WINTER DOLMEN Only have Napa workshoped copies, not final v.

WINTER DOLMEN
 
I.  The old horse trails have merged back into the brush
becoming interlaced with the newer deer trails—
a netting thrown over the steep hillside.

The humanness of my scent 
will divert the night's deer 
and they will weave another path around my trespass.

The ground is bathed in red leaves.
At the Rock, I sit and watch bluejays dive
over rounded shapes of live oaks.
As they follow the shape of the tree down in their dive
breasting the top of the tree,
they sculpt the air along its side.

At the switchbacks,my mare would stop to catch her breath,
her soft nostril flaring, her softer eye blinking.
Sometimes I rode her down from the top of the hill
sometimes I ran on ahead of her.

At the switchbacks, her strong front legs would lock, pivot and turn
as the momentum of her hind end swung around
widening each turn. Sometimes, in my dreams I see her 
roaming free in the hills.
Now all that's left are subtle ridges hidden in the brush.
The foot finds a surer path even as the undergrowth 
beats back the body.

II.  From the steep height of the Rock, 
I take mental notes. Measurements without numbers, 
angles without degree or scale
and compare it with the sheer cliffs of Yosemite.
As a teenager, I hung out over the edge 
of El Capitán without safety ropes. 
This rock juts out with the same purpose. 
My legs dangle down into lush green space. 
Below my feet, civilization falls back 
revealing toy houses, woodpiles and cars 
scattered in the folds of the hills,
looking off into this vastness, the word becomes smaller.
 
III.  I always wanted to be a red-tailed hawk
because I understood how the curve of its beak matched
the symmetry of its talons.
When I fed the injured one yellowed chicken necks
the hawk's beckoning eye approved of the shape 
of its cousin's puckered neck.
After the meal, the hawk sharpened its talons
waiting to carve my cheek to fall away like softened butter.
I turn the other cheek too late.
 
IV.  The deer cross the burned clearing,
their coats the same shade as the burned grass stubble.
In the charred landscape, the movement of white legs
pinpointed against the grass
are like reverse shadows cast by a negative.
In the tall grass their legs cast no shadow.
Their backs dark against the gold.

 On the slopes of Mt. Barnabe, 

crocheted to the flanks and gullies, 

trees leave gold meadows encircled like jewels. 

The trees hid the Indian graveyard. 

My grandfather knew where it was hidden 

but refused to tell anyone, saying, 

they needed their place of the dead, too. 

I spent years in those wooded folds
searching for stone altars and moss covered ribs.
Under the soft bleached bones I thought I'd find
dark garnets winkling slowly in the mottled light.
Instead, great rib bones of Herefords pushed up through the rocks
along the dry creekbeds. Tufts of hair, sinew and gristle--
dried clean, hard like amber.

I'm still trying to follow the old paths.
My feet remember smoother paths but the newer trails
are clogged with the detritus of fallen trees.
The god I believe in allows me to measure
the free fall of a bluejay's dive, the height of a hill,
the color of grass.

Paths, like river packed with log-jams during spring thaw.
Living on the edge of this winter dolmen
is like the crisp wind blowing off fallen snow.
The years are the true movers of paths.

10/28/83
(an earlier draft–the final version was corrupted, no final hard copy. See below.)

RRWG reading at Coffee & Co., emcee Maureen Hurley

THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BLUES: Interview with Bo Diddley, Mark Naftalin, Little John Chrisly, Sonoma County Blues Festival

Double tap to read the rest of the article. I tried every configuration, this is the only one that worked. I will transcribe it later.

Richard Salzman drawing, piano, from Obligatory Hug

Obligatory Hug, Oct. 1983, Russian River Writers' Guild, drawing

The Paper: Pineapple Princess interview (photos), Opening the Mouth

I was hired to take photos of his memorabilia for cards. Trina Castleberry was a poetry student of mine. She was killed in a car accident not long after I took these photos.

Obligatory Hug, Sept 1983, Franklin St. Clubhouse, Santa Rosa (Maureen Hurley & Charles Entrekin)

7 POEM FRAGMENTS, no date, end of summer 83?

Music running across prairies
under milky trees and golden silence,
it roars across the evening sky
and shakes the essence of night from the trees.



On the hillsides, raspberry bushes
overlook the meadow. The birds sing.
Tonight, the moonlight shines in the trees,
last night of summer.

1983?


Seedlings push earth in musical notations
A violin breaks the glass
A worm dances to the music.




Spiders huddling
over corpses of the dead
wringing their hands





 Eating rabbit looks like a skinned cat
and taste like dry chicken
Tougher stomach muscles than the chickens
Eating rodents, Romans eating dormice,
sleepy mice kept in clay pots
for the fattening winter



Outside the quiet classroom
children yelling
floating sound resonates in the air
like the loneliness of a fever.



So sorry I broke into your glass house
but I fell off the stairs I needed a bath.
The door was open and the cat
hadn't been fed in three days
and it was a stone's throw away from the fridge.




Floral clocks of darkness
are singing to the rocks of love
and fish sleep out of the rainbow
and petals fall from the teeth of poetry
while I sit looking pretty writing poetry.

September 1983?
added 9/15/2016
I probably wrote these in class, teaching CPITS
(next poem is Her mask of attention slips...if that helps)


SHORT POEMS 81-85

MASK OF COUNTERFEIT HEIGHTS

Her mask of attention slips
as she turns toward the sun
Clocks of sovereign weight
sit in rapt attention
Through her open window
a radio blares
to the rhythm of flapping laundry
next door
The judge's mask slips
Who gave her reason
to tilt volumes of abysmal trees
on their sides
don't they know she is a financier
of earthquakes?

alas, no date.

RRWG reading, Franklin St. Clubhouse, Charles Entrekin, Maureen Hurley

ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH

ELEGY FOR MARY WALSH
The atomic bomb was developed under the code name of the Manhattan Project.
Those involved with the project died within three decades of cancer.
—to Jane Walsh Reilly

Grandma said:
Julia took the kids:
Mary, her sister, and the boy twins
to Colorado for a better education.

There wasn't much in Nevada,

and there was some trouble with the marriage.

My grandmother's half-cousin Bill was a handsome man.

He was the number-one son

and ran the Home Ranch in Austin, Nevada.

Julia O'Leary came out from Bantry to marry Bill.

The family was deadset against the marriage,

They were first cousins, you know.

And Mary's sister was brilliant too

but she was institutionalized in Denver.

Darwin's parents were first cousins too.

There was something off about his sister as well.

It works that way with marriages between first cousins

genius and idiot: flip sides of the same coin.

Maybe that's the Almighty's way of keeping things separate.

It was during the war years, I remember,

Mary was chosen right out of high school

to work on a secret project for the government.

When they were testing for mathematics and science,

Mary got one of the highest scores in the country

and she went to work back east.

It wasn't until later we found out

it was the Manhattan Project

one of the government's best kept secrets.

No one knew anything about it.

We didn't hear from her for years,

and learned of her death announcement

when it appeared in the papers.

Here I was, first cousins to her,

and even I didn't know.

There was one short line about her work.

I heard, all who worked on it died,

but no one blamed the project.

The first time I saw Mary at Home Ranch

was back in the '20s the little toddler

standing by the adobe wall

and Julia talking, talking, talking

I was dazed because that child,

her voice was like a bell.

She was so perfect,

I thought I'd seen an angel.

And Julia, looking at me so quizzically

That was the pity of it. I didn't explain.

And her, Mary, clinging to her mother's skirts

as if she'd done something wrong,

crying hysterically,

Mommy, mommy, I'm not a bad girl. Mommy.

9/83

The Scatman comes to town. DATE.

IN HONOR OF SCATMAN 
BY MAUREEN HURLEY

People crowded outside River Inn Friday night: "Hey look. I don't believe it, there's the Scatman eating dinner." The focus of the starstruck, 73-year-old performer and veteran TV and movie star, Scatman  Crothers—in town, hangin' out, havin' a bite to eat at the local diner before accepting The Jazz Note award from the Russian River Creative Arts Foundation at the River Theatre Centre next door.

Crothers, a Terre Haute, Indiana, native, best known as the Scatman, has been in film for over 60 years. 

Most of his fans know him as Louis from the TV series "Chico and the Man." He starred in "Roots"' and was the piano player Sam in the "Casablanca" TV series. Piano isn't one of the instruments Scatman is used to playing but he knows where the notes are. "I've been in the business long enough to know where my hands are supposed to be," he said grinning. Crothers sings and plays guitar.

Crothers was the first black to hit television, in 1948. Besides TV, Crothers starred in several dozen films as a character actor. Some of the films are The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The King of Marvin Gardens, all with Jack Nicholson; Steven Spielberg's Twilight Zone, and The Shootist. He also appeared in five movies with comedian Jerry Lewis.

Scatman doesn't keep track of it all. His manager Ron Graham does. Graham is currently working on a documentary on Scatman for cable TV. Graham reminisced, "He didn't even know who (Director Stanley) Kubrick was when he was asked to act in The Shining. He's more interested in playing music. Music is his life." And that contribution to music is why the Russian River Creative Arts Foundation chose to honor the illustrious performer.

When asked after the show how he felt about receiving awards, Scatman's modesty was apparent. "It's nice always to receive anything," he said. "Of course, it's better to give than to receive. I ain't no better than you and you ain't no better than me. We're all God's children and everybody's a star."

SIDEBARS

They were hot. And cool. Brubeck, Viva Brasil, Morgana King, Cornelius Bumpus and 3000 people a day grooved at the 1983 post-Labor Day Russian River Jazz Fest.

Temperatures soared over 100 degrees and the KJAZ All-Stars greeted Saturday's crowd followed by Brubeck, Bumpus, Napata Mero, Kitty Margolis Cole. Sonoma County Sheriffs estimate Sunday's crowd was larger than Saturday's and ticket sales confirm it.

Though the Guerneville Fire Department made a few first-aid calls for heat exhaustion, saxophonist Stan Getz was the first real casualty of the 1983 jazz fest. Getz, scheduled to highlight Sunday's lineup, collapsed last week after doing a show with Brubeck at the Hollywood Bowl. 

Getz is under medical care at a Whittier hospital. Sunday's schedule was altered, and Brubeck returned and again teamed with Richie Cole, filling the Getz spot. The duo's 12-minute version of Brubeck's immortal "Take Five" brought the crowd to its feet. One jazz fan from Berkeley, a lawyer, told ticket takers Sunday he was going to sue the CAF because Getz failed to show; ticket takers smiled and gave him a refund.

*.      *.     *

Jazz was once thought to make one promiscuous, drink alcohol and take or smoke dope. Liking jazz meant one had fallen into the dark hands of debauchery and despair. That's changed. When asked why they liked jazz, robust and healthy festival fans said, "because it's intellectual-visceral-it allows you to think, unlike rock and roll."

As jazz moved closer to Main Street, rock and roll became the musical power of darkness. And as inevitably happened jazz and rock began to influence each other (fusion jazz). Now quite conservative, jazz purists were outraged

Clarinetist of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Bill Smith said, "Fusion jazz is not two separate things. It's two different aspects of the same thing. Rock & Roll and the blues are two different dialects of the same tongue. Music.

Dave Brubeck said, "Jazz is strong all over the world. The Russian River is like the Mississippi of California bringing us jazz."

Brubeck's jazz is often dubbed "mainstream" or middle of the road. In the '50s it was "modern" or "progressive"way off on the road's shoulder. Fusion has crept into the Brubeck group via the presence of Brubeck's sons.

Scatman Crothers, actor and singer, doesn't dig fusion. "Sorry, but I love the true sound. Chemical sounds don't do anything for me. Fusion jazz is mechanical—-that ain't music."

Jazz pianist Don Haas said the definition of fusion jazz came from the audien-ce. "To the average lay person, Count Bassie may seem vanguard. With fusion jazz, it depends upon who's talking and who's listening." To define it lies within the ear of the beholder.

Note bene: I spent a memorable evening with the incomparable Scatman Crothers at the Guerneville Diner next to the Rio Theater. After his concert, we all piled into a booth at the coffeeshop and gossiped the night away. I don't remember why he was in town (an award). Before that night I had never heard of him. He was a great storyteller. Man, the stories he told—we were riveted to the booth until way past closing—3 AM. What I remember is Scatman imitating Cab Calloway's famous song, with a Heidi heidi hei. I took notes, it appeared in The Paper with photos. The waitress closed up around us, but the Scatman was on a roll. And she had the good sense not to mess with that.

My friend and neighbor, Jonathan London had a groovy poem, Hep Cat, he was working on. (Was he with us that night in Guerneville?) Around the time Scatman blew outa town, Jonathan got a nibble from the big publishers who liked Hep Cat, and could he turn it into a children's book? Suddenly hep was in. And so was Jonathan riding high on a long coattail wind. Elucidate. Elucidate, indeed. hep-hep-hurray. He gave me signed copies. I wonder where those books are now?

RRWG Coffee & Co. reading, Marianne Ware, Maureen Hurley, Simone Wilson, Jonathan London, Zara Altair, Zelda Balchowski, Lee Perron,

Whale of a Gala, Poets & Humorists, Pat Nolan, Eula Long, Marianne Ware, Andrea Granahan, Maureen Hurley, Simone Wilson

drawing from Obligatory Hug

ARC Sept/Oct, 1983 4 photos front page: Mike Tuggle, CA Oranges, Ft Ross, kids, fence & rock

AMERICAN HIBAKUSHA

AMERICAN HIBAKUSHA
       —for Carolyn Forché 
         Hibakusha is the name the survivors of Hiroshima gave to themselves.

I.   The violin's slow scale
climbs above the beat
of the metronome,
patterning mountains of notes,
increasing in tempo.

II.   A child under the alders

stares at the liquid leaves
that hide small cones—
brown, like river debris.

III.    A sonic pitch
loosens the violin's strings.

The bow falls slack
and the hand falls silent.

IV.   A pulse of light quickens the sky
The leaves, robbed of their color
sizzle into premature fall. 
Ashes. Burnt decay.

V.  The acrid odor of hair
distracts the woman playing the violin.
Glancing at the mirror,
she watches fascinated,
as the mirror slumps off the wall.

VI.  Vast ridges of light.
No color anywhere—
only a drenched landscape
of saturated light
brushed by fingers of white noise.

 9/1/83 published in nuke notes, Sonoma, county, direct action, coalition, 2/1984, vol. 4, no.6
added 10/16 

2 POEM FRAGMENTS, Napa

The violin's small scale 

climbs above the metronome, 

small bejeweled clicks 

patterning mountains of notes,

increasing in tempo, 

a sonic pitch invades,

the strings lose their time,

the bow loosens 

and the hand falls silent.

9/1/1983

Napa? no date

Ducks slip into births and sleep 

in the shade of trees at noon. 

I feed them raspberries. 

Ducks masticating raspberries 

in a khaki colored lagoon. 

They swim over rotted bull rushes 

the way birds fly over 

invisible boundaries of fences. 

The word trespass is an unintelligible concept 

we see the line fall short of the mark. 

Either we plunge into the murky depths 

shedding drops of light from our breasts 

or we cower silently in the tall rushes 

and listen to the cackle and skirted rustle 

of ducks, afraid of the depths.

9/1/1983

Napa

First draft

the ducks slip out of the shade of trees, 

awaken from their nap by the approach, 

I feed them raspberries. 

They're masticating raspberries 

in the khaki colored lagoon.

They swim away over the bull rushes 

and I am reminded of the way birds 

fly over invisible boundaries of fences, 

barbed, electric, or wood

it doesn't matter.

The signs of no trespassing are not read.

To trespass is an unintelligible concept for birds.

I read the lines and fall short of the mark. 

Even if we climbed into the murky depths 

drops of light from our breasts, 

or we hope her silently in the tall tule rushes 

and listen to the started rustle and clacking 

of ducks afraid of the murky depths.

9/1/1983

Napa

added 10/16

Napa craft lecture, Galway Kinnell and Tess Gallagher, The music of poetry, journal

The rhythm allows a poem to breathe effortlessly, things that seemed impossible before you start writing, to be out of reach, become within reach. Writing is not the last ornamentation, but a part of the poem itself. The music of the poem is the poem. All of life is based on cycles, the becoming and the dying. The rhythm is the first expression of life. To attach to that rhythm, that’s what art does for us, it’s the music first, then the poetry. 

9/1/83 freewrite from a craft lecture with Tess Gallagher and Galway Kinnell

FREEWRITE

Death's feather-fringed angels

White like emily
more gold than gold

endless stream of raw wheat
in the eye of the poem

the same alarm clock stands
on countless night tables
back and forth
across the country
timing trysts. lecture readings
the same hands sweep
the same face unceasingly
like a sea lapping at the shore

9/1/1983? 84?

there's a reference to Mary Rudge in the first line, and Sappho in the third line. I have no idea what it means
added 5/2/2016

SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND

SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND

in the kingdom of the blind,
the one eyed man is a freak.

8/83?
Napa

RETURN FLIGHT

RETURN FLIGHT

My grandmother, they planted lilies

at the foot of your bed

before I understood the meaning of loss.

A chill in the air puts summer to rest.

White against the moon, an owl takes flight

across the valley & the echo of his cry

scatters light from the stars.

To the dancers, we leave our feathers of return flight.

The small candles of barn owl feathers drift down

from the moon's edge to light the way for your feet.

The slow breathing of soil before the frost

leaves a faint trail like the undeciphered tracks of mice in snow.

This is why we dance on the graves of our grandmothers.

The earth spreads sonorous wings over you,

shakes rubies from her blood

& your long dark hair tumbles swift like a waterfall

until it turns white in the garden of your grandchildren.

& the night horses who pasture in your hair

all turned east, toward that softer danger, the sun.

At dawn the white rooster crows over sand dunes,

leaving an echo almost tasted on the tongue.

He crows, Gallo, gallo, gallo blanco.

The web that connects us moves slowly.

Wind in the cottonwoods marks a passage of time.

When my best friend was killed by a horse,

you said, “Think of all the death in the trees

and in the fields in fall.”

The rooster cried, “My insides return to earth

so that my life may continue,”

before the axe swung.

My grandmother, now I know the earth receives us.

She watches the flowers of her children catch fire in the wind.

She kindles our slow bones so they too

will send roots down deep & drink from the stream.

She stands at the lintel with arms open wide,

waiting for us to return home

so she can close the door.

The return to earth is a quiet song

when water trickles down after the storm.

8/27/83

rev. 86
this was from reading three grandfather poems in a New Mexico magazine, by Rudolfo Anayar, Estévan Arellano, and EA Mares. I later changed it to reflect my grandmother.

1990 Red Bluff Daily News, July 23
1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1986 Under the Bridge of Silence
1983 Across the Generations


VUELO DE VUELTA/RETURN FLIGHT

Mi abuelo, plantaron los lirios  
al pie de tu cama  
antes de que yo entendiera  
el sentido de la pérdida.  
El aíre frio entierra al verano.

Blanco contra la luna, un buho alza el vuelo  
a través de la valle y el eco de su grito  
esparce la luz de las estrellas.

A los bailiadores dejamos nuestras plumas del vuelo de vuelta.  
Las velitas de plumas de buho flotan a la deriva  
desde el filo de la luna para aluzar el camino de tus pies.

El aliento despacio del suelo ante la escarcha  
deja huellas ligeras como rastros indecifrados  
de los ratones en la nieve.  
Por eso bailamos en las tumbas de nuestros abuelos.

La tierra extiende alas sonor as sobre tí,  
sacude los rubís de su sangre  
y tus cabellos largos v negros se caen rápida como cascada  
hasta volverse blancos en los jardines de tus nietos.

Y los caballos de noche, que pastorean en tus cabellos  
todos miraban hacia el oriente—
hacia ese peligro mas suave, el sol.

En el alba, el gallo blanco cacarea sobre la arena  
dejando un eco que casi se saborea en la lengua.  
Cacarea, "gallo, gallo, gallo blanco."

La tela que nos relaciona se mueve despacio.  
El viento en los álamos marca un pasaje del tiempo.

Cuando mi mejor amiga la mató un caballo,  
dijiste, piensa en toda la muerte en los árboles  
y en los campos del otono.

El gallo gritaba, "Mis adentros regresan a la tierra  
para que la viad continúe," antes de la hacha se cayera.

Mi abuelo, yo sé ahora que la tierra nos recibe.  
Mira las flores de sus hijos encenderse en el viento.  
Lentamente incendia nuestros huesos para que ellos también  
envíen las raices hasta lo profundo y beban del corriente.  

Se para en el dinltel con los brazos abiertos  
esperando hasta que volvamos  
para que cierre la puerta.

La vuelta a la tierra es una canción quieta  
cuando el agua discurre después de ia tormenta.
  —traduccion John Oliver Simon

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

Isis Oasis Resort reading, Lee Perron, Maureen Hurley, Zara Altair, Kit Aldrich, Patty Truxaw, Mickey Sheehan

 

Poetry class on August 21 at Isis Oasis

The Isis Oasis Poetry Workshop convenes again on Sunday, Aug. 21 on the grounds of the Isis Oasis Lodge in Geyserville. The Isis workshop is an open gathering of Sonoma County language artists This month's agenda includes: "Unplanned Poetry," a community of words led by Mickey Sheehan and Patsy Truxaw: and readings by Russian River poets Lee Perron, Maureen Hurley,Zara Altaire and Truxaw. Actor, poet and musician Kit Aldrich will use the workshop to introduce and rehearse his latest work, a mixed media dada troubadour experiment. Sheehan and Terry Boucher plan to act out their favorite scene from Inherit the Wind. Tommy Thompson and Michael Welch may also attend the event. The Isis workshop is open to the public and both participants and observers are encouraged to attend. The group will be discussing the possibility of organizing a chamber music/poetry/fine wine afternoon during a Sunday in the fall. Anyone interested in reading or participating on Isis Poetry Sundays may either show up or call Truxaw at 433-1907 or Sheehan at 433-5835 for more information.

Fragment MARGUERITES

Marguerites growing
amid the marble soils of Crete.
Amid the large columns of bones.
Marguerites strewn across the soil of Crete
blooming between marble columns
and the bones of the temples.
Marguerites holding the clouds up
and keeping the sky at bay.

8/13/1983
added 10/16
revised

Two marginalia drawings, RAS meeting, Lakeport

SATURN’S PRODIGAL RETURN

1. Saturn’s prodigal return straight from the heart,
the light well dips silver ink from the moon,
a nightly repetition of black time,
countless nights of washing
The seahorse cracked like a Crab Nebula.
Best eaten cold on ice.
Light, the silent snowfall of stars
whose silver lining is in question.

2. I saw the mountains on the edge of the moon
casting 10,000-foot shadows
into an empty Sea of Tranquility.
Space maps, interstellar dust, meteor showers
on the backside of the moon.
Perseus complained in a binary language.
What of the spacial folds in the Milky Way?
Who is blessing the Southern Cross,
was there really something to the back
side of the moon?

3. What is the color of blood in the dark?
Women’s blood is thicker than men’s.
Each month we try to hold onto it.
What oracles will the trees listen to
after all the leaves fall?
My tears become like leaves
and flow away and whole forests
have been decimated.
The earth is still bleeding
and we are always thirsty.

No date, 1983, probably the Perseid showers, So, August 12.

FIRST TIME

FIRST TIME
              —for Jim Byrd

Our canoe rounded a sheltered river bend—
collecting calm emerald water
'til it glistened in a slow, curved smile.
The towering trees punctuated its mirrored speech.

From our raised paddles words escaped—
unannounced as water droplets
spawning concentric ripples
in an undulating desire towards shore.

Who is naming these silent tremblings,
sneaking up, canoe-like along the river,
where,  coming down for their evening drink,
our hearts stopped,  afraid to slake their thirst?

Who will stand guard over them
so they can safely come down to the shore
and ask the river where the trees stop
and the reflection begins?
Through the trees the wind is trickling.
Only the shore answers in a slow, curved smile.

8/4/1983
added 10/16

VIRGO

VIRGO

In the moonlight,
naked,
I will cook fish

8/1983

CORNWALL

CORNWALL

The sea shakes the cliffs,
loosening rocks like teeth.
The pitched roofs of the manor
toss the air back to clouds
as the sea shoves against the moor.

Beyond the window
is the lone figure of a man
wending his way towards shore.

A girl in a blue shift
leans against another window
gazing at the sea
marking his progress.

The curtains luff like sails.
Facing the afternoon sea,
her eyes, mirrors
reflecting back the purchase of the sea. 

8/1983

TOBACCO

TOBACCO

From the campfire, flames leap and dance
as if the devil's fiddle were made of smoke.
A cigarette dangles from the gypsy's mouth.

The earth pushes up a cornerstone
in a slow rotation of silence.
The thin red wailing of a siren
heralds the dusk in another part of town.

She stops to light her cigarette.
The horses lean toward her,
hungry for tobacco.  

8/83

Poetry Reading with Crawdad Nelson, Vincent Peluso, Maureen Hurley, Humboldt Bay Coffee Company, Old Town Eureka

Journal entry, Driven

Journal,  Driven

 With unfinished work hanging over my head, I can’t get it together to fix my storage room so I can move the boxes out of my house. It’s too hard. I hate the world. I hate these boxes and more. I don’t feel good. I wanted a Jewish Mama. I want to forget everything and play. I can’t seem to forget anything except all the unfinished work over my head. I need to go somewhere and do nothing for three days. I go nuts if I have nothing to do for three hours, let alone three days. I don’t want A Jewish mama, unless she can type but then she’ll nag me about this and that and the other. I want to do something interesting for a change. I’m bored with myself. Oh man are schmucks. No, they’re not – just the ones that I know. No, just the ones I fall in love with. Maybe I should quit falling in love. And fall off barstools instead. What good is it? I am a hopeless romantic. Romantics are idealists. Idealism is dead. Long live romanticism. When did the Romans have to deal with antics? Is it a kin to Greek antics? How do you seat four guys on a barstool, turn it over. Turn over a new leaf. Figleaf. Get a heart on. I’m bored with my friends. The last time I wielded a hammer, a board fell on my foot. I’m falling over boxes and my feet hurt. And my head hurts. It’s too hot. I want to go home, my feet are in boxes and I can’t reach the clutch.

7/11/83

ODD JULY FRAGMENTS

Birds in random patterns in the sky 

bitter leaves buffeted by the winds 

9/18/1983?

Somewhere, deep in the jungle, 

an overripe mango falls. 

The almost perfume taste of a white peach 

and the bastard progeny of nectarines 

from the unnatural passion 

of plums and peaches

like  the acacia beating 

in the desert heartwood.

In the soft lavender dreams 

of your heart

what geckoes dream, 

what chameleons of thought 

rest there, unturned, 

waiting for respite 

from the long night of memory 

and language?

In the subtle home language of dreams, 

a steaming bear turd at dawn tells me 

more of the future

than the tea leaves of your cup.

This is a quiet place for remorse.

It's as if the feet of fallen angels 

made no more noise 

than crickets in the grass.

7/2 1983  or 84

A gopher has much reason 

to be the victim of thought.

7/2 1983  or 84

I am always suspicious of places 

where the tables are well padded 

and the chairs are not. 

7/3/1983  or 84

The sound of crickets 

or the shape frogs, 

the croak coming out 

of a bag filled with vertebrae, 

each croak demands 

one neckbone 

for its passage.

7/8/1983 or 84?

Wilbur Hot Springs

The snake carries the minnow 

from the stream like a dog 

with a bone and swallows it 

headfirst on the hot rocks.

7/13/1983

Invisible boundaries

These hills carry all their secrets 

with them to and from the sea.

Trees suspended from rocks 

for no reason whatsoever, 

it's like the next of giraffes 

7/8/1983 or 84   

Tomales

To cross invisible boundaries

What are invisible boundaries?

Our eyes travel into forbidden scenes 

to peer into a garage where someone 

changes the baby on a dirty carpet, 

where a phlemetic old man 

spumes in the gutter, breath in short supply, 

or to eavesdrop in on the conversations 

of others in restaurants.

Or the way the side of the building, 

painted blue, loses its constraints 

against the sky.

Outdoor windows mirroring back the room.

Within the span of three minutes 

a middle-aged man confesses 

the hospital a wedding, his daughter,

an affair gone wrong while his companion 

spreads butter and nods in silent affirmation.

I never thought of you as middle-aged.

7/30/1984

The plums on the table 

the soft burst of fruit 

against the platter 

too suddenly ripened.

Scratches on the outside of plane windows 

from the ash of Mount Saint Helens.

Clouds over Molokai 

flat tongue of Molokai 

rolls from the feet of Maui 

white boats and whitecaps 

Pacific lint. If you look 

in the wrong direction 

all there is is endless ocean 

where reefs break.

1983 or 84?

I can't believe I interleaved 1983 and 84 in the same journal. I think most are form 1983, and  I used up a page or two in 84...

FREEWRITE

FREEWRITE

I have found terror in my own thinking

I shall have dominion over my own thoughts
the dominion of fear, he said, I see myself.

An obsession of a dream
which becomes the world.

The heart can only understand
what it understands
because they're only the thoughts
of the corporeal body.

The terror of my life
is not like the fear of my own thinking

Speech – visits – the sleeping
I have in speech for love I see myself

The love I have of life.

7/2/1983, or 1984 probably 83
rev. 2/17

When the mind gets remodeled
 the residents of walking
with arms synchronized
with the stretch of opposite leg,
a crossing over occurs.
My mind frees itself of tangled debris,
the way Highwater floats the flotsam off the shore,
sweeping its meaning,
and deposits it on some other shore.

Unknown date says 730 possibly 1984



sleeping in the kitchen a.k.a.
David bricklayer
we are all friends in this double bed,
this is a submerged reef
in the middle rises as if in low tide,
a wall of bed in the kitchen,
you have long conversations with my best friend
and we fear over the fresh market
bricks like The Mending Wall
How does fear rise so quickly
our moods and consulates Unpredictable?

In your refrigerator
Three jars of jam,
One jar of butter,
a questionable cube of butter,
some birdseed
 (for the cats)
 Snowbird
a celibate interior

In the deep freeze,
amaretto and coffee,
ice cream, coffee beans
and the dope cookies crusted in frost.

I am hungry but it is too cold in the kitchen

You said you'd hang a door for five home-cooked meals.

We cross invisible boundaries
what are the invisible boundaries
our eyes travel in forbidden service
seems to appear into
a garage where someone changes the baby
on a dusty carpet

 tight says where philological man sings in the gutter
rest in short supply
or to eavesdrop into the conversation
of others in restaurants.

For the way I saw side of the building
slanted back loses its constraints against the sky
outdoor shadows mirrored back into the room
and then there's another section
within the span of three minutes

7/30/1984 

CHICO TO SF BY TWIN PROPELLER PLANE

CHICO TO SF BY TWIN PROPELLER PLANE

The Sacramento river wanders like a snake
through the great Central Valley,

leaving winter trails of oxbows, cirques, and disks;
serpentine shapes stranded amid the levees.

Fields run east to west to the mountains.

Rice levees, an organic mosaic. Earth artists.

The Marysville Buttes rise up like decayed teeth
disrupting the verdant velvet of fields.
We fly over the buttes. Inside the Marysville Buttes
are even more buttes and hidden jeweled lakes,
inside the decayed heart of an old volcano.

The Inner Coastal Range,
a scalloped shelf—like Zabrisky point.
Ocean sculpted by the great California Sea.
A spill of coastal mountains near Winters
disrupts the parallel symmetry of mountains
pushing against a sea of air and green caps.

Odd July snow on the coastal mountains.

Mt. Knocti, on Clearlake, pushes a black horizon,
bas relief of rice paddy patterns in the fields.
The rice farmers will never know that Mt. St. Helena
is pushing the sky up with her woman's body.

Dry washes of feathered snakes, dendritic memory
coming down the mountains to drink from the valley floor.

Napa Valley on the other side of the divide, an oasis.

Those dry hills hiding black gold, red gold, white gold;

hayfields, plowed earth, a valley of dust.
Then, the slate teeth of Mt. Berryessa gnawing the sky.

A singer in the fjord, Lake Berryessa laps
at the feet of the Mayacamas, like a cat.

In the dry regions, yellow pasturage,
the north slopes to the summit, open to the wind.

The lone thumb of Mount Tamalpais, guardian of the bay.

Point Reyes Peninsula, that island in time, a misty sentinel.
Home. I have full access to the plane, it only holds 12,
and there are only four of us, including the pilot.

Mt. Diablo, gatekeeper of the Bay's rivers.
Livermore, on the fault, the nuclear reactor, asleep.
So that's how the great Sacramento drains
into the Bay, over Diablo's feet.
Engulfing one half of the Central Valley

Lowlands—I'm surprised to see nothing grows
in the hills between Vallejo and Vacaville, except grass.

Cross currents in the Bay, a sudden insight,
the realization that the waves take turns
to mesh into each other like a massive weaving.

To the south, the Coyote Hills and and Mission Peak
barely visible beneath the morning fog.

A passenger asks if I take photos to remind myself of home.
He's late for his date with the US government.
He reads The Art of War. Off to the killing fields.

The plane plane doesn't want to land,
the pilot yells at the plane, Come on, land, goddamnit!
What you don't want to hear a pilot yelling.
The passenger thinks maybe he won't have to serve,
but the wheels reluctantly touch the asphalt.
We shudder to a stop, mere mortals again.

7/9/1983
minor surgery 9/2016 b/c I couldn't read it.



CHICO SF

the river wanders through the great central valley
carving a level journey leaving winter trails
ox bows cirques, discs serpentine shapes
fields outlined in even boundaries 

running east west to the mountains
rice levees
Marysville buttes rise up like a decayed tooth 

disrupting the verdant velvet of fields
Inside the buttes, more buttes
a hidden lake inside the decayed heart of an old volcano
Inner coastal ranges scalloped shelf like Zabriski point
ocean sculpted by the great California sea
Coastal mountains spill into the Valley near Winters