see here ~
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Saturday, March 18, 2017
TAKE A RIDE ~
“It’s very easy to have a good meeting with Trump,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official who is the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London. “He’s very pleasant in person. He’ll promise you the world. And 48 hours later, he’ll betray you without a thought. He won’t even know he’ll be betraying you.”
New York Times 18 March 2017
CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON ~
Two Water Poems
1
Swim in the spring
it's cold
and bites like
you slept with your daughter
At summer's end
glowing waters close
like silk over your shoulder
This time it's mother
such an evil hobby
envious
comparisons
2
Labyrinthine roots
of the water cypress
anchor
this green dove weighing
dozens of tons
this hairy cone haunted
by the cuckoo
and vanish
far under water
yours
my friendly purse
of bloody fly up
through speech-
bubbles past
their faint boundaries
into thin air
_______________________
CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON
The Lonely Suppers of W.V. Balloon
Godine 1975
Friday, March 17, 2017
BIG WHITENESS ~
Big Whiteness
We are recovering (the word) from a full-fledge blizzard on Tuesday. Not that it’s our first! It’s more that we already had a taste of Spring, the ground almost bare, open, free, even bird calls were changing, and now this. When I was 30 years old it was thrilling. At this age it seems cruel, except it is all the same, get out and work in it, get involved, and since there is no choice, we do our own plowing and shoveling and unburying (a word with snow), we get it done. It takes many days to fully recover the way we live after a blizzard that brings almost two feet of snow, most of it blowing sideways at you as you work. The blowing lasts a few days long after the snow is over, so the snow drifts take effect. Clean up again where you already cleaned up. Then there’s the ice under all the snow so the plow doesn’t manage well. Our yard was built as an increasing paradise all these decades by acoustic living people, no plow, no modern machinery but a push mower, so everywhere are these defined stonewalls I built, pathways, raised beds, ideal for the eye and the ground living Thoreauvian. But introduce a plow and a first winter using one and now the stonewalls are often in the way. Can’t push the snow away. Now we’re boxed in with too much snow and frown at the thought of another snow storm because now we are having to hand shovel five foot banks of snow where the snow plow had to stop (stonewalls) and we are shoveling those high snow banks back further. A fiasco in the making. Keep thinking it is March and April is around the corner. How many blizzards have we seen in April? Many! Yesterday, second day of the blizzard, wind starting to die down, instead of snowshoeing off somewhere like I often do, I’m snowshoeing back and forth a long trek from house to faraway cottage so Sweetheart has an easy enough hiking trail to reach the cottage in the morning to retrieve book orders. We have a bookshop. Back and forth tramp down a snowshoe path. Tramp back and forth four times, five times, six. Keep in mind someone I love lugging back a satchel of books in the dim early morning. The path looks winding with curves and neatness. A lovely path. 15 degrees. I can’t think of anything cleaner: has to be done, simple, cut into snow, rounding around tall trees, get to a door. Perfectly clear. A duty. The plow is a beautiful blue, new, hardy, but it’s now boxed in and wanting no more snow. Those spring bird calls have all but disappeared. Owls are back. I hiked under a barred owl the other day, before the snow, and it appeared as happy and freewheelin’ with the open ground as I was. He could catch mice. I could get a look at him. All gone in the big whiteness. The temperature is 20 degrees below normal. Plenty of firewood.
[ BA ]
to Michael
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Monday, March 13, 2017
BEAUTIFUL DAYS ~
Amongst the Rocks
Just who are those women
bent over on the rocky
shoreline searching and
searching and seemingly
searching for more, a pail
at their feet, plastic and
colored, not a work pail,
and these women seem
from another place in
time, not in beach wear,
skirts and hair wild with
the wind
It was only days and
days later, when we
were off the road
back home in the
woods that we spoke
with our son who asked
“where did you go”
and we told him of our
travels from mountains
and streams and rivers
and finally to the sea
and about these women
one morning bent at the
shoreline, amongst the
rocks, that he told us,
years earlier, right there
amongst the rocks, he
had thrown his wedding
Men's Room
even
the
bum
( bless him )
looks
in the
mirror
Beautiful Days
Beautiful days
when we are home
at work in the woods
far from the maddening crowd
today we lugged
out on shoulder (me)
arms (you) ash and
maple logs from a
glade I cleared
early in September —
it topped off a cordwood
stack we started last week —
wouldn't you know
by day's end
right on that woodpile
is where the sun falls too
—————————————
Bob Arnold
Bob Arnold
BEAUTIFUL DAYS
Longhouse, 2013
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Friday, March 10, 2017
TERESE SVOBODA ~
L O L A R I D G E
Anything That Burns You
A portrait of
Lola Ridge, Radical Poet
Terese Svoboda
Schaffner Press, 2016
Thursday, March 9, 2017
DAVID HADJU ~
Farrar 2016
The latest from the songful mind and memory of David Hadju, who remains
in the long list of music critics, one of the best at keeping his head in the clouds
and his feet firmly on the ground.
Each of his books — whether on the jazz world; Bob Dylan, Richard Farina and the
orbit of American folk music, are rich in portrait and analysis
steeped in enriched storytelling. In this new book on pop music at all
its staggered levels, he shows a knack for historical research
as well as rekindling his childhood.
[ BA ]
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
INUA ELLAMS ~
The Forced
One day when you are pissing on the roadside,
your cracked bare feet on grass streaked with feces
and porewater plastic bags, you will hear his name
and turn to watch his convoy, numerous as the aunts,
the uncles and ancestors you have never known, inch
down the crowded Mushin street singing his praises
as if a capitalist black Jesus, dishing cold hand cash
to those pressed either side of his jeep, hands out —
stretched, pleading with a hunger you know too well.
One month later, when another born-troway smoking
stolen Indian hemp talks softly of the crude oil rags
and patchwork dishcloths you both wore as nappies,
shivers from the same foul breeze blowing the truth
of your fractured life, you will call his name, Oluomo,
speak its solid weight and wonder if it is worth a try.
One year after your quick slim fingers have caught
the attention of his boys who dance drunk on paraga,
the oil drum fire flickering in their eyes, you will hear
they too were born and thrown away, they had snakes
for mothers too, but were lifted from gutters and now
are this citywide tribe of hard men spidering through
the night Oluomo alone controls: homes raided, rivals
knifed, politicians bribed, the rich ransomed and each
area-boy willing to die for each. You marvel at such
family, ask if they need help, anything you will do.
One decade from now, when police who are vicious
as they are duplicitous have beaten you senseless,
have dumped your swollen self in a concrete cell,
when you deny them the satisfaction of betrayal
/ no be by force o, no be by force / you will cry
your throat dry as cracked feet, sob uncontrollably
as blood bubbling your torn nostril bursts, you will
call for your brothers, but for now you are free.
——————————
INUA ELLAMS
The Wire-Headed Heathen
Akashic Books 2015
Inua Ellams was born in Nigeria in 1984.
He now lives in London and works as a poet,
playwright, performer and graphic artist.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
Sunday, March 5, 2017
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