WITH ME ~

That's Brett Sparks on the right and Rennie Sparks to the left and Brett takes the lead to this old Appalachian murder ballad which was taken from a 19th c. Irish ballad "The Wexford Girl". Folklorists will tell you the Irish borrowed it from the English ballad "The Oxford Girl". And I'll tell you Patrick Sky once parodied the song into "Yonkers Girl". It's feels good to mention Patrick Sky, barely anyone does anymore. The Louvin Brothers maybe recorded the most murderous rendition of the song in 1956, they about own it. But the Wilbur Brothers also recorded the song, and so has Nick Cave and Elvis Costello who aren't brothers. Sparks galloped in with his bold marauder version in 2003. With Rennie they make up the quite gothic American duo Handsome Family, which originated in Chicago, though you can hear in Sparks voice and tone he is Texas born.

EARTH ~

A centuries-old tablet warned of tsunamis
in the town of Aneyoshi,
Iwate Prefecture, in northern Japan.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/limits-to-disaster-memory-even-etched-in-stone/





photo : Vincent Yu/Associated Press

WITH ME ~

Born June 17, 1982 on the Ivory Coast, Dobet Gnahoré, because of her region's Civil War, left for Marseille in 1999 where she settled. She sings in seven African languages, as well as French. He father is the master percussionist Boni Ngahoré.

photo : globalmusic.fi

EARTH ~

Lenore Kandel

Small Prayer for Fallen Angels



too many of my friends are junkies
too many of my psychic kin tattoo invisible revelations on themselves
signing their manifestos to etheric consciousness with little
hoofprint scars stretching from fingertip to fingertip
a gory religiosity akin to Kali's sacred necklace of fifty human heads


Kali-Ma, Kali-Mother; Kali-Ma, Kali-Mother
too many of my friends are running out of blood, their veins
are collapsing, it takes them half an hour to get a hit
their blood whispers through their bodies, singing its own death chant
in a voice of fire, in a voice of glaciers, in a voice of sand that blows
forever
over emptiness


Kali-Ma, remember the giving of life as well as the giving of death
----Kali-Ma...
Kali-Ma, remember the desire is for enlightenment and not oblivion
----Kali-Ma...
Kali-Ma, their bones are growing light; help them to fly
Kali-Ma, their eyes burn with the pain of fire; help them that they see
with clear sight


Kali-Ma, their blood sings to death to them; remind them of life
that they be born once more
that they slide bloody through the gates of yes, that
they relax their hands nor try to stop the movement of the flowing now


too many of my friends have fallen into the white heat of the only flame
may they fly higher; may there be no end to flight





from Word Alchemy
Grove Press, 1967

photo : popartmachine.com


By the time she had moved to San Francisco in 1960, Lenore Kandel had published three very short collections of poetry (now extremely rare) having been born in New York City in 1932, her father the author of the hardboiled classic City in Conquest. In the movies it starred James Cagney. It all makes sense to Lenore Kandel who rode with the Hell's Angels, was exotic provocateur of The Love Book and for decades on end kept her reputation as an author on that slim dynamo of a book and Word Alchemy ~ no two books in the poetry world like them.

EARTH ~

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/04/eerie-footage-from-inside-japans-radioactive-evacuation-zone/

thank you to alan casline
photo : presstv.ir

WITH ME ~

The eighth child born (1935) of eleven children in a West Virginia coal mining family, Hazel Dickens has never stopped singing her bluegrass roots — from picket lines, Union halls, and classic coal mining films: Harlan County, USA; Matewan; Black Lung. She recorded five albums with Alice Gerrard ("Hazel & Alice") starting in 1965, along with her own solo albums, and she has been included in numerous compilation recordings. Everyone wants Hazel Dickens' high lonesome sound.

photo : thebluegrassblog.com

EARTH ~

JAYNE CORTEZ



If the Drum is a Woman



If the drum is a woman
why are you pounding your drum into an insane babble
why are you pistol whipping your drum at dawn
why are you shooting through the head of your drum
and making a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don't abuse your drum----don't abuse your drum----don't abuse your drum
I know the night is full of displaced persons
I see skins striped with flames
I know the ugly disposition of underpaid clerks
they constantly menstruate through the eyes
I know bitterness embedded in flesh
the itching alone can drive you crazy
I know that this is America
and chickens are coming home to roost
on the MX missle
But if the drum is a woman
why are you choking your drum
why are you raping your drum
why are you saying disrespectful things
to your mother drum----your sister drum
your wife drum and your infant daughter drum
If the drum is a woman
then understand your drum
your drum is not docile
your drum is not invisible
your drum is not inferior to you
your drum is a woman
so don't reject your drum
don't try to dominate your drum
don't become weak and cold and desert your drum
don't be forced into the position
as an oppressor of drums
and make a drum tragedy of drums
if the drum is a woman
don't abuse your drum----don't abuse your drum----don't abuse your drum


from Coagulations
new and selected poems
(Thunder's Mouth, 1984)

photo : uctv.tv



Jayne Cortez was born in Arizona (1936), raised in California, lives today in New York City and Senegal, and has published nearly a dozen books and almost as many recordings. Her poetry has been translated and is known around the world. Once married to Ornette Coleman, she is the mother of jazz drummer Denardo Coleman.

EARTH ~







TONY MARES



STANTON STREET BRIDGE GOODBYE



Time to say goodbye

to the river crossing,

goodbye to El Paso / Juarez,

the Stanton Street Bridge.



Time to say goodbye to the family,

a child, a woman, two men,

one white-haired, all crowded

together on the rubber tire raft

crossing the river.



Time to say goodbye

to la migra in their green trucks

running around like Keystone Kops

chasing mexicanos guilty

of trying to return

to their ancestral homeland.



Time to say goodbye

to the troubled border.




from RIO DEL CORAZON
Voices From the American Land, 2011






www.voicesfromtheamericanland.org/html/mares.html

CRISTINA BRANCO

ELIADES OCHOA

GOODBYE ~

TELL OL' BILL



The river whispers in my ear
I've hardly a penny to my name
The heavens have never seemed so near
[That] All my body glows with flame.

The tempest struggles in the air
An' to myself alone i sing
It could sink me then and there
I can hear the echo[es] ring.

I tried to find one smilin' face
To drive the shadow off my head
I'm stranded in this nameless place
Lyin' restless in a heavy bed.

Tell me straight out if you will
Why must you torture me within?
Why must you come from your high hill?
Throw my fate to the clouds and wind.

Far away in a silent land
Secret thoughts are hard to bear
Remember me you'll understand
Emotions we can never share.

You trampled on me as you passed
Left the coldest kiss upon my brow
All my doubts and fears have gone at last
I've nothing more to tell you now.

I walk by tranquil lakes and streams
As each new season's dawn awaits
I lay awake at night with troubled dreams
The enemy is at the gate.

Beneath the thunder-blasted trees
The words are ringin' off your tongue
The ground is hard in times like these
[The] Stars are cold, the night is young.

The rocks are bleak, the trees are bare
Iron clouds go floatin' by
Snowflakes fallin' in my hair
Beneath the gray and stormy sky.

The evenin' sun is sinkin' low
The woods are dark, the town is too
They''ll drag you down, they run the show
Ain't no tellin' what they'll do.

Tell Ol' Bill when he comes home
[That] Anythin' is worth a try
Tell him that I'm not alone
That the hour has come to do or die.

All the world i would defy
Let me make it plain as day
I look at you now an' i sigh
How could it be any other way?


© Bob Dylan 2005

photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

Ai Weiwei

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/04/ai-weiwei-detained-unreachable.html?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=feeds

blogs.telegraph.co.uk

EARTH ~

DIVINING ROD




Over the winter we had two well diggers in the house —
Good guys. Gerry & Sam.
They arrived on a cold afternoon, no higher than 20 degrees.
They came because we had about reached the finish line
With any plumber who could untangle our
Plight with air in the water pipes
And it's a very simple plumbing system
We'd been living with this for a half year —
Air that clouds a drawn glass of water like smog.
So when in doubt, go to the ones who dig for water for
A living, they seem to have a sixth sense.


Out of their truck I watched both guys head
In different directions since we shovel a pathway
To two different doors. We always leave from one door
With an outside lock but like to come back in through
The other door without an exterior lock, because the door
With the lock is under a roof edge of ice that makes a slippery path.
We leave from that door and button up the place and
When we return one of us goes through that
Way to unlock the door we prefer. The preferred way
Has a wide and cleaner shoveled path.
The other way is a cowtrail punched down by snowshoes that
Ducks under a clothesline...so watch your head!


Gerry's a country boy, it's no surprise he was going the cowtrail way.
I don't know where Sam's from, he was coming on the wider path.
For a moment there both had stopped to negotiate with
One another which way to arrive. Maybe Sam won or
Gerry listened to his idea because they ended up
Coming on the wider path. All I know is when they
Left Sam went out the ice path way and Gerry almost
Insisted with his body he must go out the way he arrived.
Maybe he's superstitious?
I greeted them with a joke about two paths.
Our first meeting.


No, that's not true —
I met Gerry almost forty years ago
When he was a youngster and I was about 20
With a crew of his brother and cousins we worked together
For a fellow who liked sugaring and who seemed to like kids.
Think of us as a bunch of elves as we sprang off the tractor
With its pulled wagon holding the big sap tub and flew
To the trees with our gathering pails, snow past our knees
To fetch an overnight catch of maple sap from
Hundreds and hundreds of tapped buckets.
Squeals and shouts and always laughter we spent
Hours this way. Sometimes days in a row.
On a big red tractor plowing down a narrow back road of snow.
This was before tubing was used to collect maple sap.
Before tubing (and cellphones) people seemed to be
Outdoors more often, and they liked to work together,
And there was much more laughter.


So this was how we worked with Gerry & Sam at our house
And things got communicated one to the other
And the water problem was solved.
It was solved by listening carefully to our stories
While standing in the kitchen and getting warm
For a moment by the woodstove, before moving
(yes all of us) down into the bowels of our stone cellar.
By crawling over an obstacle course I won't even go into,
Just trust me. Into the cellar and listening to us and
Watching the water and how it was operating (or not)
In the pipes, and shouting up to someone
Through the floor boards in the kitchen to
Turn on or off the pump, while another went out
To the truck to grab additional tools since gaining
On a problem always calls for another tool or two.


From the stone cellar we all then headed
Outdoors to the well and its submersible pump.
Long ago I had built a stone cairn around the well casing,
Always kept it shoveled free of snow just for a problem like this —
Having to go down into the well in the middle of winter and
Yank everything up. That means about 100 feet of
Black pipe up and over all the snow banks,
See to the old pump (okay), now carefully look over
The pitless adapter and check valve.


The latter is the troublemaker —
Probably has been since the day
Or week it was installed, brand new and brass.
But brass now comes weaker without lead added to
Its mold and can crack in the handwork of even the best
Plumber or well digger and this is what this one had done.


It took two guys with a sixth sense for water to
Track it down. Searching from the kitchen to the
Cellar to inside the well 100 feet pitched into the earth.
And one guy is newly recovering from shoulder surgery
So the other guy came to help him lift.

photo © bob arnold

EARTH ~

BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/reflections-fukushima-time-to-mourn-to-learn-and-to-teach

photo : scientificamerican.com

EARTH ~

Letter to Mrs. John Marshall (Jane Pollard) in Leeds, 1805



...the time will come when the light of the setting Sun upon these mountain tops will be as heretofore a pure joy — not the same gladness, that can never be — but yet a joy even more tender. It will soothe me to know how happy he would have been could he have seen the same beautiful spectacle. I shall have him with me, and yet shall know that he is not of the reach of all sorrow and pain, can never mourn for us — his tender soul was awake to all our feelings — his wishes were intimately connected with our happiness.


...his courage I need not speak of, it served him in the hour of trial, he was seen 'speaking with apparent cheerfulness to the first Mate a few minutes before the ship went down', and when nothing more could be done he said 'the will of God be done' and I have no doubt when he felt that it was out of his power to save his life, he was as calm as before if some thought of what we should endure did not awaken a pang. Our loss is not to be measured but by those who are acquainted with the nature of our pleasures and have seen how happily we lived together those eight months that he was under our Roof — he loved solitude and he rejoiced in society — he would wander alone among these hills with his fishing-rod, or led on merely by the pleasure of walking, for many hours — or he would walk with William or me, or both of us, and was continually pointing out with a gladness which is seldom seen but in very young people something which perhaps would have escaped our observation, for he had so fine an eye that no distinction was unnoticed by him, and so tender a feeling that he never noticed any thing in vain. Many a time has he called me out in an evening to look at the moon or stars, or a cloudy sky, or this vale in the quiet moonlight — but the stars and moon were his chief delight, — he made of them his companions when he was at Sea, and was never tired of those thoughts which the silence of the night fed in him — then he was so happy by the fire-side, and little business of the house interested him, he loved our cottage, he helped us to furnish it, and to make the gardens — trees are growing now which he planted. Oh my dear Jane!

15 March 1805

If it wasn't for the rich leaves of Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, diaries and letters, we may not have today many of the poems as rich by her older brother William Wordsworth. He fleeced her tree freely. Though married to Mary Hutchinson, brother & sister lived together almost all of their lives. By age 30, Dorothy decided she was too old to marry. The Lake District was her bride.

The letter above concerns her younger brother John, who died at sea in 1805 off the south coast of England while Master of the ship Earl of Abergavenny

EARTH ~

kokomo

One Last Snowfall?







photo © bob arnold

ANNOUNCING FOR SPRING !

Y O K E L


a long Green Mountain poem by Bob Arnold

Ten years in the work ~ farm poems, woods poems, narrative, love poems

Longhouse, 2011
156 pages perfect bound / $18 plus $3.95 media mail s/h
International orders please inquire

Credit card, check or easy-to-use Paypal - just link here

A portion of this book previewed through Sylvester Pollet's "Backwoods Broadsides" series.

Available from Longhouse, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303

write ~ poetry@sover.net

Link here and visit for more titles by Bob Arnold

EARTH ~

LINDA GREGG





STAYING AFTER



I grew up with horses and poems

when that was the time for that.

Then Ginsberg and Orlovsky

in the Fillmore West when

everybody was dancing. I sat

in the balcony with my legs

pushed through the railing,

watching Janis Joplin sing.

Women have houses now, and children.

I live alone in a kind of luxury.

I wake when I feel like it,

read what Rilke wrote to Tsvetaeva.

At night I watch the apartments

whose windows are still lit

after midnight. I fell in love.

I believed people. And even now

I love the yellow light shining

down on the dirty brick wall.




from In the Middle Distance

(Graywolf Press, 2006)
photo : flickr

Long before days dawned cynical, one after the other, and poets weren't as clinical, in fact they were truant and almost wanderers, and would admit easily to something like falling in love and believing in people, Linda Gregg grew up as a poet. It's made for her some immaculate and endearing poetry. I came upon one the other day, far from home, where I reached a book of poems down from a shelf and standing there minding my own business, just started to read.

WITH ME ~

Pinetop Perkins
Belzoni Mississippi July 7, 1913 – Austin, Texas March 21, 2011
legendary Delta blues musician ~ he was playing right to his last days












David "Honeyboy" Edwards
Shaw Mississippi June 28, 1915
still playing













photo : billboard
photo : nyfolklore.org

EARTH ~









MIRROR









rain



on



leaf

LULU ~

You'd be hard pressed to see the Kansas in Kansas-born Louise Brooks when she made two films for G.W. Pabst in the same year (1929), both genius classics — Pandora's Box and Diary of A Lost Girl — if anything she was all Berlin. In her short film career she made about twenty-five films, seventeen of those silent, and many of those now lost or damaged. Her first film was shot in 1925, a year after Kafka's death, and her last in 1938, pretty much a throw away western with John Wayne, whom she liked. The bulk of her starlight ranged over a handful of years, still unsurpassed. Elizabeth Taylor and later Hollywood would be like comparing a Robert Parker detective yarn with a deep Pacific deadly by Raymond Chandler, it just can't be done. With a hairstyle forever known as one of the ten most influential, and lovers ranging from Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo (I can probably stop there) to CBS founder William Paley, who had the benevolence to send her a stipend for life, which may have kept her alive for almost another half-century...when she grew out the famous bob hairstyle and looked very much the lean and tough rail Kansan.

It's an honor to show a clip from Lulu in Berlin (1984) with Louise Brooks chatting it up later in life. A film by the late Richard Leacock, another courageous sailor in the storyteller's art of celluloid. To imagine these two together is enough to ignite a romance of cinema. The love of pinpointing that ideal portrait and light.

photo LB : verdoux.wordpress.com

EARTH ~

Bob Kaufman

Benediction


Pale brown Moses went down to Egypt land

To let somebody's people go.

Keep him out of Florida, no UN there:

The poor governor is all alone,

With six hundred thousand illiterates.



America, I forgive you ... I forgive you

Nailing back Jesus to an imported cross

Every six weeks in Dawson, Georgia.

America, I forgive you ... I forgive you

Eating black children, I know your hunger.

America, I forgive you ... I forgive you

Burning Japanese babies defensively —

I realize how necessary it was.

Your ancestor had beautiful thoughts in his brain.

His descendants are experts in real estate.

Your generals have mushrooming visions.

Every day your people get more and more

Cars, television, sickness, death dreams.

You must have been great

Alive.





from Cranial Guitar
(Coffee House)

"My head is a bony guitar, strung with tongues, plucked by fingers & nails," is how Bob Kaufman once put it. One of the great improvisational poets, it was his wife Eileen Singe who put onto paper many of the poems Kaufman worked in the oral tradition. Born in Louisiana in 1925 and gone from us in 1986, Kaufman was one of the co-founders of Beatitude after he moved to the San Francisco Bay region in 1958. His books have been solid showings from both City Lights and New Directions.