FOLLOW THE MONEY ~

FOLLOW THE MONEY

W/

BERNIE

SANDERS

LEAF FROM LAST FALL THIS SPRING ~

Once In Vermont Films 2016
copyright  bob arnold

OH SUSANNA ~

from the LP Johnstown

(Stella/Square Dog, 1999) 

GERMAINE GREER III ~

 

GERMAINE GREER II ~

GERMAINE GREER ~

REAL LIFE ~

Real Life

It was a hot day thrown suddenly cool

By that hard rain, poured off the slate roof barn

When the boy was hit by lightning.

Standing safe, he thought, in the large doorway,

Eaves above him tapping,

Farm trucks shining up.

Big for his age, father’s overalls, watching things,

Whole complexion tan like pure maple syrup

The stuff he gathered with his grandfather and horses.

His old man and older brothers stoke and boil the wood fire,

Spend those long nights in the sugar house.

The way the light spills out of the small steamy windows

All over snow, dreamy in the valley.

Well a mean bolt came down from the sky to end that,

A splitting axe flying.

Water dripping smooth from the roof edge

Splashes onto his boots and cuffs,

Hayseed still itching his back,

Cows poking behind him in their stalls.

Need a light already it’s getting so dark, he thought —

Struck him from the forehead straight down

Cracked him open like nothing should be.

The family dog lay nearby on a broken bale

Like he has for 15 Julys,

Large head on his paws tilted and watching

Rain burning the ground.

_____________________ 

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET 

START CALLING ~

Burger King staff tricked into smashing outlet's windows 'to release pressure'

Prank caller posing as a firefighter told workers that dangerous levels of gas had built up inside the restaurant

S M A S H I N G

NO WORRIES ~

I'VE NEVER HAD

ONE WRITER FRIEND

IN 50 YEARS

WHO HAD TO

WORRY

ABOUT THIS

T H E     W O R R Y

 

 

THE BIG DREAM ~

HEARTH ~

JOSEPH STROUD ~

The Potato



Three days into the journey

I lost the Inca Trail

and scrambled around the Andes

in a growing panic

when on a hillside below snowline

I met a farmer who pointed the way —

Machu Picchu alla, he said.

He knew where I wanted to go.

From my pack I pulled out an orange.

It seemed to catch fire

in that high blue Andean sky.

I gave it to him.

He had been digging in a garden,

turning up clumps of earth,

some odd, misshapen nuggets,

some potatoes.

He handed me one,

a potato the size of the orange

looking as if it had been in the ground

a hundred years,

a potato I carried with me

until at last I stood gazing down

on the Urubamba Valley,

peaks rising out of the jungle into clouds,

and there among the mists

was the Temple of the Sun

and the Lost City of the Incas.

Looking back now, all these years later,

what I remember most,

what matters to me most,

was that farmer, alone on his hillside,

who gave me a potato,

a potato with its peasant face,

its lumps and lunar craters,

a potato that fit perfectly in my hand,

a potato that consoled me as I walked,

told me not to fear,

held me close to the earth,

the potato I put in a pot that night,

the potato I boiled above Machu Picchu,

the patient, gnarled potato

I ate.




________________________


JOSEPH STROUD
Country of Light
Copper Canyon, 2004 


 

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED ~

Please listen to:

R O S A R I O     D A W S O N

Rosario  Dawson

IT AIN'T RIGHT ~

ROTTEN EGGS ~

P E S T I C I D E S     T H A T    K I L L

 

 

THE GREAT CLOD ~

In Burton Watson's analysis of nature imagery in T'ang poems he finds more references
to non-living phenomena than living, and over half of those looking upward to sky, weather,
wind, clouds, and moon. Downward: rivers, waters and mountains predominate. Among
living things willow and pine are the most-mentioned trees, but the specific names of
herbaceous plants and flowers are few — with "flowers" usually meaning the blossoms
of trees like cherry or peach. Wild goose is the most common bird, associated with
being separated from a friend; and monkey the most common mammal — because of its
mournful dry. Cicada and moth are the most common insect. The point is made that many
natural references are used for their symbolic or customary human associations, and not
for intrinsic natural qualities. No doubt the oral poetry of a pre-literate people will have
more acquaintance with the actual living creatures as numerous intelligences in furry or 
scaly bodies. But this does not detract from what the Chinese poems are, highly disciplined
and formal poems that open us to the dilemma of having "regard for the myriad growing things"
while being literate monks or administrators or wives of officials in the world's first
"great society." The reign of the Emperor Hsuan Tsung (712-756) is considered one of
the highest points of Chinese cultural history: the poets Wang Wei, Li Po, and Tu Fu were
at the eight of their powers during those years, and so were the brilliant and influential
Ch'an Masters Shen-hui, Nan-yueh, Ma-tsu, and Po-chang The national population may
have been as high as 60 million.

I first came onto Chinese poems in translation at nineteen, when my ideal of nature was a
45 degree ice slope on a volcano, or an absolutely virgin rain forest. They helped me to "see"
fields, farms, tangles of brush, the azaleas in the back of an old brick apartment. They freed
me from excessive attachments to wild mountains, with their almost subliminal way of
presenting even the wildest hills as a place where people, also, live.

G A R Y     S N Y D E R

Notes and Memoirs on Nature and History in East Asia

T H E     G R E A T     C L O D

 

M E R L E     H A G G A R D

passes away on his birthday

6 April 2016

b. 1937

Oildale, California

photograph by marty stuart 

 

WHY YOU MAY HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR SOUL ~

THE PANAMA PAPERS

 

NEW JAMES KOLLER ~

 

James Koller

Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005

Longhouse 2016

  72 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 6.25 inches

$12.95

order here through Paypal, plus $3.95 (US shipping only)

 

international shipping,  $12.95 plus $15

Check or money order to

Longhouse

PO Box 2454

West Brattleboro, VT 05303

FOR, IDA VIVIAN ARNOLD ~

born at the tail end of March on a spring day