EQUINOX, AFTER THE WEDDING

EQUINOX, AFTER THE WEDDING

All night long tiny tipsy men
tiptoe past my fridge.
As they walk by
they ask me
"Are you ready yet?"
"No," I tell them.
There must be eight of them
crowded into my kitchen by now
celebrating the equinox.
My cabin is populated by dwarves
stacking up like plates,
they are breaking the crockery
with their clumsy bodies.
Determined to stop this nonsense,
I roll out of bed
holding my hangover in both hands
and vow never to drink again.

Spring Equinox 1982
added 2/2017

The white wool of sleep

The white wool of sleep

The white wool of sleep
is knitted with the purple pollen

of opium poppies 

The ringing sound you hear
emanating from clouds
is made by someone
drinking the detail out of the sky
with their eyes
as lovers look deep
into one another's eyes

and all is voided.

3/22/82? 81?

sounds like an in class poem

added/2/2017

The Paper: Slugocide-for salt-free world (farce)

I don’t have a tearsheet for this paste-up column, I guess it appeared  March 13, 1982 date. Or it probably was an April Fools’ Day column.

By Haureen Murley

"According to latest reports, the renowned cephalopodic organization, Greensleasz introduced a bill to congress banning harmful substances to mollusks.

Greensleasz, located in the former Evolution Institute on Roblar Road in Petaluma is noted for its unceasing efforts to attempt to desalinize both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Their goal by the year 2000 is to make the waters safe for vacationing slugs and other land mollusks of importance: Currently, they are unable to bathe, during the summer months without bodily threat to self personal health. They maintain that their constitutional rights are seasoned by this problem.

The organization is currently lobbying congress to ban all sodium chlorides, better known as common table salts, from the face of the earth on the grounds that it is an illegal weapon, and when used in the wrong hands, is capable of molluskan genocide.

Spokeslugson for Greensleasz, Alfurred E ‘Zippy” Slugstein, who received the Mobile Piece Prize in 1981 for his brilliant research on saline solutions and disorders in Slugastronauts, stated in a slugscusive PAPER interview, “the time has come for all responsible citizens to band together and demand a safe, salt-Slack squeeze free world for our children to inherit.”

Slugstein sees the Dead Sea, King Neptune, The Salt Box at the Bottom of the Sea (see Grimm's Fairy Tales), Death Valley, the Salton Sea, and a tiny Austrian village of Salzburg in the Tyrolian Alps to be involved in a conspiracy with the intent to commit mass genocide on the already persecuted land mollusks of the world.

According to eminent Forestville chemist. Pat ‘Tootslug’ Bond, sodium chloride (NACl) forms square crystal, conducts electricity and kills mollosks by robbing them of  their entire supply of body water. Says Bond, “We use it in science for dehydration purposes.” Her laboratory is currently under Investigation by the  SPCA slug squad for possible mollusktation of Slugs. 

Slugstein reminded The Paper of land mollusks’ origins in the fertile crescent, their unpopular history, and their plight into Egypt when the Dead Sea was used as a purgebath by Martians from Outer Space (see Pat Bond’s brilliant report on the origins of land slugs in The Paper, March ’82, trying to eradicate slugs nesting on the lower wings of their space saucers. 

Millions and millions of land mollusks (they prefer the term Land Mollusk to slug which they feel is derogatory and connotes racial prejudice) who perished when they were forced to commit mass sluggocide after the Martians poured sodium chloride on them. They fled into the Dead Sea which was once a freshwater lake and turned it into a briny bath. 

The Dead Sea was reputed to have bubbled over with an unusual froth for over two centuries after the massacre according to one of the survivors, Littlest BigHorn who is appropriately named because he lost most of his eye stalks during that battle.

MacArthur Littlest BigHorn, author of the controversial treatise on the turbulent history of the Land Mollusk League, Burying my Pseudopod in the Dead Sea, a seminal book responsible for the renewed militant slug, I mean the Land Mollusk Consciousness raising phenomenon during the last 20 decades. 

When asked how he felt about Slugstein‘s proposal on the Dick Crabbit television show, Littlest BigHorn was unavailable for comment. However, it is rumored he did utter something about forked-tongued scientist under his breath.

Religious organizations all over the world including Shamnesty International and the Pope have verbally endorsed Slugstein‘s bill. Pope John O’Reilliozski said, “this atrocity is the worst thing that has happened to the world since the Irish potato defamation league invaded Poland.’

Local religious leader, jazz aficionado and award-winning paper columnist, the Reverend Bob Jones, who recently returned from a pilgrimage to South Sonoma, stated that the slugs (sic) of South Sonoma are uniting and overthrowing the unjust Saltinistas government and locking SALT leaders in atomic vaults. Jones supports Slugstein’s proposed bill.

Slugstein’s concluding statement was, “my toughest opponent trying to keep this bill from passing are SoNoMore slugs.” The anti-land mollusk group is purportedly backed by mafia pesto interests, in particular, the French Escargot Berets, who are noted for their unusual and unnatural hatred of mollusks and amphibians in general. 

These interest groups are reported to have an annual income from “billions and billions’ of dollars’ worth of business selling illicit illegal salts on the black market to communist countries who are desalivating the oceans, according to noted economist Carl Saga. Slugstein has no future interest other than living beyond March 13, the proposed date for SLUGFEST.

Women's History Month poetry reading, Sonoma State, calligraphed poster

THE BOAT PEOPLE

THE BOAT PEOPLE

Perched on a net, a lone cat

gazes down into the water, 

His attention caught by a fish. 

His sungold eyes darken 

As he yawns and pulls his tail in close.

Mothers prepare fish in charcoal braziers
While thre fishermen cast out their nets.

The murky river is pierced by their lanterns. 

Attracted by the light, schools of fish 

surface into the nets.

Boats on the Nai kong Delta float 

like memories of shadow after rain.

Women spend entire lives 

gazing into the tumid depths of the river

And their children are conceived

in the incunabula, the boat-cradle.

Babies learn to walk on the decks of boats 

never knowing the feel of dirt 

or grass beneath their feet.

Only in death do they learn the feel of river bottoms —
How the contour of river banks hems them in.
Only then do they learn to furrow the fine silt
through their fingers and toes.
In the distance, sumi-ink hills bleed into the water
hunker down, like cats at dusk.

3/10/82

minor revision

added 2/2017
i think it was in class writing