CLASSIC BLACK & WHITE JAZZ SESSIONS ~

 

R E A D     M E

1 of 2500

M O S A I C    R E C O R D S

JAMES PURDY ~

 

Oxford, 2022

THIS IS THE WAY IT'S DONE ~

 

JB

way ahead

of his time

R E A D    M E

RizzoliElectra

 2022

FAREWELL DAVID LINDLEY ~

 

1944-2023

FIVE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA ~

LITERARY ALCHEMIST ~

 

R E A D    M E

MIRCEA CARTARESCU ~

 

R E A D    M E

MOSAB ABU TOHA ~

On A Starless Night

On a starless night,

I toss and turn.

The earth shakes, and

I fall out of bed.

I look out my window.  The house

next door no longer

stands. It's lying like an old carpet

on the floor of the earth,

trampled by missiles, fat slippers

flying off legless feet.

I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,

that the old painting still hung on their walls,

that their cat had kittens.

Palestinian Streets

My city's streets are nameless.

If a Palestinian gets killed by a sniper or a drone,

we name the street after them.

Children learn their numbers best

when they can count how many homes or schools

were destroyed, how many mothers and fathers

were wounded or thrown into jail.

Grownups in Palestine only use their IDs

so as not to forget

who they are.

Sobbing Without A Sound

I wish I could wake up and find the electricity on all day long.

I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no 

    buzzing drones.

I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again,

or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play.

All around me are nothing

but silent walls

and people sobbing

without sound.

Hard Exercise

In Gaza,

breathing is a task,

smiling is performing

plastic surgery

on one's own face,

and rising in the morning,

trying to survive

another day, is coming back

from the dead.

A Rose Shoulders Up

Don't ever be surprised

to see a rose shoulder up

among the ruins of the house:

This is how we survived.

_________________________

Mosab Abu Toha

Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear

Poems from Gaza

City Lights Books,  2022

JOHN SAYLES IN THE CLOSET ~

 

AGNES VARDA CLOSET PICKS ~

 

ISABELLE HUPPERT STICKS IT IN THE BAG ~

 

TOM LUDDY, CINEMA ~

 

Mr. Luddy at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival. The festival became a gathering of devotees to the religion of filmmaking, and Mr. Luddy was its most fervent believer and its main officiant. Credit...Pamela Gentile, via Telluride Film Festival

T O M     L U D D Y

1943 ~ 2023

DALE MARTIN SMITH ~

 Look for the Local

It would not have been possible

to say to you, Here, inhabit

this now. Rain and leaves

suggest time is with you.

Corners, cluttered with plants,

books, pictures.  The trees

were full of leaves, and now not

so red, so yellow.

In this blur what is apprehended

bends toward, and away, from you.

Slow day of rain, and naked,

hair up, casual in this light.

________________________

Dale Martin Smith

BLUR

Knife | Fork | Book, 2022

Canada

HUEY PIANO SMITH ~

 

January 26, 1934 – February 13, 2023

GEORGE HARRISON ~

 

GEORGE HARRISON

Feb 25, 1945, Liverpool, UK.

IRIS DEMENT ~

 

Goin' Down To Sing In Texas

PATTI SMITH ~

 

R E A D    M E

L I S T E N

MARTIN SCORSESE ~

 

URSULA K. LE GUIN ~

 

Extinction

Imagine dark.

Forty years'  rain.

The sinking ark.

No dogs bark

or doves complain

in the long dark.

No eel or shark

noses in vain

the ribs of the ark.

No star, no spark.

No full or wane.

Silence and dark.

Without mark,

without stain,

bright, stark,

the ocean's arc

is bare again

above the dark,

the sunken ark.

__________________

Ursula K. Le Guin

Collected Poems

The Library of America, 2023

edited by Harold Bloom

"Extinction" was first published by Longhouse in 2007

in Ursula K. Le Guin's foldout booklet Four Different Poems

reprinted here in the new The Library of America volume

Photograph by Theo Downes-Le Guin

MICHAEL PALMER ~

After Midnight

Sometime after midnight

Han Shan drifted down

a mountain path

and arrived in my dream

only to announce

that every angel is terrifying

also that heron you saw

by the muddy pond

was not real.

You, reader,

may believe this or not.

Han Shan said

that he does not

though he spoke

such words

to me

as if

they were his own.

_________________

Michael Palmer

Little Elegies for Sister Satan

New Directions, 2021

PETER GIZZI ~

 

The Afterlife of Paper

the last best love is language in the mouth

the last best hope for joy doesn't forget

a besting sensation

the last stranger blooming on the tongue

a compass rose blooming internally

laying down track

riding the rails

wake unto me

_____________________

Peter Gizzi

Now It's Dark

Wesleyan 2020

CRASH ~ CRONENBERG / BALLARD ( 1996 ) ~

 

MOHAMMED HASAN ALWAN ~

 

R E A D    M E

MARGARET RANDALL ~

 

R E A D     M E

Duke University Press

LAO YANG, PEE POEMS ~

               

U F O

        

A kite from another world arrives

Bearing another lonely dream

_______________

Lao Yang

Pee Poems

Circumference Books

2016

translations by 

Joshua Edwards

Lynn Xu

ERIC G. WILSON : CHARLES LAMB ~

 

PETER GUARLNICK ~

 

BALD EAGLE BIG BEAR (CA.)LIVE NEST ~

 

FEN, BOG & SWAMP ~

R E A D    M E 

JAY HOPLER ~

 

Honky-Tonk Sonnet

Before cancer, I was a country.

Now—, I’m a fucking country

      Song: job gone, house gone,

            Wife diagnosed w/ Post-Traumatic Stress—


      I’m missing more organs

                          Than a looted church.
            Even my dog’s been repossessed!

            Know what I got left?

      2 years. The lifespan

            Of an average rat. My wife’s therapist

      Tells me I can use this time to find

                          Out who I really am. Lord help me Jesus,

                          I’ve wasted it, so/help me Jesus,

I know what I am: squeak.

_______________

Jay Hopler

Still Life

McSweeney's, 2022

A BLACK COUNTER-CULTURE ~

R E A D     M E