Warner Bros.
daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Joe Turkel in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980). Mr. Turkel’s ominously stoic presence shifted the film into a darker register.Credit...Warner Bros.
Crying girl
in the canopy
branch held
unstable
a face drawn
pendant-
shaped, from
the bark
marks
how like
a tree is
a woman
crumbling
with age
conversations
inaudible
without a
stethoscope
to the forest
floor and
even then
we whisper.
____________________
Rachael Allen
Kingdomland
Faber & Faber, 2019
You're going to meander
but it's a fine Sierra Nevada
geological, historical, personalized
portrait, with chapters on the
masters of the place:
John Muir, Mary Austin,
Clarence King, Norman Clyde
& Gary Snyder —
for a more unique and
textural Sierra, see Norman Schaefer's
Records of a Broken-Down Mountaineer
______________________
from Songs for Schizoid Siblings
the bird has flown
i'm all alone.
via the edge
comes all knowledge.
were i sure i'd live twice
i'd stop taking your advice.
take it away,
tae it away,
what isn't tomorrow
is yesterday.
buy a chair
and mend a table,
catch a fact,
and write a fable.
almost all lies
are pocket size.
kissing fish was a habit
enjoyed by a rabbit
whose fur was a kind of fin.
he would look at the water
convinced that his daughter
was either without or within.
i think i often look for things
that disinfect what in me sings.
were i not a fool
would i be in school?
gentle, gentle little lamb
even you'll become a ram.
the moon will ruin
the solar tune.
the sun will split
the moon's orbit.
jupiter
will saturn crack,
and bounce
sweet venus off her track.
but pluto soon
and dry neptune
will enverate
the earthen state
and rectify
the martian eye
through which,
like pitch,
a quadrate light
will burst —
and make uranus shatter first.
authority
is you and me.
a man who rides
the lunar tides
rarely decides
on other guides.
__________________
Lionel Ziprin
Songs for Schizoid Siblings
The Song Cave, 2017
Sweet William Fritsch & Lenore Kandel
________________________________________
My Few Days Filming the San Francisco Hells Angel
Paul G Ryan
Photograph: 2009 Isaac Hernandez
Bill Bathurst, The Collected Poetry & Prose
edited by Bob Arnold
___________
Longhouse, 2022
________________________________
Time On My Hands
for Billie Holiday
As though abed in white satin
her wedding night with Prez
that never threatens dawn,
her voice from the Thirties
untouched by Death
the lone night through.
As though Lady,
filling in my silence
like Prez when her soul
caught its breath,
could ease me through the dark,
“I’m Pullin’ Through.”
As though that voice
would never trail off,
dawn never catch me,
like a shade flying up,
sandwiched between mirrors
taking a piss,
wide-eyed and hollow
cheeks needing a shave,
this image reflected &
diminished to a point
invisible with silence
she must have welcomed,
leather soles of police
on the waxen floor
of her hospital death room
heard inside her eyes
as gardenias of years gone by
crushed underfoot.
As though, then, this coda
could finally be left
unwritten: Sunday, lonely,
guest of a friend
gone to bed with his wife
pregnant again, restless
when I write this,
outside I’m spaced, the sun
at my armpit, encircled by
acres of broken land
flat as my prospects,
weeds & barbed wire running riot
like doubts in my head
make it hard to walk,
uncertain & shy, alone &
a long way from home.
20 August 1967
Just A Song
Thanks because the river flows
and the villages are fruits on the roads
and the roads are sleepwalking doors
and sleep is the shadow of death
its white land's first
and the dead are with me
strolling in front of my house
unarmed and peaceful
they posed for photos then left
singly
without an evening
or a calamity
and thanks to the evening.
A Going
Leave us something
we'd be sad if you leave
Leave us, for example,
if you like,
your last photo by the door
our summer trip together
that scent of pine,
your words or your tobacco?
And don't go
alone
and whole
like a sword.
A Horse
And whenever I fall asleep
I find a horse grazing grass
. . .
always
a horse comes to graze the grass
. . .
when I fall asleep.
____________________
Ghassan Zaqtan
Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems
trans. Fady Joudan
Yale 2012