Heaven Is...

Dog Days

—Photos by Stacey Jaclyn Morgan, Fair Oaks, CA

WHEN HEAVEN IS A SWIMMING POOL
—David Wright, Sacramento

It was an August Sacramento day,
Nineteen hundred and seventy five.
One-hundred-eight degrees.
Our Yellow Cabs were not air conditioned back then.
I had too few fares and few tips and
Two flat tires that day.
Had my fill.
Dig?
Shift finally ended, and I
Bummed a "Black Beauty" and a "J"
From a cab driver buddy and I
Went home to my apartment.
Popped the pill, smoked the "J", and
Dived into the apartment swimming pool.
Ecstasy!
Forty years later and I can remember how that felt and I smile.
Don't even try to catch up.

_________________

WINDS
—David Wright

The wind moved the leaves
To laugh
And the stars were a
Twinkle in an eye

The beauty of ocean
Went on forever
Under the moods of
Sacred sky

The leaves are moved again
Wind begins to weep
Clouds cover sky
Moon goes to sleep

 Edward's Crossing

BODEGA BAY RENTAL HOUSE
—David Wright

We always liked looking through the big window, the one
Facing the sea, the one we had the telescope set up by to sometimes
Bring a distant boat or whale close.  Close.  Nearer.
Once I swear I saw a mermaid in the surf, golden tail, she
Beckoned me to follow with her finger.
A kind of wakeful dream.
Was it a dream?

Often the view won't do, the
View won't do at all.
Compelled to,
I head out the door,
Slam it, run across the sand,
Now getting wet with sea-spray, the
Smell is intoxicating, the
Breakers jolt me awake, my feet on the
Slime of kelp.
Gulls dance.
Bubbles on the wet sand
Where the sand crabs dig in.

A frantic desire, straining to be
Ever closer, ever one with the wild essence.
No matter how close we get we want to be even
Nearer the source, ever more enveloped by it.

And then, even here, after a series of breakers, there comes a
Mystical calm, it turns so quiet one hears the peeping of the
Tiny sandpipers.
The surf seems to take a rest, seems to breathe deeply before again
Cracking the quiet wide-open with a fresh set of breakers.

After awhile I head back, heat up some chowder, and sit
Inside now content again to gaze out the big window.
Of course the day would always come to
Painfully pack the car and head home.

Sometimes I recall the vision of that mermaid and I wish I had followed her out
Past the breakers, farther into the open sea than anyone has ever gone.

_________________

TO THE MISTRAL WIND
—David Wright

Always just as I've languished too long on
Glass seas, the stink of death in my nostrils, first comes a
Light breeze, and then, again, the
Mistral wind blows me!
Deeper than skin my
Sails sing out, no
Compass can
Encompass me now.
The stars are eschew, the
Howling is deafening, the
Sea unchained.
Yet again I crash onto some unknown island,
Unconfined by their dreary maps.
Drums pound on as never heard, then a
Thunderous song from a tiny sea bird...
a piper...
Before whom the
Great whales flee.

Again I convalesce on wet sands,
Painfully alone but
Gloriously free.

 The Third Tit

REVELATIONS IN THE MARROR
—Scott Thomas Outlar, Atlanta, GA
 
The vastness of your scope
as I stare into the sky
reveals itself here and there
with glimpses into the absolute glimmer,
yet the mystery remains ineffable
in a context beyond that which
my primitive consciousness can grasp,
and I’m beginning to understand
that the seduction of your existential aloofness
is part and parcel
to the inherent romance in this experience of life.

I cannot come to know you fully
in the spaces of my mind,
but I can feel you in my guts,
in my heart, in my veins,
through my blood, in my bones,
down to the marrow.

These two open eyes
cannot gleam your greatness,
but when they are closed
I can see dimensions
beyond this physical plane of existence,
and I can sense the raw power
which pulses from your source
as it radiates outward
to be divined by those who truly seek.

The names which you have been called by
throughout the ages
mean nothing to me at this point—
simple words babbled from broken tongues
cannot capture the purity of your meaning;
it is your essence
to which I am addicted,
and I will never cease
reaching toward your unconditional love
until every urgent craving in my soul
has been satiated by your presence.

(Originally appeared in The Song Is…)

________________

SILENT STORM
—Scott Thomas Outlar
 
A yellow buzz from the sky
torches the center of my third eye,
stroking the membrane softly
and sending shock waves through neuron pathways
which have laid dormant for ages.

An electric hum throbs like thunder
as the storm builds to a crescendo
and rains down with vibrations of fire
to sing in the silent space
between my ears in the back of my mind.

Oxygen tastes like emptiness
when I breathe in the void
of entropy,
seeking to inhale the present moment fully
so I can exhale the past
and spark a fresh path toward tomorrow.

Pour down on my tired head
with a symphony from the stars
so I can sense the frequency of heaven
that pulls my consciousness back to source
where the primal truth bursts
all the bubbles of illusion
that hold me back from higher karma.

One more step, one more day, one more thought,
zeroed-in on reaching the inherent destiny
that was writ upon my DNA code
when I burst forth from the womb
and entered this world of mortal flesh
where nothing seems to make sense…until it finally does.

 Artichokes, Late Summer

SCHISM
—Scott Thomas Outlar

A heart full of Christ’s blood
A liver saturated with the piss of Dionysus

A mind that flashes back and forth
between a faithful love of light
and the temptations calling from the darkness

There are angels soaring in the heavens
but there are snakes down here in the grass

A desperate search for higher truth
A crashing tide of little white lies

A body with legs that can walk
all day and night toward the siren
or
A body with a bruised and broken back
lacking the strength to rise out of bed

A womb with promises of new karma
A grave that yawns with a final seduction

A silent meditation on the path toward peace
A violent world that cannibalizes its own flesh

A fiery halo adorning the crown of ascended masters
A rag of salt for thieves with wounded hands

There is always a fresh hope in the next step
but there are always new challenges that lie ahead

___________________

RHYTHMS OF THE RAIN
—Scott Thomas Outlar

A summer storm,
of a sudden,
begins to fall
heavily from the sky.

Furious rumblings of thunder
in the heavens
mirror the wild sound
my pounding heart makes
as it screams out your name.

A flash of lightning
zigzags through the air,
igniting the atmosphere
with bolts of electricity
that send shivers up my spine
at the enticing thought
of holding your hands in mine.

I close my eyes
and listen to the rain
as it pitter-patters
into the nearby puddle,
and I imagine
that each drop of water
represents a divine kiss
landing on your precious lips
with a promise sent from mine
to love you infinitely and eternally
even beyond the end of time.

 Man

THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS
—Scott Thomas Outlar

The Harbinger of Hallelujah
has arrived in his hour,
and she is adorned
with the smile of an angel
that sends my heart swooning
into a deeper state of happiness
than it has ever known.

Ascending me upward through the sky
in a chariot of glistening gold,
she shines a thousand rays of light
from the reflection of a holy halo,
and my eyes are mesmerized
by the sight of her divine presence.

Who am I to deserve
such a gift of utter bliss?
And how can I return her kindness
other than with a thousand kisses of pure love?

Through the heavens we soar
with our two souls entangled as one
while the clouds spread apart
and open a portal to cosmic realms
where the goddess makes her home,
and now I, also, thanks to the fortune
granted from every star ever wished upon,
can sleep soundly in her safe arms forever.

________________________

Today’s LittleNip:

UNDERTOW
—Scott Thomas Outlar

Your love is like a wave sent from God,
crashing over me,
taking my breath away,
pulling me under
where the flames of my heart
can be quenched
in deep waters
that I’ve never
quite learned how to swim.

 Cover, Happy Hour Hallelujah

by Scott Thomas Outlar

____________________

Our thanks today to Photographer Stacey Jaclyn Morgan, always intriguing, to David Wright, a Sacramento poet who has been around our poetry community for many years and who has just returned to the fold, and to Scott Thomas Outlar from Atlanta, GA, whose poems, "Revelations in the Marrow," "Schism," and "Undertow" are included in his new book, Happy Hour Hallelujah, which was released in August of 2016 through CTU Publishing. Go to www.ctupublishinggroup.com/scott-thomas-outlar-.html for info/.

Friends, students and admirers of Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus Dennis Schmitz will be saddened to learn that his wife, Loretta, passed away on August 15. Her obituary in The Sacramento Bee may be seen at www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?n=loretta-schmitz&pid=181159295

—Medusa
 

(Anonymous)

Celebrate Poetry—our connection 

to the world around us!

Scroll down to the blue column (under the green 

column at the right) for info about upcoming 

readings in our area—and note that 

more may be added at the last minute.

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

Bouncing Balls of Light and Imagination

Joyce's Cat, Spirit

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE GRAVEN PANELS

Come to the stone wall for the story. See how the
history reveals. You are there, too, as part of life’s
repetitions. You have felt the carving and the en-
graving, how the language and the imagery repeat
and differ. All is the art of the artist. The artist is
the believer who has not time enough to say it all.
Rain heightens. Winds erase. Sunlight must trace
all the indentations, revise the panels. Why not
eyes, why not mind, why not argument of lost
opinions? This is where you gravitate when time
diminishes around you, reading the answers that
do not even recognize the questions.

_______________________

Let us now take up our pens

and mathametize all possibilities. Edges are moot.
Rounds are preferred. Distance is correlated by time,
as language is to poetry. Also moot. This is a study
in concepts—con and pro. Rules are unproven—as
are the questions. Light and shadow are forbidden.
Glass is allowed for consultation. Use white paper to
emulate the flatness of the sky. Stars will be added
where needed, for guiding points. Use no seams.
That would confuse the lesson. All must be all, and
all in place, correct and absolute, with a center pin-
point viewing-hole for the viewing mind to fathom.

ENIGMA
After The Uncertainty of the Poet, 1913, by Giorgio de Chirico

Make of this what you will. We are all fumbling
for meaning through a maze of words and symbols:

take this stem of bananas by this green torso.
Incongruous, yes. But note the slanting shadows

from Roman arches, the sky pulled away into
its own blue reaches, that speeding train along

the first horizon while ship-masts in the other distance
bob in tranquility. The torso contorts—as torsos

must—at the absence of head, and arms, and
legs, twisted toward all lost sensation, except for

memory of taste and smell—for light that shapes—
for desire of touch, from spreading pool of shadow.


(first pub. in Rattlesnake Review)

POINTLESSNESS

The point of this is pointlessness,
I keep trying to explain.
You, as vague as usual,
stare away in your other direction.

Take words, I say, throwing you a few
in broken sentences.
But you, still in love with cruelty,
turn up the volume of your deafness.

Let the cat in, I suggest,
let the cat out,
let it in,
let it out. Damn cat.

You, of course,
have no use for cats
though cats love you
with all their eyes and sidle up to you.

I am bereft, I plead.
Take this silence,
so tiresome,
I don’t know how to say it.

You open a page of light,
read it
with your lips,
and make a revision.

I drag you along in my conversation,
I need your provocation,
I need the way you look at me—
your un-reach-a-bil-ity.

You turn away from the
immaculate mirror of your face,
open the door
and let the cat out.

 

THE CAT IN THE FOREST

I hear the cat’s voice, but the air is too thin to hold it.
It is another fairy tale, and the cat is under a spell. The
scene is a forest, as it always is, and I don’t know how
I got to a forest anyway.

The point of the story seems to be vanishing among
the trees, and the cat’s voice, too, until I am sure
I was mistaken, because the last page is missing.

The old dread has not yet settled down, and I don’t
expect it to. I suddenly realize I am writing—I am
making this up—it is all my own doing,

The cat’s voice is what I need to guide me through these
deepening trees—but where did the cat go? Where did
it take its path of mewling? How will I save it—or it
save me? How will I ever know the ending?  

THE CHILD PRODIGY

leaping, dancing, amid painted cats
and blue music of red violin
in hands of floating child
with flowers
and bouncing balls
of light and imagination
where nothing
falls
it is
a
masquerade
for the sky
the cats think they
are falling,
but they are only dancing
to the practice violin of
the prodigy child
who is a mischief maker
filling the dream sky
with painted cats
leaping,
dancing,
to the music
of the red violin
in the hands of the floating child

RANDOM AS TIME IN ITS DUSTY COLLECTION
After Still Life with Music and Parrot, 1737, by Gigory Teplo

It is in
this room
that artifacts
list themselves
in the afternoon’s
dusty shadows
with light that streams in,
looking for lost detail,
A child is hidden here.
You can sense her,
behind a door—
a clue,
or afterthought,
not meant for
curiosity’s probe.
Do not touch,
and do not ask,
is what is implied.
Things are random—
even the stuffed parrot
the child would like to pet,
lisp words, ask her question,
touch the things—
once more slip past the No.

_______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

NOURISHMENT
After Poem by Teresa Torres (Argentina)

Here is a table full of words. Flesh and wine.
Gorge yourself. Never be hungry. Even the
crumbs are precious. Ask for more.

Fill your mouths and eyes.
Push your chair back. Fall asleep.
It’s all useless language. Do not speak.

______________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s wonderful poems and pix! Our new Seed of the Week is Pals. 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.

—Medusa

 Celebrate your need to write! And scroll down to the blue 

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

upcoming readings in our area—and note that 

more may be added at the last minute.

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

Lorsque les Chats Étude Française

—Anonymous Photos

THE CAT WHO COULD SPEAK FRENCH—
AND MANY OTHER LANGUAGES AS WELL
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

Anselm Hollo was
A Finnish poet,
Translator, BBC news writer,
Teacher
At the Iowa Writers
Workshop.
A foreign exchange
Student who
Refused to go home.

I studied with him
Briefly, just before
Legal issues—herbal
Substances found
In his car—
Might have sent
Him away.

Was in his Gypsy
Pirate
Bell bottoms period
Back then, and didn’t
Have a whole
Lot of teeth—

Among the last
Beats?  First Hipsters?
Nevertheless,
He was a Cool Cat.

Still, his Finnish
Accent, tempered with
A somehow
Midwest drawl,
Made his speech
Sound like delicate
Animals from
A Disney movie
(And I mean this as a
Compliment).

I’d tape our sessions,
And after, go to a park—
There are lots
In Iowa City—and
Transcribe our
Talks before
I lost the sense
Completely.

Inevitably, people
Would come up
Asking, “Are you
Hurting some
Small animal under
That table?”
Mais non!

A couple of years ago a French woman walking her poodle dog in Belfort claimed to be attacked by feral cats
     She told the media six feral cats pounced on her and her dog
     saying they dragged her to the ground and mauled her (yeah right!)
     Despite how ridiculous it sounded, French police apparently believed this woman’s story
     and they issued a warning to beware of France’s stray and feral cats
     They warned, “Tourists from countries like Britain should certainly be wary.“
     The French perhaps figured their free-roaming cats do not like the English, most of whom they might also perceive as “dogs”
     However cat lovers like author and poet T.S. Eliot need not fear any terror attacks from the cats of France

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento, CA

_____________________

On Amazon.com there is a book listed called French for Cats: All the French Your Cat Will Ever Need by Gary Zamchick
     The 1991-published book was of course a humor book
     In people’s reviews they say they actually used this book along with using French phrases such as
    "Je crois que je vais cracher une boule de poils"
     (I think I am going to cough up a fur ball)       
     It’s written pretty much, though, how French cats, if they talked, what kind of things they’d say
     American cats of course would use English because that is the majority language they hear
     Once, I swear, my mother’s cat Hurley spoke to me when I was sleeping over at my parents’
     She woke me up with saying “I want to go out now!” to be let out on the enclosed patio (catio) 
     Apparently if cats can speak our human language, it’s only to get something they really want
     While cats can look into our eyes as dogs do, they don’t want to or are likely to possess the skill to “chat” with us
     Also if one is going to give “commands” to a cat, such as “off"
     just like dogs, it would be best in America to give them in English
     A dog or cat spoken to only in French in America might cause a problem for someone else who has to take care of them
     For instance a pet sitter or boarder-kennel worker may only talk to a cat in English
     A cat who is talked to only in French just might look at an English-speaking person in confusion or fear

—Michelle Kunert

 Playing Cat and Mouse

LA BERCEUSE DE KITTY SOURIS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

I named her Mouse,
hoping she’d rid the basement’s
every nook of vermin, and
then go on to clean the house.
So keen her eye;
each claw a clever hook.
I’d tiptoe down at dawn to see—
and look! under the bath-
mat, a tiny form tucked gently
to eternal sleep;
still warm.
But maybe that wasn’t
Kitty Souris the backwoods
tree-top aerobat,
but Possum the box-springs
guerrilla shelter-cat?
Neither shared a word
with me; tongue too busy
grooming her own
cat-French. A swarm of purring
syllables, mouse-dirge sweetly sung.

____________________

THE USED-BOOKSTORE CAT
—Taylor Graham

Felicette spends her time in the French
section, a volume of the illustrated world
open before her. She flicks her ringed tail
through the pages, symmetries of margin
and text. A zodiac of beasts (her favorite,
the two Poissons) and constellations,
le Cygne trumpeting silently just for her.
She watches as through a periscope,
waiting for the fish to swim, the swan to
fly. They never do. At times she catnaps
on the shelf, looking down from her one
lonely cloud on the world displayed for
her alone, cat francophone who cannot
speak a single word aloud.

 [Note Book Title]

MOON, RIVER, HARMONICA
—Taylor Graham

Al says, It’s hard to hear myself, what with
the guitar, bass and drums, and Susie singing,
everybody blending. I never did take
lessons, just listened to Crazy Unc blowing
into his harp so it sounded like no instrument
at all but himself, it disappeared between
mouth and fingers into pure song. No words
to get in the way. A man tried to teach me
what they call theory, inversions and all those
terms sounded like blowing through
the brains instead of the heart. I want to hear
the soul-tone solitude, music you make
that no one else hears exactly as you hear it
below the other voices, touching bottom-rock
then rising, a fish in wine-dark river,
drifting with time which is the music. Moon’s
inverted and riffed in the river’s reflection.
I just try to keep my breath afloat
in the immersion. That’s how I play,
thinking about Crazy Unc. They always
said he was high on moonshine. Only moon-
shine he ever knew was full moon on the river,
his harp a river flowing under the moon.

DEVOTIONAL
—Ann Wehrman, Sacramento, CA

The winter of ’76 was one of the colder on record,
even for Minnesota, where they’re used to weather;
100 below with the wind chill—
we were sent to fundraise door-to-door.

The evening was gray-shrouded, light snow fell;
I trudged silently, whistled holy songs.
The cottages were well separated,
room for a garden in summer, personal and family space,
soft lights burned in the windows.

I approached each door as if making an altar call,
opened the cardboard box in which nestled
scented candles Church members had made—
fragrances of pine, blueberry, cherry
captured in cheap, thick, glass carafes.

The box too heavy on my hip;
my fingers, double gloved, clutched its edges tightly;
the box gradually disintegrating
under the persistent wet snowstorm.

Bills folded in my pocket,
face freezing despite scarf’s swaddling,
heart like a votive flame in burgundy glass,
out alone in the night,
tiny Minnesota hamlet, cruel winter of ’76.

_________________

CROWN OF STARS
—Ann Wehrman

You say you liked me better
before, when I danced all night,
drank and got stoned with you,
was always somebody’s lover.

Maybe if I’d stayed
in that Illinois town—
instead, I ran from comfortable abuse,
tried to climb a mountain
without a rope,
fell down into darkness—
eyes sealed, I slept.

Today waking in bright sunlight,
I gulp sweet, cold air,
admire my delicate, glistening
wings of cobalt and violet,
beat them, gathering myself to fly.

 _________________

WEIGHT OF THE YEARS
—Ann Wherman

all that mattered was
your hand holding mine
walking home in the dark
your long legs, tender belly
spooning me as we slept
your joyful morning smile

decades later, I realize
I’ve always had your back
in the twilit, rented room
for a breath, I seem to see
your twenty-year-old face superimposed

then it dissolves
I touch your shoulder lightly
afraid you will vanish completely
feel your fingers brush mine

IF JUST ONE PERSON
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

If just one person comes to our workshop
on writing as an instrument to heal
or comfort sickness, even the desperate drop
toward ever-plummeting death, if it anneals
that one to the pain sewn coarse against refined
and sweet stuff in a life, this will have shown
how closely lung and stomach, heart and mind
can team in sympathy, so may atone
for whatever failings at least in my life
lead me to stray from vision, stray from plan,
and even this straggling verse, come catch-as-can,
I hope distills the urgency, the strife
that doubles relief in utterance-shared release
—as once I convinced a violist to try an Arnold Bax piece.


For Mary Hansen and Dipali Buch on the college workshop “Writing Your Way to Wellness” (poem written just before a professional development teleconference at Folsom Lake College)

 C'est trop difficile...

Today’s LittleNip(s):

IF WE WERE DEAD, YOU WOULD STILL BE BEAUTIFUL
—Ann Wehrman

imagine meeting again
in space somewhere, your eyes are stars
mouth’s generous curve now a lilting comet’s tail

our bodies fed worms decades before
yet here we are, still living
I recognize your laugh, your warmth
we still love each other without reservation
outside of death, outside of mind, outside of time

* * *

UB THE JUDGE
—Caschwa, Sacramento

Ulysses Boykin
is a judge of the 3rd Circuit Court
in Wayne County, Michigan

___________________
 

Our thanks to today’s fine contributors, and to our readers for their patience with these cat photos celebrating our absurdist Seed of the Week: When Cats Learn French, including our first-ever (however crude) animation!

Our new week in area poetry begins with the poetry read-around in Placerville, Poetry In Motion, 6pm, as well as Josh McKinney’s Eco-Poetic Readers at Sac. Poetry Center in Sacramento, 7:30pm. Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento features readers every Thursday night at 8pm. Next Saturday, SPC’s Thursday Night Poetry Workshop, led by Rhony Bhopla, will hold a celebratory reading at the Valley Hi-North Laguna Library in Sacramento, 2pm, and there will be another poetry read-around in Placerville, Poetic License, also 2pm, at the Placerville Sr. Center. Then on Sunday at 5:30pm, friends and area poets will hold a tribute at California Stage, Sacramento, to Ann Menebroker, who passed away in July. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right of this) for info about these and other upcoming readings in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

The Sacramento Bee published a lovely obituary for Sacramento Poet Pat Pashby this past Sunday; see www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?n=patricia-pashby-pat&pid=181139065

There’s definitely a change in the air as the new season approaches: watch the green box at the right of this column for workshops and submissions opportunities, beginning with Manzanita Writers Press in Angels Camp (Calaveras County). MWP is a lively enterprise featuring Writers Unlimited, Manzanita Arts Emporium (bookstore/gallery/giftshop/publishing house), and periodic workshops and seminars. On Oct. 14-16, for example, they will bring the Writers Roundup Retreat to the Mark Twain Wild West Fest in Angels Camp, featuring three days of writers' workshops on a variety of topics. See manzapress.com for info, schedule, early-bird tickets (by Sept. 1).

Manzanita Writers Press's also has a new online anthology/blog which accepts poetry/art/photography/prose: manzapress.com/2Guidelines%20for%20Submission%20Out%20of%20the%20Fire%208-4-16%20(2).pdf

Save the date of Sunday, Sept. 18 for the annual Petaluma Poetry Walk: see www.petalumapoetrywalk.org 

Advanced Dancing by Laverne Frith, 
who also did the cover art

And congratulations to Laverne Frith, who has a new book out, Advanced Dancing, from AuthorsPress. Go to www.authorspressbooks.com/author_detail.php?a_id=612 or to Amazon: www.amazon.com/Laverne-Frith/e/B0076RQNB0 for information and to order. We are very happy to announce new publications here in the Kitchen; send info to kathykieth@hotmail.com/.

______________________

—Medusa
 

Celebrate poetry! 

—Illustration by Edward Gorey

For more about illustrator Edward Gorey, go to 

www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/08/04/collecting-edward-gorey
For more silly photos of cats on a variety of subjects, see

verybesttop10.blogspot.com/2015/01/top-10-images-of-cats-reading-books.html

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.

Loss of Habitat

(Anonymous Photo)

STRANGE RECLAMATIONS
—Michael Ceraolo, Willoughby Hills, OH

A house on the East Side
where eleven women had been murdered
and the smell of death had been blamed
on the sausage factory next door,
                                                 and
a house on the West Side
where three women had been kept
as sex slaves for a decade;
                                         both razed
as though the evil were in the houses themselves
and not in the respective residents
who committed the crimes
                                         (and
all the materials destroyed rather than re-used
in order to prevent souvenir hunters)

A former movie theater first converted
to storefronts with apartments above,
now converted to a grassy lot,
                                             and
another theater converted to a parking lot

A house in the suburbs razed to make way
for a pocket-sized park and garden

And many others,
                           a too-lengthy list,
                                                     gone;
                                                               gone
for no other reason than that someone
(or several someones)
decided they should be gone,
                                            those someones
sometimes looking to make a name for themselves
and always ignoring the truism
that the greenest house is the one
that is already built,
                              and not caring
that demolishing homes that are structurally sound
when many people are homeless
has little or no justification,
                                        except
as a ritual sacrifice
to the god of property values

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Michael Ceraolo for this poignant poem about lost homes and other habitats, including his own.

 Celebrate poetry today by going to Avid Reader on Broadway

in Sacramento, where Mosaic of Voices will present

Juan Manuel Carrillo and Danny Romero, 2pm. 
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 more may be added at the last minute.

Soulitone

Phoenix Botanical Garden

—Poems by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

—Photos by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento, CA

JUST BEYOND THE BOG—SOULITONE

                    for Alice Anderson

The fields of eternity
Just beyond the bog.

Bring your breath along with you.
Your favorite one, the one you use
For love, dressed in the colors with
Which you sing the perfect song.

The moonlight knows the music,
While we teach ourselves the lyric.

Two golden ghosts made of
Sparkling lights, racing one
Another up the steepness of a roof.

The prizes that burned our mouth-tops.
The moon out, looking for us
Specifically, yet never making
A sound that could be our names.

How do we come to know what
These things are?  A distant
Barking.

Golden teeth of the Ancient Greeks
Huddled over events.  Soulitone,
Feeling they have an importance in
Common with the twisting given by
Mute sky and a fevered
Dream of a drunken midsummer’s
Eve, populated entirely by fireflies.

Now, they are the same as sands
Upon the ever-moving shores.
Choirs of angels, writing madly
As night after night they throw
This writing to the earth.
Knives of the muses poking
Out of every heart.  The rivers,
The landscape, wine dark
With blood, year after year,
Garden after garden, ruined
By the same petty desires
That drive the oxen before
The starry plow.
Watch.

PIANOFORTE

Where can your mouth employ me
That is not speech but telling
Drifted into villages of time.

Its peasant gods claiming
Great dominion over such
That has no worth except
To the heart and its rampant
Roving for a true eternity
That blows here and back
And is a flurry of our hands
Too upon each other.

Hailed in thunderstorm and
A kind of worship understood
By those who build such language
With their bodies, hands in hair
And pulling like the tides
That charge over the wave tops
Lest we ever be done
With one another.

CASTANETS

She spoke to me at night
And she was my voice and I was
Not her voice and our speech
Was of the hurricane, the sounds
The wasps make with their chewing.

The shaking of the windows high
In the house.  No one goes there
Anymore.

So I told her I was at her arm
And balls of blue and silver were
Her charms.  I lifted up the veil
And let the Autumn in.

I give you this room and you
Give me this room and it is not
The same room or the eye
Before the keyhole or a splash
Of sun in a dented cup with
Most of the water used up.

She called it luck.
I called it taking a corner
On two wheels with a loaded truck.

She said hold me like that again, sir.
And I said the same but used her name
And so we continued until morning came.

ÉTUDE-SKIPPING

The dream was you again.
We were singing that old Neruda song,
That old Patchen song, that Edward Estin
Ditty.  It was all there.

The touch of your hand, like they said.
The smell of your hair.
The drift the moon had on everything.
The parts where the words disappeared
And the song would be forever singing,
There would be a perfection of you again.

We would wake up before God had the idea.
We would roll across the bed as big as the sky.
We are come out of the forest, across the meadow.
Every single thing would know the circus of the stars.
We would walk into all naming, and naming
Would be done.

I reach out and feel your shoulder.
This is part of a dream.  It was
Those poets talking with their songs
In their mouths and they were us and we,
Oh yes, oh yes, we were always ourselves.

 Phoenix Botanical Garden Pavilion

WORLD

What made you think
It was a dream?
Did you open your eyes
Suddenly and the world
Seemed unreal?

* * *

AFTERNOON

Leave a moment to glance
Out the doorway.
The afternoon has returned
Without asking anything.

* * *

SHADOW

Sometimes just the shadow moves.
Every object in the room
Perfectly still.

* * *

LEAF

One leaf touches another.
Asking a question?

* * *

BITTER MELON

In the Chinese garden
The bitter melon plant
Decides exactly what
Its fruit will look like.

* * *

WREN

All afternoon, not one bird
In the sky.  Then a house
Wren takes a short cut.

* * *

CHANCE

I’ll take a chance
I may never hear
Your voice again.

* * *

MEADOWLARK

The meadowlark returns.
I am completely surprised.
Such singing.

 Rocklin, CA Sky

BLUE

It’s just the sky,
You say.  The blue
Lifted above the green.
So much there, it wasn’t
Known for lifetime
After lifetime.

Why make a noise about it?
Homer saw the wine-dark sea.
We have no idea where the sky
Begins.  Where the sea ends.
Let us lift ourselves and fly.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

BREEZE
—D.R. Wagner

It is too hot to run
Across the top of the
Garden pool but the breeze
Does it anyway.

 D.R.'s Latest

—Cover Painting By Steven Kenny

Many thanks to D.R. Wagner for sending us today’s fine poetry, even as he recovers, and Cynthia Linville for sending us these sunny photos of Phoenix Botanical Garden. About “Soulitone”, D.R says, “It is a word I made up. I'm liking how it sounds and how it can mean.” His new collection, Love Poems, is supposed to be released today (8/20); order it at coldriverpress.org/. It’s 110 pages, perfect-bound soft cover illustration by Steven Kenny (see above), five original illustrations from Cynthia Charters inside. $16.95, free shipping included for the Continental States.

Sac. Poetry Center’s journal, Poetry Now, is now an online quarterly. The new edition (edited by Rhony Bhopla) may be seen at poetrynowblog.wordpress.com/ or check in at their new Facebook Page, Poetry Now. Lots of fun news, poetry and photography here, including upcoming events such as the Sacramento visit (Nov. 12) by U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, with an opportunity to buy tickets, and the tribute to Annie Menebroker to be held Sunday, Aug. 28 at the California Stage in Sacramento from 5:30-8:30pm.

___________________

—Medusa

 My Inspiration

—New Poetry Now “Cover” Photo by Nanci Lee Woody

Celebrate poetry in our community and around the world! 

Sacramento Voices presents Carol Louise Moon and 

Wendy Williams at Sac. Poetry Center today, 4:30pm, or

 head up to Placerville for Poetry Off Main, with Kate Wells 

and Lara Gularte, 3pm. Scroll down to the blue box 

(under the green box at the right) for info about these and

other upcoming readings in our area—

and note that more events 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.

That Trump Card

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

MY WALL STREET GARDEN

It’s midnight
and I’m too tired to stroll
in my Wall Street garden
to check on the nightlife

among the flowers
and wildlife
under the moonlight
so I let my eyes

float silently out
above the garden
like flying saucers
spying on all below.

At dawn my eyes return
rheumy and red and tell me
the garden’s a war zone
and warn me

not to go out there 
without a bazooka.
They tell me
of moles and voles

popping out of holes
to be eaten alive by
possums and coons
with saliva dripping

as they forage hell-bent
for something to eat.
Moles and voles are
something to eat.

Possums and coons
are Wall Street gluttons.
They hold the Trump card
and dine at will.

_____________________

HEDGE WITH A HOLE

Stretched on the couch
by the living room window,
too tired to rise,
verify locks and the stove,
officially retire, he hears outside
blasts of a curse, fists, and feet
running.  In the morning,
before he leaves for the train,
crisp in his seersucker suit,
he walks around to the window,
finds creeping bent torn,
roses beheaded,
the hedge with a hole
the girth of a man.
He will be too upset
this morning
to read his paper
on the train.

 Spray

GRANDMA ELLA

She was about the doing
not about applause

canning tomatoes in summer
baking pies in fall
quilting winter away

using watercolors
to paint robins in spring
hopping across the lawn

listening for dinner
in the softening ground.

___________________

A SONG IN HER VALLEY

When he saw her in heels
he said she’s the one so
he said his “I do,” never to
climb a different mountain.

That night he began 
at her ankles, climbed
seams in her stockings,
moved over her hips

and circled her waist,
strolled up her spine and
stood on her shoulders,
took a deep breath and

rappelled to the smile
he saw on her breasts.
Many years later his life
is a song in her valley.

 Beach Flowers

SMALL SHOULDERS

She speaks the truth
as she always has
in 40 years of marriage

especially when she’s
lost in making dinner.
This time though

she has to wash
blood from the paring knife
before she peels

the last of the potatoes.
Until the knife went in
he didn’t think in 40 years

she had noticed that
for a man his size he  
has small shoulders.

 Pelican

AN UNFORTUNATE REMARK

The old couple sits in recliners
after dinner the way old couples do
and she tells him what she saw
in the yard that first warm day
and it’s crocuses and daffodils
no tulips yet but she knows
tulips will pop any day
and he listens because there
might be a quiz but then

she sees the gun in his lap
and she asks why it’s there
and he says it’s in case
she repeats the remark
she made the night before
because this time he’ll shoot
the words out of the air
quicker than a pheasant
in hunting season and

blood will splatter
on the ceiling and walls
because this time she won't
put a hole in his heart as she
did last night and maybe
the two of them can return
to who they were before
she spoke and he survived,
hanging on to life.
 

 Surf Fishing

LIKE FATHER LIKE

Strapped to his bed
in the nursing home,
he tells every nurse
who comes in
and tightens his straps
his trouble started

in first grade when
he'd make a mistake
reciting the alphabet
in the kitchen for Mother
while Father in the parlor
waited for an error

and then dragged him
down to the basement
and made him stand
in a tub of hot coals
plucked from the furnace
until he was able 

to recite his letters
without error and then
Father would take him
upstairs to Mother who
put salve on his feet
so he could recite

his letters all over again,
this time without mistake
which Father pointed out,
decades later in the same
nursing home, was proof
his boy had learned a lesson.

 Humpback Whale

UNIVERSAL TRUTHS

When Bill was a lad
his parents preached that
Scripture was the truth.

Decades later now
Bill still believes that.
In college, though,

his professors told him
science was the truth.
Bill still believes that, too.

But there’s another truth
that Scripture and science
never clarified for Bill.

At age 13 he saw it
scratched on a wall
in black graffiti

above a public urinal,
a universal truth he had
just begun to understand.

The message was
“Big tits are the greatest!”
a truth he still believes as well.

 Whale 2
 

CATS AT THEIR BOWLS LAPPING

This time there’s a postscript:
“If ever I cook dinner for you,
it will be Coquilles St. Jacques
and Jefferson Davis Pie.”

Imagine Angela,
after all these years,
rising and gliding
to check on my pie,

wouldn’t that be something?
Angela, come to Chicago,
and bring all of your cats.
I’ll watch those cats

in your lap napping,
you in my lap napping,
the cats at their bowls lapping,
and I in my chair laughing.

Angela, bring all of your cats
and come to Chicago
to make Coquilles St. Jacques
and Jefferson Davis Pie.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

BEFORE THE LEAP

—Donal Mahoney

Young hummingbird swirls
and darts to the red feeder.
Black cat waits below.

___________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Donal Mahoney and Katy Brown for today’s highly satisfying breakfast in the Kitchen! Katy's photos were taken in Pacifica, CA, when she and Sandy Thomas read down there recently.

(Anonymous Photo)

Celebrate poetry, and the magnificence of the sea!

 

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.

Oranges in the Desert

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

WE MET

We met in August
as it were yesterday
when I reviewed
movie scripts
for a summer job
then danced away
at a Fifties mixer
from the cotillion
my aunt made me attend
and now I compose
an elegy and epitaph
to our anniversary
remembering where we hid
behind closed doors
at the Algerian
pavilion plaza
when you
and Uncle Sonny
worked on a movie script
and we telegraphed
each other
for years as you settled
in West Hollywood
working with
my Uncle Sonny
as publicity director
for a big studio
you who really
understood me
as we sat on
a box of oranges
in the desert.
 

 Paddle 8, Frank O'Hara, 2009

—Portrait by Alex Katz

ALEX KATZ'S "O'HARA"

An era
swimming in love
with Frank O'Hara
his fixed smile
transfixed as a guide
close to the earthy verse
by lifting a beer
at the Cedar Bar
keeping up with
your "lunch poems"
intact and we arrive
as the smell of a shower
of rained-
out circumstance
at the five-star
training gym
with dressing down
in sheets finding as you out
with a circus clown
in town on the elevator
your bodywork
of laundering
with your
one-night stand
as Alex Katz
paints your nexus
facing the city
with an accent
by an unlit street
at midnight's
soundproof jazz
near love traffic
by Central Park
asking us two
to play piano
for two hands
by Mozart
in bare feet
at the faulty window
where pigeons
reside forever
near the open door
when taxi cabs await you
others flag down a limo
for those uptown
knowing you’re
showing up late
running in the taut breeze
perspiring in a sweater
from a colorful portrait
and missing love letter.

 Two Deck Chairs

—Painting by David Hockney, 1988

HOCKNEY'S TWO DECK CHAIRS

What you do
after you swim
out of breath
in your half-open mouth
who captures a wave
before a sprightly
grin and tonic
from my laughter sides
enjoying your excursions
toward art's communication
in the pool or ocean
when competition
runs deep
but there is only
one Hockney
from the West Coast
pressured by
your declaration
and art's invitation
at the movie set
in the ’80's
unaware to look up
at my poster to host
itinerant artists
for a bed and breakfast
who were here
to visit a poet
at my kitchen table
by your portrait
and signed print
called Two Deck Chairs.

Bottles and Fishes, 1910-12

—Painting by George Braque 

BRAQUE'S DAYDREAM

Not allowing any space
of impulses
to divide my time
in competition with Picasso
our surrealism will be made
from our several painted wounds
we share in common
in an uneasy studio
as Apollinaire visits us
extends his friendship's hand
a still life is reality
transforming sadness
into fulcrums of creation.

____________________

WALLACE STEVENS’ SENSIBILITY

Language invades
your sensibility
parting yourself in art
at innocent glances
of framed nuances
to disengage your life
from an emancipated time
to take a chance at your age
and engage in a balancing act
of passages of rare emotions
as nature's way
of transfiguration
inside an analysis
of your Platonic soul
from a maturation
of dramatic reveries
in days of contradictions
revives us to recollect our past
is to make a history
of your soul
in annual pilgrimages
by prominent goals
with a metamorphosis
in an ease of dreams
your elegies seasoned
with body shadows
forming monologues
of memories
based on reason
in the life of Socrates
or in your "Notes
Toward a Supreme Fiction"
written on August dog days
your diction is dominant
in your harmonium to please,
after a brief swim
of enchantment
in a heated
somnolent nakedness
wading in
at the swimming pool
enfolding a waiting
invitation's engagement
of bubbles rising
in a nimbus of words
which welcomes
your poetry of surprise
from a gesture
of former images
you sent out
by composing exquisite letters
and maxims on your patio
now at the kitchen table filled
with pistachio sherbet
you listen to classical music
unleashed on the piano
by a Mozart and Schubert trio
by guests who arrive
requested to entertain
by your perplexed continuum
who are transfixed
by your palace of a pool,
yet Wallace you are alone
playing solitaire
keeping furtive secrets
as Baudelaire entangles
your double-dream vision
and children out of school
thrill to mingle
on the sandy playground
you listen to shadowy birds
with sounds flying over
the tree shade
and a friend does a self-portrait
of a much younger Stevens
when you were a climber
doing an exercise
of a bard's body bends
on the tennis court
or composing a morning
aubade looking at the fence
in a quintet
of avant-garde poems
in your world without ends
or regret.

 Wallace Stevens

—Portrait by D.B. Johnson

R.B. KITAJ'S PORTRAITS

You smile
as a Jew in a fedora
but without having
the Torah in exile
staring at your portraits
of poets Creeley
and Duncan
as you paint a fascist cell
in Warsaw
or a Russian woman
in the Gulag
you make
our century real
in the flames
of our history
someday an angel
in Revelation
will accept
an invitation
extended from
the Isle of Patmos
to open the Lamb's book
of life in seals
from the great I AM,
he will reveal
that the Word
is hid in our heart
only to be exposed
as revolutionary poetry
as in Blake's divine art.

 For Love (Robert Creeley)

—Portrait by R.B. Kitaj, 1966-70

IN FRANK STELLA'S WAY

His lectures inspired
like his art of attentiveness
assertive
that culture's history
will answer us back
to our memory
of Fascism
with an abstraction
to give truth
in a prism
of satisfaction
in his Polish Village series
tells us in a thousand
scenes of glass
where Auschwitz
has a space for what
memory has forever passed.

 Pilica I, 1973

—Painting from Frank Stella Polish Village Series

BEN BELITT'S ENCOMIUM

The illuminating
Vermont
in your photographed
symmetry of description
of the Green Mountains
over a trek
of landscaped lakes
at a annunciation's retreat
from stills transported
awakening
in locution's pictures
from indifferent
vacation sites
with silence of
your moving nights
at a timeless
travelogue of vocation
transports words
of originality
at Platonic monologues
into a vocation
of hallucination
from posters
wanted on Elm
to locate
a lost golden retriever
of seasonal
announcements
at a weekend
barn dance
as homecomings
of birds
remake your images
in a symmetry
of poetic form
or about
St. Augustine's epigraphs
from a
charity of senses
into a narrative
of humanity
from nature in “Departures”
as you write
upon Mexican scenes
of a siesta's hour
from a
visionary insinuation
of compensatory objectives
as robins and orioles fly
toward the third heaven
up from your new-
found visualization
in several
shifting flower pictures
we receive
your recognition
with love
for what
is an expansion
in language's
cultural invitation
from querulous
yet marvelous lines
asking space
and time shifts
into subliminal
added associations
with translucent
harmonies
of clarity's tenses
of Ben Belitt's
fascinations.
 

 Old Bennington (Click to Enlarge)

FAIRFIELD PORTER'S DAYS

Receiving an invitation
to view Interior with
Dress Pattern
in a gallery
of upper Manhattan
feeling flattered
in this penthouse loft
wondering
was life downhill
from here
among the jet set
with the blues
of memory
as the day
with a voice raised me
up from Boston's backwaters
of obscurity
yet with a security
of feeling
standing apart
from the crowd
playing
a Bach violin sonata
feeling like a proud jester
of entertainment
with a Bojangles angle
as angels prepare
for my debut
at fourteen
without any directions
but to be cool
as Mailer takes me
up to the roof
after I told him my fear
of heights
subtracts
this August
midnight hour
and asks me
to look down
at the traffic
and to fight fear
he said with a bear hug
and a Bronx cheer.

 Interior with Dress Pattern

—Painting by Fairfield Porter

ROBERT LOWELL AT 100

This autumn you would be
one hundred years young
of waiting to celebrate
your September birthday
in a Beacon Hill dorm
if you are able to make it
through your mental storm
wondering if anyone
will remember you
as the first
confessional poet
with the words of form;
now that you are translated
your spirit still calls
out to us
in the warm hallways
when a poet
like Elizabeth Bishop
would visit
who could alter your mood
more than any medicine
or confession of sin
to make you feel free
facing up to your loss
with her cross-reference
as a Sapphic
wordsmith of poetry
in a landscape boundary
as a bailiwick
of nature
reaching your
mature mind
shaping words
of the centuries
from a soliloquy
resolution's activity
in her own skills
at colloquy
taking after Wordsworth
as the Romantics will
by adjusting eidetic memory
speaking of your loan of grief
who alone understood you
when she subtly returned
your belief into tell us
a good report of her lover
that made you jealous,
reporting
of her recent visit
to Nova Scotia and Brazil
you discussed bas reliefs
and petunia paintings
of Georgia O'Keeffe,
as guys still play soccer
or ice hockey
here along
the Widener library wall
nearby the fireplace,
Lowell still sits with his pipe
(we still witness your face)
making us thrilled
to be warmed
by your ripe verse
at the August rain
and sustained
by disarmed grace
in Robert's innovation
of history's charmed trace
of epigrammatic individuality
that will
not conform or swipe
at art in a hurting gesture
of dramatic intimacy
with a grotesque
critic's stripe
from the abyss
of his epiphanies
from a narrative's
metamorphosis
in an innovation
of a new age
of hip and hype
surviving from past words
and his third wife's last kiss.

 Albert Ginsberg Portrait by

Fabrizio Cassetta

GINSBERG'S GUIDE

You stood up to
all the verbs,
you would not adjust
to Passover's bitter herbs
or Easter's story of hope
you preferred
cruising along
in the face of it
as a poet of "Howl"
gets high on dope
saying on
Merv Griffin's show
there is nothing wrong
with a thirst for a bong
from Queens, NY
sweat lodge
with a towel
over your head
when at
my first urban read
with a rugby star
next to a bed
I felt strange
lips pecking
at the nape
of my neck
like a wise
wizened owl
but not wanting
any vatic fuss
or to hear
any dramatic song
from your sitar
on our laps
at the edge
of Indian summer
with an August
insomnia's collapse
pretending we were
living
in Roman gladiator
or pagan times
hearing the impending taps
at the door to an apocalypse,
there is no crime, Allen
for affectionate love,
only your poor mother
did not get the Hitler-Stalin
crime’s connection
in a Devil's pact
in fact,
she was still smarting
from the direction
of pogroms
in Russia,
Hungary or Romania
where Fascism
was aiming
its crossing arrows at us
as Bob Dylan sings to us
in a post-war chorus
"The times were
a-changing."

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Poetry is an act of peace.

—Pablo Neruda

___________________

—Medusa, with thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today’s fine poetry!

For more D.B. Johnson portraits of writers, go to www.henryhikes.com/illustration/portraits/portraits2.html/.

For Susan Wheeler’s tribute to poet Ben Belitt, see www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/tributes/susan_wheeler/. By the way, do you ever check out poetrysociety.org/? Lots of fine material there.

 Celebrate poetry today by going to Words Dance Publishing 

(wordsdance.com) for a variety of interesting, well laid-out 
features with lots of audio, plus a submission opportunity. 
(I think they’re still publishing, since I couldn’t find any 
info to the contrary…) Today’s LittleNip is from that site. 

Then head over to Luna’s Cafe for Poetry Unplugged, 

featuring Ann Wehrman and lots of open mic, 8pm. Or—

go across the Causeway to Poetry in Davis, 

with Allegra Silberstein and musician Timothy Nutter, 8pm. 

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

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

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

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to Medusa.