Shout out from Sharon Doubiago on the publication of Hard Country

I wasn’t expecting a Facebook shout-out from poet Sharon Doubiago, for triggering the events for the publication of Hard Country. But, thanks.

Sharon Doubiago wrote to John Crawford:

“In 1980 two poet friends, Maureen Hurley and I think Leonard Cirino took my manuscript Hard Country, to Meridel LeSueur who was teaching at the annual 2-week poetry symposium in Port Townsend Washington. Copper Canyon Press of Pt. Townsend had enthusiastically accepted it but now was making sexual demands "or no publication." I took my ms from him. Meridel said "I've waited all my life for this book and before I die I'm going to get it published." And she did by taking the ms. to John Crawford of West End Press. Upon reading it he accepted it. Thus began my publishing career (which, as with some of my longtime poet friends as good as any of the superstars, might not have ever happened—writing poetry and getting published are 2 entirely different—in many ways contradictory—endeavors). West End was in Minneapolis as was Meridel. John was wonderful. He founded his press in the West End bar across the street from Columbia University in New York where Jack Kerouac, et al, had hung out and subsequently poets, writers and students. John was a great human being of great integrity and subsequently a great publisher. He never, not even slight hints, demanded what Copper Canyon had. Nor did he require extensive rewriting, changes or cuts to my 264-page poem. Instead he created a 6 female poets committee as editors. An issue rose about the Native American poems in Hard Country, whether a poem about the history of the U.S. by a "white woman" was politically incorrect. It was the great poet, the Native American Joy Harjo, who gave the okay. While in the publication process John came to San Francisco to meet with me, took me to the Basque Hotel/Restaurant in the alley across from what is now the Beatnik Museum, and over dinner educated me in the contemporary political Basque situation. Most awesomely he took me to the Marina apartment of the great poet George Oppen and wife. At least twice he brought me to Minneapolis, for final proofing and readings. He shared with me in several visits and letters his disastrous marriage with a Southern California woman named Sharon. He warned me to never take personally any confusion he might make with my name! He told me this several times! When published he made great connections and readings for Hard Country. When West End moved to Albuquerque he published a second edition. I last saw him there. He picked me up at Margaret Randall’s house and took me to his house which was packed with boxes of West End’s other publications. When he retired West End he sent me the remaining Hard Country copies at no cost to me. In publishing Hard Country he made possible all the rest of my life, all my further publications.  He made possible my poet’s life. He made possible the hope of a great America.  Thank you, mucho gracias, merci beaucoup, shukrin  John Crawford, Love Sharon (the one who loves you).”

https://www.facebook.com/547040818/posts/10156315981285819/

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer. 1st draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER

It's hard for me to choose or to make a distinction between teaching and writing as each process informs the other.

I was a poet before I became interested in teaching for California Poets in the schools, but just barely. The two events were nearly twinned. I arrived to poetry all out of breath, with things to say and nowhere to channel them. I wasn't a writer and I was a below average student in high school and college. I couldn't retain or access the information I learned in school. It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Poet Leonard Cirino (1943-2012)

         Most of my life I’ve been poor,

          I never lived in a house with gables.

          This year I’ll grow flowers.

          The movements change hour by hour.

                  —from The Moments Change, Leonard Cirino

I found out via a small Facebook comment posted by Crawdad Nelson that poet Leonard Cirino had died. I had no idea that Leonard was even ill. I was out of the loop and I'm completely stunned. No one thought to contact me—not Lee Perron, Claire Josefine, nor Crawdad Nelson. Donna Champion, who was in constant contact with Leonard, knew he was sick, but not the dying part. No Leonard-flavored instruction manual. He didn't tell Donna the news either—and we were among the ones who knew him the longest.

Apparently it was a quick diagnosis on January 23, Leonard's liver cancer had spread like wildfire. Leonard was given six months to wrap it up. Instead, he got only six weeks. Barely enough time to say hello to death, let alone, goodbye to life. According to his Facebook page, he said he wanted another 15-20 years more. He literally ran out of time.

So I am gleaning the web for links to Leonard in case others too didn't get the news. It may be a bit of a chaotic collection here but at least it's a start.

An Italian-American native of the San Gabriel Valley, east of LA, Leonard John Cirino was born 11 September 1943 and died 9 March 2012, in Springfield, OR. During the early 1960s, Leonard was a state champion pole vaulter in high school and in college. Leonard attended UC Berkeley during the FSM days—where he said his real education began. He tuned in, turned on and dropped out and did the Timothy Leary thing. Moved back to the land. Tried to clean up. Speed took its mordida. Went crazy. Was institutionalized for a horrific, violent crime. I remember the sun stood still the day he told me the news. It was a litmus test of faith. A watershed of loyalty.

Leonard was paroled in 1975. Rehabilitated, then repatriated. He reenrolled in college, and picked up where he left off. Leonard graduated from Sonona State University in 1978 and moved to Albion Ridge, in Mendocino, where he earned his keep as a jack-of-all-trades: landscape laborer, carpenter, solar specialist, a news reporter, and dishwasher. Writing all the while.

About that same time Leonard was at Sonoma State (circa 1976-78) I met him through Lee Perron and Donna Champion. I was organizing readings at Sonoma State. We hit it off like long-lost kin. Maybe it was an Irish-Italian thing, We had the same saints queued up along the portico. We knew when to genuflect.

Letter to Michael Kettner, Catalyst

Dear Michael Kettner,

I noticed that you're selling a book I'm published in, under Abebooks.com. I'd completely forgotten about it...and AD Wynans...Migawd! How did you obtain a copy of the book? Would you like me to sign it to increase its value? Hahah. Um, what poem DO I have in it?

Maureen Hurley

CATALYST #17: 3nd ANNUAL EROTICA ISSUE
Bookseller: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers
Contact: Michael Kettner
Address: M. Kettner and Son, Booksellers, 1501 NE 68th, Seattle, WA, U.S.A., 98115
E-mail: mkettnerbooks@juno.com
Phone #: 206-323-7268

Dear Maureen, 

How nice to hear from you again. Lest you have forgotten, i was the publisher of said CATALYST. Have taken a few years off writing to insure i have retirement income - to set up an on-line book biz specializing in poetry and sm. pr. stuff. Only have a few dozen of Catalyst 19 left, and since so popular, am selling them one by one on line;

Your contribution to #19 was a graphic, "self-portrait". thanks for offering to sign a copy. however with periodicals, there is little value enhancement with signatures unless multiple contributors do so or if signed by editor or famous person. in the case of erotica, the mere fact it is erotica, is usually enough. 

You did receive a copy or two of #19, did you not? don't remember you being on list of copies returned with no forwarding address. check out my list on ABE by clicking on booksellers. have over 1500 sm. pr. titles on line with at least as many to go. also have large list of general titles since it's hard to make a living on poetry alone. if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, let me know. 

Take Care, M.

In a message dated 8/28/04 12:24:34 PM, mkettnerbooks@juno.com writes:
<< if you ever want to sell off part of your poetry collection, >>

Hi Michael,

I've been thinking about it for ages, the books just sitting in my cabin in Forestville, some rare ones at that. And correspondence. Robert Bly/ Calliope Press...I put on that event at SSU. Lotta work & little gratis from himself.

Lee Perron--do you know him? also got into the rare book business--along with John McBride...who, if I have the story right, was laif off after 25 years from Moe's Books on Telegraph--recession, a sign of the times. As our friend Ken Bullock said, hell of a time to try & sell books. How are you doing with it? Are you still publishing journals? I did look at my resume and Catalyst is indeed listed--way back in the 1980s.

Ach, the book signing, It was merely a ploy to say hi via cyberspace...your name rang a bell, and certainly, Seattle....I'm trying to put a face/event/place to your name as I'm certain that we met...in SF? Or Port Townsend? I'm excellent with faces, even after 20 years...when & where? Obviously you've got my drawing, it must be a self portrait...

Gawd it's been a right long while since that epic journey we took north from Mendocino: Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Tobey Kaplan, myself and Moonlight the Alsatian shepherd, in a white station wagon named Roses. An anarchy of northern California poets crashed the Port Townsend Writers' Conference...Carol Jane Banks was having apoplexy right, left & center.

We were all sleeping on the beach, one full moon night, the tide came in and nearly swept us away. Leonard was floating around in his down bag like a cork. Bill Knott was living in a big Victorian on the bluff with Pamela Uschuk (sp)?, we spent a couple of nights on the porch. We later found some barracks that were open after that. CJ Bangs was trying to get us bounced out of the conference but we were like bad pennies. Meridel LeSueur took to us, said we stayed or else and that was that.

Meridel took Sharon under her wing, and that was the start of something, all right. I kept out of the way, feeling like a poetry impostor, and years later, Meridel was asking me why I stayed away so long, was I mad at her...by then it was too late for a prodigal daughter.

I remember Ray Carver, a long cool drink of, er...uisge beatha, chainsmoking and we were all singing Irish songs at some bar with Tess Gallagher... and Michael Daley. Empty Bowl. And Marina Albert...putting us up. All these names bubbling up. it was a spur of the moment event that irrevocably changed my life, somehow I always thought it would continue like that, mad confabs of poets...but then long distances of time and isolation set in.

After finally breaking it off w / John Oliver Simon, I wound up in the USSR doing a poetry & art exchange. It was there I began to translate the Soviet poets. I ran into Marina in Moscow, we were both living in Leningrad with crazy Soviet singers. We'd hoard our dimes and meet at the Seagull Cafe on Nyevsky Prospect, we'd pay an outrageous sum (a week's wages for some) for lattes, worth every penny. 

One time we met Mendelstahm's publisher, it was Glasnost and there was hope. He brought his samizdat publications out of hiding and we held a piece of history. For that one publication he could've been killed. In Moscow, I saw Akhmatova's frail sister feeding pigeons in the snow. But I had to let go of Russia in order to survive. I came back to the States.

I did get to Poetry International in Rotterdam a couple of times, and was in on the Breytenbach translation project...with the likes of Holub, Heaney, Dove...I was onto something, in that I loved the process of translation, then I was nearly killed in 1997, a car accident, and with the shock and healing and all that, poetry sort of left me. I still write, but not with the fervor of the past. Dabbling in prose too, but what's a dyslexic to do with linear thought? After the accident I went back to school and got a MA/MFA at SFSU, w/ a side of Celtic studies at UC Berkekey. Did some playwriting too. But I blather on...

Maureen

Hey Maureen, 

no, 12 years of publishing was enough for me. still writing. on-line is the way to go with book biz these days. more one has on line, the more you make. been learning on-line biz from a couple of the masters here in seattle. left Kathleen after 23 years a couple revolutions about the sun ago. tough at first but had to be done. 

quit job of 16 years and decided to set myself up so i'd never have to work for someone again. just write and sell books. if your poetry collection is anything like mine, i'm very interested if you truly want to sell. i'm just getting past initial years of set-up and debt management it takes to get going and could probably work something out as autumn progresses. 

glad to hear you've recovered. the writing impulse is fragile. been observing it in others for years, studying, if you will, how to maintain it and have it thrive. not easy to do, especially as one ages and life's vicissitudes work on one. have to get ready for work (at Horizon Books). talk to you again soon. -M. P.S. No, we have never met. You were in town once but we didn't hook-up, if i remember correctly.

Take Care, M.

Teaching Notes: Mendocino Woodlands Journal: translations, rainy day women

Mendocino Woodlands, October 6, 1995

Twenty years ago, my first boyfriend, Bob Hamilton turned me towards the bay window of Zachim's Gallery on Main Street, placed nasturtiums and yellow calendula beneath my chin, tilted my rainhat back, turned me towards my reflection in the window, and said, This is how you will look at 40 or 50. We will come back and remember this day.

I couldn't imagine my life without him, for I still believed in love. The gray sea reflected in the window, but his potters thumbs were already molding the clay of my belly. I stood in front of that bay window, and inhaled the punishing odor of nasturtiums in autumn. The sea practiced nuances of turquoise and jade beneath a cloudy sky.

Two decades later, I stand in front of that same bay window and remember what was said, and not said. In the bookstore, I take solace in fingering the book spines in the poetry section, just seeing the names of all my friends in print is comforting. I am homesick, but there is nothing much to return home to.

The other night I told Karin Faulkner I was homesick. I am teaching nearly 200 teenagers from Windsor poetry and silk painting at the Mendocino Woodlands.

Karin's presence, dinner and a beer helped to settle me. The bartender treated us at the pub. Karin and I go out to see Dangerous Minds in Fort Bragg and we are weeping, Do not go gentle. Karin said, We poets are always on the edge of tears.

I understand my students better after the movie, and regain some center by sleeping at her cabin. The last time I slept here in the pygmy forest, years ago, was with Oleg from the Ukraine.

I walk the Mendocino Headlands, no use walking the streets, I have no use for most of what fills the stores. I am not a tourist. I pass the Mendocino Hotel, and remember nights at the bar, where we all gathered after readings and talked about poetry until closing. Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Bill Bradd, Jesse River, Devereau Baker, and Tom Robedeaux. Time was more gentle then.

I still want to sip coffee at the Café Beaujolais, but The Loft bookstore, an converted water tower, is now a bakery. Once, at The Loft, Leonard, Tom and I read poems on the crazily tilting floor. Poets are already a bit tilted, so it mattered not.

Leonard Cirino is well represented in the bookstore. I heard Tom Robideaux and Devereaux Baker split up and she went to Texas. Tom, I don't know where he went.

The For Sale sign, another death knell to the past. None of us can afford most of what's's being sold in the shops. As if poetry automatically carried its silent vow of poverty like a prayer flag against the wind. Mendocino's become too rich for most blood. People support new Irish knit sweaters with no patina of age, no shiny cuffs.

Once we lived along this coast like gypsies, sleeping within speaking distance of the ocean. We were part of the migration of artisans that began in the 1960s. The pygmy forest became our bed. Once we came up to help Sasha Makovkin unload his kiln, followed by a wild party of roast goat and vodka toasts as we baptized the new dinnerware fresh from the inferno.

Did that all really happen to me? It's as if memory itself had become fiction. And I could have forgotten all about it, and the sea caves in the middle of the bluff. but I drew a picture of it so I know I was there.

The masculine sea is pounding punishing the earth's vulva. The sheer drop into the sea astounds me. A prophylactic package is wedged in a groove on the fence railing. Why not here? I am envious of someone else's orgasms as if it still lingered in the salt air.


Walking the headlands, a poem is stuck, so alone, so lonely, yet so lovely. A breechbirth. I find myself looking for Sharon Doubiago's blue van, but it's no longer summer, she's headed up the coast.

Already I am rubbing shoulders with memory, the ghost haunting me. My eyes are doing funny things, I can only see the town as it was nearly a quarter of a century ago. The gallery where we once read poetry.

Sharon Doubiago's hair, like golden wings engulfing her face. And how her son, Danny stood there in front of their small cabin, just out of high school about to go off and play football for the Dallas Cowboys that bronze golden-haired manchild, and his slender sister, Shawn standing shyly behind him, deerlike, a carbon copy clone of her mother.

Memory is tricky for it tends to want to tell a story other than its own, and we are left with disembodied images. Ghosts.

And I am remembering the ones who stayed lost, how my childhood friend came here to lick her wounds, and raise a child. She was a friend from when horses came before boys, but later, the drugs took the reins. That all happened before the summer of love. She followed the bands who shaped the substance of a decade.

Karin's voice still seeps in from some of the old readings we gave at the McCallum House. We were the rainy day women: Karin Faulkner, Sharon Doubiago, Robin Rule, Cindy Frank, Mary Norbert Körte, Judith Tannembaum, and Marnie Purple. We were the poets lending our mellifluous voices to the wind.

Hunger gnaws at me but I deny myself food. The full moon is pulling on my blood, ambivalence choking my will. This place of uneasiness unleashes a savage, untamed and wordless poetry. 

Overburdened by memory, I am unable to capture what was said, what was remembered. Everything is always in translation. Even poetry.

Leonard Cirino, Maureen Hurley to read at Markey’s Cafe

 

Journal entry, The anniversary of James Wright’s death

Last night I was in San Francisco staying in Gene Ruggles’ guest bedroom. I slept in the room reserved for John Logan, and I read a postcard poem of Maui and his visit to WS Merwin‘s place. He wrote how the angle of ceiling to cliff affected the color of the sky. 

Today is the anniversary of James Wright’s death. And I haven’t written a poem in ages. All these lines are bouncing and now I’m imagining that I’m sitting in Albion where I saw the water snake swimming along the bottom of the ditch full of standing water. I had never seen a snake slide along the bottom of water before. He poked his head tiny head up for a breath, looking like a stick with a tiny forked tongue flittering, testing the breeze.

And Leonard Cirino told me how the pygmy forest soil doesn’t perk water so Leonard‘s house was red tagged last summer. The well made everyone sick. Now the new pump delivers water to the heart of the house. But the ground holds water, it can’t shake the memory of  marine terraces. It dreams of the ocean pounding along its shore instead the soft winds and irregular tides rustling through the cypress needles and the ground sighs with the faint color of bleached bones fallen from the ancient trees.

Found on a scrap of paper, undated, later coerced into a poem on 3/25/85. So I’ll post it there for now.

Obligatory Hug, July, 1984, Russian River Writers' Guild, Whirlybird aka Maureen Hurley

Obligatory Hug, Nov.1982, Copperfield's, Sebastopol

RRWG reading at Sebastopol Creative Center, Leonard Cirino, Maureen Hurley, Richard Salzman on sax

 

Moon fragment with Galway Kinnell

To type the ambiguous is to launch into something new. Where in the outer stretches of boredom, does creativity lie? To talk about nothing is nothing—how it is a “no thing” thing. It balloons like flaccid cock, dangles from the lamp stem. La Luna esta brilla en El Mundo. There is no moon. It’s a cat eye. Venus in the sky is casting shadows before the sun arises. Galway said Jupiter and Saturn were so close together that long shadows were cast on the New Mexican desert last summer. And I spent years watching these planets, follow the stars across the night sky. They conjunct in darkness.

(No date, but I wrote a poem to Leonard on  4/12/82 So, close enough. I was a mess after taking care of Leonard, and Galway was reading at Sonoma State for me. If it wasn’t for Galway, I don’t think I would’ve gotten through that week.)

THE ADDICTION OF SIGHT

THE ADDICTION OF SIGHT

         … What appears before the eye is simple illusion.

              – from Double Sonnets from the Subconscious

                                  —Leonard Cirino

            for Leonard and those who have ridden the black mare

What separates the word desert 

from something sweet 

is the twin presence of slithering S curves 

of snake tracks in the sand. 

The letter S has no consciousness of desert sand 

or, of dessert peach.

One singular S stands alone. 

The second S changes meaning

gives plurality, gives possession 

and ownership to words.

Snakes go blind during summer molt shedding 

even the skin over their eyes.

In their hot blindness they strike anything warm 

with an accuracy surer than sight.

In the twin mirrored lakes of horses, 

verdant green blades stab at the sky.

Cows easily slip into the past.

Their prehensile tongues covet only grass, 

not the thrones of one eyed kings.

Cows carry the mark of Cain in their eyes.

Sheep pressed their lips to the earth, 

always trying to get closer to the source, 

and they forget how to move on.

They graze until there is no grass left 

and the cattle starve.

Horses tear at the tops of grasses, 

their eyes always on the next bunch. 

In the boneless desert behind the eyes,

we all carry the carrion crows within.

In the fallow fields where the grass is greener, 

the convex lens covering the eye, carries light 

to the arid folds of the brain.

The eye is the cistern in the arid boneless plain.

Yes, the same sheep graces in the same pastures

and need no eyes to find the turf.

Maybe it's the size and shape of cows 

on that always leads them onward.

Or maybe it's the cloven hooves of the goat 

and the sheep that carries the shape of death 

in its eye, bringing us still closer to the earth.

Still, it is a privilege to see the milk-blue eyes of babies, 

unfocused, half blind, closed, asleep at the breast.

As they gain age, the focus sharpens, 

clarity leaps forward, images fall into place, 

and the foraging begins.

King Lear said, "a man may see 

how the world goes with no lies."

Do we truly learn wisdom with our eyes?

What appears before the eye is simple delusion.

Reduced to the level of beasts, Gloucester, 

blinded by the pelican daughters of Lear, said,

"I have no way, and therefore want new eyes."

No, we can't return to that first sight.

There are no thrones left for one-eyed kings 

and beggars will never ride in the dry desert kingdom 

of the blind with the surefootedness of second sight.

5/1982

Revised 8/82, 10/82

Leonard’s revision of my poem

Letter from Leonard Cirino

Dear Maureen,        April 12, 1982

Ah the rain I wish it would end but that's not the forecast. I traded some work hauling manure for some strawberry and lettuce starts so there will be something ready by June. This is the poem that is an "answer to your one about my eye. Read it and tell me what you think. Please have someone let me know for sure about May 10 at the reading date because I always make plans ahead so 1 can't change them. I have a whole lot of new work since december at Garbo's so 1 won't be repeating any poems if anyone asks they will all be rather new or at least never read in Sonoma before. These damn typewriter keys keep getting and hitting in the wrong order so I hope you can make sense of this letter. All is well except for my truck which still is without transmission and no transportation. Costs me less money as I am very poor these days—no job at all—I quit dishwashing because of the ten-mile one-way trip and the minimum wage. Are you going to Pt Townsend this summer? I might go if I could  take my dog and find a ride. Hint Hint. Must close now and write other letters hope to see you next month or sooner if you want to visit. Get Simone and you up here sometime soon.
       love,

                      Leonard

Leonard Cirino, LeePerron, Karla Andersdatter reading

No date but probably 5/82

THE LETTER S

THE LETTER S

What separates the word desert

from something sweet 

is the slithering S-curve 

of snake tracks in the sand
Leonard writing rebuttals in the green grass 

reflected on convex lenses covering the eye.

Eyes – the addiction of sight 

in the twin lakes of horses and cows 

verdant green mirrored blades of grass 

stabbing the blue sky.

The letter S has no forgiveness, 

no consciousness of desert sands 

or a dessert peach 

But one S, singular – 

the second S changes the meaning, 

gives plurality, 

gives possession and ownership 

to the concept previously implied 

in the word preceding it.

Snakes go blind during summer molt, 

shedding even the skin over their eyes, 

in their hot blindness they strike out anything warm.

Cows easily slip into the past 

their prehensile gray tongues covert only grass
the cloven hooves of cows, camels, goats, deer, sheep, 

ungulates who ruminate – chew their cud.

Sheep pressed closer to the earth, 

they're always trying to get closer to the source, 

and they forget to move

Horses, have you ever watched 

how they tear the tops of grasses,

there is always on the next clump of grass, 

their fluid joints making popping sounds

as they shift towards the next elusive hummock of grass.

Eyes are mirrors, all of us carry death within us.
It is it is a privilege to see the milk-blue eyes of babies, 

unfocused, half blind, as they gain age, 

the focus sharpens, the clarity sharpens, 

images fall into place and the foraging begins.

4/15/1982
also a prose poem, there's also a poem version....somewhere.

added 9/2016

CALF EYES

             —for Leonard

The old mirror in the hayloft,
instead of allowing light in,
has been blocking it out
for the past 25 years.
It throws light back to the sky.
 An image of itself
it throws back to the sky
an image of itself framed
with the liquid green
of maple leaves.
Behind the mirror
the annual pile of cobwebs
gathers in barn dust.

I've always noticed
how the eyes of calves
are like twin pools of murky night
surrounded by a shore
of retina and rain.

It was last night my stomach
forced a tidal wave back down
and this memory where I
had to reason my nausea into being,
that I read those poems of yours,
I could feel the finger behind the eyes,
gouging behind the eye,
to the eyesocket,
finding not more water,
but a boneless desert,
an arid fold of brain.

Sweet, the cycles of rain
following the footpath of the seasons
count them, the cycles of madness.
I hear the rain singing
on the mirror of the beast

What separates this tangle
of human flesh from that of beasts?
Those calves with their liquid eyes
imprisoned in cages so that their flesh
will stay succulent and tender for veal.
They suck my finger, the urge to nurse
is strong in one so young.
Their pink petal tongues
caress my index finger
and they know, somehow
they know it is wrong.

In their eyes I see the fish lens
reflection of myself and the summer sky
The smell of grass fire hangs heavily in the air.
Skirting the shores of the lake
every action demands an equal reaction.

We bring moldy hay inside the barn
with the mirror reflected sky
Are the mummified carcasses
of those born to young,
of those whose mothers
could labor no more,
the breach birth breed
breath, hangs heavily in the air.
Their choice was made for them.
We're always trying
to come to terms with our own death.

I am not a sailor.
These eyelids hold no water.
The eye is a cistern, a repository
in the arid eyeless place . .

THE EYE, INNOCENT OF THOUGHT

THE EYE, INNOCENT OF THOUGHT
      Where are your eyes?
      Vision slit through skin
      Plump as a ripe berry
      Slow as  quartz.
       —Susan Suntree

After 10 years, the road under the reservoir
is still visible in summer. Cycles of drought.
The edges of the old road are slowly diffusing.
Its edges the same age as the lake bed and the shore.
The old cement bridge where the creek ran is underwater.
The road only offers a departure point into the lake.
Ten years measures a cycle of madness.

Boarded up windows
are like the white eyes of the blind.
The peeling mirror in the hayloft door is blocking the light.
It throws back to the sky an image of itself
framed by the liquid green of oak leaves.
Behind the mirror, cobwebs gather dust in solitude.
Through a light shaft, dust motes drift on air currents.

I've noticed how the eyes of calves
are like twin pools of murky light
surrounded by an indigo shore of retina and vein.

Last night my stomach forced a tidal wave back down.
This morning I had to reason my nausea into being.
I read your poems, could feel the finger behind the eye.
The finger in the eye socket finding
not water but a boneless desert,
an arid fold of brain.
There is nothing to punish there.
The eye was innocent of thought.

Sweet, the cycles of rain follow the footpaths of seasons.
Count them, the cycles of madness.
I hear the rain singing in the manner of beasts,
Yet I am wholly human and, I can hear the singing of rain.
The sound reserved for the ears of beasts.

What separates this wretched tangle
of human flesh and bone from that of beasts?
Those liquid-eyed calves imprisoned in cages
So their flesh will stay succulent and tender,
suckle my finger, the urge to nurse strong in ones so young,
Their petal tongues caress the index finger
And they know, somehow they know it is wrong.

In their eyes I can see the fish-lens reflections
of myself and the summer sky.
Every action demands an equal reaction.
Lying in the moldy hay inside the barn
are the mummified carcasses
of these born too young,
of those whose mothers could labor no more.
The breech-birth breath hangs heavily in the air.
Their choice was made for them.

It is difficult to learn how to forgive
what we, and others have done
And pity is also self-inflicted.

I am not a sailor.
These islands hold no water.
The eye is a cistern in the arid toneless plain.
A repository for madness,
the eye, innocent of thought.

8/16/1981

ODE TO LEONARD CIRINO

ODE TO A MAN GOING OUT INTO THE WILDERNESS
                         —for Leonard Cirino

My car threads the road,

weaving continents of light and dark 

in the primordial gloom of Navarro canyon 

& I arrive to your empty house—

windows like shuttered eyes.

This ground won't perk. 

The well, polluted by fastidious raccoons 

made everyone sick—

The new pump delivers water 

like the heart of an athlete to an empty house. 

The outhouse & its damp library—

Kenyon Review, paper curled back into bark. 

At night, deer still come to browse

and lick salt from the wood.

This ground won't perk. 

It can't shake loose the past. 

Marine terraces, full moons, high tides, 

clam beds & absolution. 

It wants the salmon promise, 

red roe in uterine sand. 

Instead, rhododendrons squander 

spring's promise in a pygmy forest of cypress,

pencil thin, and a thousand years old. 

My feet crushing years with each step—

the cause and effect of minty air and bleached bone.

What unreconciled Oedipus in you

was avenged by the slow digging of your hands-—

one eye at a time, to banish light forever?

What do you dream of?

& like Lew Welch, 

you've gone into the forest, 

following the voices of the shaman wind.

Deeper in the heart, the earth

will translate your arrival 

where the junta inside you 

cannot stop your singing or your vision.

Later, you will complain—

not able to judge distance, with your one eye. 

Do you dream of eating your children? 

Victor Jarra's hands were cut off by the junta 

but poetry was his revenge.

Mother's Day
5/81
rev. 88

see also

Poet Leonard Cirino (1943-2012)

WORDS FROM THE PERSIAN:

WORDS FROM THE PERSIAN:  

1. When things get unbearable

I repeat Leonard’s line

over and over like a mantra:

Words from the Persian:

limes, sherbet,

                  pajamas,

                           paradise.

Imagining a dark world without them.

2. Later, I told him how his lines

bring me small comfort.

­He said, It’s wonderful,

but I never wrote it.  

DATE? 1981-82?

rev. 7.7.1994

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

POEM FOR RUSTY NORTH'S HANDS

With its absent-minded stroke
upon the coarse woven skirt,
the knowing touch of an
arthritic hand, too old
for a middle-aged woman

The surety of her deft dressmaker's touch
reminds me of my grandmother's hands,
who made all my school clothes,
but this woman's other hand is missing

& I sense the presence of her twin limb
occupying space, still capable of feeling,
never aging, like the amputated limbs
of children.

As if in greeting and supplication,
her absent hand caresses this room
with the comfort and care of a hand
that lips of children dutifully brush.

Her daughters smooth their dresses
carefully over their thin knees.
I too remember how cruel the kids at school were
on the subject of home-made dresses.

7/11/1980
Port Townsend, WA
The Child in the Bell, CPITS Statewide Anthology, 1981-82

Benefit reading for California Poets in the Schools in Sonoma County at the Cotati Cabaret, journal

Journal 11/13/1979 

My Cotati Cabaret benefit reading for California Poets in the Schools went well. Poets who read, Marty Goldstein, Pam Rafael, David Bromige, Leonard Cirino, Hunce Voelcker, John Kong, Susan Maxon, Marianne Ware, Boschka Layton, Pat Nolan, Lee Perron, and Jere doing poetry and dance. Second half of the reading was Will Staple, myself, Chaz Abate, Jerome Reiter, Jonathan London etc. 

We made $143 at the gate and it was a great turn out. Also, it was mostly community people not as many students from Sonoma State. Definitely Public Poetry Center’s goals have been met. We are bringing the Sonoma County poets together. River folks participating with town folks and reading poetry and maki g art together. John’s mime piece on suicide was excellent. Lee and Jere’s dance and poetry ensemble, Silent Crow, was superb. 

 I think we will need to tour Sonoma County with this entourage of poets to raise more money for California Poets in the Schools, it was definitely a high night. The poets were wonderful, the audience was wonderful. Next time only two sets I think people started to leave before the third set was finished. I published a chapbook of their work, called The Program as a memento for the audience to take away with them.