THE BEST REVENGE

THE BEST REVENGE

   The best revenge of all is living well

      —Spanish proverb

What I've discovered
is that reality is stranger than fiction.
Real life is fiction.
Truth is a stranger to fiction
when we write truthfully
from the heart.
To write about truth

is the best revenge of all.

no date 1982?

added 2/2017
I think this was in class writing, if so, then Guerneville School, June

LOOK HOW HE STANDS THERE

Look how he stands there, my friend
looking the world like James Joyce
In his vest, Joyce-dapper.
Joyce would never appear in the streets of Dublin.
dressed in a red corduroy vest 

with nine buttonholes
and three buttons, two at the breast
one stomach
all snug on his bare frame.
It must be the glasses and the hungry stance
that frames them both together in my eye.
Two incongruous writers who would never meet.
My friend goes to London 

to write poems to animals in cages.

no date 1982?

added 2/2017

FENUCCIO, II

FENUCCIO, II

(enroute to a CPITS poetry meeting)

1. I awoke this morning thinking of my mother 's 
black cat, Cantinflas who loved to swim in the tub.

On Mission & 18th, we pass a Doggie Diner,

Another Doggie points a forlorn nose up Army & Mission,

What luck, seeing two Doggie Diners in one day.

When she moved, the cat ran away.  No bathtub. In the '5Os,

everyone complained about the tacky Doggie Diners.

Today, artists are dying to save them.

We pass the abandoned Hamm's Brewery.
I don't have the nerve to tell my poet friends
my mother lives in one of those steel vats. 

She's a beatnik mother to addicts
and punkrockers who steal her blind.

I don't tell them she never had time to mother me. 
Or that there are no windows in the vats. Soul windows.

She can't see how the mountains slant toward the sky,

how resting clouds form right angles after rain.

The wet street glistens like fungus on rotten logs.

The pavement in the middle of each lane 
is dry from the heat of cars, a rainy conundrum.

My traveling companions drone on about Rajneesh,

& the woman who was raped while the movie was filmed,

everyone asking her how she felt. They wanted her 
experience as if it was something holy and profound.

2. Fennel is one of California's toughest invaders.

Along cement cracks and in abandoned lots

its feathery jeweled plumes glisten after rain.

I sit outside Carol Lee Sanchez's home in Bernal Heights, 
and watch a snail maneuver along a broken curbstone, 
where the phrase: THE STAR SPANGLE  is etched. 

When the snail reaches the granite precipice

where the missing "D" should be, he stops 
and waves his eyestalks in wild circles.

From the lot, I pluck white chrysanthemums 
for my birth month, soon I will be 30.

I pluck rosemary from an abandoned garden plot,
and fennel plumes, the sharp odor of petrichor 
and Ouzo assaults my senses, scours the air.

As we write, a Japanese poet says
 my feet hurt because of my heart.

I mutter under my breath, I'm so tired 
of living and no one hears me. Typical. 
Does every suicide want a rebuttal? 

Then, my mother has many coming.

 I'm sick of hearing the poets drone on about 
their spiritual gurus, Krishnamurti and Rajneesh, 
and I hate the color orange.

3. Shards of amber glass collect pools of water.

Only dogs are brave enough to walk barefoot in the city.

From rooftops, pigeons flap their wings like white sheets.

Do they have genetic memory of their ancestral home

the Italian sea cliffs? Fenuccio, Italian for fennel;

Fenuccio's on Broadway; transvestitsm; liquorice; anise;

underneath it all, it's all the same thing.

The soft earth slips under my feet.

I need to take off my shoes for grounding.

Sitting on curbstone overlooking a sea of houses,

I uncurl my feet like a snail from its shell.

These girders anchor my breasts to this continent.

1/82
10/23/15

Folklore fragments from my grandmother on the Sullivans

Folklore fragments from my grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly, collected in Forest Knolls, 1982

Death Superstition

The pictures fell off the wall and the glass broke. (Death.) All the boys— I’m getting superstitious. Ricky is already gone. There is still David, Kevin, and Guy. All those wars.

Before the English came, keening rituals
The voices moved up the hill. The women were crying when grandfather died. All week long it went on. We got used to it. All around his bed the birds singing, singing for Old Donough Sullivan Beare, he was the last of the clan.

The Sullivan Babe, keening ritual
I was facing the window, looking out, and I heard the voice of a woman crying, that was the banshee, it means fairywoman. The voice traveled from one row of trees to the next, and all along, down the houses, the Sullivan babe had died. It was the Rh factor, I think. I don’t know how many they had lost. It was an ongoing grief with no end in sight.

Sullivan Men, bog men and bog butter, and why you need to wash linen.
The Sullivan men were all so tall, square shoulder and handsome, my niece was married in England and the Sullivans standing beside her were all related. The isolated peninsula across the bay was known as the bear place. The boys looked for the cave where the bear skeleton was. Only the Bantry Sullivans are O Sullivan Bear. There was once a real bear. The skeleton is in the Irish museum that belonged to an earlier era. A huge skeleton of a man was found with it—when I was growing up. He was nearly 8 feet tall, you see, the bog preserved him. They used a special type of basket, a firkin and wrapped him up in linen. Linen absorbs the moisture. A firkin of butter was so many pounds worth – they took it into town. They used to sink the butter into the bogs for years. Flax grows on wet ground. That’s why you have to wash your linen tablecloths, to keep them alive.

Early childhood memories, teaching notes, Westside school

From my CPITS teaching notes. don’t know if I was teaching the workshop or Lee Perron was, but my boyfriend Edwin Drummond was there, which leads me to believe it was me teaching. Or perhaps, Lee and I were co-teaching. Personification, early childhood memory.

The first thing I remember was crawling in the grass. I opened up my hand and there was a leaf. A —student from Westside school fifth grade.

I was walking down a circular staircase, lost my balance, and fell. I remember my head hitting the stairs and my vision blurring as my head struck each step. I didn’t have any word for pain so I didn’t feel it. I remember seeing the walls in the sky bounce around. —Maureen Hurley.

I was chasing my brother down a long, circular stairway case on Cape Cod. We came around the corner, and I saw my father on the landing, putting trash into a wastebasket. There was a lightbulb on over his head. My father looked up at me, and smiled. —Lee Perron

 I was two years old. I was at the ocean and a shiny glistening star was floating in the water. I went to pick it up. The water was deep, and I walked up to my chest and brought it to my mother. She screamed. It was a jellyfish. —Edwin Drummond

I was standing on a stonewall. I was waving goodbye to my sisters as she was going to school. Suddenly, I’m crying, my mother picks me up, takes me inside and takes off my shoe, four wasps crawl out. —No name. The teacher?

SURVEYOR’S MARK

This one beside me, 

this straight road 

is a surveyor’s mark, 

a line-up, a painting

held by invisible threads. 

It is straightforward, 

no hidden surprises, 

it’s level, above board, 

predictable, though odd. 

Neither a prime, nor a composite 

nor a compound number, 

its slender surface,

a vanishing point

perspective.

At the end is a period, 

the beginning, or the end.

1982 no date.

From a Lynn Watson workshop, I was training her.

WHAT THE SCHOLIAST SAID:

Zara Altair said write a poem without naming it. Use juxtaposition. Write about how a chrysanthemum in bloom is like art or ants on fire.

WHAT THE SCHOLIAST SAID:

Regard the chrysanthemum
stalks, flat on the ground, 

flowers, twisting the tips 

past the roof shadow.

The spent bud

a honeycomb, 

a hornet’s nest, 

significance once as a pattern, 

but a theory of progress? 

A constant explosion 

of shapes, 

quiet, fringed, yellow, 

burning, and the bush, 

utterly consumed

No date 1982

random fragments culled from scraps of paper, 1982-84

Dennis Banks and Abby Hoffman 

are the only real heroes left.

Do you remember when you realized 

you were going to die?

The oppressor and the oppressed

Their women pass time
pressing strawberries between their thighs
The oppressor is always "they"
They have nothing better to do 

than to watch their wives sitting at home 

squashing strawberries between their thighs. 

No strawberry sunday at the fountain

We're all shiksas looking for home

Nuptial

I bet you're so perfect 

you don't even get junk mail.

Primal

As Richard plays the piano late at night
Coastal fog drips from pine trees 

a morose foghorn sounds in the distance
Do we respond to those notes 

the sounds we heard as children
What makes us respond to music?
Certain chords touching off the coastal fog 

dripping off Presidio Pines 

and the forlorn cutting the fog 

1984

When his hand grazes on my body 

reality and memory cease 

and all there is is the moment.
What I want to tell the fish 

rolling in my bed at night 

is that none of us can crawl back 

to that place called home 

no matter what coast we seek.

And the robins sings of smashed mates 

the feathered triumph of my VW 

mercilessly breaking the bondage of robins 

April 1984

I am as innocent as I can afford to be – Howard Hart

I wish bad poems were more like clay pots 

slumped at the wheel
Instead they're fired with air bubbles 

trapped within the clay wall 

and they explode in the kiln 

or break with ease leaving us 

to piece them back together, 

our hands sticky with glue. 

No date I'm guessing 1984

The sand shifting of time
This marriage of poetry and art
The infant weaving the woman's hourglass
The band bird is the color of white horses
I cover my eyes and speak
I cover my ears to see
I cover my mouth to love
My breast is laid bare 

this clothing gathers them in.

I have been running for more than a year 

in the act of running the rabbit legs lengthen

the ears elongate the ratio between ear and hind foot 

measures the distance of fear.

Billowing loose from my shoulders 

the hair at the nape of my neck

gives me chills, like the dead come to visit.

All words are suspect
prepubescent poetic intention 

covering the eye, the ear
Aural intentions of the throat
The ancient sea voice whispering in my ear
Reminding me the shape of time 

is woman shaped. 

And I have hands to turn the glass 

on its side 

looking really looking into another's eyes 

for the first time. 

And as I gather up  my infant body 

covering the exposed flesh along the belly 

where the outgrown clothes pull apart 

revealing the darkness underneath 

in fetal defiance my knees are raised to my chin 

as I survey that mouth I want to kiss again and again

Our bodies never forget the touch of old lovers


After the honeymoon

I come away from the conference feeling both old – 

the wasted time floundering on mnemonic chores 

and doing that the last stages of my infancy

growing pains anchoring the honeymoon 

is this another poem about about writing 

how I bend over while driving to retrieve my hat 

and the feathers licking my fingers greedily 

as the car swerved into oncoming traffic
We are alive for such a short time 

and the unfinished poems remind us 

of the sand sifting through the hourglass 

in the shape of a woman's body
Yet another year passes. 

that odor of tar weed and skunk, 

the aging yellow edges of blank paper, 

wanting to slip off the cliff 

a feeling that lasts longer than the flight of poetry.

7/82  Napa Poetry Conference


Coyotes

Five coyotes emerge out of darkness, 

with strange square jaws with herbivore's teeth. 

The coyote spoke to me but I couldn't understand—

it was a coyote dream. What did the coyote say?

added 9/2016

revised a bit as they don't make a lot of sense.

Analy High School Participates in Poets in Schools Program

Country Joe at Garbo’s

Not sure of the date on this poster, either 1981 or 1987…but I think Garbo’s was long gone by 1987. When I scan this I will post a clean copy.

RRWG flyer, Dec 1981, Garbo's, Guerneville, Maureen Hurley & Meridel LeSueur

RRWG reading at Garbo’s with Meridel LeSeuer & Maureen Hurley

Education: Back to Basics—Art is the 4th "R": an interview with Lee Perron, Sonoma County Stump

UNDER THE FOUL MARBLE OF JUNE SKIES, and LOOKING EAST, automatic writing

UNDER THE FOUL MARBLE OF JUNE SKIES
                        —for Jason, who was a sailor

                            (from a visual translation of Rimbaud's Fleurs)

Beyond the greasy corduroy gaze of skies,
green velour over stormy seas,
and crystal waves of flotsam bronzed by sunsets
an ordinary fleece floats on the surface.

The digital voices of harpies
like flagrant sergeants floating in the shipping lanes
clicking a welcome to oil tankers
and, asleep, you sail past the gates of Hercules.

Beyond the Golden Gate where ocean agates and akajou pillars
support the emerald dome of sky,
night virgins, smelling of roses, joust for rubies
under bouquets of white satin clouds.

Tell me, what can you do with these enormous fleets?

Blue sheep, and various forms of night.

The ceiling of the sea is tired and harassed.

Under the foul marble of June skies

40 roses are blooming on golden sheepskins
while Jason sleeps.

11/1981
added 10/16

LOOKING EAST

Looking east along the quaking river,
mouse whiskers tremble in the breeze.

Tiny tracks are seen in the silt along the shore.

The ivy creeps along the stone faces
and takes root in the fissures of memory.

Herons silently spear fish is in the shallow sandbars.
Along the bank, sunflowers hide their heads, afraid of ivy.

This coiled river bends almost back on itself
like a blind snake ready to strike.

It runs north, south, then west to the ocean
and its cloudy surface, gray like the coats of mice,
trembles in the slightest breeze.

While overhead, an osprey waits patiently
for the surface to clear.

11/1981
added 10/16

Automatic writing

Summer birds singing 

dark sunlight 

navy blue bell tolls 

sweet dust motes drifting 

Jason passing the gates of Hercules 

picture perfect meadows 

baby birds 

butterflies sinking ships 

large bells 

soaring kites 

bluebells 

tree sparrows 

the ocean pounding on the sides of the glass 

hummingbirds hovering on the brink of a waterfall 

ship horns cutting through the fog 

baby sparrows 

thunder crashing on the right 

carnavals in the rain 

the elephants are escaping 

tigers with wet feet 

elephants afraid of mice 

rain dripping over the edge of my collar 

lightning 

I am afraid of thunder 

slow breathing of streams after rain

11/24/1981

added 10/16

At the Lotus Sutra Spa, Entering my 30th Year

 At the Lotus Sutra Spa, Entering my 30th Year
(Or There's no such thing as a quick fuck)

One of the men attached to Josh's stable clambered out of the cold tub. I notice his penis is shriveled, wrinkled and uncircumcised and I sigh. It is a difficult and lonely search for an uncircumcised male. Here in America, Judaic tradition affected the better judgement of most doctors and the mothers of sons.

I think of X, an unusual example of a man. The woman sitting next to me jabbers on,and I discover we have many mutual friends in common including X. She asks me how I knew him. What could I say? Yes, in the carnal sense. After three years of torture, the male denial of love, an infant seed torn from the uterus and thrown out with the other garbage chatteling our lives? Yes?

This thing called love has become a symbol of death; leaving behind proud flesh— the irreversible scar tissue that never heals? And last night, for the first time in six months I sat across from X at the dinner table wondering where it was all going to take us this time. We each try to carry on with our daily living one breath at a time.

Sometimes I forget to breathe. Each breath brings us a little closer to dying. Answering the woman next to me, I say, Yes, I know X. Loaded gun. The biblical sense is never mentioned. I take a deep breath and smile.

X's uncircumcised cock holds an almost mythical fascination for me. The man lived with for seven years—before the seven-year itch set in (ten years, and I've spent it all with two men.) Y chromosome said to me once in the middle of lovemaking that he was angry with his parents for letting the doctors circumcise him. His bereft mother said, I didn't know...it was the thing to do at the time. Like sheep, their lives lead them closer to the slaughter and they quickly go forward, afraid to cause a stir.

Y said his pleasure in sex was limited. He blamed it on his parents, the doctors and on America. I said, How can you know if the whole sum of your pleasure has been lessened because you've been circumcised? You've never experienced sex as anything other than as a circumcised man. Y proceeded to show me the pucker, a crooked stitch-mark from 1949 where some doctor took up a surgical needle in hand, and forever altered the foreskin on Y"s cock.

The first time I saw X again, was after the summer solstice. X worked out a slow seduction game. Y was working nights, and I was sleeping outside on the patio because the smell of frying bacon at 4 AM and an  man angry at the world climbing into my bed at dawn demanding ransom for the world's wrongs, left me cold. It was easy not to come home one night. Y left for the weekend without telling me he was going. Or where. With whom.

X undressed me by candlelight. How many other women has he seen with their skin bathed by the pale dust of candlelight? Did he reach out and take women to his bed like ripened persimmons just before the final turn of rotted-flesh slumped in the bowl—in this world of eat, or be eaten? My parched bones reveal no new secrets or truths. My body hungers for no other  man's touch. Even after all this time. My relationship with X was a lesson on survival, how to endure life.

Another birthday comes, and goes. And X's birthday in two days. They all seem to forget me. I hurt somehow. Birthdays are supposed to be special. I spent the whole day at the Lotus Sutra soaking it off as I ceremoniously entered my 30th year.

Even this place was not devoid of X. I thought I heard his familiar pssst! Turning, there was no one there. Just the empty room and a startled glance over my shoulder as I spread the plush rust—colored towel over the massage table.

That pssst reminded me of the time I thought I heard angels when I was five. I was playing with toothpicks—striking them across the rough rusted green teeter-totter that was buried in the tall oat grass. It was mid summer, probably August. The oats had long since spilled their seeds because my socks had the tiny seed birds hidden in their grooves. Oat seed birds, like herons on slender legs and their beaks pointing skyward.

Out of nowhere and that intense summer heat, a strange woman's voice said Don't do that! Startled, I dropped the toothpicks and looked over my shoulder. There was no one there. I forgot about what I was doing in the tall grass. Perhaps they really were matches. Or angels. Who knows?

Later, at dinner, X said, I saw you at the Lotus Sutra, you looked like you were having a good time so I quickly ducked out. It seems his presence is always walking through the rooms of my life. We tried to sever our connections. I don't want to see him again, ever. I'm furious with him. And Maury. She's here too. She even has the same name as me.

It's like one big drop-in party at the Lotus Sutra. Who needs ghosts when the present is so full of appointments? She stepped out of the jacuzzi and my eyes burned holes through the back of her skull. The welling up of unfamiliar jealousy, and I wanted to follow her, jump on her back and pull her hair. It's true what they say about the jealousy of a woman. Suddenly I understood why crimes of passion are committed.

Like an animal, ready to bite with fangs bared in the traditional cliché, I watched her long loveliness, so like Modigliani's nudes, shedding water in the half light. I could see why X made love to her. Suddenly, I was moved to pity watching her slow ponderous weight and bovine gaze. Her acceptance of my rage, the brutality of life, no joy.

Somehow, I knew it was already over between them—less than three months after X wrote me that Dear John letter when I was away on vacation. But still, I wanted to taste the coppery saltiness of her blood. That animal inside of me circled her and I cornered her just for revenge's sake.

Later, at dinner, X said between clenched teeth, How often are you going to resurrect it? I'm so sick and tired of it all. I just wish it would all end. I answered, I won't let it die—not until I'm ready to. I later sent him my Dear John letter. Three pages single spaced guaranteed to enlarge any holes in the
Swiss-cheese conscience of X.

I carried that unsent letter with me for months as a reminder not to go back on my vows. The ultimatums... I thought that through all that incredible craziness that there was something worth fighting for...  Love stronger than most loves; a connection of the mind and body that would last lifetimes. Hah. Was I naive. I told him we certainly couldn't be friends either.

I thought intelligence had something to do with emotions. Intelligence has nothing to do with emotions. His desire to have me as a friend as he pursued other women would lead to a lot of corpses dotting the proverbial landscape. I was patient. Patience is something women are very good at. I was more patient with him than most women are with their own children.

If he had any emotions to share with me, then I probably wouldn't have sent the letter but the post office delivered it anyway. No time for regrets. What's done is  done. I told him that he, in his secret male paranoia, was afraid of being raped (or maybe he secretly wanted to be seduced, but the way he used it against me was a sperm grenade waiting to explode on contact).

My capacity for pain had been more than filled, or, so I thought. What I've discovered is that pain lives in the same wellspring that jealousy does. Slake your thirst. Its only temporary. Soon one's thirst needs slaking, to be quenched again. And again. I shut another door in the room of my heart (life?) Why am I attracted to men who resent their mothers? I too resent my mother. But it's all Oedipal with them.

I'd forgotten about all the childhood dreams I'd had as a kid about the leopards and the lions who lived up the hill by the water tank. At night they'd catch scent of me and come charging down the path in search of fresh meat. I'd run to the house for safety but every time I got past the front door, closing it on the lion's paw, the door would shrink and swing free on the door jam. Like cocks too small for the cunt. Totally useless.

I'm a fugitive in this world of small cocks. My hunger is larger than this room and no man can feed me. No woman either. The rejection is another element dotting the landscape in this world of retreat.The societal substrata of the Lotus Sutra unfolds from the cushions and reveals itself to be a bandy-legged man looking for another aesthetic piece of ass. In this world of hustler, and be hustled, there is no room for me. I laugh at then absurdity of it. I fob him off. He struts off to another conquest. A numbers game.

I once thought I'd have to become a nun because my second cousin was one.  I tried to be bad. Maybe that's where I learned to suffer. Thats the real nunhood. The suffering, not the abstinence.

There's no such thing as a quick fuck. At the Lotus Sutra I am the only woman looking at cocks, their size and shape, and whether or not they've succumbed to the surgical needle. My jaundiced eye scours over their bodies. Too lean. Too fat. too, too... It doesn't matter. I'm not interested anyway. I practice my breathing. Each day brings me a little closer to the source.

See Letter to Lee Perron 10/19/81
Looks like a first draft. Two dates: 12/8/81, and 11/24/81. Probably written 11/81, on my 29th birthday.
added 10/16

BENEATH THE WEIGHT OF COWS, and DEPART

BENEATH THE WEIGHT OF COWS

Beneath the weight of cows

The water, churning down
from the Swiss Alps flows by me.
The sound of the nightingale
is lost under the white roar of waterfalls.

Centuries of snowmelt
loosing from sky blue glaciers
slipped by me. I have never heard
a nightingale singing.

In the lizard heat of the sun,
I sit on a rock and listen
to the drowsy hum of bees
as alpine clover is crushed
beneath the weight of cows,
their heavy dank breath
exuding chlorophyll and trembling sunlight.

They cease their chewing a moment.

Their ears pivot towards the scaled notes
of the nightingale wavering
by this icy, ancient stream at dusk.

11/23/1981

SC Stump 1981

DEPART
    —from a visual translation of Rimbaud's poem Depart

So say you,
visions recanted in trees.

Toes of the air,
so say I. Rumors spread like valleys.

O parting night and morning sun,
today, they say
arrest life.
O rumors of visions
departing on the dance of affection
in the bright night,
trees swaying,
toes of the air.

11/23/1981
added 10/16

RRWG/CPITS reading, Copperfield’s

Copperfield’s on a Rainy Afternoon

Copperfield's on a rainy afternoon
by Maureen Hurley

On a blustery Sunday afternoon over 50 poetry aficionados braved torrential downpours to listen to 4 poets read at Copperfield's Books, (formerly Myst Books) of Sebastopol. It was standing room only with people crowded in among the stacks, sitting on the floor and in the aisles as Ina Scrocco, Boschka Layton, Gerrye Payne and Ann Zimmer read from their works.

Scrocco, Layton and Zimmer are former students of Gerrye Payne, who teaches adult education creative writing through the Santa Rosa J. C. Their poetry reflects the diverse styles of their writing even though their connection is that they are former students of Gerrye Payne's writing class.

Canadian poet Boschka Layton read some humerous love poems and poems about her cat Ivan. Cats have a special place in literary circles from Cat Geoffrey in Jubiatante Agno by Christopher Smart, to the present day tortoise shell cat of Copperfield's who nonchalantly strolled across the tops of books to visit the kids browsing in the children's section.

Ina Scrocco, coordinator of SSU's new series, "Poetry Readings at the Pub, " held every other Thursday, shared wonderful image-laden glimpses, of her world with us; and Ann Zimmer read long narrative poems of love, Cinderella retold, and birth. There's an old Chinese saying... a picture is worth a thousand words...

Taking that a step further, I'd like to say a poem is worth a thousand pictures and that adequately describes Gerrye Payne’s work.

Payne, a Marriage & Child counselor for the Erickson Institute in Sebastopol, has a book soon to be out from Loon Press called An Amatuer Plays Satie. Ms. Payne is also the publisher of White Bear Books, which has printed 5 titles so far. Grandmother Spider, an anthology of local writers, is one, and Richard Welin's book The Ride Back is in libraries all over the US. Although The Ride Back is sold out, most of the other books are available at Copperfield's Books.

The owners of Copperfield's are dedicated to providing a special sort of bookstore for people to feel at home in. Series Coordinator Donna Fisher, who limelights as a 6th grade teacher at Brookhaven Jr. High during the day, said "We wanted to provide authors with a warm place to read their works. For me, its a resourceful place, people come in off the street, develop a dialogue with the bookstore and come back again for the readings." 

One of the co-owners of Copperfield's, Barney Brown, who founded People's Music ten years ago was also a teacher in the Berkeley School System. Barney, his partner Paul Jaffe (no relation to Sherril Jaffee, the writer) and Donna Fisher have created a unique atmosphere and provide the Sebastopol community with a well received weekly reading series that has gained a lot of momentum since is started last September. Readings are held on Sunday afternoons from 2 to 4 p.m. The events are free.

*
Stump Poetry Editor Maureen Hurley will join Zara Altair & Andrea Granahan at Copperfield's for a California Poets-in-the-Schools reading, November 22 at 2pm

On Sunday, November 22nd at 2 p.m. Copper-field's will present a Sonoma County Poets-in-the-Schools reading with Maureen Hurley, Zara Altair and Andrea Granahan.

Students from Analy High School, where Altair and Hurley are poet-teachers in an after school program, will also read from their recent works. The event is free. For more information on California Poets-in-the-Schools, contact Lee Perron, 1932 Champs 'd Elysees, Forestville, 95436.

Half Moon Bay

        October 24, 1981

At another fair with Leo and Terry selling jewelry at Half Moon Bay. It may as well be Anacortes. Same gray sky, same great buildings. All the crafts I have no desire to buy are displayed enticingly.

I am bored with buying. I want it if it's a bargain. But there are no bargains at craft fairs. People work too hard to get there. They can't afford to sell for less. Why is it the only satisfaction I get is when I find something in need of love and repair, that I feel I'm shopping? Is it work ethic guilt? I doubt it. I enjoy the process of restoration.

Perhaps this is also the method I use in picking my men. Leo says I'm a storehouse of information. I'm a wonderful seller. Why don't most of the men I see catch my eye? Is it that I'm too hard to please? I am I too discriminatory? If I want children, and I do, I need to decide upon a man soon.

Lee is hopeless. Besides, I sent him a final goodbye letter. Ha, is there ever really a final goodbye? What to do with the man who loves you, but doesn't want you for a lover? Besides feel awful.

I have qualities and talents that most women don't possess. Some women possess a few of them, fewer have the talent to back it up. How do I market myself? When selling jewelry, I'm learning to size up who will buy and who won't. I thought I knew how to do that with men but now, I'm not so sure.

I found a wonderful man, a poet, sympathetic with my own writing, but only a few small problems. He lives on the east coast, teaches at NYU, has a wife and may even have kids nearer my age than he is to me. He is the best lover I've ever had, better than Lee and I thought Lee was very good.

Galway said to me if I didn't make love to other men, it would be a great loss to mankind. It was the way our bodies moved, the way our lips fit together that made it so special. He said my body was well muscled and strong, that I would be a good hiker. It's too bad we didn't have the time, he said.

Is it true what Lee said that "hard times for love, today?" Is there no hope? It is a month before my 29th birthday, and again I am alone.

Letter to Lee Perron 10/19/81

Lee,

I feel the need to clear up a few things...some final parting words to you. Remember when I said to you over a year ago, that if you got it together with another woman, our friendship would cease to be? I've said it to you several times, and basically I plan to stick to my statement, that was the only 'rule' i ever made in our relationship.

All the rest of the trauma that I put up with (in terms of how you treated me and our on/off affair for the past 2 and a 1/2 years)...patience, persistent patience.  Water under the bridge. I felt, that all thru that incredible craziness, that maybe there was something worth fighting for, something worth acknowledging... a love stronger than most loves, a connection of mind and body between two people that could last lifetimes.

I think you panicked and tried to flee. I panicked and pursued you. As long as that deep taproot was there, I was willing to endure and struggle thru, because I believed in love, and in you, and, I felt that you weren't allowing yourself to explore your emotions. I thought there was a great emotional blockage on your part, that you were never cold (as so many others perceived you to be).

Now, I think you're thick-headed and not in touch with your feelings, but that is no longer my business. If you wish to seek further feedback, please talk about it with your other friends. Not me. They have some important things to say to you, but won't do so unless you seek put their advice. (Try Jere or Greer out on this matter sometime).

You have decided that romance is an impossibility with me, and that "we were so unhappy together in the past," as you so aptly put it the other day. Aside from the fact that we never really had a chance to have a "relationship" per se, it makes me wonder about the validity of all this "unhappiness" garbage. You decided that you didn't want a relationship— therefore we never had one. Yet you pursued me. What was I, a conquest? You broke up my seven-year "marriage" with Bob. 

The mutual unhappiness we experienced had nothing to do with our being a couple, and having a relationship. The unhappiness was a byproduct of the other trauma we experienced, the abortion, a byproduct of your unwillingness to be open to having a relationship; and the unhappiness was not from having, or not having a relationship. Is that clear?

So, you've made yourself perfectly clear—we will not have a relationship, understood, computed. Got it. When you took up with another woman, you had the foreknowledge that I would reject you, that I would not accept your friendship, that I could not accept your friendship. That single act granted you your freedom, the freedom you so desperately sought. You are now free to do what you want with whomever you want—the only stipulation is that you can't have me again, ever, as a friend, as a lover, or whatever third alternative you were trying to come up with.




You've made your choice, Lee, now stick to it; I have been doing so, ever since July when I received your " Dear John" letter up in Port Townsend. Need I remind you about that 'other woman' stipulation? When you sent me that letter, you regained your precious freedom to do what you want. So go do it and leave me alone. I have my life to live and I will do it without you. I don't need a confused man hanging on to me, dragging me down again. 

You see, I too felt like I was drowning in this relationship because you tried so hard to hang on to me as a friend, as a lover. I asked you to let me go. But you couldn't do that. You didn't want to lose me. You clung to the idea of our friendship, and you strung me along, knowing my weakness. My anger towards you is deep-rooted, and many of those scars will never fully heal.

I can't believe you were actually that dumb. It's my fault, I thought intelligence had something to do with emotions. Intelligence has nothing to do with emotions. Nor has it anything to do with your desire to have me there as a friend always, as you pursued other women with my passing a blessing upon you. No guilt.

You are no longer a part of my life. You've ceased to exist for me.
 You're a non-entity and that's the way it has to be. I'm not going to
be the moping martyr hovering in the background, nor will I cease to be interesting to others, nor will I lose my creativity; some unfounded egocentric fear you seemed to have voiced at one time of another. I do just fine without you. I've been doing fine without you for more than a year now.

I don't know how much I can stand to be around  you—you honestly get on my nerves and irritate me. I'm not saying this to dig at you. I get inhibited when I'm around you, you cramp my style, that's why I don't want to see you. I feel watched and I feel stifled around you, it's unhealthy for us both, so leave me alone and let me breathe.

Before all this nonsense started, I was willing to be patient with you. I put up with  a lot of things that I would never tolerate from another human being. Patience is something women are very good at. I've been more patient with you than most mothers are with their own children, and, what I've discovered  is, that you had no idea of what I was doing. You've used up your lifetime supply of patience; and  love from this woman who once was a true friend. There's no more left for me to give.

So, now you'll have to  accept the 'other me'. In a sense, I am now another woman. You may not like my hostility and  abruptness, but that's the way it is. This  other side of my nature has always been there, but I foolishly coddled and sheltered you from it. Now it's your turn to see the other side of me. You may not like it. So be it. In one sense, you've got it coming to you. I can see it makes you extremely uncomfortable, and that you do not like it one bit.

If you were really there for me to share my emotions, if you had any emotions to share with me, then I wouldn't be writing you this final letter. As it is now,I've been a sounding board for you and it feels very one-sided. 

I can hear you saying: "Maureen is going thru rough times right now. It's too bad. I may feel a bit guilty about the whole thing, she's withdrawn, moping, perhaps suicidal. I owe it to her to be there and help her out, and then we can be friends again, and things will get better between us." This is a fantasy dialogue I sometimes hear you playing to yourself. There's no way you're going to be absolved, and then we'll be best buddies again. This is really it. It's over, finished between us.

I read somewhere once that it's the woman who has the ultimate power of decision when a relationship has ended, and this one ended in July. I get the sense that you think l'm waiting in the wings to attack, you, or to make sexual advances towards you, or something of that ilk. And all I can say to you is, how absurd! Maybe I didn't make myself clear in the past. Well, rest assured your body is safe from me. Not interested.

Your bringing in the 'other woman' was the key in unlocking and dissolving this  relationship. You, in your egotistical male paranoia, are afraid of being raped — not that it's even possible for a woman to rape a man—ravaged, seduced, more like, or maybe you secretly just wanted to be pursued. Yet you're always the pursuer. 

No longer will you pull off my top in jest, and pretend it was just a joke (albeit sick). I am not available for that form of crude torture you seemed to relish so much. I no longer am interested in you— you blew it this time. There's no reprisal, no turning back. My capacity for pain had more than been filled.

Galway once told me after Leonard put his eye out, that love is hard, that while many good things are easy, true love is not, because love is a power, its own power which continually makes its way forward, from night into day, always forward into difficult day. Our paths no longer seek the light of difficult day. Goodbye Lee, God bless.

Maureen 

10/19/81

I carried this letter around with me for months as a reminder before I sent it in December. See At the Lotus Sutra Spa, Entering my 30th Year
added 10/16 Minor revision, punctuation & spelling cleaned up.

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

A QUESTION OF BALANCE

Governments are going native
We worry about Iranian Oil, socialism,
and the fundamentalist essence of capitalism.
Free speech liberties are bought and sold
Then, there's the cockroach problem.
There was no repression from Stalin's point of view.
We need a day to get started on this earth
And what is the Polish Question?
We talk about compost and ask
what's the best kind of shit to put on raspberries?
In this world today, it's a question of balance.

10/19/1981
minor line break changes & punctuation
added 7/17

REESE RIVER VALLEY

REESE RIVER VALLEY

I remember the adults talking politics,

the blue cigar smoke of family reunions,

The kitchen table jumped

with empty whiskey glasses and jam jars—

as their fists punctuated each statement.

This, my inheritance.

Sometimes my grandmother sits

and talks about her days on Home Ranch

about the coyote fur coat she and her Aunt May made.

Everywhere they went, the dogs followed

with raised hackles, growling and barking.

Even in San Francisco, the dogs sensed the danger.

Far from the green hills of Bantry Bay,

my family settled in this place.

The grain in this valley was worth more

than the silver grubstake claims in Austin.

She said: Men had to eat.

My half-brother is part Cherokee.

Our fathers never met.

His Indian grandmother sat on a porch

watching someone else's cattle forage

under the fierce Nevada sun.

But it was my grandmother who raised us.

While unloading an enraged bull

her uncle Paddy was killed by his horse.

His wife, Mary, stood on the porch

her mouth framing a silent white O

as the foreman lifted his rifle

to the forehead of that cowpony

who lay dying and the wind lifted

a dust funnel that whirled through

the open door like ghosts.

We sat by Paddy's tombstone,

granite & marble softened by the elements.

She said, I wanted you to see this place.

To write the stories. I'm the last one left now.

I took a photograph of my grandmother

looking away from the camera—

the moment, engraved in memory like stone.

I never told my grandmother I love her.

10/15/81

see In the San Geronimo Valley

We Dreamed We Were Giants

We stopped to rest on the top of the knoll before turning back. Late afternoon. I fell asleep sitting indian style with my chin in my hand. Lee and I had the most amazing dream. We had turned into upright stone outcroppings at the end of a long winding ridge. We were really sleeping giants, dozing off for a few moments (in giant time} and like Gulliver, we were visited by little people who made pilgrimages to this place. For them it was a powerful spot. Our dreams became the stuff of their myths. They held picnics by our knees and along our thighs where we touched the ground. The lives of the people were so short, in flash, three generations had come and gone, and with their passing, the memory of our dreams disappeared from their stories. The visits became fewer and fewer, until one day they no longer came at all. We awoke with a start. Only a few minutes had elapsed. We stretched, yawned, and like bears we ambled back down the mountain in the dusk light.

10/15/81

minor changes, added 7/17

IN THE SAN GERONIMO VALLEY (see Reese River Valley)

IN THE SAN GERONIMO VALLEY
      —to Dan Propper

In the San Geronimo Valley 
where my grandmother lives,
a, tree is growing out of a cleft in the rock.   
When I was a kid, I  remember 
the adults talking politics and smoking cigars.
The kitchen table jumped with empty whiskey glasses
as their fists punctuated each sentence.
There are no more Indians in San Geronimo Valley. 
My brother is part Cherokee. 
His great-grandmother sat wrinkled on a porch 
under the fierce Nevada sun.My grandmother spent summers
riding across mesquite covered valleys.
She never met the Cherokee woman
whose native blood sculpted my brother's face
into the  sane proud shape of arroyos.
His high cheekbones frame flashing black eyes
darker than my owm Black-Irish look.
Our fathers never met, 
yet they loved the same woman
who bore us willingly,
but it was my grandmother who raised us.
Sometimes she talks about Nevada,
and Home  Ranch where her uncle Paddy
was thrown and killed by a horse.
His wife stood on the porch,
her mouth a silent, white 0
as the foreman lifted his rifle 
to the forehead of the cowpony
and the Nevada wind howled through the open door.
In the Valley, where Geronimo once rode,
the tree thrusts its roots deeper into the rock.
The fracture widens imperceptibly
as roots swell from the Autumn rains.
I have never told my grandmother I love her.
 
date? added 10.16
on paper dated 0ct. 12, 81.
See REESE RIVER VALLEY
HOME RANCH  4/85

4 short poems from photos

THE WAY OF THE MOUNTAIN

Bent double from the weight,
my chin brushing the red velvet blouse,
I am staring at my cracked toes.

Splay footed sure mountain feet
to carry wood back to the yurt.
The band around my forehead
carries the weight away from my shoulders.
I think of my small dowry.
Perhaps the ferns won't mind my poverty.

Everyone in this village is poor

It is the way of the mountain.

10/1981

APOLOGY POEM

Thumb, forgive the hammer
that came down so suddenly.
It was meant for another kind of nail.

10/11/1981

IGUANAS

Marine iguanas everywhere
black scaly skin
dragon's manes
yellow slit eyes
tail flagellates in the sea
when they swim
iguana bodies all over
standing upon each other's heads
a lone crab scuttle across their surface.

10/11/1981

The rugged black edges
gaping holes
torn rents
shredded
my heart consumes itself
in its infant hatred
from loving you too much.

10/11/1981
added 10/16

MOON SNAIL

MOON SNAIL

Aboard this crowded raft,

I make strange love to

a river of foetal cave fish.

Once, I was the night mist 

and in the moonlight,

a shiny trail of snail spittle

led to the corners of my mouth

as I swallowed you.

Thinking I was a wolf,

you fled into burrows

but I was a mountain

and the ground where you hid

was my body.

I make love to friends.

Their thin hands passing over the raft

find you hidden among the blankets.

You ask me for forgiveness.

All I can offer you is rotted flesh

rocking gently on its dark mooring.

10/10/81

FOR THE FISH IN MY LIFE

FOR THE FISH IN MY LIFE

A minnow sleeps in my bed

and noses at the watery quilt.

As I climb into bed,

concentric ripples form

where, toe first, I slip in and under.

I'm careful not to disturb him.

All night long, the fish thrashes

and turns as I sleep

in a bed of soft stone.

If I turn over too fast,

will he be thrown from the bed,

or drown from lack of water?

10/81

Sonoma County Stump 8/18/81