NO OTHER ~

The Big Hug

Live long enough and you may see

Those you loved and who didn’t love you —

Heroes, fantasies, icons, dreamboats, filigree

All disappear, never-were, something about a big imagination

While those you do love and they do love you

They also disappear, here today gone tomorrow, poof

So now you know what to do

Kindness

No one spoke to her much, how strange —

Not family or friends and even those who

Sat with us at meals couldn’t say a word to her

Or even look her way. That must be beauty.

But every time she went to town and was alone —

A pretty scarf, an intriguing handbag, forever

And ever elderly women in parking lots and

Aisles of stores sought her out. This daughter

Whose own mother wouldn’t speak to her

Had women without daughters

Eating seed from her hand.

No Other

After she was sick awhile

She became thinner

Still young enough and strong

Her moves sexy

I couldn’t keep my hands off her hips

The attention delighted her 

She blushed instead of being too confident

Her hair fell to pieces like always

When she looked up my sky was blue

At night she fell asleep by the wood fire

There never would be another woman

Rain at the windows for days was welcome

In times of trouble no one wanted to listen to this stuff

To Have 

To have every bird in the woods

Finally sing and I am known to it

Is all the morning I ask

To see the flower garden

Move as a dress on your body

Is all the day I wish

To have the stars rise from the river

And you think of me not as crazy

Has to be the night ahead

—————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

 

TRACKS OF MY TEARS ~

DENISE LASALLE ~

HERE BUT I'M GONE ~

THEY SAY IT'S WONDERFUL ~

ATLAS ~

CECIL TAYLOR ~

C E C I L      T A Y L O R

( March, 25, 1929, Queens ~ April 5, 2018, Brooklyn )

JENNY WREN ~

THE WISDOM OF FAIRY TALES ~

The quality of this new book is an

unfortunate piece of junk, for $27 mind you,

and however slight, it is Robert Bly, much worth

a read and one would have hoped after Bly has given publishers

a good cash crop of his many subjects over decades: poetry, translations,

essays, and many years as a publisher himself at his Fifties, Sixties,

Seventies, and all the books were well made and handsome,

why not give the old wise man a book to last!
Bly has lost none of his adventurous self.




Henry Holt
2018

COME RAIN OR COME SHINE ~

I've never played The Eagles. Never. Not allowed in the house.

But this song is.

HENRY MILLER ~

—————————————————

It is not enough to overthrow governments,

masters, tyrants: one must overthrow his own

preconceived ideas of right and wrong, good

and bad, just and unjust. We must abandon the

hard-fought trenches we have dug ourselves

into and come out into the open, surrender our

arms, our possessions, our rights as individuals,

classes, nations, peoples. A billion men seeking

peace cannot be enslaved. We have enslaved

ourselves, by our own petty, circumscribed

view of life. It is glorious to offer one's life for

a cause, but dead men accomplish nothing. 

Life demands that we offer something more —

spirit, soul, intelligence, goodwill. Nature is

ever ready to repair the gaps caused by death,

but nature cannot supply the intelligence, the

will, the imagination to conquer the forces of

death. Nature restores and repairs, that is all. It

is man's task to eradicate the homicidal instinct

which is infinite in its ramifications and mani-

festations. It is useless to call upon God, as it is

futile to meet force with force.

H E N R Y      M I L L E R

Anyone lifting their head up to recognize the power and the glory

of Henry Miller, in my book, is a good day for the reader,

the individual, the world. Although a bit of a boggy

appreciation, Burnside does dig down into the golden

essence of Miller — not simply the once popular

lust of his Tropic books — but the realer lust

for life, which hasn't been equaled in his

many books of essays, travel, philosophy

and like Whitman, the greater love

of poetry and liberation.

Princeton 

2018

photo: Henry Miller

home on Big Sur

BESO, the Donkey ~

Beso and the Mailman




Beso is tired and old

but will wake up

and travel the pasture

to greet the mailman.



He carefully studies

the mouth of the box being

opened and the hand

feeding it.



I wonder if he remembers

the rum cake

my mother sent to me

last year.







Beso the Helmsman




A tide of gray fog floods

the valley floor.



Iron oaks drink their brew

with the dead and loom.



Beso measures deep waves

lifting pasture, hills,

and hemisphere,

with ancient earth legs.



The world seems unhidden.



We were marched onto this ark

a long time ago —



what was I?








Ask Beso




Are you wonderful?

Ask Beso

what he thinks about

the drinking song

he endured

when he carried you home

last night.








Beso's Dialect




Woud I know

if Beso spoke?

Maybe he has been

conversing with me

in a dialect that he

assumes I understand

because sometimes

I scratch his ears,

fetch the apple,

or leave him alone,

as requested.






Beso Keeps



Overcome by weariness,

Beso keeps to his stall.



One halfhearted ear tracks

hawks passing over the barn.






———————————

Richard Jarrette
Beso the Donkey
Michigan State University Press

WINTER REVELS ~

About One More Wood

From this little wood,

at last,

for ever or for years

the mushrooms have gone.

This happened slowly,

over thirty years.

And now, as I think back,

this disappearance, their "going"

seems one single action,

like the dying away

of a long-lived orchestra

of a long-lived choir.

————————

Gennady Aygi

translated by Peter France

WOODLANDERS ~

Woodlanders

She sat in the last of a summer sun

Her eyes closed

All ocean

Winter Light

We walked the town

By staying in the sun

And the sun was everywhere

That day and so were we

Fucking

Going grocery shopping

With the one you love

Isn’t grocery shopping

All At Once

Is my love for her really that vast — 

or is the heart-shaped onion she

brings to my hand at the grocery cart

really that beautiful? 

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

 

BETTYE LAVETTE ~

I'M WORKING ON A BUILDING ~

THE ROCK IS MY HOME ~

Der Fels ist mein Haus

Le Rocher est ma demeure

The Rock is My Home

VAN NOSTRAND REINHOLD

1977

My bible for the last 40 years of stone work

and no book to my knowledge gets down to the ground level

of appreciation of touching, lifting and placing stone.

Now very costly to purchase, in the many 100s$

but far beyond the thought of money to me.

With stone work you want someone with the

Werner Blaser eye, who wrote the text

and took the photographs

and found the treasures.

[ BA ]

TO THE HEARTLAND W/ TINY TIM ~

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, IDA! (age 2) ~

DENISE LEVERTOV & CHARLES OLSON ~

ALLEN GINSBERG & LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI ~

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS ~

PHILIP WHALEN & GARY SNYDER ~

EVEN INSIDE ~

There

From no place —

a small striped gull feather

blowing closer to me

Cape

The wilder

the place the

wilder the birds

~

Top down —

hair blowing

fields blowing

Edge Of Land

What overtakes me more —

The blue of the sea or her dress

Raised, wading, high above her knees

Today

3 days since we’ve been to the sea —

But there again

When I kiss your hair

Even Inside

You were asleep

I blew out the lamp

Turned to you —

A firefly blinked

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

LILA DOWNS ~

MAN GAVE NAME TO ALL THE ANIMALS ~

INDIAN TALES: JAIME DE ANGULO ~

No more excuses 

that you have nothing 

to share 

with your children 

or grandchildren. 

Start here~

Indian Tales by Jaime de Angulo

Tales of the Pit River Indians as recounted by anthropologist Jaime de Angulo for KPFA in 1949. Re-edited and produced by Gui de Angulo in 1991.

L I S T E N

IRMA THOMAS ~

Yes ~ head to You Tube, a quick away (as they say)

DAVID BLUE ~

RYSZARD KRYNICKI ~

. . . May Slaves


. . .

. . .

. . .

may slaves not strive for power at any cost,

may power govern nothing but itself,

may judges be fallible rather than venal,

may prosecutors not stop at nothing,

may the police work to reveal their own crimes,

may burglars break into their own apartments,

may censors redact themselves out of existence,

may informers deliver reports on themselves,

may customs officers look up their own asses,

may guards build the prison of their dreams

and locking themselves up to a man, from inside

throw the key into the ocean


                                                           73/74




———————————————

Ryszard Krynicki
OUR LIFE GROWS
New York Review of Books 2018
translated by Alissa Valles
afterword Adam Michnik