EARTH ~

 

photo © bob arnold

ASK ME ~

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thoughts, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.



I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.





_________________________________

WILLIAM STAFFORD
The Way It Is
(Graywolf 1998)

THROWAWAY ~

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
(DON’T EXPECT IT TO BE ANYTHING
IN YEARS TO COME)   



Our African American and smart and handsome President
is detested by half of Congress
who are hated by most of the people


when this President is making a speech to the world
3,000 miles away in the western mountains
another African American man is being burned alive


the same ilk guarding this President
are hunting this African American man in the mountains
who came from a city that has killed many African American men

 
in the meantime, a cruise ship stacked like sardines with passengers
is full of
shit

 
back to the African American man —
it’s a manhunt, he’s holed up in a cabin, when he comes out the
back door instead of capturing him, they force him back inside

 
we’re all on a cruise ship full of shit
the African American man, a former police officer, is called a “cop killer”
the cops always take care of their own

 
it’s none of our business
turn off the
tv


________________

valentine’s day


 

FERLINGHETTI ~

INEFFABLE ~

I AND YOU


Transmissions flow from your heart to Mine,
trading, twining my pain with yours.
Am I not — you? Are you not — I?


My nerves are clustered with Yours.
Your dreams have met with mine.
Are we not in the bodies of millions?


Often I glimpse Myself in everyone's form,
hear My own speech — a distant, quiet voice — in people's weeping,
as if under millions of masks My face would be hidden


I live in Me and in you.
Through your lips goes a word from Me to Me,
from your eye drips a tear — its source is Me.


When a need pains You, alarm me!
When You miss a human being
tear open my door!
You live in Yourself, You live in me.






PEOPLE'S EYES WAIT


People's eyes wait for me
like candle wicks for a light


Shames brothers beg my help,
deceived sisters dream of consolation.


And I, with stubborn boldness, have promised
that I will increase tenderness in this world —


and it seems to me that I will, in time
move on through this earth
with the brightness of all the stars
in my eyes!






WAR AND VICTORY


Give me no gift of weapons
nor feelings of victory.
I want no triumph.
Let me fight, but lose!


Give me heroic stubbornness in love,
unending heart,
to give friendship without measure,
to forgive without end.


Only grant me strong bright senses
to bring happiness, to help, to hear the needs
of even a pulse-beat,
the call of any person!






A SUNDAY IN JULY IN BERLIN


Today the city belongs not to people —
only to trees.
Citizens of a proud land have come
and taken over all the streets.


Standing with torches in their hand,
gathering luster for every eye;
holding plates outstretched
while the sun distributes bits of dazzle.


Today the city belongs not to its citizens
but to us who have remained in it.
Those who've gone touring
left the town to the most lonely
and locked her up with stillness.


And we with torches in our eyes,
with cool-fire loneliness —
forgotten bt everyone —
we love you — you, the deserted for a day and night!

for my sister Esther






FORGIVENESS


When I wash myself with water I shudder, thinking:
"This is the sweat of millions of laborers."


Street-walkers are my bastard sisters,
and sinister criminals — souls perhaps transmigrated from me.


Concerning those murdered, I think
that I encouraged the assassin.


Perhaps I insulted
the disgraced people in my town.


Something in me confesses
"I'm guilty a thousand times for your distress."






MY SONG


I want to give you — world,
The inner lattice of my limbs;


My word, my hands,
the wonder in my eyes.


Take me for service to you,
And use me for your ends!


Place me
in alien railroad depots


like a greeting-statue
for forlorn guests . . .


with joy, and throat filled with words


with a bright face
and sunny hands.


Send me to exiled brothers,
prisoners in jails.


Send me with good news
and consolation to mourners.


With help to the poor,
with rescue for the sick.


Take me for a friend!
Take me for a slave!


I want to throw my head at your doorsteps —
prisons, hospitals — and beg forgiveness.




____________________________________

Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Ineffable Name of God: Man
translated from the Yiddish by Morton M. Leifman
(Continuum 2004)

POP! ~

Farewell to an Uninspiring Pope

By JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY

Published: February 11, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/farewell-to-an-uninspiring-pope.html?hp





nytimes

NUALA NI DHOMHNAILL ~

Carnival


1


When you rise in the morning
and pour into me
an unearthly music
rings in my ears.
A ray of sunshine comes
slender and spare
down the dark passageway
and through the gap

in the lintel
to trace a light-scroll
on the mud floor
in the nethermost
sealed chamber.
Then it swells
and swells until a golden glow
fills the entire oratory.

From now on
the nights will be getting shorter
and the days longer and longer.


2


When I open my eyes
to come up for air
the sky
is blue.
A single bird sings
in a tree.
And though the tension
is released
and the chill
gone from the air
and a honeyed breath spreads
like frankencense
about the earth
such is the depth of emotion
we share
that neither of us speaks
as much as a word
for ages and ages.


3


If we were gods
here at Newgrange —
you Sualtam or the Daghda,
myself the famous river —

we could freeze the sun
and the moon
for a year and a day
to perpetuate the pleasure
we have together.

Alas, it's far from gods
we are, but bare, forked creatures.
The heavenly bodies stop
only for a single, transitory moment.


4


A rose opens in my heart.
A cuckoo sings in my throat.
A fledgeling leaps from my nest.
A dolphin plunges through my deepest thoughts.


5


I straighten the bed
for you, sweetheart:
I cannot tell
you and my husband apart.

There are daisies strewn
on the pillow and bolster:
the sheets are embroidered
with blackberry-clusters.


6


I lay down three robes before you:
a mantle of tears,
a coat of sweat,
a gown of blood.


7


You are a knife through my heart.
You are a briar in my fist.
You are a bit of grit between my teeth.


8


I dreamt of you again last night:
we were walking hand in hand through the countryside
when you suddenly ambushed
me and gave me a lovebite on my chest.


9


I spent all last night
driving down the byroads of your parish
in an open sports car
without you near me.
I went past your house
and glimpsed your wife
in the kitchen.
I recognise the chapel
at which you worship.


10


You won't hear a cheep from me.
The cat has got my tongue.
My hands do all the talking.
They're a swimming cap about your head
to protect you from the icy currents.
They're butterflies searching for sustenance
over your body's meadow.


11


When I left you
at the quay tonight
an enormous trench opened up
in my core
so profound
it would not be filled
even if you were to pour
from one utensil
the streams of the Mull of Kintyre
and the Irish Sea and the English Channel.



_______________________

from The Astrakhan Cloak
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

translated from the Irish by
Paul Muldoon
(Wake Forest 1993)

TELL IT ~

FEELING FUCKED / UP


Lord she's gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white    crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing


____________________________


ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
from Blues Poems
(Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/etheridge-knight

For twenty years — through the 80s & 90s — I visited an all women's boarding school as a poet-in-residence for each year's winter term. It worked well with my other work as a builder and landscaper since these were the lean months for me financially, and it worked for the school because it brought something different into the English Dept. One more win-win. I would allow a day off for the sophomore class teachers since these were the classes I worked in from 8AM until 1PM, and then in the afternoon I conducted a two-hour writing seminar where I welcomed in all ages and scholarship — no prejudice. This is where we got to walk into a classroom and really shut the doors (and open the windows) and write and speak our minds, and we did. The classes were often explosive in size — chairs used up and students sitting on the radiators or windowsills. Good stuff. Anything that could be handled with care was allowed into the class and contributed. So in came guitars, notebooks, personal journals, art work, poetry, sports, complaints, wisdom. Since I shot baskets in the gym an hour before class, I met the jocks and the janitors, and in more ways than one they also were inducted into the class. I always brought poetry, and every year this poem by Etheridge Knight came and every time it received the same thrill response. It's important for young women or men to receive the heart and soul of other women and men.

ARCHIVE ~

John Schuchardt

John Schuchardt is an old friend of the family, once of Brattleboro, Vermont — former Marine, antiwar activist and humanitarian — his tale of speaking against the war in Iraq in its early stages remains as important today.

More on John and his life's work may be found here:

http://forusa.org/blogs/linda-kelly/people-for-peace-carrie-john-schuchardt/10000

JACKDAW ~

Heathcote Williams
vocals: Alan Cox




http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/2012/03/longhouse-heathcote-williams-being-kept.html

"Perfect" ~

Mississippi Fred McDowell

"I shall never forget", wrote Shirley Collins," the first sight I had of Fred in his dungarees, carrying his guitar and walking out of the woods toward us in a Mississippi night." Collins traveling companion and recording genius Alan Lomax recorded McDowell over four nights in 1959. Night time, because during the day McDowell was picking cotton. As Tom Piazza describes the bluesmaker in his book The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax ~ McDowell was "a sharecropper who sang and played slide guitar in juke joints and at dances, he embodied a legacy of black work songs and field hollers. When he performed his "61 Highway Blues" for Lomax, the folklorist wrote a single word beside the entry in his field log: "Perfect."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Fred_McDowell

DEER CAMP ~

When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder




When the roll is called up yonder

And my hunting days are done

Leave me lay out on some hillside

Where the ole red foxes run

Leave me lay back from the hillside

Where the traffic sounds are not

Where the noisy sounds of progress

Cannot reach my resting spot

Make it where no greedy grasping hands

Will reach to grasp their fill

Make it where all greed's a stranger

On some quiet peacefull hill

Make it by a speckled trout stream

On a hill that greets dawn's sun

Where dedicated houdsmen

Will bring their hounds to run

Make it by some hardwood forest

So that in the fall

The colored leaves will caress this spot

Where from the frost they fall

Leave me lay beside the game trail

Where the mightiest whitetail trod

Let it be where just the mightiest

Leave their hoof print in the sod

And make it where the cross winds

Will blow which ever way

It takes to bring the baying sounds

Of the hounds that pass that way

Make it where the warming sunshine

Brings the earliest signs of spring

Leave me lay beside the tallest elm

Where first the robins sing

Make it far back in the country

When to rest you lay me down

Leave me lay there ever after

'Neath the peaceful country sound

- hunter, poet, and songwriter

____________________________

from John Miller's
DEER CAMP
(MIT Press 1992)

CAROL BERGÉ ~

the women again


women, then, don't wear some things:
angry faces on their wrists, on tiny
jewelled bones of jewel-like wrists.
they turn in their seasons like suns,
like rusted ferrous jewels, unused
to the motions of their angular men.
having novels written about them,
women conceive of conceiving, then,
in a kind of angular retaliation
or dedication, some of their fantasy
becomes children, which solves time.
they shine and spawn crustal faces,
hours sun-full, clear-cut as sundials.

1960






at big sur 
 for R.


downcenter into your eye
swimming past the green
into the well of black
i catch a glimpse of you
something beautiful there
glinting moving as if seen
through water through sun
where the shade leaf falls

1960






BEFORE THE CHILD

for Iris Mac Low


the woman bends with majesty:
move the sweeter beast I am;
when a baby wants, it will come,
regardless of my plan.
that I result calm or numb
makes it November, not June.
but notice our incurred frailty:
if I am honed to dignity
by you, I am part of all.
when the baby wants to be,
it will be, summer or fall.
nothing I say, beast or beauty,
strong, mars it. changes.
it happens as the heart arranges.

1961






TEXTURES


the hunchbacked woman:
clad in bright silk.
her hair shining near
her lover's cheek.

if the flawed flower has
fine perfume and true
color, it pleases the
senses. she knows this.

what is between them,
their legs, has contentment.
perhaps the color of
her silk, her silken hair.

1962






letter

to Eileen Kaufman


i say woman can
sense woman.
                       your
anguish, where are you.
in a dream, you walked
up a stair, while you
sat next to me
in a mexican atrium.
she flew in for the day
and was surprised to
find you,
               especially
the way you look.
she had your face.
as i watched you all.
the you next to me
was thinnest: too thin.
it made me weep,
all of it,
             but mostly
her exclamation
on seeing you again.
write to me,
                    tell me
my dear, how you are,
have you been
taking care of yourself?

1963 






position 


i stand before you
to represent all of the women
you have ever hated

your mother who
whipped the shit out of you
your aunt who
kibitzed the life out of your life
the girl who didn't
or wouldn't    or couldn't    but didn't
etc      etc      etc

what chance have i got
unless you consider
that you stand before me too

1963  






DIMENSIONS

for Alice Faye


Watch yourself move (lighter
than air, than celluloid)
across the past, across
those Silver Screens to now.
How you shone, and shine yet!
My time as woman reaches in-
to those dimensions, I can
remember you as you were
when I too was air-light.
My child sleeps nearby.
The child I was, still am,
sleeps or wakes within me.
In the gentle ruin you are,
does the air-light lady live?
Perspective; you sparkle out
softly, memories, wistful-
faced, an artificial form
lovelier than speech, than
old farm grandmother types
or simply different, by
choice. The choice I know.

1967






POEM AFTER READING JOHN WIENERS 


or any man who has written your name
and is left then shaking and naked
before the pain of the lovely humans.
Here is broad sunlight, to indicate
there are wills as strong as mine
which cause animals to reach upward
toward whatever makes them learn.

A weak man with the soul of a demon
has just called me on the telephone
when I thought it might be your voice.
The icicles melt and new leaves form
while I tell him I am not interested
in his busy affairs. Three friends
who are larger than his whole house
are dying of their stay on earth
without being able to send messages
the whole problem rending them alive
in a slow tortuous process I watch.

And many more of us have gone on.
When a 'lady' puts down 'gossiping'
I say it is just the human condition
from which not one of us is exempt
and that she might consider growing
a philosophy which understands that.
She moves thickly in rooms near here
wishing all her rooms were larger
and it is true: if you wish rooms
larger, then they are indeed small.

I am surrounded by my sweet comforts
the flesh of children animals friends
and still the rooms ripple and quake
when I consider your name and absence
and that you walk on earth somewhere
or sit at your desk even as I sit
or lie alone abed wishing for love
and forming your stony philosophies
from the leaves which melt from ice.

The only thing I can do is continue
in a semi-calm that assumes answers:
the children are almost as tall now
as when I thought I knew everything
and some day all this will become
their land of the elegant questions.
What will remain will be the stream
moving with dignity past my window.
And even that is changing constantly.

1970 




_______________________________________ 

Carol Bergé
From a Soft Angle:
POEMS ABOUT WOMEN
(Bobbs-Merrill 1971)

   

RR ~

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/06/us-high-speed-rail-network-possible#






 

MAX FINSTEIN ~

SONG


ah! you know

what I mean

so deep

so true

oh! you know

how I like

we two

be but one

uuu! won't we

do what we

do want

to do

hey! the

world stop

right here

on here!






_________________________

MAX FINSTEIN
There's Always A Moon In America
printed by the great Clifford Burke
in an edition of 600 copies
at Cranium Press (1968)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Finstein 

PATH ~

Go to your broken heart.

If you think you don't have one, get one.

To get one, be sincere.

Learn sincerity of intent by letting

life enter, because you're helpless, really,

to do otherwise.

Even as you try escaping, let it take you

and tear you open

like a letter sent

like a sentence inside

you've waited for all your life

though you've committed nothing.

Let it send you up.

Let it break you, heart.

Broken-heartedness is the beginning

of all real reception.

The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.

See the gates opening.

Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,

your mouth opening like a womb

giving birth to your voice for the first time.

Go singing whirling into the glory

of being ecstatically simple.

Write the poem.


(2033)


_________________________________

JACK HIRSCHMAN
Volevo Che Voi Lo Sapeste
(Multimedia Edizioni)





photograph:
jack hirschman &
lawrence ferlinghetti

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANINE ~

One of Janine Pommy Vega's early poems published in Mademoiselle

(1973)

Birthday, 5 February 1942

Sterling Allen Brown ~
(1901-1989)

 

Mose

Mose is black and evil

And damns his luck

Driving Mister Schwartz's

Big coal truck.

He's got no gal,

He's got no jack,

No fancy silk shirts

For his back.

But summer evenings,

Hard luck Mose

Goes in for all

The fun he knows.

On the corner kerb

With a sad quartette

His tenor peals

Like a clarinet.

O hit it Moses

Sing att thing

But Mose's mind

Goes wandering; —

And to the stars

Over the town

Floats, from a good man

Way, way down —

A soft song, filled

With a misery

Older than Mose

Will ever be.

Crossing

This is not Jordan River

There lies not Canaan

There is still

One more wide river to cross.

This is the Mississippi

And the stars tell us only

That this is not the road.

We do not know

If any have reached that Canaan

We have received no word.

Behind us the belling pack

Beyond them the hunters

Before us the dismal swamp

We do not know. . .

We have exchanged Louisiana for Mississippi

Merely

Georgia for Florida

Carolina for Tennessee.

We have passed, repassed

So many rivers

Okmulgee, Chattahoochee,

St Mary's, Mississippi,

Alabama, Tennessee,

Mississippi.

We have leapt

From swamp land

Into marshes

We have won through

To blooded clay

To gravel and rock

To the baked lands

To the scorched barrens.

And we grow footsore

And muscle weary

Our faces grow sullen

And our hearts numb

We do not know. . .

We know only

That there lies not Canaan

That this is no River Jordan.

Still are we motherless children

Still are we dragging travelers

Alone, and a long ways from home.

Still with the hard earth for our folding bed

Still with our head pillowed upon a rock

And still

With one more river,

Oh, one wide river to cross.

Sharecroppers

When they rode up at first dark and called his name,

He came out like a man from his little shack.

He saw his landlord, and he saw the sheriff,

And some well-armed riff-raff in the pack.

When they fired questions about the meeting,

He stood like a man gone deaf and dumb,

But when the leaders left their saddles,

He knew then that his time had come.

In the light of the lanterns the long cuts fell,

And his wife's weak moans and the children's wails

Mixed with the sobs he could not hold

But he wouldn't tell, he would not tell.

The Union was his friend, and he was Union,

And there was nothing a man could say.

So they trussed him up with stout ploughlines,

Hitched up a mule, dragged him far away

Into the dark woods that tell no tales,

Where he kept his secrets as well as they.

He would not give away the place,

Nor who they were, neither white nor black,

Nor tell what his brothers were about.

They lashed him, and they clubbed his head;

One time he parted his bloody lips

Out of great pain and greater pride,

One time, to laugh in his landlord's face;

Then his landlord shot him in the side.

He toppled, and the blood gushed out.

But he didn't mumble ever a word,

And cursing, they left him there for dead.

He lay waiting quiet, until he heard

The growls and the mutters dwindle away;

"Didn't tell a single thing," he said,

Then to the dark woods and the moon

He gave up one secret before he died:

"We gonna clean out dis brushwood round here soon,

Plant de white-oak and de black-oak side by side."

Foreclosure

Father Missouri takes his own.

These are the fields he loaned them,

Out of heart's failure, gratuitously;

Here are the banks he built up for his children,

Here are the fields, rich fertile silt.

Father Missouri, in his dotage

Whimsical and  drunkenly turbulent,

Cuts away the banks, steals away the loam,

Washes the ground from under wire fences,

Leaves fenceposts grotesquely dangling in the air;

And with doddering steps approaches the shanties. 

Father Missouri, far too old to be so evil.

Uncle Dan, seeing his gardens lopped away,

Seeing his manured earth topple slowly in the stream,

Seeing his cows knee deep in yellow water,

His pigsties flooded, his flowerbeds drowned,

Seeing his prize leghorns swept down the stream,

Curses Father Missouri, impotently shakes

His fist at the forecloser, the treacherous skinflint;

Who takes what was loaned so very long ago,

And leaves puddles in his parlor, and useless lakes

In his fine pasture land.

See years of laboring turned into nothing.

Curses and shouts in his hoarse old voice

"Ain't got no right to act dat way at all!

No right at all!"

And the old river rolls on. sleepily to the gulf.   

Harlem Street Walkers

Why do they walk so tragical

Oh, never mind, when they are in

The grateful grave, each whitened skull

Will grin. . . .                   

_______________________________________

from The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown

edited by Michael Harper

(Triquarterly Books, 1980)

 

photo : roy lewis