First drafts and short takes

First drafts

SHORT TAKES

A tearful winter cloud waited 

while the rooster danced in winter 

Coastal cloud, a rooster wants to dance in the sun 

Winter waits while rooster tail clouds 

dance across the sky.

4/21/1986

The magician of the north 

pointed past the insectivores plants 

snapping in a rage for rare meat.

4/21/1986

During the steep night 

owls shift seasons with the moon

Ruddy sky slips from 

The western phase of the equinox.

When will we pass this way again 

and call out names 

like cattle lowing in the sun?

Horses hungrily tear at the grass 

as if it were the last handhold 

left on a sliding earth.

4/21/1986

Who is this beast breathing beside me 

like some forgotten ancestor 

coming for recognition in the night 

to give me new colors for dream

to shake me from the womb 

where breathing began 

beneath the skin of the ocean?

Sunlight surreptitiously slips out to reveal the age of reason.

Tattered cannibals devour the darkness

And the beast arises from the swamp.

Dust beneath, dust above.

Winged half-moons in symmetric repetition.

Why so sweet

Why so yellow

So sun, so moon.

Civilizations rise and fall by the edge of this fruit.

4/21/1986

4/21/1986

Added 2/17

Some of this  becomes the framework for LUNAR, ECLIPSE, MULEGE

This becomes fodder for the poem for Tengo Dinero 

Oh say can you see 

green sheep grazing 

on newly minted grass? 

On the banks of rivers 

silvered with coinages coinage of fish

Who can ask the gypsies 

how to line the edges of the moon? 

Who sobs for untold fortunes 

and greased lightning 

to increase the weight of the moon 

and the sky where dreams crackle 

and rustle like freshly minted bills 

hot off the press to spread thin across the night.

4/21/ 1986

added 2/17

Walking between the wooden boats 

she tests the white coral sands with her heel 

the delicate inner arch 

like the inside of a conch shell 

the thin brown leg 

long muscled, fleet, deer-like.

The carbon blue sword edged horizon 

floats above her head.

She holds her hand to her face, 

a shy gesture, 

as if to balance the angle of her heel 

or her head.

After spreading the nets to dry,

the fisherman walks over to greet her 

the curve of the boat 

is like the curve of her cheek.

unbelievable blue skin of the ocean.

The earth beside me 

like a sea breathing on sand 

I place my hand upon 

the cow like vision of trees 

grazing on the sky 

their trunks, vast straws 

to suck up particles of the sky 

that have fallen into the lake.

Saratoga 

April 1986

AMONG BLACKBIRDS

AMONG BLACKBIRDS

Movements among the blackbirds 

golden flecks and mica lakes 

captured in the corner of the eye.

In this way, words swell like an evening tide 

across a desert of granite and cactus 

and Russian caviar....

and then it all escapes into the dream.

4/23/1986

added/rev. 2/17

OBSCURE CLARITY

OBSCURE CLARITY

Listen to the luft and rattle 

of palm trees across the pond.

Only the wind can obscure the moon.

Lean towards the center.

The approach is like the obscure clarity

of dream of the first water.

Night rises from the well,

so like the sound of wind.

Incredible as it seems 

the caesura and the notes 

stretch across time and space,

to play a melody we can all comprehend.

4/23/1986

added 2/17

re to make tenses agree

SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES 

A tearful winter cloud waited 
while the rooster danced in winter 
Coastal clouds, 
a rooster wants to dance in the sun 
Winter patiently waits while roostertail 

clouds dance across the sky.

4/21/1986




The magician of the north
pointed past the insectivores plants
snapping in a rage for rare meat.

4/21/1986 

added 2/17

SHORT TAKES: prewrite for LUNAR, ECLIPSE, MULEGE

During the steep night
owls shift seasons with the moon
Ruddy sky slips from
The western phase of the equinox.
When will we pass this way again
and call out names
like cattle lowing in the sun?
Horses hungrily tear at the grass
as if it were the last handhold
left on a sliding earth.

4/21/1986


Who is this beast breathing beside me
like some forgotten ancestor
coming for recognition in the night
to give me new colors for dream
to shake me from the womb
where breathing began
beneath the skin of the ocean?

Sunlight surreptitiously slips 

out to reveal the age of reason.
Tattered cannibals devour the darkness
And the beast arises from the swamp.

Dust beneath, dust above.
Winged half-moons in symmetric repetition.


Why so sweet
Why so yellow
So sun, so moon.

Civilizations rise and fall 

by the edge of this fruit.


4/21/1986
Added 2/17

Some of this writing becomes the framework for LUNAR, ECLIPSE, MULEGE

RUSH HOUR

RUSH HOUR

As we approach the Bay Bridge toll plaza

the guy driving the red Honda 

finishes up a close shave. Pats his cheeks.

In another lane, a man is poring over 

the stock exchange, the newspaper

slumped over the steering wheel like a blanket.

He's squinting, I worry about his eyesight, 

and the relative safety of driving during rush hour.

I finish off my apple down to the core.

Spin it on its axis. El mundo.

Two Mexicans roll down their window 

and ask, Si? and laugh. Please.

Another driver adjusts his headphones, 

taps out a complicated beat on his steering wheel 

with dueling pens. I can see that he's a drummer.

Everybody's multi-tasking while driving 

in their hermetically sealed cars. 

I'm the only one with my car window open,

and I worry about what eating happy meals 

while commuting does to one's digestion.

I marvel at the dexterity of those businessmen 

while I, the poet, haphazardly scribe it all down

between the blue lines of my notebook,

glancing up at the last minute, just in time

to see the warning flash of the red taillights 

of the car in front of me.

4/21/1986

added/rev. 2/17

LUNAR ECLIPSE, MULEGE, BAJA

LUNAR ECLIPSE, MULEGE, BAJA 

Sunlight surreptitiously
slips out from under rocks
to reveal the age of trees.

Dust beneath us,
dust above.
Pale green bloom on leaves
like spores.
Winged half-moons
in symmetrical repetition.

why so sweet
why so yellow
sun and moon

The beast rises from the swamp.
Tattered cannibals
devour this darkness.

Civilizations rise and fall
by the edge of this fruit.

When will we pass this way again
calling out the names of cattle
on the last handhold of sliding earth?

4/21/ 1986

Broadside: Homage to Ken Poff, by David Fisher

April is the cruelest month. A broadside found in Donna Champion’s copy of Boschka Layton’s book, Prodigal Son, published in 1982. So, I suspect we were having a memorial reading for Boschka at the Russian River Writers’ Guild or perhaps a memorial at Paul Mariah’s place in Sonoma—some time in April of 1984, and David Fisher must’ve showed up to read as well. Hence the broadside in her book, marking the title poem of the book. Manroot Press’s Love Poems: Homage to Houseman by Samuel M Steward. So, though I found this in 2018, on somewhat of a pilgrimage of remembrance, I’m posting it on the date of Ken’s death. I remember Ken as a slight, grey sort of man. Dear friend and lover of Paul Mariah. And Paul’s guilt, of course. And the certainty he lived with that he too would follow Ken, so every day he survived the dread disease was filled with grace and guilt. Those who survived the longest shouldered that burden of grief unto the next decade. Or century. I'm not sure when Ken died, but he was still alive and kicking at Helen Luster's memorial in March ofo 1985. His big, beautiful grin shedding light.

Ironically, Paul didn't contract AIDS, He refused to get tested for years, but died of pneumonia in January 1996.




Posted 10/24/18




See Letter to David Fisher

Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children

More Than Words CPITS NEWSLETTER
CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS
Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children 
by Maureen Hurley

"We are continually invited to become what we are," wrote Thoreau. What does this mean? Why do we, as poets, need to be in the schools?

Poet Gerald Stern (American Poetry Review, May, 1985), suggests that PITS is simply a device to help build future poetry audiences, to give poets Income and attention, to modernize curricula, or to discover budding Rimbauds among the masses. He expresses a certain doubt about the enterprise of "making" poets. Stern's doubts about the goals and purposes of PITS programs and their validity nationwide may come from the fact that he only worked three days with selected high school students.

As a California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) poet-teacher, I am interested in the development of similar programs across the country. CPITS is the largest artist in residence program of its kind. CPITS is successful because it's community-based. We spend more time in the classroom and we work several years within a given school or community. We start "teaching" poetry to kindergarteners. We don't wait until they're in high school.

Sonoma County poet Lee Perron sees the role of a PITS poet to be that of a disseminator of culture. In Forgotten Languages (CPITS 1985 Statewide Anthology), he writes that artists and poets represent a culture not present in schools and "its purpose is to nurture all people, especially the young." Whether or not we as poet-teachers can bring culture and creativity into the schools is a question we continually have to ask ourselves. Then there's the argument of "artist" versus "teacher." "Those who can paint, paint. Those who can't, teach," said my mother. Gerald Stern argues that one can't really "teach" poetry; only a select
few students are ^chosen" to become poets—with or without help from us. 

The philosophy of CPITS is that every child has a creative potential to become a poet because we speak the beginnings of poetry with the same tool: oral tradition. Its roots reach into the paleolithic past. Why are people with strong literary commitments working in the schools? We live in a specialized society that inhibits and negates creative self expression.

TREES

TREES

The earth beside me

like a sea breathing on sand

I place my hand upon

the cowlike vision of trees

grazing on the sky

their trunks, vast straws

to suck up particles of the sky

that have fallen into the lake.

Saratoga

April 1986 

added 2/17

WOODEN BOATS

WOODEN BOATS

Walking between the wooden boats

she tests the white coral sands with her heel

her delicate inner arch

like the inside of a conch shell

her thin brown leg

long muscled, fleet, deer-like.

The carbon blue sword edged horizon

floats above her head.

She holds her hand to her face,

a shy gesture,

as if to balance the angle of her heel

or her head against gravity.

After spreading the nets to dry,

the fisherman walks over to greet her

the curve of the boat

is like the curve of her cheek.

And the unbelievable blue skin of the ocean.

Saratoga

April 1986
added 2/17

Freewrite on anger

It's a lot of work
to be mad inside all the time
like when you get steamed
and everything seems wrong
and you want to take on
the whole human race
in a free-for-all
like there was nothing else
to die for.

Pulling knives each time it hurts my mind,
this postal warning of death
sent to the wrong address with postage due.
We fold small memories
and put them inside manila envelopes
because at the time
it seemed like the logical thing to do.
These difficult sad things
we've all had somebody die
at one time or another.

When I get mad,
I throw a tantrum
and expect everything
to take care of itself.
And when it doesn't
I get sick to my stomach
and nothing will make it go away.
She was dead couldn't stamp her feet
nor cry
and it stayed all inside
until one day there was an explosion
like when a flowerpot drops.

1 April 1986
John Oliver Simon's workshop on nothing