LOTUS IN HALF DARKNESS

LOTUS IN HALF DARKNESS
      —for Marty Goldstein

         Oct 14, 1949 - Jan 15, 1983

The sound of whistling
escapes from the lips of a solitary walker.
Down the empty corridor
a ringing sound echoes
from an empty can rolling across the cold cement
An escapee from the junk piled in the corner.

The corridor with its empty straight

lines and right angles leading no where. 

No one standing in the closed doors

and darkened windows.

The whistling sound—
a forced breath escapes 

from a friend 

who lies waiting
in a hospital bed.

His hand, a fragile lotus curled
on the white sheet can't stop the darkness
from creeping out of its lair
and spreading its viscous fingers of cancerous ink
across the soft grey carpet of his brain.

A song without words echoes through
the corridors of the brain.
The sentinel note sounds.
But there's no one there 

to open the closed doors
and the windows are locked shut.

We are all walking.
We take turns walking.
We all walk unannounced 

on that long, dark road.

6/29/82


A poem for Marty Goldstein, the first of my SSU classmates to die, of brain cancer. He was such a brilliant man, one of my close compadres in the Senior Seminar Literature survey class, and in the MA program. He died too soon, probably why this poem never made it to the electronic realm. Too sad. I still miss him. He died Jan 15, 1983, he was 33 years old. There wasn't a memorial, or if there was, we didn't know about it. So we never got closure. Next to go was Jim Montrose. We thought we were immortal. Here's lookin', at you, Kid.

Added 10/16

CAC/CPITS teaching journal, Working with continuation students, Bill Bradd

Working with continuation students, Bill Bradd

I work in small groups 10 to 12 kids, we create non-public poems, there’s no censorship. The ratio is more boys than girls, it’s usually 12 to 1. There’s always rebellion, you’re entering into a conspiracy. Bill uses the blackboard for anything, any thought. Class consciousness, he says, is a good place to start, but you can keep on writing if something strikes your interest. The way to love the thing you’re doing is to get to know it best. Overview—write a poem about it. Overview—kids know geography well. Start with their geography. Climb up a mountain and look down at your town like a bird. Write a poem about it. Maybe you’re looking down through time itself. Bill says, I introduce them to their own terrain, their own roots. Bill takes a piece of paper and marks all over it and then tells them that it is not holy. Not an icon. Does it work with them? On editing: Bill cleans their work up with them and throws words away correct spelling and grammar right there with them so that they see the process. Bill says, being eccentric helps. It intrigues them. The one-to-one attention I give them is all important. Bill says he is not there to sell them anything and they accept it. Bill likes to work without the teacher in the room. Says it hinders their creativity and self-expression.

6/1982

RRWG reading at Copperfield’s Maureen Hurley & Jane Hirshfield, photo

Boschka Layton’s bio for the Russian River Writers’ Guild

WHY DO TREES DREAM? and other questions

WHY DO TREES DREAM? and other questions

Why do trees dream always of sunrise?
Why does the fog creep behind the frees and slumber there?
And where does the horizon stop and the ocean begin?
Why does the breath of mice stir in the dreams of elephants?
Why are pencils yellow as the sun and as round as the moon?
Where does the breath of elephants live?
When does the sun sleep?
And what is the matter with the moon?
Where do most changes occur?
What can be said about the color red?
What does the shape of a human heaft represent?

6/82

Guerneville School

in class writing after Neruda's Questions

DIVIDED REALM

DIVIDED REALM

Divided in sleep,

we slip in and under

the watery realm

where I am tossed

from shore to shore

by the river

of your night journey.

The horizon of your dreams

merge into mine

and the eye of dawn

rising soft

as a pillow of fog

offers some chance of rest.

 6/82

NIGHTHAWK

Crack, the sound of the house muttering 

as the nighthawk flies overhead, 

crying kiree, kiree in the moonlight. 

Shadows of the great oak shelter me 

as I lay half asleep. Beside me, comes a sound, 

the sound of gentle slumber. 

While I think of his strong, young body, 

feeling his hips upon mine, and his firm back, tight ass, 

my fantasy unfolds and reveals romantic tendencies. 

I visualize nibbling upon his cock and his surprise. 

Meeting someone is exciting but as you get to know them 

the excitement fades, takes some new characteristics. 

After seven years, there’s not much surprising about either of us. 

We have known each other that long. 

So my fantasies provide me with new inspiration, 

but tonight my thoughts were interrupted by the nighthawk’s cry.

No date, not even a clue but by the tone, it sounds like it was written in 81 or 82. More likely 82.,On the other hand, seven years suggested it was written about Bob Hamilton, whom I was with for nearly 7 years.

I’m going with June 1, 1982. But it could easily be June 1983.

GRANOLA MAN

Roll over Sonoma granola man. This bed only carries one. 

Take your aging frisbee and press it between the leaves of a book. 

I don’t want no nacho eating macho cowboy sitting on my couch. 

Take your four-wheel-drive bronco out of my kitchen. 

And tank up somewhere else.

I don’t want a new age mechanic who gets to his garage by noon. 

Take your blackened hands and monkeywrench 

and tighten someone else’s bolts. 

I don’t want a new age man. 

I don’t want a ménage à trois. 

I prefer even numbers. 

Give me a rock ‘n’ roll man and a boogie woogie night. 

Don’t give me a poet. The next thing you’ll know 

we’ll all be splattered in the public domain. 

Take your typewriter keys and pound them out on someone else’s flesh.

? Gotta be spring but when? 1980-82

No date, no clue other than it’s written on the back of a press release for Jim Kohn, who I think was a classmate at Sonoma State in Expressive Arts. He was director of Ali Akbar College of Music in Fairfax. I wonder if he hit up on me and I got annoyed. I do remember the frisbee. It was red. So that places it at Sonoma State. Since during 1979 and 80 I wrote in my big journal, and this is on a loose piece of paper, I am guessing that it was written in 1981 or 82. And the tone is closest to what I was writing in June 1982.

AT THE 10,000' HUT

AT THE 10,000' HUT

The glacier rose up like a tongue
lolling out of the frigid mouth of the north.
I climbed over an ice wall
to trudge to the summit.
Ptarmigans, in half-summer plumage
chuckled in the undergrowth
of huckleberry and mountain heather.
The sun warmed us as our feet
crunched over rotten snow.

From the Olympics,
a sudden summer storm growled in,
threatening snow.
Dressed only in summer gear,
we were foolishly alone on the mountain.

The first sign of hypothermia
is the rhythmic rotation of frozen fingers
and your numb cheeks no longer sting.
Earlobes feel warm,
and your skin turns from red to blue.
The white patches of creamfat
like small islands adrift on your skin
are the first signs of frostbite.

Then, the overwhelming need to sleep,
euphoric warmth, and dreams—
a jumbled series of memories
out of proper sequence, take you in farther.
Soon, you reconstruct your memories
to fit the shapes of snowdrifts,
and you float into that warm tide of snow.

A thunderbolt cracked,
stirring the thick air and our senses.
Ptarmigans dove for cover
as snowflakes settled on their mottled backs.
We turned and ran down the mountain,
each gigantic stride brought us closer to home. 

At lower elevations, the snow turned to hail,
then to rain, whipping our legs,
as we descended to Paradise Lodge
nested on the slopes of Rainier
2,000 ft. below the hut, to safety.

6/82

slight revision

2/2017

ACROSTIC More than I can say

ACROSTIC  More than I can say

More than I can say
A letter drifts slowly
Upward like a
Red kite loosened on a string
Except that I'm supposed to write about about me.
Every time I begin, I get distracted by
Nouns, verbs, the shape of letters...

But letters strung sideways are
Another way of viewing the world.
Better start writing about me.
Absolutely distractable, loves the color

Violet—putple, and sunsets before a storm.
Intuitive, irresponsible, irrepressible
Open-eyed, both
Lazy-eyed, and slothfully
Ambitious at the same time.

Hurtling along at 9,000 miles per hour
Until something stops me
Right dead in my tracks
Like a train hitting a brick wall.
Everything crashes.
Yet out of the chaos, curiosity persists.

6/82

in class poem?

acrostic

added 2/2017

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

Give me an 0 as round as the eyes 

of snow monkeys sitting in hot pools 

on the island of Hokaido.

E's a hungry Pacman 

attacking the letters in front of them 

eating up all the other vowels in sight 

And U's are. the twin horns of the water buffalo
balancing the red Egyptian sun between them.

A U for Isis and Osirus.

Pyramids of A's buffeted by desert sands 

standing in memory of Custer 

And A's framing the camp 

as the Indians ride north to hunt.

I, the megalithic monsters of Carnac
with 900 stone teeth projecting skyward

I want W's. Double U's to hold up the moon,
the earth's axis, temples of the sun
I want W's swinging from cloud to cloud
Like monkeys in the temples of India
A place where Custer can take his last stand
Where Reagan can see his last redwood tree
Where Einstein can safely bend the universe
Where nuclear bombs can sleep for an eternity
among the bits of floating debris of deep space.

6/82

in class poem after Rimbaud

Guerneville School?

added 2/2017

POCKET GOPHERS OF SPACE

POCKET GOPHERS OF SPACE

Drifting, drifting on a memory,
The pocket gophers of space
are devouring the Milky WAy.
They are holding galaxies
between their teeth
as the scissors of time snip
snip at the purse strings
of the past, The pillow of
infinity bursts forth
and new galaxies are born
to the.volcanos of history.
Drifting, drifting on a memory,

6/82?