MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2017

Dear Ones,

Thank you for stopping by and reading my ebook reviews. I am primarily interested in women's fiction and the well-crafted murder mystery genre. I delve into historical fiction, and cozy mysteries, sometimes even alpha make action adventure series, but I am no fan of chick-lit Regency bodice rippers, nor am I a fan of sugary cupcake who-dun-its, though I will read them if there's nothing else to read.

End of year writing stats 2017

So I washed my hair at noon
making ready for the New Year,
I wasn't expecting it to be freezing all day.
Only to say, Stay cold, Pony Boy.

Of my 137 entries for 2017, at least 60 to 90 are poems (some posts have multiple poems), a few are prose poems, a few are themed haiku. I try & tag all my poems. I'm not always successful. Standard poems have BLOCK CAPITALS for titles.

My Facebook words aggregate 2017

Dear Facebook, stop blocking me

Dear Facebook:

Nearly every time I post a link anywhere on Facebook these days, it is marked as spam. Your newest spambot algorithm sucks. Usually it is a link to one of my own blog posts that sets it off, and now even a friend's very benign YouTube link was marked as spam.

Zima, Russian winter, trading sides

When I was doing a big poetry and art exchange with the former USSR, we collected poetry from the people (vs State-sanctioned poetry), and translated it. We remarked upon the fact that so many poems were filled with images of snow and winter (zima), for the winter of their discontent was still upon the Soviets in 1990, then the putscht brought a thaw of sorts. Then the NEA Jesse Helms-Mapplethorpe art scandal. My Soviet friends laughed and said, this is how it begins, and they said that the US and the USSR were trading places. What strange times we live in, trading sides like that. We are reliving the winter of our discontent, brought on by the Republicans, who were once so rabidly anti soviet, they blackmailed a whole generation of artists, and executed the Rosenbergs for treason—for conspiring with the enemy. Pogo was right. We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

A MADRIGAL FOR THE MILLENNIUM

The conch sounds

calling the distant sailors home.
The waves curl and beckon.
The sailors chant. 

The gulls dive and weave 

the air into nets.
The fish rise, 

they rise up 

and gather in the clouds.

Something holy and profound—

the clouds part.

I tell John Godbeams 

pierce the sky's heart,

in Gregorian time

while roses bloom midwinter.

Milagros de Guadalupe!

A madrigal for the millennium

an open mind of music.

Insects practice percussive 

dance steps. The scent 

of roses in an empty room.

12/20/17

Winter Solstice
CATHEDRAL OF SOUND
Last time 

CATHEDRAL OF SOUND

Bird voices find the wind
speaking in tongues.
The trees shake off the night,
stretches a little closer to the sky.
The clouds shed their tears,
the memory of water,
a rainstick takes us deeper
into the cathedral of sound.
Peace comes dropping slow.

12/20/2017
Winter Solstice
A MADRIGAL FOR THE MILLENNIUM
Last time

RED HERRINGS

RED HERRINGS

—for Sara Menefee

our iPhones

seeking shoals

of lost words
to compose small poems

catch unschooled fish

inappropriate

placeholders

leading us astray.

12/8

She gathers
purse seine nets
on the city streets
where the homeless
tell her stories
small poems
flashing a silver
currency
of hope
in the gutters
of despair.

SINGING BETWEEN THE LINES

Because there weren't enough altos in the choir

my high school music teacher, Mr. Parker,

shipped me off to the meager alto section

where I sang Handel's Messiah in monotone riffs 

like a scald crow, or a ploughman at the fields.

Never the white dove soaring in the vaulted sky.

Decades later, after an accident, a punctured lung 

left me breathless, my therapy was to join a choir, 

where I discovered that all this time that

I was a soprano. I felt cheated at both ends: 

I was given no melody line when I was young,

singing a supportive third below the gilded flock 

who preened their swansong feathers, 

& screeched high notes because they could.

Mr. Parker's nose was as red as that fictional reindeer,
as he spiked his coffee with endless libations.

And now, with no way to reach the upper arpeggios,

I stagger between the two parts, a switch hitter

baying out all the song lines.

No wonder I was always trying to braid 

the alto and soprano lines together all at once, 

splitting the difference between the sour notes. 

No wonder I still can't sing to save my life.

12/8/17

No alto, I sang
the Messiah in flat notes
no melody line

to soar in the vault

of the soprano songbirds

preening their voices.

12/8/17

Firestorm of Words reading in Healdsburg

I'm still feeling a bit under the weather, after a week of intense headaches and earaches. Smoke inhalation takes its toll. Trying to muster energy to drive to Healdsburg for our big Firestorm of Words reading at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts, organized by Penelope la Montagne to honor Brian’s dad,  Monte Kervin who died in the Tubbs Fire. 

Bea & Fran Hawkes in the 2017 anthology, Singing the Feathers of Freedom. 

I was almost about to cancel, but as Sean Folsom flagellated me on Facebook, and said, The show must go on. So, I girded my loins, I rallied the ponies and had a great time. My Alexander Valley students were stellar. A good reading all round, and I wasn't as tired! I went back to Nicasio and spent the night there, as Sinead was driving. Emotional times.

Alexander Valley School students in both California Poets in the Schools 2016 & 2017 poetry anthologies!

Historic Alexander Valley Schoolhouse by Frances Hawkes, 1st Grade

WAITING FOR LAUNDRY

Waiting for laundry: the clothes in the dryer 

go round & round, round & round, 

round & round—they don't dry any faster 

no matter how hard I watch.

Internet again!

Yay! After three days of no internet and no landline phone, Elvis from Romania, I kid you not, got us up and running at top speed. You vant I should fix, yes, he asked? I looked at his shoes. Blue. Suede. You have got to be kidding. He shimmied up the pole, cleaned out the cruft. Voilá, dial tone, internet again. AT&T insisted the problem was at our end, blamed faulty house wiring. Elvis is now a personal friend, Neil gives him a CD after a mini concert in his honor. Our little ponies are happy. The squirrels, less so. Private acorn stashes and squirrel larders in power boxes may have been involved. Yes, AT&T, that’s it, always blame the customer—we often shimmy up the telephone poles late at night and stuff our nuts into the cable boxes. We’d love to shove yours instead. Reciprocity, and all that.