CAMPBELL HOT SPRINGS, earlier version

Crows sit over the orchards.
The way a woodpecker approaches a tree is with intent.
We follow the Feather River north along the bowl of valley
and sit in the steaming pool, discussing our stomachs
amid a flurry of snowflakes. Ice forms in our hair and melts,
trickling down our scalps like blood.
Snow gathers on willow branches.
Snow on skin, the water, leaving marks,
dermis of snow on the water.

1982, Chico
Rev. 3/12/83
The original impetus for this poem was written in Chico, 1982. It’s almost a different poem. This is a second draft from 83, for NPC.

• CAMPBELL HOT SPRINGS (100 Monkeys) no efile 

SOLSTICE

See this night pass under piercing stars.
The clear bell of night cups the earth
with a soft blue blanket of snow.
We wait for the sun’s return
to melt the frozen tears of the world
from its journey along the dark winter road.

12/82, or 83 solstice

RRWG winter reading at Sebastopol Vets Bldg

THE ILLUSION OF LIGHT: notes to a landscape painter (Frank Gannon)

THE ILLUSION OF LIGHT
Notes to a landscape painter

Just as I'm beginning to see color notes
the way fog resting on a green-eyed patch of ocean
turns to pale jade, or a wedge of sunlight
carves a bright cerulean wafer of sea,
and cantilevered mountains amidst swells
tease color across its taut surface,

you said, "find a red-tailed hawk circling in the sky.
His cry will make you forget the pain."
What I didn't see was how light belays notes of color
to your eye as you stroke the landscape.
"There isn't anyone else I'm seeing," you said,
and it dawns on me that this light is your mistress.

A web of my hair fell across your face
and you said you couldn't breathe.
A friend once said, "when lovers disagree,
one casts his vote and the other negates it."
No one told me the choices would be so limited.

Our conmingled clothing in a dark pile
at the foot of the bed casts tall shadows
as you held them up, a hooded cloak of darkness
stealthily slipped over the hills robbing them of color.
No one told you the night is for lovers.

At Bridgehaven, I found a hawk crouched on a pylon.
I said, "if he flies away, I'll forget the pain."
But he wouldn't fly away. Dammit!
I had to shake my fist at him and scream.
A hawk is not a feather daisy one plucks petals from.

Now, the dark painting you gave me makes more sense.
Who breaks up with someone on their birthday?
When I looked, it filled me with a feeling of loss
What I couldn't understand, because it wasn't
anything like your impressionist landscapes
but of a fence hemmed in by shadow.

The light peeked out from behind trees
teasing the viewer's eye around the corner, out of reach.
But, a painting is only an illusion of light after all,
just as these words are an illusion of feeling.
Didn't they tell you—if you stare at the sun too long,
you'll go blind?

12/4/82

Drawings 82 (art)

MOTHLIGHT

MOTH LIGHT

As you breathe in 

the light,

darkness,  softly fallen 

from your face

reveals these burnt wings

rekindled in your eyes.

11/23/83 

Date may be off, it may have been published in Radius or Arc. I used the published version line breaks.

a page from the Marin Poetry Center anthology, 1982? or 83?

Obligatory Hug, Nov.1982, Copperfield's, Sebastopol

To Maureen in your fourth decade: a Sestina for my 30th Birthday

To Maureen in your fourth decade

Be sure to spend the season in Mexico.

Remember, ice melts the red hot licks of summer and spring.

Make sure you take a hike from forest Knolls to Tomales Bay.

From southerly licks, the red hot summer season
spreads grassy knolls to your moment.

Spring the tumbleweed down into the red hot summer
sleeping up into green meadows.

Be sure to have plenty of Guinness, a saucer in any season.

I have not spent any time in Mexico
And sometime during your 70s, we will sing together
in Dublin's fair city
and spend next summer picking huckleberries with your grandmother
And when you come back, be sure to practice your spear throwing
because the men who carry earth and bags are closing in on you.
If you need spears , I have several at my place.

In Mexico, hawks melt especially in spring from Bolinas to Petaluma.

The dish of Guinness wanders towards Dublin

Huckleberries are in leather bags.

Dehumidify your Volkswagen especially while eating strawberries.

Maureen,  in your fourth decade, go to Mexico
when the ice melts in TOmales Bay, take a hike to Foresville.
We'll all be there to meet you with the saucer of Guinness
because of the men with spears, because they carry bags of dirt.

I pass, Maureen, you should pickup your mail more often
on your way to Mexico from Tomales Bay
with your dehumidifiedVW, strawberries and Guinness,
pick up males on the road. Choose a nicer man. No more junk mail.

On your trip, may your bag contain the berries, beer, wisdom,
and the maturity of the recent past.
May it also contains the happiness of the future.
And made also contain first-class mail.

Maureen, in the 30th year, which is your fourth decade, take a hike.

Maybe lick the hot ice of summer and spring

Trek past that one with your saucer of Guinness
singing in Dublin with Mike, pick huckleberries with your grandmother

Take a spear and dehumidify your VW. Pick up your mail.

May your fourth decade be multiplied by your sixth sense in your fifth decade.
With the saucer of Guinness by your side, look forward
remember the days, not to be too mindful of sword flashing in Guatemala.

Always dehumidify your VW with strawberries,
remember to pick up your mail.

Have a good time while rolling down into the Russian River.

Spent a season in the hot licks of Mexico
with your saucer Guinness and the summer
spearing huckleberries with your grandmother.

Remember to dehumidify the bagman in your VW
and pick up your male more often whoever he is.

When you multiply your sixth sense in your fourth decade
so that your fifth decade will have seven blessings
while your VW rolls down the hill to the river.

Then next fall, take your new dancing shoes and hot stockings
to the mouth of the river and dance and Irish jig
while the pelicans dive for fish.

Go to the Pink Elephant and get drunk.
Get your VW lowered, chopped, cherried, and painted metallic blue

Cruise down to Mexico. Drink Guinness and Dos Exxes.
Cruise to Tomales, lay down in some river.
Take your grandmother to Stony Point Rd. and pick up some males.

Go down to the mouth of the river and celebrate
while the whales spout. And always keep the crows nest in your heart
in your fourth decade, and stop to pick the violets and wildflowers.

11/21/1982 

I had a huge bash at Zara Altair's. Poets included Lee Perron, Mike Tuggle, Susan Kennedy, Simone Wilson, Jim Byrd—most of my old boyfriends...

RRWG reading at Sebastopol Creative Center, Leonard Cirino, Maureen Hurley, Richard Salzman on sax

 

DAWN ON THE LAGUNA date?

DAWN ON THE LAGUNA

Purple cutouts of mountains,
etched valleys and cold creeks 

tumbling over boulders where ice forms 

on the edges, rising steam off the laguna 

shrouds the lone heron croaking at dawn.
I walk through the mist-filled trees looking 

for the mystery, white light leaps from eddys 

and drops from ice, swims blindly downstream 

and falls into a blue pool at dawn. 

11/1982, or early1983?

added 9/15/2016

minor changes

random poems and notes on small pieces of paper 1982

Found poems my notes on small pieces of paper 1982

The difference between 

the FBI and the CIA 

is like the difference between 

scotch and bourbon.

Clemency for goat rock

Will this stretch of road support Winnebagos, 

a parking lot with TV antennas and stereos

Sacrilege of another California monument. 

If we had some ham 

we'd have ham and eggs 

Now if we only had some eggs 

—Irish saying

We make light-years leaping with other people

Yes but the wind was locked within the woods 

11/13/1982

The ghosts upstairs are moving furniture at night 

while the rest of the world sends out for coffee

1982

added 9/2016 oddities, at best.

Misc Bread & Roses letters

• Bread & Roses Festival handbill 1982

 

ARCHITECTURE OF BONES

ARCHITECTURE OF BONES
          —for Bill Snow

Some members of the Donner Party didn't wait for spring.

Their bones grew new coats of skin.

The survivors slept, dreaming of hot ash bonfires

remembered the earth was a vast burial ground

but did nothing.

Deep inside, the earth shuddered.

Liquid bones of molten lava tried to escape

& snow soothed the terrible thirst

from their hearts.

They say beauty is only skin-deep.

Skin stretched over the cheekbones of women

means nothing without inner structure.

Leaves are homeless without

wind-polished femurs of trees

to hold them to sunlight.

Look to the architecture of bones for strength.

Without them, holding snow would be impossible.

Mountains would bleed back into the sea.

In spring, no skin would slough off

to reveal the bare-boned mountains.

Who keeps moving the bones?

Soon they will rise up

& reassemble themselves

but the pattern is forgotten

& the earth's strength is altered.

Bare bones. Hidden bones.

For a year, Albion Ridge

swallowed the bones of young girls.

The murder was not avenged.

No one lit hot ash bonfires for them.

Their skin sank into the earth in a slow trickle

& the trees were the only ones left to listen

to the soft music

of skin falling from bones.

10/31/82

Sebastopol

rev.88

1985 Napa Poetry Review
1984 Deepest Valley Review
1983 Poets of the Vineyard, 2nd Prize
1983 ARC/Rural Arts Services
1983 Poets of the Vineyards, 2nd prize

WAKING MNEMOSYNE

WAKING MNEMOSYNE

As you rise up in sleep,
dreams and memory merge
like dove-tailed hands.

In sleep's imperfect flight,
the sum of our lives
enters a new waking.

Seeking night vision
a memory slowly approaches
in the shape of wings.
The mantle of stars drops
over your death—

lifts away from it,
& of this, you remember
how like doves,
her hands.

10/13/1982  (81?)
rev. 1988
Forestville

1989 Women's Voices

Mnemosyme, a Titan goddess of memory, mother of the muses by Zeus
2. roughly translated, it means speak-memory

ASCII file was half gone. hard copy rools.
Such a radical shift from the first draft, almost a completely different poem, so I've posted both.  see MNEMOSYNE AUBADE

MNEMOSYNE AUBADE

MNEMOSYNE AUBADE – for Richard Salzman

In sleep, dreams come
flying halfway down to greet you.
And as you rise up to meet them,
the dreams become a part of you,
and you, a part of the dreams.
To those dreams we bring with us
the whole sum of our lives.
Dreams and memories merge and sleep
like a pair of dovetailed hands.
I am seeking your stars in my dreams.
Like night vision, from the corners of your eyes,
you are remembering you can see
how the mantle of death approaches slowly
in the shape of doved fingertips.

10/13/1982

Mnemosyne, roughly translated, means speak-memory.
She is the goddess of memory, a Titaness, and the mother of the Muses, by Zeus.
The revision is so different, it's almost another poem.

WAKING MNEMOSYNE

Bread & Roses Festival handbill 1982, photos

Misc  Bread & Roses letters

CPITS Teaching Notes, Montgomery ES, Westside School, Healdsburg ES, journal

10/29/82 Dear diary, after 20 hours of fruitless arranging of a SSU Public Poetry center benefit reading with Herb Kohl on November 11, then the 10th, then canceled completely because I couldn’t find a venue—then I got the Cotati Cabaret to agree to host us which is a good connection. God, how can I even write because of the exhaustion and the frustration. I was sick in bed for three days, so zoned out, I never wrote up my teaching notes. This is a recapitulation.

Since my last entry, I’ve taught nature poems of 4 to 11 lines. Write four obvious things and four obscure things. Pat Solen‘s class went well but Gary Reeves’ class was out of control. Dick Peters’ class had low energy with minimum output. I got so-so results. I talked lots about images for concrete poetry. 

After Gary’s second class, I had my doubts about going on with the lesson plan. Lee and I did animal poems during the next section. It was like regression. Dumb it down. We each read lots of examples and told them to start writing when they got something in mind. That went well and some of the best animal poems were produced ever. 

Peter’s’ class we did a repeat lesson and got some mediocre stuff. I think they’re doing what they think I want, not writing about their feelings. We went ahead with other lesson plans in Pat‘s class. Day, one four elements, four seasons, four more elements. Write a nature poem with at least one from each category, then do a drawing of it. Went well.

Day two make a simple sketch. Cut out the words that describe your poem or drawing and organize them on the page in a shape, that’s concrete poetry. These poems came out wonderful. Example if you wrote tree and did a silhouette sketch of a tree and looked for lots of words for example, and only found tree tree tree tree, you’d have a hard time trying to find enough words, but if you describe the things a tree is to you you get more ideas. The poems were very good. 

We went ahead with it in the other classes. I have to do follow up from the last class. Peter’s’ class is lethargic but they did the best poems I’ve ever witnessed. Gary Reeves’ class went well too. 

I’m learning self-control, pacing, etc. The logistics for concrete poems takes up the whole afternoon. I need lots of time for students to hunt for the words. Techniques for getting their attention at the beginning. Don’t say a word. Just stand there until they get the message. Then begin.

I told them about the upcoming anthology and to please write more poems at home to be considered for publication. The idea of appearing in print is always a siren call.

PPC I had a public poetry center student reading scheduled on October 28 and no one showed up. The poets conducted a workshop which was small and lasted from noon until 4:30 PM so it wasn’t entirely wasted.

Reading for a day in on November 18 all set up, negotiation with ICC intercultural center, poster is made—I made it, etc. it’s all finalized. Press release needs to be done. Art show classical guitar and poetry reading for Alta, Jonathan, London, and Beatrice Lagos at the Laguna is all set up. We have free floor space. We keep the door in order to pay the poets. Poetry show with flamenco dancing and classical guitar.

Mandala magazine is getting submissions and the class I’m teaching is unreliable, so lately I am recruiting outside help from PPC members. I’m learning to administer work to be done provided that the class is there to receive instruction. 

Tomorrow I start teaching a calligraphy class at Montgomery, Elementary school in Cazadero. I will give a history and show work and ask them to find feathers to make their own quills.

11/3 Poetry reading at Garbos with George Englander. I thought it went very well. My best so far reading from journal entries mostly.

11/6 reading at SSU in my fiction class with Elizabeth Herron, I read short story stories from my journals. I am not cut out to write fiction. I need to write about real things or listen to my poetic voice.

11/18. Busy busy putting on readings, Boschka Layton, Jonathan London, and Beatrice Lagos with Alta. I’m pretty jazzed as Alta doesn’t often come out to read. I was surprised that she said yes. It was very time-consuming, setting it up. Boschka’s art and poetry reading was a smash success. Her daughter, Naomi was wonderful on the guitar and we had a full house. My photos are in the Sonoma County Stump.

I haven’t had time to write any of my teaching stuff. The Mandala classes coming along. Calligraphy at Cazadero, I spend a lot of time researching material. I’m teaching third and fourth grade, I suspect there may be some problem with the teacher. She seems annoyed. Does she even want the program? 

Paul’s class by comparison, is a dream. Kids are doing well but I don’t always have the same kids each session, so It’s impossible to build continuity, something you need when learning calligraphy so, that’s not working out. I don’t like the bait and switch. I have one student who is left-handed. So we worked with many systems before we got something to work for her. I had to learn to do left-handed calligraphy, and she learned to do right handed Calligraphy.

Garbo’s meeting for coordinators at Jim Montrose’s house. Hammer and tong.

10/8  teaching notes from Healdsburg Elementary school fifth grade I taught intro to poetry to three classes. The format is what is poetry and why do I write? It was hard for me to talk about myself. I discovered that the information, what is poetry, was too detailed and that I couldn’t throw out too much. They became space cases if I did. I would be lucky to teach them all. 

I want to cover in one day plan during the next five sessions. I passed out two pages of poems with words, like metaphor and image and rhyme on it. They read poems out loud and we discussed big words in the poems and what the poems meant. I asked them if they had ever experienced any of those things? 

In all three classes, they picked the fire poem versus the Sexton poem (fury of overshoes had appeal), but I was flummoxed when they picked my poem about light. I told it was one of my list, and I said the reason why I started to write it was because I wanted to paint pictures with words. That’s when I discovered poems are made up of images. We can all see an image and write about it. I say an image is a picture worth 1000 words. And also an image is worth 1000 nouns. 

In the first two classes on Monday, Lee Perron, the arts coordinator, and my trainer came in with a guest so I invited him up to the front of the classroom and we each made up alternating lines out loud so the kids could see the process. We used objects they could see hear, taste, touch, and smell both in and out of the classroom. We made up the beginning and the kids wrote the last line.

On Wednesday I was on my own! I had the teacher working with me, but the fire alarm went off right when they were starting to write, so I took control of the class and asked them to finish. I rekindled the interest by reading some of the other endings out loud.

Time: to prepare for the first day is idiots delight work, and it took me three hours. Teaching time, etc. it was there from I was there from 10:30 AM until 4 PM. Wednesday was better, I taught from noon until two. To prepare the lesson plans, 10 hours total and one semester of observation, ouch. Talk about time commitment.

I also met with all three teachers on 10/3. The conferences went from 10:30 until 2 PM. I was reeling with exhaustion.

On 10/4 I reported back meeting with Lee, and for a half hour I met with another new poet, Pam Rafael. We went over her book for the Horicon anthology, and I did the calligraphy for it. We also discussed our first day. She tried to instill confidence in me. And I was terrified. I had these pictures of 6 foot tall fifth graders waiting to beat me up. We are already on our way to be coming friends.

I also did some other CPITS related work on 10/7. I won’t always mark down my time as it is a lot to write it down means I won’t have as much time to do my incredible workload of school work. Poetry Center, and calligraphy, not to mention my own classes. For example, it took me 45 minutes just to write this up. 

PS, the reading Tuesday with Elizabeth Herron, David Bromage and Roshni Roshtomji drew 80 people.

Press release photo see the Stump photo Roshni, set up and clean up, making posters etc. eight hours

Also I made the front page of the Healdsburg Tribune today as poet and residence to kick off arts program at Healdsburg Elementary school. It’s a big deal I was shocked to see a photo of myself in class teaching.

11/18. Focus on chores at Garbo’s for the RRWG. Lee and I will do the entertainment plus booking for February and March to generate some capital. The grant we applied for, technical assistance, for $3000 has 175 applicants so the CAC did not award it to anyone. It will be turned over to a region. We may have to rewrite a grant and the most we could ever hope for is around $200 so what’s the point? We spent that much and maybe more just writing the grant. 

Basically this means I go unpaid again. If this continues the burn out what rate will be great. Bad news. Good news I was asked to teach a guest CPITS residency at a private school in Marin. My former employer’s daughter’s class as a memorial to her great grandmother. Negotiations with the school will proceed on Friday. I have a 10 AM appointment at Saint Mark’s school with Mr. Bizjak, the principal. I am asking for the full $650 plus money for anthology.

I got the CPITS countywide poetry anthology to the printers all camera-ready to Reprographics. 

Yuck. A bit of domestic theater. The cat is acting crazy and the frightened mouse can barely move. The cat is high on it. I wish he just eat it. Don’t dare throw him or the mouse out as a second mouse has been caught. I really wish the cat wouldn’t share He’s caught two in two months in my house is too small for mice too. It’s an eat, or be eaten world. The mouse and cat are banished for the evening.

Last session CPITS with Pat Solem’s class. We made creation myths. I read some and then told them one. They wrote their own myths and some had trouble getting started while others loved it. I got my first fan club going because of it. Dick Peters’ class went along well with concrete poetry, but surprise!they needed less time than we planned for.

12/17 since last month, lots has happened. The Sonoma County anthology was taken back from printers by Michael Dow. I hereby throw up my hands in despair because the anthology now represents too much anger and frustration. And Michael has been a prime blocking force for entirely selfish reasons. 

And six months is just too long to be spent hustling over some things such as this. Too many power trips. The man has no concept of how to put a magazine out or what kind of commitment it requires. He’s already ruined relations with the county printer. Not good. And this is after Lee and I set that one up too. He’s afraid to release power or afraid to be honest. Too much to deal with. I find it ironic because of his involvement with Tibetan Buddhism. But life is full of such paradoxes. Enough on Michael.

(When MIchael doesn’t show up for our annual meeting, that he produced, Lee deposes Michael and becomes de facto area coordinator. MIchael said he was held up by an escaped bull and had to capture him but he didn’t call us or anything. He just left us floundering. 

Michael’s holding on and keeping us from expanding or going into new schools has became positively crippling. It was not a pretty sight. I felt so badly considering that MIchael was my first mentor and it was he who brought me into the CPITS program through the child and changing times conference at SSU.

TOCALOMA ROAD

TOCALOMA ROAD

—for Alan Mclssac

The round sound of Tocaloma rolls off the tongue

like night drowning in the gibbous moon.

The herefords stop grazing and low to each other

as I help my neighbor gather topsoil for her lawns. Tocaloma.

We stop afterwards at the Western Saloon.

I sip sasparilla as she rolls down another beer

beneath the cobwebbed mooseheads.

At the other end of the bar, a gaggle of men

bang down a cup of Liar's Dice for another round.

Ranchers in overalls and gumboots

argue over what's the best feed for cattle. It's a lean year.

Two-wire bales of alfalfa sell at the price of three-wire bales.

We overhear them talk of planes dropping emergency feed

to livestock stranded on the open ranges.

Toby's Feed is shipping in the last of the Nevada hay.

I'm having trouble feeding my horse.

The corners of Agnes's mouth turn downward when she sips bourbon—

as if it were an uncertain pleasure.

She salutes the empty morning air, saying, Sköl pifiskin,

and I look for the toofta from Norway who always steals her drinks.

When her husband is at sea, and alcohol loosens inhibitions,

she tells strangers met in bars we have no socks.

Their eyes fill with easy tears, and during whiskey runs,

they take us to the General Store, buying me more white socks

than I know what to do with.

Tocaloma. To touch the earth.

The McIssacs went from milk cows to beef.

Alan says they couldn't make it any other way.

In the barn, we step over a dead weaner calf. He says, Don't look.

Their ranch stretches from the sky to the old Tocaloma train station.

Alan has a “Stop” sign in his bedroom, but the cattle erode the hills

and fine silt settles in Papermill Creek. No good for salmon.

On Sundays, her husband sends tightly written letters

on thin blue airmail tissue from Bombay, Hong Kong, the Mekong Delta.

When his ship, the “Baton Rouge” loaded with secret ammunition

was torpedoed, we watched the news again and again, but got no word.

The weeks uncoiled a glittering chain of days before she heard if he was alive.

I played with leopard cowries from the Indian Ocean,

and Caucasian silk dolls with Japanese eyes.

My music box chimed a tinny Sayonara, filled with foreign coins

as she showed me on the big map where the stamps and letters came from.

On Sunday evenings, we'd listen to “Hawaii Calls” on the radio.

When the liquor warmed her blood,

she'd spend hours rolling white bread into little doughballs.

After they got good and gray, she fed them to Smoky, the springer spaniel.

She made me feel unclean for becoming a woman—

as if it were something I could control— like those doughballs.

It was O.K. when we were still kids playing in the thistles.

My neighbor died in summer, when the waves turned golden,

and the lawn stretched to the hills like a green wave.

We pulled weeds, stood under sprinkler rainbows,

tumbled on the grass, until sky and land blurred, became one.

The rich black soil from Tocaloma sprouted healthy thistles

nourished by the cow paddies we stuffed into empty feed sacks.

Her husband drinks and thinks about the sea: Korea. Vietnam.

He planted the disease in deep so she never had children

(other than us). Couldn't, says Gram'ma, tisk-tisking.

Her insides blackened. The surgeon trimmed what he could,

but it wasn't enough. I felt nothing when I heard the news—

as if she were never there. And only now, twenty years later,

I am remembering all those lawns, and Tocaloma—

this place where we touched the earth

because the rolling hills and grazing cattle

weren't enough to feed the eye.

10/1982

1988 Creative Discourse
1987 California Quarterly
1986 Marin Poetry Review

Russian River Jazz Fest, Adam Makowicz interview

Top Polish pianist's escape to the home of jazz

BY MAUREEN HURLEY

At the Russian River Jazz '82 music festival, world-renowned Polish pianist Adam Makowicz made his  Sonoma County debut to an enthusiastic audience of nearly 1000 Sept. 12. Billed for the past five years as Europe's number one jazz pianist, and chosen by America's jazz bible Downbeat international critics poll in 1979, Makowicz is making huge inroads on American audiences coast to coast and the Jazz '82 audience was no exception.

A recent emigreé to the United States, Czechoslovakian-born Makowicz lives with his wife in New York. He describes himself as a country boy used to open spaces and villages living in the middle of Manhattan. He emigrated to the US from Poland nearly five years ago because, the wholesome-looking, blond haired pianist said with a twinkle in his blue eyes, "America is the home of Jazz!"

Sculptor/Poet, a performance piece Zara Altair, Bill Snow, Mo

We met several time during the fall of 1982, to produce this piece, but our inspirator, Bill Snow, never followed through, and so it was abandoned, though we did a rough performance at Bill's Gallery, Dec 21, a Tuesday. I have pages and pages of notes.  The Architecture of Bones came out of it.

Journal Drawings, Napa

Napa Poetry Conference poems 1982

After a Galway Kinnell reading

The stillness of time, bones, 

hands filled by the harvest of want

There is time, still time for one 

who can groan, who can sing 

for one to be healed.

August 1982

Galway Kinnell workshop


Drowning

Bone-kelp fingers of the dead

clutching at my ankles
slip off, harmless and beckon
to the breeze, lifting the clouds 

over the mountains. 

August 1982

Alan Soldofsky workshop

When writing, you are balancing language and experience. It's a balance between experience and metaphor there is little reward in poetry except a sense of posterity. Why do this? To try and write great art is to put everything into the line, and give up everything else.

August 1982

Alan Soldofsky workshop

Every bed is a mouth
That's what poetry is.

August 1982

Alan Soldofsky workshop

In the blue regions of afternoon
there is but one desire, for a boat,
a red reflection plays off the water
And it is a slow levitation of joy.

A bowl of dead bees covered with rose petals 

a green dream emerges from the rind 

of a cantaloupe and everything seems possible 

There is no need for narration in the poem 

the ravens will keep us awake
Only the force of brushstrokes
keep lilacs from the pathos

Lilacs against white houses
You can hear pain singing, it is not a song

it is hard to let go of summer 

remembering, then forgetting loss.

launched a lunch of raw butterflies

Bob Hass workshop Bantu Rhythms

August 1982 (also 85)

added 9/2016
I need to edit them

Orphan Calf

Today, I rubbed the face of a young steer. His horns were erupting under the furry pole. His long forelock covering the bulge. It was like teething. A young orphan calf, reassured by the steer's presence, sidled up to suckle upon my outstretched finger, he tasted the saltiness of the steer. Spat it out. His lower teeth were perfectly flush with the gums, like the toenails of elephants. I walked over the hills covered with Diogenes' lanterns and Ithuriel's spears. And wild lillies—tulips called pussy's  ears. Lavender hair on the triangle that joins the ovum. Thought of the calf's disappointment of finger. The illusion of mother. The breast.

8/13/1982

added 10/16

THIRST

THIRST

I am trying 

hard not to 

think of our 

water contaminated by 

pollutants. As I raise a glass 

to my lips and drink, 

I discover the 

throat has 

memory.

8/13/1982

added 10/16

first draft

SKIN DEEP

SKIN DEEP

They say beauty is only skin deep

Imagine the snowy skin of mountains 

able to transform the bleakest mountain 

into a thing of beauty. 

But without bone structure 

that skin of snow would not be seen. 

It's the bones of the mountain 

which lend the snow its beauty.

8/13/1982

added 10/16

Mr. Abatni of Avelar Road

There's a man from my dreams, whose name is Mr. Abatni. He's a smallish, balding man who lives on Avelar Road. I don't know much about him except it's been over a year now, and still his name randomly crops up like a mantra.

It's like the two are intertwined Avelar Road and Mr. Abatni. I have no idea why. Maybe it's the way the two words sound so close together that haunts me each time I pass the road. Maybe Mr. Abatni doesn't even exist, except in my own mind. Even so, he's clamoring to get out and I keep stuffing him back in. Because I don't know what the story is. What if there is no story?

But you see, I've been so busy dreaming lately and it seems that I just don't have the time to write about him. I resent the way he keeps introducing himself and intruding upon my life. Especially since he's a fictional character. Especially when I'm feeling depressed. Especially when I dream.

I like to hide out at home and make plans on catching up with myself. Put away my clothes that are still draped all over the bathroom since the last time I went away, how many months ago? Do my laundry properly, not this wash the underwear, and the white dress I've gotten so fond of, in the sink.

Actually, I've quit wearing underwear because I hate to wash them. It doesn't really matter when I wear a dress anyway. No one is looking. Who has the time for a born-again virgin in a white dress?  The best part about hiding out from the world is that you can break all those plans you made.

Sometimes I don't answer the phone, especially when it's Lee on the other line. I always know when he's there. I always know when he's calling. He has a way of calling whenever I think about him—which is the most of the time. It drives me mad.

At least, when we're fighting, he won't call. Sometimes the fugue state can last for weeks. That gives me plenty of time to catch up with myself—except, then I'm so preoccupied with rewording and analyzing what I should've said, could have said, that I sit in a stupor. There goes the laundry.

That's when the story of Mr. Abatni crawls out from under the pillow I'm sitting on. Sometimes I think I'd like to banish him from my memory banks forever, but he's like a bad tune that gets stuck in your ear, and plays over and over until you want to punch your own ears out. Even now he is haunting me, and yes, I still can't seem to write about him. Because I don't know who he is. Or what he wants. So this non-story will have to do.

Ah, the sound of Avelar, like the halls of Avalon. It jogs the memory like a fairytale, or a novel that one becomes so absorbed in, that reality seems less likely than the story.

The dreaming at night gives birth to the credence of the tale. Enter into that landscape of far distant pavilions. Avalon, huge halls where knights still dwell. King Arthur, in my dreams, yes, Avalon. Avelar. Echoing through the cavernous depths of my brain.

But I detract from my story, that's the way he is. Puts a fog over my brain. Doesn't want to get born. I guess. I heard  rumor that he and the missus ran Casini's Campground in Duncan's Mills for a while. That was before she got religion. It seems she didn't want to live with him anymore after that.

So he moved over to a small cabin on Avelar Road. He didn't have a whole lot to look forward to. No job. No missus. The TV was the only saving grace, I guess, or maybe fishing. He used to tell stories about the one who got away. I was never sure who is getting away with what, the fish, or Mr. Abatni.

The choppy sound of Abatni. Short, rotund, and balding—like the man. He drove a little sky-blue car, a Toyota, the valve rings were so bad that that little circles of black smoke drifted out from the exhaust pipes like twin fumes of dragons.

Who says dragons aren't real? They've just been reincarnated. Get it? The pun: inCARnated. It could be worse, dragons mating with cars. In this advanced technological age, anything is possible.

Grendel really does live in the bottom of the mirror. That's why I avoid the looking glass. Beowulf was right, you know. But it's too late to do anything about that. The treasure's long gone. A mere reflection of itself.

Abatni. There is no Mr. Abatni. It's a name my dream made up. It's a bit hard of hearing. Oh, I get it: abat ni—it's all about me, or not—with a headcold. Or I'm dreaming in Church Latin again. Or is it Provençal? It happens. Pay no heed. Carry on. Abat means blind. and clearly I am blind. Or not. Said the knights of Ni. Nay. Ave Maria. And avalar is to to endorse. Endorse nothing.

The ducks bobbing along the coast of Santa Barbara are nursing black milk from the mother. Long live Beowulf. He slew the wrong enemy. Grendel and his dam were not the enemy, Herrot, the meeting hall, and civilization—were.

Blame is due, where credit is given. And when I walked along the shore, my feet were covered with black milk, black gold. How crude. Oil companies insists the crude comes from a natural seep at Coal Tar Point. What a wonderful way of covering it all up. The not me syndrome. Do they think we are blind? Where is the dragon when you need him?

The oil companies feed the nursing public a cockamamie story and they all swallow it. Blind endorsement. Good milk. Black milk. Milk drips like honey from the open sores along the coast of Southern California. SoCal, lo-cal. Calories from the black mother. Feed the children. Nursing. Weanling. The great teat. And there's rumor that they want to drill off our northern coast too? I think not.

May all the oil companies get udderitis.

August 1982? Other poems bundled on the same paper, on 8/13. Friday the 13th! It fits.
added 10/16.
Minor changes and connections to make the story work. I still don't get it, but it wanted to be written, so, I indulged.

AUGUST SNOWSTORM IN THE SIERRAS

AUGUST SNOWSTORM IN THE SIERRAS

As I gain elevation leaving the valley floor
Water drips from the rocks
And collects in pools
And ripples along sandy, pathways
Light juts out from behind a cliff

and penetrates the valley floor

My vibram soles cup soft

Against the rocks. 

Rain turns to snow

Moss needs little light 

My pack weighs too much. 

My shoulders are familiar 

As the backs of horses

August 1982

RITES OF EXTREME UNCTION FOR MONO LAKE

RITES OF EXTREME UNCTION FOR MONO LAKE

In these unadorned camelid hills, ancient 

clam beds seek absolution from baked adobe 

while unseasonable green fountains of corn 

suck water from this desert oasis. 

Sacrament. This morning, the priest wore 

an alb and the purple robes of penitence,

as he offered up the blood of the earth,

the palms give voice to parched santana winds. 

Grapes from Chile at two dollars a pound; 

the price of water from Chilean earth 

3,000 miles south of this desert where 

campesinos struggle for the dailiness of bread.

And in the north, an ancient lake 

 is dying of thirst so a garden may grow. 

What is the color of forgiveness 

when mirages of real water slick the surface?

Easter 1983?  It may be 82
Bakersfield

1984 Napa Poetry Review
         Poets of the Vineyard, First Honorable Mention

AFTER THE HONEYMOON

AFTER THE HONEYMOON

Yet another year passes

my lip remembers the curve of yours

the bed was a mouthpiece
and our bodies spoke simply.

All words are suspect.

Hands betray us

by covering the eye, the ear, the throat.

Our bodies never forget the touch of old lovers.

Sea voices whisper, "time is woman-shaped."
As the sand rushes through the  hourglass,
the sea hisses, "a drowning body
means the honeymoon is over.

I have no hands to turn the glass on its side
and the sand within is the color of white noise.

I come away, feeling old.

7/1982
Napa

SEASONALLY, LIKE A FLOWER

SEASONALLY, LIKE A FLOWER

I entered the church late and slip into the last pew.
At the altar, my uncle's widow remarries.
During the nuptual mass,
The priest raises his hands high holding the Host.

I glance up, after years of superstition
The nuns said, "Don't look at the body of Christ, 

or you'll go blind." Bells ring. Mea culpa.
I place my clenched fist over my heart
and close my eyes for old time's sake.

Mary Azalie marries again after 25 years of widowhood.

Her husband died so young of cancer.
My uncle's jaundiced skin
was yellowed like the pages of a book 

left too long in the sun.

I was four. I remember the way light 

filtered through the windows
of the hospital ward,
illuminating the sheets a radiant white against the skin.
The white tile floor, in chicken-wire patterns,
was stained with rust like his skin.
"It was the liver." they said. Melanoma.

When my uncle Myles died, he left behind a widow
and three sons — one in utero.
And my grandmother lost another son

so soon after her husband. 

She never got over Feilim’s death, at 17, 

a ruptured appendix.

Mary Azalie’s three sons consoled the mother. 

And then there were only two sons.

One lay dead across a parked car,
The Harley's stuck throttle roared like an enraged bull
in the neon-dawn.
When the news came, they couldn't waken me.
I wanted to sleep dreamlessly, without effort.
My dreams of violence.
Is the dreaming
waking?

Bikers from all over came to see my cousin off,
with their chrome and steel gods
roaring through the streets of Santa Rosa.
The last time I was in this church,
the pallbearers wore armbands of green, gold, and white,
and an Irish flag was draped over the coffin.
Another son dead.
And the mothers of Ireland keening. Mea culpa.

And the priest says to the married couple,
"Let us pray for those souls so long departed 

in the hopes that they will rise again." 

Pray for those who hope to rise again?
Hope? The charade of Mass —
And the priest gives the body of Christ to the living.
Should we go forward willingly into death
in the hopes that we too will rise again? 

We chant, "I am not worthy to receive you. 

Say but the word, and I shall be healed." 

And we shake each other's hands.

I kneel.
Dressed in virginal white.
After ten years of trying to cast off the faith
I'm beating my heart
and chanting mea culpa as the bells ring 

and the Heavenly Host is risen.
If I look, I'll go blind.
Body of Christ. Body of
Christ.

"...and a half a loaf of bread," the priest concludes. 

"I now pronounce you Man and wife." 

Christ said, "this bread is my body." 

Marriage, the sharing if the bread, the body. 

The priest says, "You may now kiss the bride." 

The congregation applauds.

Do we choose who we love
Or are we chosen by love?
The golden age of lovers is in the past.
And I wait for yet another man who can't say the words
as if love were death's handmaiden.
There is nothing to do but wait
with my fate sealed shut in the coffin.
And time marching through the unopened womb.

As the newlyweds leave the church,
I am sobbing.
Not for the wedding,
Not for love, or my lack of faith,
But for the sons.
The sons and lovers we all try to bury.
It's not the death we mourn for,
But the grief which starts anew each time,
and blooms seasonally like a flower.

I gather my bouquet and leave the church.
Beside me, my grandmother says,
"Its OK for me to grow old,
But I can't bear to see my children so old.
All those children with those bent grey heads,
they all belong to me."

7/13/1982