BHARTRIHARI (Buddhist Hermit) ~

———————————

Her quick eyes

and animated mouth

unsettle me.

So, of course,

her uplifted breasts,

full lips —

soft fruits for the hungry.

But why should a

single wisp of hair,

stroked beneath her naval like some

classic

line of poetry,

reduce me to such

anguish?

                                                                                 K. 119

————————————————

Bhartrihari

Some Unquenchable Desire

Andrew Schelling, Translator

Shambhala, 2018

SANDOR KANYADI ~

Smoke


Smoke has been the sign of human settlement

ever since Prometheus' defiant act,

ever since people settled down to roasting,

torching, scorching and cremating, ever since

human history began its smoldering.



The pale blue smoke of campfires and

the black smoke of plunder, burning stakes,

and crematoria; they both have stained the sun

and its starry vault in this accustomed hey hue.



Puffing on a cigarette I'm sitting high up on a hill,

watching limpid supper smoke weave its way

from the valley across the reclining sunrise;

but it's the sickening fun of burning brains

that tickles my memory for taste and smell.



Could they be burning books somewhere?



———————————

Sandor Kanyadi
Dancing Embers
translated by Paul Sohar
Twisted Spoon Press 2002

KEVIN YOUNG ~

How To Make Rain


Start with the sun

piled weeks deep on your back    after

you haven't heard rain for an entire

growing season    and making sure to face

due north    spit twice into the red clay

stomp your silent feet    waiting rain

rain to bring the washing in    rain

of reaping    rusty tubs of rain    wish

aloud    to be caught in the throat

of the dry well    head kissing your back

a bent spoon for groundwater    to be

sipped from    slow courting rain    rain

that falls forever    rain which keeps

folks inside and makes late afternoon

babies    begin to bury childhood clothes

wrap them around stones    and skulls of

doves    then mark each place well enough

to stand the coming storm    rain of our

fathers    shoeless rain    the devil is

beating his wife rain    rain learned

early  in the bones    plant these scare

crow people face down    wing wing

and bony anchor    then wait until they

grow roots and skeletons    sudden soaking

rain that draws out the nightcrawler

rain of forgetting    rain that asks for

more rain    rain that can't help but

answer    what you are looking for

must fall    what you are looking for is

deep among clouds    what you want to see

is a girl selling kisses beneath cotton

wood    is a boy drowning inside the earth



———————————

Kevin Young
Most Way Home
Zoland Books, 2000

DIETER ROTH ~

 ~ Yale ~

edited by Barry Rosen

HEAVEN LAKE (11) ~

Breaking News

What's to be done with “Breaking News?”

I watch the news with the sound off and read the captions

So there is no sound of anything breaking

A second ago it was a cyclone

Now it's two planes nearly colliding over Indiana

The breaking news is now old news for all the passengers

It's not even news, it's good luck, they're still alive!

We need more good luck on television news —

By the time its breaking news reaches us

The cyclone may have died down to 

A light breeze, there’s no way 

To make news with mother nature

For instance, it's raining as I write this

But probably not as you read this

And if it is, it's just our luck

Millionaires

What to say to

A Mexican gal

Working high off

In the mountains

With a quick greeting

For us to step out

Back and see what

They do — dyeing

Wool over a cast

Iron pinion fire —

The dyes stir with

Wool skeins in two

Deep tubs boiling as

Bare armed she works

Ingenious pulleys to

Lift out and bleed

Magnificent colors —

Nothing like we see

Anywhere else in old

Town until we look up

To the sky, and another

Worker drapes the dipped

Wool over makeshift

Drying racks, neither

Women bothering much

To wear their masks

For the wicked vapors

Since out of nowhere

In the smolder of heat

And poisons she says

They are both

“Going to win the

Lottery” — fast toothy

Grins — “Yep, going

To win big-time

A million bucks!”

Cross Country

In all our windows

It’s the moon

On the train

Mother Earth

Lonesome far

Out in the snowy woods — 

When we wanted

A friend to visit

We built

A snowman

—————————

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018

GRAHAM FOUST ~

The Sun Also Fizzles




That's this place, between

geography and evening? The sun

also bludgeons; a car has three wheels;

and what's the wrong way to break

that brick of truth back into music?



Money belongs together. I'm right

where I wanted to leave me. Rain

belongs together. At mirror,

I've neither me believed.



I've come covered in arena dust,

my mouth a sleeve's end,

meatless. I've come somewhat up,

and I'm here to lick

the static from the ground.



Twice, I've been evidence of,

if anything, my breathing.

Not particular, I've pissed against

a cage, pretending wind.



Swallowed whole, a songbird might

could claw back through the hawk —

or so I've thought.

The choosing of a word

might be its use, the only poem.




———————————

Graham Foust
A Mouth in California
Flood Editions 2009

GOING UP COUNTRY (VERMONT) ~

—————————————————

More an historical narrative and portrait-driven

wonder on the counterculture streamlined

back-to-the-land movement once upon a time in Vermont.

The tribes arrived when gasoline cost 20 cents (I remember)

a gallon, and land was cheap, and some of the

ragamuffins were filthy rich, others had strong backs,

a mighty handful persist to this day. Not quite

the seminal text on the subject as Robert Houriet's

Getting Back Together, written in real-time

and it felt it; Daley digs in deeply to the

Green Mountain state decades after its

zenith dream-time and finds many of

the key locations, people, and she 

cherishes the heart that came with it.

A wiser proof reader should have been hired:

it has never been "Woodie" Guthrie (and

never will be), and "Further" was certainly

not cosmopolitan author Tom Wolfe's

prankster bus, but Oregon's own

Ken Kesey's.

Veteran commune photographer Peter Simon's

work graces the front cover of this

handsome book.
The resonant message: thousands came
and an uncountable stayed and made a viable community —
one outlier became mayor, congessman, then senator, 
and almost the president.

[ BA ]

University Press of New England

2018

HEAVEN ~

H E A V E N

TOSH ~

L I S T E N !

TOSH is a memoir of growing up as the son of an enigmatic, much-admired, hermetic, and ruthlessly bohemian artist during the waning years of the Beat Generation and the heyday of hippie counterculture. 

A critical figure in the history of postwar American culture, Tosh Berman's father, Wallace Berman, was known as the "father of assemblage art," and was the creator of the legendary mail-art publication Semina.

TOSH takes an unflinching look at the triumphs and tragedies of his unusual upbringing by an artistic genius with all-too-human frailties, against a backdrop that includes The T.A.M.I. Show, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Easy Rider, and more. Includes a preface by actress/writer Amber Tamblyn (daughter of Wallace's friend, actor Russ Tamblyn).

The book also includes dozens of rare and previously unseen photos.

City Lights Publishers

TRANSLATION ~

R E A D     M E!

LOVE CINEMA ~ (TCM)

INADVERTENT ~ (Why I Write)

BLEECKER BOB'S RECORDS ~

R E A D     O N

    

THIS LITTLE ART ~

R E A D      M E

HEAVEN LAKE ( 10 ) ~

The Little Factory

Young women work for two older

women in the little chocolate factory

the young women work on tiny tables

behind the massive glass showcase of

chocolates wrapping chocolates and

smiling when someone comes through

the door, the two older women never

smile, they have hired the young women

for this, the young women will never last

at this job as the older women have done

they smile and wrap chocolate and dream

of fucking some of the customers who have

dreamt of fucking them, there is something

even more important than chocolate

Wedding

                      to JK & MB

Two days before

They were to be wed

He said by phone they

Had been out that day

Near the ocean, the sun

Was glorious, the hills

Were green, the hills

Had horses on them

Greetings

He’s got pizza parlors

Three of them

One is near a mountain we like to climb

But we bypass that one for the one where he works

Closer to where we live

Where he hires autistic kids to give them a leg-up

From a school he founded, all for these kids

And he doesn’t care if they are a little slow sometimes

And a little wired and a little crazed other times

They’re happy and so he’s happy

With his hunchback, stooped walk, little mustache and

Ever cheerful face

He just wants to make sure you like your pizza, and we do

Because years ago he was in the disco life

All sorts of shady businesses and partners

“We made a ton of money and spent twice as much”

He says with the biggest grin

Wearing an apron

Both his hands palms up and open

Like there was no choice

Like meeting the buddha

Kindness

We don't know the kid we shoot baskets with in the park — 

he even chased our ball for us

never to be seen again

—————————

Bob Arnold

Heaven Lake

Longhouse 2018