding across the grace
Of the sloughs.
All made of tears.

I’ll break the night into little
Pieces.  I can’t fit the words
Into my mouth.

A couple of towns ago
I held the devil.  He tried
To kiss me, but I had kissed you.

That was a vast yesterday.
I was full of what God
Must have been feeling
A few moments after he realized
That it wasn’t all that good
And started over again.

We were left in the present
With one huge gift, water.
Everything else had to fend for itself.

Something tore at my throat.
Are you hungry?
Everything in this world tonight
Seems to be waiting for dreams
To revisit.  The waves repeat
Upon the shore.  We’ll show God
This can be a very beautiful place.

Take this whirlpool, for instance.
That is simply another universe
Only a few million light years away.
I’ll wait for you there with some new
Clothing so we will look good in the morning.

 Rain

LIGHTNING IN THE MOUTH

You return to me in dreams.
The sky is glass marbles.  When
You speak, lightning speeds
From your mouth.

Steam locomotives cough
Into life.  Steam surrounds
Your eyes, pours from your ears.

I am no longer able to find
Poetry.  Here is the heart of your
Son and your daughter.  There is
No poetry here.  Heaven is broken.

Let us dance together.  Drifting
Through this rain that feels so much
Like tears.  I’ll try to stop here
Before we are kissing each other.

I told you this was a dream.
Nothing is going to happen.
Nothing is going to change.
This is a window.  It is the joy
Of life.  I can see the shadows.

The dream returns.
The lightning continues.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

LOVE NEVER GOES AWAY

Love never goes away.
Love never goes away.
Spills over every edge.
Love never goes away.

Love never goes away.
Undoes the clothing
Time brings to the bed.
Love never goes away.

Love never goes away.
The morning.  The evening.
The sun too, a love song.
Love never goes away.

I have a handful of pebbles.
We are all waiting to be kissed.
Love never goes away.
There are arms in the mist
That hold us like this.
Love never goes away.

All these tears.  Love never
Goes away.  Room after room
Filled with love.  Dream opens
To dream.  Love never goes away.

___________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for today’s fine poems and photos! Dave Boles of Cold River Press has put together a lovely pre-publication package for D.R.’s new book, Love Stories (110 pp, soft cover, perfect-bound, with five original illustrations by Cynthia Charters; special pre-sale price of $16.95), including a separate "tip-in" poem signed by D.R. Wagner and illustrated by Cynthia Charters, plus a FREE book form the Cold River Press catalog and, as always, FREE shipping included for the Continental States. Go to www.coldriverpress.org to take advantage of this offer.

And my apologies to Host Nancy González and to anyone who may have been inconvenienced by my mis-listing of the Mosaic of Voices reading yesterday as 2pm, rather than 7pm. What WAS I thinking???

__________________

—Medusa, whose wits are easily addled these days...

 Celebrate poetry today by going over to Sac. Poetry Center 

at 2pm for the "Asian Diaspora" featuring Jassi Bassi, 

Rhony Bhopla, Meera Klein, Heera Kulkarni, 

Yuyutsu Sharma. 25th & R Sts., Sac. Host: Penny Kline.
See www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com for details.

(Yes, it really IS at 2pm today...)

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. 

John Wayne, High Tea, and Parents Night

—Poems by Donal J. Mahoney, St. Louis, MO
—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

A SUMMONS FROM THE OZARKS

This is Granny in the Ozarks calling.
Please come down before spring
goes away for summer.

The geese are coming through
and landing on the pond
as they do every spring.

You can watch them dip
and flutter the way you used to.
When I go down to the barn

the geese rise in a perfect V.
They come back when I go away
and will stay for another week.

I hate to scare the geese
but I have to milk the cow
and feed the hen.

Maybe you can show me
on that pad thing you gave me
why geese rise in a perfect V.

 Jenkinson Lake, Pollock Pines, CA

HIGH TEA IN MISSOURI

They're the oldest couple
my wife and I know
and we’re no pups either.

Peter out for a walk
leans on his cane often
to admire my wife’s garden.

The English roses remind him
of home, he says, and one day
he invites us over for tea
at the civilized hour of 3.

That day at 3
we enter an old world
in a Victorian house
and are served tea in
porcelain cups with warm
scones and marmalade.
They arrive on a silver tray.

It’s a presentation
one might expect
at the proper hour at
Buckingham Palace or
in a nice cottage in England.

Peter excuses himself
for a moment and I get brave
and ask his wife how long
they have been married.

Sixty years, Mary whispers,
and then with a tinkling giggle
she says whenever Peter
enters a room her heart
still beats faster.

 Shoreline, Jenkinson Lake

PARENTS NIGHT

Emma used to do real good in school
her mother tells her new teacher.
It’s Parents Night at Ryland Elementary.
Mostly mothers in attendance.

What’s the problem, her mother asks.
Fifth grade shouldn’t be hard for her.
Emma's never had a grade lower than
a B, her mother says.

Teacher says Emma doesn’t do
her homework and talks a lot in class.
Her mother can’t believe it.
Says her father won’t either.

She says Emma goes to her room
right after supper with all her books,
studies till 10, brushes her teeth
and goes to bed.

Bill's mother’s next in line to ask
the new teacher what’s the problem
with her son Bill, who did so well
at his other school.

Afterward the mothers meet
over cookies and a glass of punch
and wonder whether this new teacher
can communicate with Emma and Bill.

They don’t know Emma’s awake
till midnight texting new friend Bill,
who’s in her class this year.
They like each other a lot.

FATHER THE CHAMELEON

Father the chameleon was lime green
the first day I saw him peering into
my crib smiling and he remained

lime green until kindergarten
when a nun called the house and said
I was disrupting the class and would

he come and have a talk with her.
He remained wildfire red until
the college he paid big money to

expelled me as a senior for sending
chickens clucking in big crates
to a French professor who gave me

a B instead of an A, thereby killing
my chance for an Ivy League law school.
When I got home and told Father

his face glowed purple as eggplant
and he began taking huge pills
day and night, even when a small

law school finally gave me a chance.
The day I passed the bar exam Father
was whiter than his pills in his coffin.

AN OLD FRIEND IN A BOX

I found an old friend
in a cardboard box
in the basement
where I left him
forty years ago.

His body was intact
but he never had a heart
which is why I left him
with drafts of other
poems published
long ago on paper
in little magazines
decades before
computers appeared.

The poems were born
on a Royal typewriter
with carbon paper
serving as midwife.
He was the only one
I didn't sent out
but didn’t have
the heart to abort.

I took him upstairs
to see if my skills
as a surgeon
had developed.
Maybe I could give him
a heart on my iMac.
So far so good.
He’s not perfect
but he’s wriggling.
If he doesn’t reject
his new heart
I’ll let you know
how he turns out.

REMEMBERING A WAR
WE TEND TO FORGET

I will never forget him
but I can’t remember his name
it’s been so long ago.
Maybe I never knew it.

But I think of him on days
America celebrates its veterans—
Memorial Day, July 4th,
Veterans Day, D-Day.
The wars are all remembered
but not so much this one.

He was Billy's big brother
and more than 60 years ago
Billy and the rest of us
were in 8th grade watching
him climb a ladder
and hammer a hoop
on the roof of a garage
so we could play ball
while he went to Korea.

I saw him again when he
came back from Korea.
He was walking in circles
in the family’s backyard
smoking Pall Malls,
one after another, talking
to no one we could see.

We were practicing at
the hoop he nailed up
before he went to Korea.
We were seniors
in high school then
and had to be ready.
We practiced all summer
for the season ahead.

AU JUS

Some women use perfume
and that’s fine.
Some don’t

and that’s fine too.
Over the years
I’ve found I prefer

a woman au jus.
I married one years ago
and I still salivate.

NO JOHN WAYNE

He likes people
if they are useful.
Women are useful.
Employees are useful.
Voters are useful.
Tax experts are useful
when you have
that kind of money.

You get the feeling
he loves his children
and that’s a good thing.

But despite the thunder
with which he’s galloped
out of his skyscrapers
to capture so much
of America, deep
in your heart you know
even if he puts on
a ten-gallon hat
he's no John Wayne.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

METASTASIS

I am sorry to hear the news.
I lost it when I heard about hers
and now to hear about yours.

I’m livid at times, peaceful rarely.
If you prefer, I won't forward emails
about her until you recover.

I thought you should know
how the doctors say she is doing.
Meanwhile I write about anything

rather than yell about everything.
Some days I go to the basement
and yell when no one is home.

_________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Donal Mahoney for today’s fine poetry, and to Katy Brown for her wonderful photos.

 Celebrate poetry by heading over to Avid Reader at the Tower 

in Sacramento at 7pm tonight to Mosaic of Voices, featuring 

Yuyutsu RD Sharma, Dr. Andy Jones, and Allegra Silberstein. 

Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box at the right) 

for info about this and other upcoming readings in our area—

and note that other readings 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.