Friday, April 29, 2022

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

CHARLEY PLYMELL, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ~

 


CHARLES   PLYMELL

! H A P P Y    B I R T H D A Y !


Poet

Publisher

Printer

Native


Born April 26, 1935

Holcomb, Kansas


"The only way to stay out

of trouble is to grow old"

Orson Welles

The Lady From Shanghai


photograph by Mark Reinertson

Charley sent it to me last weekend





Monday, April 25, 2022

RUSSIA ~ UKRAINE ~


"Don't think yourselves better because you burn up

friends and enemies with long range missiles

without ever seeing what you have done."

THOMAS MERTON 

____________________________________

It is unconscionable that while Ukrainians are being slaughtered, NATO members still send hundreds of millions of euros every day to Mr. Putin’s coffers to buy oil and gas. Political leaders who oppose a total halt to transfers to Russia are complicit in Mr. Putin’s war crimes. They are indirectly paying the wages of those who committed atrocities in Bucha. Ending all imports of Russian oil and gas would come at a significant price, but it would be small compared to the continued destruction in Ukraine. Here too, Finland is moving in the right direction, promising to end the country’s reliance on Russian energy imports in a matter of “weeks or months.”


Mr. Rasmussen is a former secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a former prime minister of Denmark.


New York Times, April 25, 2022







RENE CHAR

 




The Resourceful Bulrush



I hear rain even when it's not the rain,

Just nightfall;

I rejoice in dawn even when it's not the dawn,

But my own white pulp stirring among the mud.

A child's mouth ruffles me with its teeth.

Love of the silent waters!


The hawthorn has the nightingale.

I have the spells that bind.



__________________________


Rene Char

The Inventors

translated by Mark Hutchinson

Seagull Books, 2015





Friday, April 22, 2022

CHARLES MINGUS HAPPY 100TH ~

 



    G O    T O    T H E    P A R T Y


                                                             Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images
Charles Mingus, who was born 100 years ago on Friday, lived, wrote and played bass in a state of agitated brilliance.


KURT VONNEGUT ~

 



R E A D      M E





Thursday, April 21, 2022

MURIEL RUKEYSER ~

 





Poem



I lived in the first century of world wars.

Most mornings I would be more or less insane,

The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,

The news would pour out of various devices

Interrupted by attempts to see products to the unseen.

I could call my friends on their devices;

They would be more or less made for similar reasons.

Slowly I would get to pen and paper,

Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.

In the day I would be reminded of those men and women

Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,

Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.

As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,

We would try to imagine them, try to find each other.

To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile

Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,

Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means

To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,

To let go the means, to wake.


I lived in the first century of these wars.


_______________

Muriel Rukeyser

The Essential Muriel Rukeyser

Ecco 2021





Wednesday, April 20, 2022

BRIAN DOYLE ~

 






Joey



A while ago I got sick.

It was a thorough and major sick.

Lost use of the old hands and feet,

Which was, as you can imagine, weird.

My kids called the sickness The Thing.

The Thing went on for months and months.

I could tell you lots of stories about The Thing,

But there's only one story that I want to tell you:

Every morning my son got up early to help me

Put my socks on. I would sit on the back stairs

In the dark and he would wrestle my socks on

And neither of us would say any words and I

Still can't think of anything cooler than that.

I have racked my brains and considered

All the possibilities of love and I still

Return to that boy and those socks.

No matter what happens to me,

That happened to me.



______________

Brian Doyle

One Long River of Song

Little, Brown, 2019



photo: Brian Doyle & his family, 2017




Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Saturday, April 16, 2022

WHOLE EARTH ~

 




Whole Earth

The Many Lives of

Stewart Brand

John Markoff

Penguin, 2022



Thursday, April 14, 2022

CLIVE FAUST ~

 




"Light flickers on and off ruffled layers of leaves."


_________________

TODAY

WE REMEMBER

THE PASSING OF OUR FRIEND

CLIVE FAUST

PLEASE READ MORE ABOUT THIS FINE

POET




E.B. WHITE ~

 






Wednesday, April 13, 2022

ALICE PAALEN RAHON ~

 



Varda Poem

                                     for Yanko


You who taught numbers to know the rainbow


Who opened every door in the celestial city


Who always made more when there was less


Who enchanted birds


Who loved all things except the mean


Should you be seen


Dancing in your golden ashes


About half a league off our port beam


As we go out the Gate


While the sun sets clear


Will you tell us one more time


How hard it is to be human


When it's so easy to be divine



_______________________


Shapeshifter

Alice Paalen Rahon

New York Review of Books

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

2021



Tuesday, April 12, 2022

IN A CLAY PIG'S EYE ~

 






screeching like baby birds

in a crowded nest ~

dumplings frying







on the fourth day

I named the fly

howard







my senile father

eats the fortune cookie

and the fortune







our beautiful old love

on such thin ice

we can't even shiver







a splinter

pulled from my thumb

spit into the fire







because of my old father

my old mother has learned

to make baby food






after the storm

an apology

of soft rain







going out the door

i pass a grape that had

rolled away from breakfast







a fence between

the cemetery and the road

leans toward the road







mountains disappear in fog

and i want to go right along

with them



_____________________________


selected from ~

Ronald Baatz

In A Clay Pig's Eye

Seastone Editions, 2005