TREES ~

Norton 2016

The author did not drop his prize ash tree

others did, he watched like all good authors

and then wrote the book

of making things from his ash tree

he sought out the crafts people to

make his things and guided

the long life

of his tree

along

RAYMOND QUENEAU ~

It's Raining


Shower shower shower shower shower shower 

rain oh rain oh rain oh!   oh rain oh rain oh rain!

waterdrops waterdrops waterdrops waterdrops

umbrella oh umbrella oh showered oh!

waterumbdrops waterdroppel

hoods capes and raincoats

the rain's so wet and the water soaks and soaks!

wet water wet water wet water wet water

and how nice nice nice it is isn't it

to have your feet soaked and your hair all wet

wet from the shower and the rain and the drops

of rainwater and of shower and with no dropbrella

to protect your feet and your wet hair

that won't curl up again won't curl up again

because of the shower because of the rain

because of the shower and the drops of rain

the water drops of rain and the shower drops

unruly hair umbrellaless hair



______________________

Raymond Queneau
E Y E S E A S (Les Ziaux)
translated from the French by
Daniela Hurezanu & Stephen Kessler
Black Widow Press 2008

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALVARO ~

The wonderful poet, painter, humanitarian, activist
Alvaro Cardona-Hine passed away in late August
on the 28th, and only Alvaro would know to be
with us forever, leaving us all on our wedding anniversary.
His correspondence to me was like no other —
rich in romance and clear thinking, hard work,
steering by the poem star.
He is missed by many ~
His birth month is October.

Alvaro Cardona Hine High Road Artist

Alvaro

Truchas, New Mexico

MUSCULAR UNGULATES ~

SAVE CARIBOU

SAVE WOLVES

KILL DEVELOPMENT

read more ~

photo ~

A large bull mountain caribou in late fall in British Columbia, Canada. Known as gray ghosts, the animals are among the most endangered species in the continental United States. 

Credit

                                                                                                photographer ~ David Moskowitz 

REPUTATION ~

Reputation

Fist-size Harley-

Davidson belt buckle he slouched

In steady rain shoveling

Snow around his truck

Parked by a driveway I shovel

As caretaker. He told me his
Life story how things hadn’t

Worked out right when his family

Moved to the woods, hiking

Deep snow to a trailer

Across the river after a

Makeshift footbridge washed

Away — and by the way, long hair

In his eyes — could he cross our

Land down river where most of the

New lumber to his bridge was salvaged —

He’d heard it was best to ask me first.

Local Killers

They’re polite, both of them

Just killed a deer on our land.

One hunter needs to use the phone,

The other one doesn’t want to retrace

Their hike through the woods

To his car. Could I drive them back?

The same place we buried our old dog

Last spring these two hunters have

Dragged an 8-point buck down the

Hill slope and gut it right there.

Of course they didn’t know anything

About the dog and when I came upon

Them they stood rubber boots

In blood, guts matted on snow.

We left no sign or blood when we buried

The dog. Dropped a pine tree and buried

Her under the boughs, head at the stump.

She rotted. Now one of the young hunters

Is washing his big knife off in the brook

Running behind us. His balding head is

Ashen with sweat, sweater blood smeared —

He tags the deer with a rip into the

Rear leg, shows me where they shot it

Four times. They still don’t know where

They are, so I point them to the road.

Goodbye

It’s been three years

Since we spoke with one

Another, and I sat in my

Old car with the engine running,

Window rolled open, and Everett

Squatted by the roadside in the

Dirty wet shadow of his home-made

Barn, munching on a cigarette stub

In a late afternoon rain.

He is leaving the valley. There is

A For Sale sign hammered into his

Front lawn above the retaining

Stone wall I built for him long ago.

I can remember how we cruised the

Back road in his dusty pickup truck

Robbing the walls that nobody seemed

To own because no one was around.

All that has changed.

Everyone owns land in this

Valley — now a dog and home are

Every 1000 feet — the same

Road I once followed the

Dragged trail of a porcupine

Today I wave to six new neighbors.

Everett still hasn’t lost his

Handsome smile and he knows I

Think what he is thinking but

We don’t say anything except we do

Need this rain as it soaks his green

Work shirt, and nearby the familiar

Drizzle from heaped manure drains

Down to the brook. That water

Once tasted like cold stone shade

And I would haul it to my cabin every

Other day — then Everett moved in and

With a farmer comes manure and in that

Pissy barn he gave me water from his tap.

No other man on this road ever gave

Me water from his tap or stood talking

In the privacy of rain or paid me one

Fall to cut his winter load of firewood

Because his back was lame and there was

Just no one else around to ask.

______________________

Bob Arnold

O N C E     I N     V E R M O N T

Gnomon

MOSES MASON ~

(1928)

HIS CONTRACT WAS SONG ~

S O     L O N G  

   I T'S     B E E N     G O O D  

   T O     K N O W     Y O U

O S C A R     B R A N D

ALTAMONT ~

A L T A M O N T     by     J O E L    S E L V I N

A L T A M O N T     by    J O E L     S E L V I N

Dey St, 2016

"The full enormity of the situation was crashing down on the Stones finally. The rushed preparations for the show, the absence of a police presence or any sort of practical security for that matter, the low stage, the scorched earth from the campfires of burnt garbage, the bad drugs and strong wine, the physical harm to the members of other bands who'd played that day, and the very real danger that the [Hells] Angels posed —all of it seemed to converge in this moment of the [Hells] Angel grabbing the microphone. The audience and everyone around the stage had known for hours that Sam Cutler was not in charge of this show; now it was clear that the Rolling Stones were not in charge either."
(Joel Selvin, Altamont, page 208)

MARGARET RANDALL ~

M A R G A R E T      R A N D A L L

"This is an urgent call. Those who haven't seen the PBS Frontline special "The Choice-2016" should watch it. I realize many of us are sicker than usual of the campaign spectacle this time around. It makes us ill. We think we cannot watch or listen to another sound bite, even from the candidate of our choice. But I urge you to watch this Frontline video for several reasons. First, it is brilliant. Second, it traces Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton from their childhoods so that we come away with an in-depth sense of who they are and how they became who they are. Third--and perhaps most importantly--watching this special we learn that Trump is far more dangerous than anything we may previously have understood. Trump is not simply a self-serving lying megalomaniac racist, sexist and xenophobe. He is a eugenicist. This means that he believes there are some human beings who are genetically superior to others. This was Hitler's philosophy. I sympathize with those in this country who favor a third political party. Who wouldn't like to see our two-party system open to include other truly competitive possibilities. But preventing a Trump presidency is too important right now to be supporting Jill Stein, whose ideology we may appreciate, or Gary Johnson, who doesn't recognize the word Aleppo and cannot name a single foreign leader he admires. The race is too close. The stakes are too high. Watch "The Choice-2016" and then do everything in your power to elect Hillary Clinton, no matter what disagreements you may have with some of her policies. If she doesn't win, it will be too late to bemoan a government in the hands of Mike Pence (whose hero is Dick Cheney), a Supreme Court capable of pushing back every gain we have made in the past many decades, despair among righteously desperate working people who believed they could trust a strongman to fix their lives, and "law and order" rather than the healing of our communities."
_______________________________

M A R G A R E T      R A N D A L L
from MR Facebook page, September 29, 2016
Reprinted by permission of the author


F R O N T L I N E ` "The Choice 2016"

ROLAND BARTHES ~

R O L A N D      B A R T H E S

Signs & Images

essays on art, cinema, photography

translated by Chris Turner

Seagull Books 2016

FEATURING JOHNNY GUITAR WATSON (1959) ~

ETEL ADNAN~

E T E L     A D N A N

Still from I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another. Courtesy LUX

"Poets used to walk across countries; they now sit motionless."

Seasons

O the Syrian desert mounted by its young emperors in the steel

days of Rome! Its salt has melted in the Euphrates. Further north

the spring has planted miles of orchards. Frantic flowers whisper

to the wind. Birds use corridors of air within the air for their flight.

Their shadows come from the soul. It is necessary not to stay still;

the voyage is family.

Shiny red peppers!  Green peppers!  Women walk between

tomatoes and leeks, in a season of war; that's not unusual. It's

rather like swimming in the summer. Things move fast in a world

of silence and disruption. In the morning, pushing dreams aside,

it's good to take a walk down alleys linden trees, vegetable

gardens.

Writing: the body's imprint on wet sand. Spring is element of

thinking; perfect tool. Poetry is a question of speed and time,

speed and time. For insomniacs, mind — while all other things are

excluded — plays games with itself. Then language, in those nights,

reveals itself as being our essential self. In dreams, we fly as fast as

we think, and we're rather happy.

When the world and the mind face each other with ultimate

intensity, they cannot cancel out. With its electrical system broken down,

the body doesn't qualify anymore for a name. One can then water

the garden with wine.

Eucalyptus doesn't grow for the shade it provides but for sheer

pleasure. Plane trees spend their nights on the county's lower

meadows. During the winter their branches burn in the

woodstoves. Silence falls gradually. Sleep becomes another form

of awareness.

Small towns suit the full moon. In the bars, loud music increases

the nature weariness of the customers. The season is undamaged

but there's danger in the grass. An apprehension of things to come.

That woman doesn't shoot heroin, being naturally high. Fate is

cruel and its damage irreparable.

Women enter their bed with their lover and feel their loneliness.

There's mystery to their flesh. On Saturn's moons a watery stuff

has been found. This night is not a night although it's not a day.

It's late at night. In a matter of a few hours a motion picture

has covered the lives of a bunch of people. In the same lapse of

time the air has hardly stirred, the trees have hardly grown and the

animals in the surrounding farms have not turned in their sleep.

The season is passing by.

A silver box on a table was considered one's Greek temple. To

teach the Veil's other side one needs to already by there. Obviously.

Winter is mystic season: a time for the transmutation of the cold

into intimacy; of terror, into certitude. Old Tolstoy, where are you,

you who knew departure on trains as liberation?

Are we a dream, a nightmare, a fulfillment? The desire for

permanence has given way to the eminence of the ephemeral.

That's why air drafts, dance, cinema or fire are privileged; they

disappear as they come. To be is a process that we're searching for

while it's already here. We are the looking, the heat, and the

voyage.

__________________

E T E L     A D N A N

Seasons

The Post-Apollo Press, 2008





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