DRUM-BEAT ~

 

DRUMMER BOYS ~

TWO MASTERS ~

otata's bookshelf

2017

JOE NAPORA ~

B  U  L  L  H  E  A  D       B  O  O  K  S

2  0  1  7

DREAM COME TRUE 2 ~

 DREAM COME TRUE

————————————

 for, you know who

Fucking

Going grocery shopping

With the one you love

Isn’t grocery shopping

Flowers

How clever to be so

Beautiful — to have us

Move them into the light

In Country

Everywhere —

Little bits of mouseshit

Little bits of seed

Name

With my long hair

Tucked up into my cap

I’m called redneck

No

When there are no poems to write

Get used to it —

No is no

Hidden

Every single second

This stream passes under

This bridge

Eco

I chopped down the tree I planted

Cut up and burned as fuel

Carried out its ash to spread

Sure

The cat hides away all

Day asleep and thinks nothing

Of coming out and wanting a kiss

———————————

BOB ARNOLD

Dream Come True

Longhouse, tel-let, Nordsjoforlaget 

2001, 2008, 2009

A little book published by three

different publishers and thank you

to Susan, John Martone, Hanne Bramness,

Lars Amund Vaage who translated the poems

into Norwegian

ARETHA FRANKLIN ~

JIM DODGE ~

Backroad Chalkies

Summer 2017

photo ~ Two Hands

AMEN ~

The world was lucky to have Leonard Cohen

YOU GOTTA GO ~

ETTA JAMES ~

JEFFREY YANG ~

Circle of fierce

embers floating to stars

divine spark inside

breathing     breathing

I am coming, Mesingw

is coming

I am here




~




Beaver appeared, then otter, muskrat,

toad on a lily-lotus, turtle's

slow search earth rocked

tectonic web,  spider's net

Mesingw astride deer

face red black mask

eponym of peace, of

silence, steps, breath

making the forest

opening the path

Thoughts born of words:

You are not myself

nor any other

we are: thoughts




~




Surrounded by water and darkness

immersed in the sound of her heart

If this is blindness what is sight?

Before memory




~




They walked toward me from a great distance

and clothed me in garments of sun

faces so familiar, from a city of bridges

city of stone, city of ring roads

waterway fields

now dust motes in a sunbeam

They rubbed my back

and my feet

whispered sweet words to me

brought me food and drink

So thirsty I stood

alone

as they danced around me

knowledge and acknowledged

Salt flowing down

my body, a

vessel, my

blood my water

misting with earth

Hours not of silence or sun

but of the child

The cries in my arms




~




Stepped into water to wash

by dawn's first light

I carried her

she

carried

my heart un-

sequestered forest

Musing's breath

everything living emotion

motion in stillness

water clear as the air

was clear, the earth, my

thoughts, hers




~




And after many days

of water-silence, naps

and dreams,

her milk feeding my heart, her voice

gentle wind, her face blossoming sky

I returned to the village of nine houses

without a name, uprooted

not-yet-born calling me calling me

Tears of the Father




~




Walked the shore of shells

Walked the dock, the glass

Peninsula, the broken pier

Walked the macadam to

Grassy field, walked the path

Thru the trees towering to sand

Walked the mourning dove's nest

In shade and leaves

Walked the temple

Of elfin gold, of orpiment crystals

Tempered with wine

Walked the birches and outhouse

Walked the water back to where

I began

(tho I could see no semblance of a beginning)

And what the walk revealed

Along the sea's margin

Along the rimrock

Of the island

After so many centuries

Of marsh-tides and moonstones

Of or and ore (before oar)

Was an experience of walking

Irony replaced and transience

The unsaid

Thoughts flowing round my heart

And the rays like a shepherd's fire

Shadowing the vanishing-line



——————————————

Jeffrey Yang
Vanishing-Line
Graywolf 2011

THE PRISON SEGMENT ~

POLINA BARSKOVA ~

Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova
During the Fire of Moscow




I will try to live on earth without you.



I will try to live on earth without you.



I will become any object,

I don't care what —



I will be this speeding train.

This smoke

Or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.



The human body is without defense.



It's a piece of firewood.

Ocean water hits it.

Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.



And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit

Lives

Inside the water and inside the wood and inside

     the shoulder of a great dictator.



But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.

I will be an eyelash.

A sponge washing the hairs of your neck;

Or a verb, an adjective

I will become. Such a word



Slightly lights your forehead.

What happened? Nothing.

Something visited? Nothing.



What was there you cannot whisper.

No smoke without fire, they whisper.

I will be a handful of smoke

Over this, lost, Moscow.



I will console any man,

I will sleep with any man,

Beneath the army's traveling horse carriages.


     — translated by Ilya Kaminsky



———————————————

This Lamentable City
poems by Polina Barskova
Tupelo Press 2010

THROUGH THE TREES ~

DREAM COME TRUE 1 ~

 DREAM COME TRUE

————————————

 for, you know who

Visitor

Along the very tops

Of trees only —

Our wind

Map 

The road goes through

Such a wilderness —

Forget town names

Contagious

Just the way your loose

Hair sweeps your cheek

Loosens me

Centuries

Long after millions perished

This old painted vase

Goes on

Oak

Before I cut this

Tree — feel its

Life to live

Trick

Mere seconds

To be

Friendly

Sunlight

Doesn’t it feel like it is

There for you when you

Sit in the room with it

Clue

You tell an old house

By the squeak

In its hinge

———————————

BOB ARNOLD

Dream Come True

Longhouse, tel-let, Nordsjoforlaget 

2001, 2008, 2009

A little book published by three

different publishers and thank you

to Susan, John Martone, Hanne Bramness,

Lars Amund Vaage who translated the poems

into Norwegian