Spring arrives

The wildflowers were late in arriving, all that rain, deluge after deluge nearly had us building arks or doing glacial prepping. The trees, too long without adequate water, are cautious, having shed most of their leaves during the long drought, including the coast live oak, and redwood. It’s hard for me to witness the miracle of spring when all the backroads are aligned with dead and dying trees. Still, spring arrives all out of breath, the distant hills are losing their first blush of yellow against green, and the sky lupines seep into the crevices to fill the void. It’s as if small bits of the sky have fallen and landed on the steep hillsides. Of course the poppy gangs are shouting like cheerleaders on their thin rock outcrops, they are unable to compete with the foreign grasses that the cattle dote on. This year, the sun too was slow on the scene and the grass was a pale shadow of itself which kept the cattle working overtime. But now the sun has returned, and they graze contentedly, none of winter's sparsity nipping at their heels. First up are the spring calves snoozing in small hollows, their ears like small sails luffing in the breeze, while red shouldered hawks circle and careen with the vultures, looking for an easy meal. The light is still low on the horizon and you can see in the way it drapes itself over the hills, as if dressing the curves in a shawl of chiaroscuro light.

4/26/23 Write On! prompt Terri Glass

Sleeping on it

When I was troubled, my grandmother always told me to sleep on it, as a solution would come, and invariably she was right. I only needed faith that a solution would arrive, as it often did. Even though I didn't believe her, a solution would often come while I was sleeping. I think of the scientist Kekule and the inventor Singer who both slept on it as well, when faced with a conundrum and no obvious answers in sight. Kekule dreamed of benzine carbon rings opening and closing, as if they were linked arm in arm like girl gangs. And Singer dreamed of a sword fight when he was trying to resolve how to get the thread to loop through the needle and to link a stitch. They were stitching together memory and dream with practicum. Sleeping on my math book before a test did not yield any tangible results.

TheNarrativeMethod.com prompt

MORNING COFFEE

Before a thought could penetrate her consciousness, 

the odor of coffee robbed her of all free will. 

She followed its siren call to the kitchen. 

It kicked her in the teeth and she arose to the calling. 

Her grandmother often looked skyward like that 

as she stirred her morning coffee, 

the spoon clanging against the side of a mug,

purloined from the San Francisco jail, 

the spoon ringing in the morning with victory. 

The brown towhees answered with a one note song,

hopped over the lintel to peck the toast crumbs 

scattered at her feet.

4/23. (my extra free write from the NarrativeMethod.com prompt).

Our bodies, ourselves

In the photo, a woman, perhaps she is a dancer, is looking up, she's looking skyward for answers, so, perhaps she is seeking a higher power. Once it was called searching for an answer via the God conduit. But that process has fallen out of favor, thank God, I said laughing. I certainly had an uneasy relationship with the idea of God at an early age. 

Even as a small child I had an unusually strong sense of self, call it freewill. I questioned everything, much to the chagrin of my teachers, and the nuns. That time the nuns said the reason why it was raining was because we were naughty in church and God was crying. 

Well, that did it, I was indignant and asked what if he was peeing on us? Chaos ensued. I flunked First Communion, perhaps the only child in history to do so. I was six.

There was an Irish saint, Pelagius, who was excommunicated twice. Once during his lifetime, which was rescinded, and then again after his death, he was tried again in absentia for promulgating the idea of free will. We can't have anyone thinking for themselves, the church said. 

A battle this nation is facing today in spades. I don't know what the answer is, but here we are trying to find our way back to that wonderment we once felt as children. We are trying to get back to the garden.

Most mornings begin with my spam box, all my political emails and petitions are rerouted to the spam box because there are no graphics, I have dyslexia, so flashing bits and color distract and befuddle me, making me not only anxiety-ridden, but also angry. 

So, I begin my morning by signing petitions. During this day and age, the least I can do is to object to the myriad laws designed to suppress our civil rights, especially those of women, and those who are otherly-abled. 

See, when I was still going to church, it was the era of ERA, the beginning of women's rights, our bodies were being politicized. It began with the introduction of The Pill. Meanwhile, organized religion was trying to suppress us all. Something snapped, I was 17, how dare the church dictate what I could and couldn't do with my body? 

At least in those days there was still somewhat of a separation between church and state. We took up the banner the Suffragists had held aloft. Our bodies, ourselves, we chanted. We had the vote and we used it. And now it's the government suppressing the vote, pissing on us, telling us what we can and can't do with our bodies, ourselves. 

4/23/ TheNarrativeMethod.com prompt

My 2023 CAC artist panel application

I’ve worked 2 decades in Bay Area schools, teaching poetry & art to historically underserved students in Oakland & Hunters’s Point, developing culturally relevant arts programming. I implemented school arts programming, and trained poets & artists in both rural Sonoma County and urban Alameda County. I’ve worked with all demographics, including inmates at Napa State Hospital, elders, preschoolers.

I’ve taught artist-in-schools residencies in rural & urban schools in California since 1979. I’ve had 7 individual CACAIR grants in Sonoma & Napa counties; & a grant from the Montana Arts Council. I’ve administered/taught in CAC multi-artist residencies including Poetry Flash (current), received a PBS/KQED AIR grant, & two Oakland Cultural Arts Council grants. I’ve led arts workshops in the Western US & Florida, as well as the Bahamas, Netherlands & the former USSR. I’ve mentored/ trained artists, writers and teachers through several arts organizations including California Poets in the Schools, Young Audiences, Artists in Schools of Sonoma County, and Rural Arts Services. 

I’m widely published and I’ve won prizes, fellowships and awards for my writing, art, photography—and teaching residencies—including a Golden Bell award. I’ve worked for alternative newspapers, writing news & arts feature stories & photojournalism. From 1980 to 1997, I produced literary events in Sonoma County, including Russian River Writers’ Guild, Sonoma State University, Cotati Cabaret, Johnny Otis Club, and other venues. I was staff photographer and workshop leader for the Napa Valley Poetry conferences..

I’ve taught clients in a diverse range of communities of all ages/abilities throughout California. The schools where I teach are historically underrepresented in all the arts—I utilize poetry and language from their respective cultures. I also invite in guest artists from the community. Needs were determined by meeting with host clients before the residency and creating an arts program to meet specific ideals and goals. For example, at Malcolm X ES in Berkeley, we developed, and are expanding a long-term poetry and art project that celebrates racial equity, diversity and inclusion. 

I’ve worked with many cultural demographics with a diverse language base & cultural focus, including training Middle Eastern and African health care providers to teach creative writing to their clients in the Netherlands. Though not fully bilingual, I speak Spanish & can converse in several languages. I also volunteer at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center working with elders. I am a coordinator & current  coordinator and emcee for the annual Poetry Flash Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, as well as administrator of the Poetry Flash CAC AIS John Oliver Simon Legacy Poetry Project grant.

DEAR POEM, THE POINT OF NO RETURN, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 12

NaPoWriMo write a poem that addresses itself. Dear Poem…interrogate it.

DEAR POEM

Dear Poem, why did you leave me in the lurch like that, 

surrounded by mundane words, second class ideas 

and turns of phrase so trite, they made me wince?

We had a good thing going, you left me standing,

you walked out the door like an irate lover.

What on earth were you thinking? It’s been said before.

Didn’t you learn anything at all after all this time, 

that metaphor and simile must always be served fresh 

and piping hot out of the smithy’s forge?

There is no way to resurrect or to save a stale poem, 

no matter how precious the subject matter,

without undergoing a linguistic blood transfusion.

They say poems need to be retranslated every generation 

as language takes a powder, words change nuance 

and meaning dissolves into cliché 

whenever you least expect it.

4/12/23

2023 April PAD Challenge write a sound poem

THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Lonely cars on the tarmac late at night, 

remind me of wind soughing in the pines, 

or the restless surcease of the ocean’s roar 

and I want to follow the vagaries of that road 

leading back to the point of no return.

4/12/23

THE BLUE VAULTED SKY

1. My grandmother hauls an oak sapling to the sawhorse, 

tumps it in to place, wields the bow saw like a violin, 

orchestrating the sonorous wood, as it plays the air 

like bees droning in the acacia trees. A sawdust pile rises up, 

and the cats, ever curious, watch it for signs of life. 

Our breath hangs in the air like half-formed ghosts. 

The winter reminds us there is only the wood stove for heat.

She never says anything much. Only later will I understand 

she is missing her husband, my grandfather, 

who died at the turn of the new year. She is alone now.

2. When he said he was going away, with suitcase in hand, 

I looked at the sky and asked to go with him. 

I couldn’t understand why he would say no, 

or why he’d leave without us. There was our shared birthday, 

I blew out his matches as I sat on his lap. Was he mad at us?

The aunts and uncles laughed uncomfortably 

when he said he was going up to heaven to be with the angels. 

I asked the practical questions of a four-year-old:

How would he get there, who was driving? Was there a bridge?

Would he stay in the clouds? And where was the road?

3. The following summer, I was obsessed with angels, 

as I struck wooden matches, thinking they were toothpicks, 

against the rusted seat of the teeter-totter lying on the dry grass,

when out of the blue, a disembodied voice said, don’t do that!

Startled, I dropped the matches, looked around.

But there was no one there, only the curious cats, 

and the merciless blue vault of the sky overhead.

4/12/23 Terri Glass prompt, Write On!

Early morning trail ride

Some Saturdays I rose before dawn for early morning trail rides with my friend Stephanie. Everyone else was asleep. Her father never knew of our morning escapades, and my grandmother didn’t seem to mind. But I also didn’t tell her where we were going, as it was too far from home for a child on her own. I was on my horse, somewhere deep in the hills, and therefore, safe. At least she never said anything to me. My own parents were in absentia, my father deep in a bottle, my mother in one asylum or other. Steph‘s dad was a little more controlling. See, her mother, who was a Russian translator for the UN, blacklisted by McCarthy, knew all about silence. She drank in silence, and because of that silence, she died in the fire. A short in the dryer. Because Les couldn’t protect his wife, he was over-protective of Steph. The boys, her two younger brothers, not so much. Bucky was close to our age but Gooby was still in diapers. We’d simultaneously sneak out of the house just as the sky was beginning to lighten, and meet up at the county road. The morning fog was like a tight glove protecting us from the mid-20th century. We could’ve been anywhere in time. Sometimes we’d sneak through her upper pasture, past Old Grandad, the Hereford bull, to get to the fire road that led up to Mt. Barnabe. But the stiff barbed wire gate gave our small hands pause. The top of the mountain facing due west was our goal. It was always a spectacular view from the crest of the ridge, the morning mist parting to reveal the sheathed silver sword of Tomales Bay, tracing the trench of the San Andreas Fault, and the clenched bare fist of Elephant Mountain. It restored my equilibrium to see the word from a raptor’s viewpoint. These refuges, these steep hills and valleys were the coping weapons of my youth.

4/12/23 

TheNarrativeMethod.com prompt

GHOST SHIPS

A toxic desert with abandoned fleets of ghost ships

A herd of white camels, like displaced whitecaps, 
seeking refuge from the grueling desert heat,
slumber in the shadows of rusted ghosts freighters
resting on the bottom of what once was the Aral Sea,
a sea so vast, that Alexander the Great couldn’t cross it,
disappeared within a generation. For Soviet cotton.

3/11/23

BLUE LAZARUS

I once loved an old blue truck 

the color of deep mountain skies

that always rose from the dead, 

like Krishna, or a phoenix from its own ashes, 

overcoming great mechanical odds, 

from a stuck starter, to cranky carburetors 

to broken ball joints & missing catalytic converters.

It kept me on my mechanical toes, 

praying it would not die in traffic, 

and cursing it whenever it did, 

until a runaway dumpster took it out. 

That was the final insult. 

I needed a crowbar to open the door. 

Damned if the truck didn’t fire up, raring to go. 

But I had to let it go. Its wings were clipped for good. 

No rising up from the grave this time. 

3/9 &11/23 this came from a prose piece,

• Easter Sunday

THE BEGINNING OF TRUTH

There is always an infinite supply of uncertainty and fear, 

which is far easier to mine than following your dreams. 

I took instructions from the sky to talk less,

not allowing love in. I was accustomed to abandonment, 

and I continued on, in love with my own darkness,

until the path disappeared. No lantern to light the way.

I convinced myself that the shining beauty pouring in

was merely an algorithm of the soul. I didn’t know 

my silence too was a form of armor, shielding me

from myself, that celestial light shining upon us, 

was bearing witness, only I couldn’t see 

that armor is no longer needed to let amor in.

This is where the truth begins to let the light in.

4/9/23

Easter Sunday

1. Easter Sunday. The question was what wisdom did he impart just before he passed? Are we talking about Jesus here? He is risen, and all that. Don’t know if I want to even go there, if you know what I mean. The aftermath of all those so-called Christians using God to justify their bigotry is just too much to bear. I sidestepped it all for the gathering of meadows and the mountain cathedrals. The blue secrets of the sky.

2. What was it about his last statement that turned on the light for his witness? I once had an old blue truck named Lazarus the color of a deep sky that always rose from the dead, like Krishna, or a phoenix from its ashes, overcoming great mechanical odds, from cranky carburetors to broken ball joints, until a runaway dumpster, took it out. That was the final straw. 

Days earlier, a runaway van crashed into it as well. Poor truck, its days were numbered, and I just couldn’t let it go. By that time, the side of the truck and the driver door was so bashed in, I needed a crowbar to get inside. But damned if the truck didn’t start up, raring to go. But I had to let it go. Its wings were clipped for good this time. No rising up from the grave this time.

3. There is always that moment of epiphany, when everything coalesces, and comes together in such a way that you are dumbstruck, at a loss for words. You realize this was the moment you were waiting for, but didn’t know it. Call it synchronicity if you must name it, that split second when everything aligns to create a cohesive moment in time that stays with you, keeps you wondering who or what is in charge anyway.

Sure, Diogenes was always looking for an honest man, but I don’t think he was looking for truth in a cave. He is risen…

4/9/23 

TheNarrativeMethod.com prompt

NUMBERS, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 9

NaPoWriMo write a contemporary love sonnet.

I didn’t feel it.

2023 April PAD Challenge write a numbers poem

NUMBERS

Yeah, I didn’t have much of a dad. 

Not much of a mother either. 

It all came down to numbers. 

No child support was the biggest number.

My mother, who was part alley cat,

dropped me off at my grandmother’s doorstep 

when I was four. Followed by my brother 

who arrived one Sunday morning in a bassinet 

on our doorstep some four years later.

My father came to see me a few times 

during those growing up years. 

And then he ditched me when I was 18. 

He loved a bottle of Seagrams 7 on ice 

more than he loved me. That was his number.

At least my mother tried to love me

as she descended into the depths of depression 

but her good days were a finite number. 

But I adored my grandmother, whose number 

was marred by a widow’s half pension,

so I grew up in the country, dirt poor,

but somehow made whole by the algorithms

of landscape, despite everything.

5/31/23

Nothing rhymes with…

City Hall. Used with permission, Donald Kinney photo c. 2023

Last night, City Hall was lit up with orange lights to support the SF Giants, but street photographer, Donald Kinny noted that it looked more red than orange. Well, technically, if this were the early Renaissance, then he would be right—it is red, scarlet or cadmium red. Not orange.

Before 1510, the term yellow-red was used (geoluread in Old English—say it aloud with a swallowed g = y) or red-yellow to describe orange. Or the color orange was referred to as tawny (probably a Celtic loan-word). Saffron and green were the most favored colors for Medieval Irish clothing. I imagine that gold was also used to describe orange. It got me asking, why did the English language suddenly have the need to distinguish the colors red from yellow with a new word?

Weirdly the English word orange is a relative linguistic newcomer. It’s a “new” color name, meaning it wasn’t recognized as a separate color name in English until the 1500s….so, yes, some reds border on orange. Especially the light cadmium reds.  

I didn’t understand that when I was taking painting classes at College of Marin why cadmium orange and red were so close in color. I dislike orange. I was pretty relieved when I discovered that color newcomer, alizarin crimson as I favor the blue reds versus the yellow reds. Also alizarin crimson was way less toxic than the cadmiums. Poor mad Vincent. Was it the cadmium yellows and reds he used responsible for his affliction?

Letting my fingers do the walking through the Google pages, I found this: “The first recorded use of "orange" as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of clothing purchased for Margaret Tudor.” Curious as to where the term came from, I discovered that it probably came from the Old French, pomme d'orenge. 

Curiouser yet, the color term took 600 years after oranges arrived in Europe, for the color to be named in English by way of those Normans. Perhaps politics and the Reformation played into it? As in the House of Orange? The word orange, or flan bhui is flag-yellow, as there is no word for orange in Irish (oráiste is the fruit) is a politically charged color in Ireland, signifying oppression and the division of Ireland. 

And of course, as you know, in English, nothing rhymes with orange. Unless it’s a Giants home game. Then all bets are on. Then City Hall and Coit Tower are bathed in a victorious orange afterglow. But here is the clincher, early oranges that came all the way from China, or India, weren’t necessarily orange-colored. They were green! They were bitter as well. I read that Florida farmers dye those green oranges orange.

Valencia oranges marked Christmas season for my grandmother who was raised in Bantry, Ireland. Each year her Christmas gift was one Valencia orange wrapped in foil.

AS YOU SETTLE INTO THE LIGHT, Burning a path towards the sun, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 6

NaPoWriMo make a transliteration from Poetry International tricky for me, because I can sort of read Dutch, so I extrapolated and stretched it.

AS YOU SETTLE INTO THE LIGHT

Note the steps of the ladder, not the stories of the lost children.
Note the house, not the starry night. Go ahead, drink the wine.

Remember the house is dark. The windows with their eyes shut
doubt the light, they are learning to sing the ways of the wind.

The house speaks of memory and there is no stopping it, 
with its hard wounds and proud flesh and angst it wants…

It wants you to climb into the attic of the psyche and dream
behind closed doors and dwell in the sunlight plaited in gold.

It will make everything seem like new again.
Stand there with the door open wide, your hands trembling,

greet the wind as you settle into the light.

4/11/23

2023 April PAD Challenge write a poem about odor. I misread an earlier prompt, wrote this, wrong piece.

Burning a path towards the sun

The odor of acacia reminds us that spring arrived. But the cold air severs us from beauty. Chilblains become a real thing as cruel April rolls up its trousers. The coastal mountains are still holding onto last week’s unseasonable snow, Cobb Mountain, dressed in a lace gown, is draped in a shawl of clouds and darkness like a grande dame waiting for the opera to begin. Mustard and chamomile brave the elements as if last week’s snow laid down in the deep ravines, was waiting to sleep it off until the morning comes. I admire the bravery of daffodils and tulips, they harbor no grudge against the vagaries of spring, yet rise up from the darkness like phoenixes, burning a path towards the sun. 

4/3/23

As you can see, I wrote this earlier, but it fits.

The idea of strangers

1. What misconception is the host planning to clear up for once and for all? I wrote: who is the host? What is the misconception? We are all imperfect receivers, each interpreting, and navigating reality as best we can. There’s so much to choose from. Where do you even begin? Racial injustice?

But on this day of Passover, it’s clear that every single group of people and cultures has been oppressed by, or has oppressed another. Take the idea of naming people by their nationalities. The Welsh, for example, an exogamic name given by outsiders. Why would anyone want to self-identify as strangers or foreigners? That’s what the word means.

The name tells us that the Welsh were named by outsiders in their own land, and the land they lost to outsiders and they were being oppressed, denied their own name for themselves, Cymru. This holds true for native tribes of the Americas as well. The word Anasazi, meaning stranger in Navajo or enemy and so on.

2. What does the host admit was hard to overcome? We live in an us versus them culture, where every stranger represents danger from the outside. No one single culture is exempt from this practice. Sure, we can sing, all we are saying is give peace, a chance, but, bottom line, when threatened, we close our doors quickly at the first sign of danger.

Look at what happened during the pandemic. It was worldwide free for all. Everyone was out for themselves. And look where that got us. Hoarding toilet paper and massive shortages of disinfectants and other oddities as people locked down and hunkered in, and not their neighbors. In a just world this should never have happened, but it did. And no one is willing to admit that no one is in charge, and we’re all at fault. We’re all to blame, for a moment we let go of our humanity.

3. Every group, every culture has been subjugated with pressure from the outside, whether by war, or assignation. Every group has put labels on strangers defining them as enemies. This is the way of things. It’s hard to admit, but there you have it in a nutshell.

The prefix, wall, as in walnut, wall, and even the name Walsh means, foreigner or stranger. The Welsh would not have named themselves, thusly.

We need to begin by not holding onto the past, or our heritage. There is always one grudge or another to bury us unto the next century. Look at Nagasaki. Something is always at the ready to distract us and derail us.

If only we all knew that, then the world would be a much better place. But even the pandemic didn’t help, we witnessed that from the ground up.

4/6/23

TheNarrativeMethod.com prompt

LAMENT FOR LAKE TULARE, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 5

NaPoWriMo write a poem based on Simic’s Melon.

LAMENT FOR LAKE TULARE

In the Central Valley there once was a lake so vast,
So chock full of fish that it fed entire cities.
As it dreamed of clouds mirroring the Sierra Range,
The rivermelt sang its praises of spring song,
And painted its shores with wildflowers and tule reeds
While steamships huffed and chugged into port.

No one even remembers when the lake died.
The last farmers to whisper its name, all gone now.
The story persisted, and the mad language of water
Returns to haunt the memory buried in that lakebed.
Soon it will reclaim its long-lost shores
As the spring melt rises to reclaim what was lost.

3/11

I merely replaced Simic’s words with my own. See Day 3, CURSE THE FLOODWATERS. Check out this NASA image of the lake now. I never start each line with a capital letter anymore. So it was odd and I kept trying to erase those capital letters but that’s how Chuck wrote his poem. And so it stays.

2023 April PAD Challenge take the phrase "(noun) in (location)," replace the (noun) with a noun, replace the (location) with a location, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: "Dinosaurs in Jamaica," "Popsicle in Cairo,"

The above poem could count for double, I suppose. The PAD prompt didn’t move me. On the other hand,
SUNRISE OVER MT. HOOD, which I wrote before I saw the prompt, fills the niche. Oddly, I uncharacteristically came up with the title first, as I was driving to work. So I think I will let it go. Besides, it’s all a springboard, as long as I wind up with 30 poems.

SUNRISE OVER MT. HOOD

     —for Rick Coyston 1963 - 2023

The sun rises over Mt. Hood, a golden cowl 

of mist and fog painted in crimson hues 

and delicate lavender pastels to greet the dawn.

I can’t help but think of Rick on his motorcycle, 

the old woman who foolishly pulled out in front of him

has to live with the aftermath of her choice.

I can just hear him saying in his broad Essex accent 

Oh my God, before his life ended on the old Bolinas road.

I’m obsessed with the moment he left us 

and that sublime beauty he left behind.

4/5/23 one of the few times that the title led the poem.

AT THE VERNAL POOLS, and INNER DIALOGUE NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 4

NaPoWriMo write a triolet, an eight-line poem in iambic tetramenter, lines  1, 4,7 are identical, as are the 2nd and last lines—the poem begins and ends with the same couplet, within a tight rhyme scheme  — ABaAabAB. I don’t think I like writing in forms.

AT THE VERNAL POOLS

Across the pond the herons glide,
And the egrets seek higher ground
From prying eyes and compromise.
Across the pond the herons glide,
Hunting for froglings and newts’ eyes.
We used to watch them soar around.
Across the pond the herons glide,
And now egrets seek higher ground.

4/9/23

2023 April PAD Challenge

Write a dream poem, and/or Write a reality poem.

INNER DIALOGUE

Some say that in a dream, 

the idea that we carry a dialogue with us, 

wherever we go, day and night, 

it accompanies us, is like a familiar, 

watching over us, waiting for the news, 

hidden behind a veil of symbolism 

and random metaphor.

4/9

Uncurated poems versus unpublished poems, Rattle Magazine

Timothy Green, of Rattle Magazine, is proposing a new category for unpublished poems, dismissing poems published on social media or in blogs as being unpublished. I am all for the uncurated poem idea, because I use my blog as my notebook. Yet I can hardly consider my poems published because I post them in my blog. I have a readership of 12 people and I think all of those are web crawlers. Somebody could easily say, well why not just take your blog off-line and use it that way? Good question, but, what’s the point? Knowing that my blog is online, and knowing that somebody might read them, makes me tighten up my chops. No time for slovenliness. No time for cliché. At this advanced stage everything I write is all or nothing. I think a 40 year apprenticeship is long enough. Besides, I can’t find my poems anymore. I have far too many children to commit them all to paper. And Google’s Blogger search engine sucks at retrieving them. But at least, if they’re online, I stand a chance of finding my poems again.

SPRING, AND ALL short poems, not quite haiku

Spring arrives with convicts
dressed in orange jumpsuits,
picking up the detritus of our lives
abandoned by the side of the road.

The hawk hunkers down on the powerline,
waiting for the foolish optimism of mice.

Two days of sunlight after weeks of rain,
the spine of the drought is broken,
and the pale hills flash their family jewels.

The wind laughs at the years
as if he were listening for something
from the great beyond.

Mornings, the words take their own time coming in. 

You have to be ready to rearrange the parts. 

     —With thanks to David Melzer. 

4/3/23

CURSE THE FLOODWATERS, Obscure Facts, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 3

CURSE THE FLOODWATERS 

After Lucille Clifton’s blessing the boats.

curse the rising floodwaters
leaving us bereft
on the rocky shores of grief without a raft
dragging us down
below the murky depths of memory
curse its laughter and gurgle
that stifling heat of scorn     then embrace it
know that the uncertainty
won’t ever have your back   so curse it too
and remember to keep your mouth shut
the sun burning incandescent    too is cruel
and so curse it for the dark knowledge it harbors
as you founder in the quicksand 

seeking solace on an ephemeral shore

4/3/23
NaPoWriMo pick a poem, any poem, change the words to their opposite meaning. Revise.


2023 April PAD Challenge write a connection poem (I accidentally used the wrong prompt for this one, so this is a placeholder.

Obscure facts

Someone said to write about an obscure fact, something that no one else would know about. I couldn’t think of anything. And I thought of how stop lights are not green, but turquoise, reminding us of tropical seas and of our own origins.

After the rain, the drowned wildflowers can’t poke their head above the sludge. After the floodwaters have dropped a foot at a time, the meadows carry a permanent high tide line.

I can’t get over that image of the Tibetan woman with her trio of marmots begging for food like small children. Since winter lives year round in Tibet, I think of those marmots begging at the hem of her skirts hoping for the arrival of spring. Does she sing to them? Her marmot children?

4/3/23

Two poems forthcoming in Spectrum 34/35

I have two really old poems that date back to the very beginning of my apprenticeship as a poet appearing in the latest double issue of Spectrum 34/35. One poem in each issue, p. 25, and p. 16. The operative word is noir. A SENSE OF TASTE, and SALMON DANCE. well, I guess the poem is not forthcoming. After all it is the editor, Dan Campbell took down the blog, so now it is once again unpublished.

Her 100th birthday

They were running late as usual, no place to park, the streets were rimed with white SUVs and oversized white trucks. They found a doghole down the street to squeeze their rusted brown sedan into a parking spot with a little elbow grease, and some discreet bumper kissing. 

The woman’s heels clicked a rapid staccato on the sidewalk as they hurried toward the house. The kids dragged their shoes on the cement, slowing her down. Late again, she thought. Late, she hated the abrupt accusatory bark of the word. Her mother said that she will be late for her own funeral.

The front door was open wide, the party was in full swing. Folks wandered in, carrying tinfoil covered dishes, and the womenfolk headed toward the kitchen to ease their burden. The menfolk made a beeline for the coolers lining the porch to ease their discomfort, taking solace in the chilled brown necks of the bottles nestled in their hands. Their empty hands sought simple comfort as they gazed out, talking of the weather.

In the living room center stage was a shimmering bouquet of black and gold helium balloons proclaiming a hundred years of living. They squealed and chattered amongst themselves like young girls as they swayed on the air currents. Two clear balloons had gold starfish printed on their bellies. A backdrop curtain of black kelp undulated and swayed like cabaret dancers. The fat 100 was minted in gold. 

People gathered in tight clumps, or drifted into other constellations, moving like the tides from conversation to conversation. The air conditioner hummed a monotone song, the chink of glasses, and orphaned fragments of conversation mingled and tangled into a pastiche.

The old woman, whose birthday they were honoring, sat in the wheelchair, her claw-like hands, gripping the steel arms, as if she were about to rise, but they all knew that would never happen. She had been confined to her metal chariot ever since the fall. She didn’t want presents. She said she had enough, she didn’t need anything more.

A broken hip at that age was a death sentence. You could see how the tumble took its toll. A precursor of things to come. But nobody wanted to look that closely. She thought how the monotonous days rolled on and on like an endless soap opera. But today was different, her hair was freshly styled, her nearly new clothes unstained, and she smiled radiantly, glad to see her clan gathered around her on this momentous occasion of her hundredth birth.

SURREAL QUESTIONS after Celan, VERNAL PATROL, FINAL CURTAIN CALL, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 2

SURREAL QUESTIONS after Celan

1. What is fog?

     The hills hiding from the sun because they forgot their origins.

What is salt?

     That old mill grinding its eye teeth at the bottom of the ocean.

What is a river?

     A sob story that begins deep in the mountains where the ouzel lives.

What is longing? 

     A immeasurable distance of abandoned grief dressed in twilight.

What is a song? 

     The sun, by any other name, dressing the horizon in silk.

(Now throw away the questions.)

2. The hills hid from the sun because they forgot their deep origins.

Neptune’s old mill is gnashing its eye teeth at the bottom of the ocean.

The river begins as a painting deep in the mountains 

   where Wu Wei’s water ouzels seek the mysteries of the gorge.    

An immeasurable distance of grief is dressed in twilight.

Meanwhile the sun is dressing the horizon in flaming raiments of silk 

   to remind it of its intangible beauty.

4/2-3 (playing catch-up. I read the prompts, and let them perk.)

NaPoWriMo make 5-10 impossible questions after Celan or Neruda, you choose. Toss the questions and revise the answers.

VERNAL PATROL

The wild geese were arguing in the meadow again 

as they swarmed the vernal pool searching for frogs. 

Meanwhile, the egrets patrolled the pools 

with the relentless concentration of prison guards.

The fairy shrimp and tadpoles didn’t stand a chance.

4/3

FINAL CURTAIN CALL

Our love affair was a torrid B-movie with a bad plot twist.
It lasted far too long, and had too little reward in the end,
and all that was left were the broken seats in an empty theater.
The curtains were drawn, the limelight snuffed out.  

Popcorn and spilled coke on the floor took mint hostages.
The director had long since fled after the bad reviews came in.
And then you say you want to be friends
like some Frankenstein monster seeking redemption
or perhaps Saturn waiting to devour its young.
But my name still means bitter herbs.

Nothing will ameliorate that fact.

4/3
2023 April PAD Challenge Write a B movie poem.

GREAT WHITE HUNTER, FOOLISH HEART, NaPoWriMo Day 1 haiku

GREAT WHITE HUNTER

Oliver the cat
tiptoes over the wet grass 

then sits on the bug.

He slinks down the path 

flat-eared and round-eyed, he chatters, 

but the birds are no fools.

Foolish cat lays low 

thinking he’s invisible. 

The birds know better.

………….

Last night’s storm damage 

is measured in increments 

by the sheer number 

of utility trucks 

parked by the side of the road

hoisting up cables.

………

Driving any old way to work

So much depends on

the SUV in front of me, 

which way it turns, 

thus mapping my path 

leaving the day’s route to chance.

The road least taken.

………..

Unlucky rabbit 

by the side of the road, split 

like a BBQ chicken.

………..

The marmot was right

Winter didn’t let go 

its hold until April arrived 

rolling up its trousers, 

ready for business.

4/1-3 (I counted syllables all day, but didn’t commit to print)

NaPoWriMo. Haiku & American looons.

FOOLISH HEART

Foolishly, I thought you’d love me forever.
Foolishly, I put all my eggs in one basket.
Foolishly I waited 21 years to seal the bargain
before I had enough of all this foolishness with you.
Foolishly you thought it would all blow over.
Foolishly you hedged your bets. And assumed much.
But when the promissory note came due,
there was nothing left, but your foolish pride.
Foolishly, I believed everything you said.
Foolishly, I believed that forever would last
at least for a half-life of forever and a day.
Foolishly, I believed in the fairytales.
I believed that love was forever today.
But my moth-eaten pride was in tatters,
my heart was dressed in Cinderella rags.
My heart harbored pestilence, rotted from the inside,
because foolishly, I took it all in and blamed myself
gaslighted by your foolish pride.

2023 April PAD Challenge Write a foolish poem.

Here are all 30 of 2022 poem a day prompts. Knock yourself out.