At the coffee plantation, Hawaii journal

Later, at the coffee plantation, geckos chuckle, and make small fists as they lift their hands from the hot surfaces. A Hawaiian hawk circles overhead. We talk about getting closer to the center of the core. The papayas below the kitchen are like multi-breasted Greek goddesses, hanging heavy on the trees. We will eat them with lime juice and apple bananas.

I am sleeping on the slopes of Mauna Loa, this great joyous weight—aina. These islands were called the Sandalwood Islands— ʻiliahi. The sacred fragrant wood was a source of wealth in the islands, traded for rum and weapons, until there were no more trees.

Ed points out the trees. I learn that the Australian macadamia nut, named after the Scottish-Australian chemist, John MacAdam, as was macadam, is also called the Queensland nut. The kukiu tree, first to colonize the lava fields, is the candlenut tree, a bringer of light. The koa tree, is Hawaiian mahogany. And the kamanu tree (punnai nut) is mentioned in the ancient Hawaiian chants.

The mountain apple, or roseapple, a kind of myrtle related to guava (Syzygium malaccense), ohi'aloke, or ohi'a 'ai, is the golden fruit of immortality. Buddha was said to sit beneath that tree. Not the banyan. The mountain apple, the first fruit tree of Hawaii, is sweet, crisp, pear-like, with overtones of bayberries. Will Staple and I once made a mountain apple pie on Maui. A sacred wood, used for carvings and canoes.

The jacaranda from Brazil, sometimes called the fern tree, its blossoms form vast lavender carpets in the undergrowth. Wild philodendron snakes up trees like a massive serpent. The coffee trees, with their red "cherry," and gardena-like blossoms are so beautiful and fragrant. Ed says they're related.

A mango tree looks like it's always ready for Christmas with its rosy fruits bright against dark leaves similar to the magnolia and rubber trees. The sky opens. We press some banana fronds into instant rain capes.

Ed quotes: "Man is like a banana the day it bears fruit—like the banana which dies after it bears its one bunch of bananas, man dies after his work is done," I've no idea said that. He doesn't elaborate. It's bad luck to dream of bananas. Later I find out that it's an old Hawaiian saying. Bananas, the fruit of the gods, sometimes used in place of human sacrifice, were kapu, forbidden to women.

A racket in the distance. Kona nightingales are like wild donkeys, says Ed. I make a few quick drawings before the rains come.

Mauna Kea rises up 13,796 feet above sea level, or 32,000 feet from the ocean floor. Ditto that for Mauna Loa. Twinned breasts. In the Waipio Valley, the 1946 tsunami cut 2000 foot cliffs, 4 miles across, out of the Kohola mountains. Escaped papayas float in the inlet like a canoe war party.

added 9/17, revised

Kona Lagoon, Hawaii journal

Kona Lagoon

Kahaluʻu Bay, the royal residence: rock carvings where Chief Kamalalawalu (Kama-lala-walu) the Alii nui of Maui, was killed, and his likeness is carved into the pahoehoe. Makolea's heiau—the women's house. Makolea's beauty was so great it was like a flame. Women who want children still come to her heiau.

Ke-eku or Ku-eku heiao, the place where Chief Kamalalawalu was held prisoner until the proper human sacrifices were made. Chief Kamalalawalu brought his two dogs, a blind black one, Ko-papa-ho, and a white one, Kaua kahu-ekaoka, to his final battle. They both died grieving him, and were deified and proclaimed guardians of the Ke-eku. The white dog guards outside the southwest corner, and the black dog, the northwest corner. The Chief's bones and his dog bones were taken back to Maui.

Ancient sea wall. near the Kapua Noni heiao, a temple to increase fish and food production, it is said the kuʻula, the sacred stones were brought from Maui as monuments to fish.

On the Big Island pahoehoe pours out long ropes from the umbilicus. Mauna Loa, like a spider, is pulling long threads from her belly spinning her black web.

8/8

SHORT OAHU poems

The Punchball Crater
serves up a strange broth,
bones of the dead.

As we rise in elevation,
they roll the beverage cart down the hill
to the thirsty galleys of passengers.


Molokai very barely visible in the mist.
Haleakala, the house of the sun,
rises up above the clouds, and yawns.

The pink cuticle of the sea at sunset
pushes back the night
the mountains of the Big Island
rise up for miles and miles and miles.

8/7

AT PU'U HINAHINA LOOKOUT

At Marker 13, Waimea Canyon

At the Pu'u Hinahina Lookout
cattle egrets skim the tangled kukui trees
deep in the Waimea Canyon.

A riot of flowers
morning glory, wild fuchsia, and hydrangeas
enough to tangle the eye.

8/6, or 7

PELE ON MT. WAI'ALE'ALE

Such cliffs, 4000 feet straight up,
spires piercing the sky.
Blue leaks down into the ocean.
Deep valleys—some no wider
than a hundred feet across,
as if made by serpents.
In the Valley of the Lost Tribe,
where time becomes a concept of the future,
the present breathes green air.
Inside the crater of Mt. Waiʻaleʻale,
where it rains inches a day,
hundreds of waterfalls, like long white hair
tumbling down over 2000 ft sheer cliff.
Madame Pele, aged, and turned to water,
shakes loose the next element—
and cloaks the island in green.
One can't slip any further back in time,
it's  like suspended animation.
On the coast, sea caves, lava tubes,
fresh blue opals and rainbows. Notes of color.
How does all that color get into the sea?
Paradise, a Persian word, means garden.
This garden extends from the summit
of Mt. Waiʻaleʻale, to the ocean floor.

8/6

Paradise in the tropics, is a fragile thing.
Waikiki, Mardi Gras West, is an open sore.

8/6

In spite of it all the development
I am truly in love with paradise.
I have come home to a place
where I have never been before.

8/6 

Japanese doves pool at my feet
the blue of their beaks and eyes
as if dipped into the ocean.

Raucous mynabirds and finches
in the guava trees make the Galapagos
seem dull by comparison.

8/6 

ON KAUAI'I, 8 poems (photos)

CROSSFIRE

Enroute to Kauai'i
CO2 rolls out of the air conditioners
Stewardess says, Don't worry.
It's only a crossfire.



rough fabric of ocean
warp and weft of cross currents
on the sea, whitecap lint.



mynah birds and Indian doves at my feet
plumeria, pikake, and jasmine
warm rains, blue on blue, mother of oceans
and the fish make fire opals
seem dull by comparison.

8/5/84


SOUTHERN CROSS

It's hard to rearrange the stars
of the Southern Cross
to make them fit in my mind.
At the Tropic of Cancer, 

I align the planets
and lose my way along the constellations
Where is north? The Big Dipper?
The stars of the Northern hemisphere,
their indelible location, 

hardwired as breathing,
have gone and moved on me.

8/5/84
rev. slightly 12/4/15


IRONWOOD

Ironwood cones brace my feet
their litter needling this shore
to be an adult, is to realize
the dreams of childhood
Ironwood trees, the South Pacific.
all those things learned in geography books
At 12, I was ready for the stars
of the Southern Cross
At 31, I'm almost there.
Will I ever see them directly overhead
instead of at an oblique angle?

8/5/84

ISLAND IN THE STREAM

Kawai'i. I keep thinking how this place
looks so much like the South Pacific,
the banana leaves, hibiscus, coco palms,
and the rain on the tin roof shacks.
I have to keep reminding myself
but this IS the South Pacific.

8/5/84

NA PALI VALLEY

What can I say
after flying through the valley
of the lost tribe? Honopu Valley.
There is nothing to compare with this.
I am forever losing my way in sleep
to return to this valley, this place,
a place I've never been to before.

8/5/84

MT WAI'ALE'ALE

Entering inside the crater
of Mt Wai'ale'ale, Kauai
there is no time,
only the verdant walls
where white ribbons splash down
the mountain flanks
and etch the curve of the caldera
The summit wears a continual raincap
sheaves of hoary white hair
Pools carved eyelets on the mountain
The ocean is hammering the reef
All that suspended salt wanting water
Pele's hair covered the mountain
when she left to stoke the fires
of the Big Island.

8/5/84

POLYNESIAN PARALYSIS

In the hotel I am meeting no one
but the shopkeepers all swap tales
of homeland and journey.
Traveling alone, feeling safe
no need for more of the same
A watercolor artist at the zoo fence
and I lefthandedly discuss right brain theories
redefining the role of discipline and art.
I came here to write
so far, it's all rubbish
but I'm collecting so much data
I feel viscerally ill after each day
I keep losing camera, keys, wallet,
camera bag, and am non-plussed
Polynesian paralysis takes hold while you sleep,
stealthily slips in like an errant lover
into your waiting arms.

8/5/84

I will need to redo these photos, they're slide prints from a proofhseet, which has degraded.

NA PALI VALLEY (photo)

NA PALI VALLEY

What can I say, I am left speechless
after flying through the valley
of the lost tribe. Honopu Valley.
There is nothing to compare with this place.
In sleep, I am always losing my way,
to return to this valley, this place,
to a place I've never seen before.

8/5/84?

(will need to redo photo when I get a decent scan of slides).

MT WAI'ALE'ALE

MT WAI'ALE'ALE

The chopper dives into the crater
of Mt Wai'ale'ale, Kauai,
and time stands still,
only the verdant walls
where white ribbons splash down
the mountain flanks
and etch the curve of the caldera
into crenulated skirts.
The summit wears a continual raincap
made of sheaves of hoary white hair.
Pools carve bright eyelets on the mountain
to watch the sky and weep while
the ocean hammers the reef like a fist.
All that suspended salt wanting water
swirls and dances like ancestors.
Pele's hair covered the mountain
like a cloud mantle when she left
to stoke the fires of the Big Island.

8/5, or 6, /84

(not sure of the date)

POLYNESIAN PARALYSIS

POLYNESIAN PARALYSIS

In the hotel I am meeting no one
and the shopkeepers swap tales
of homeland and journey.
Traveling alone, feeling safe,
I have no need for more of the same.
A watercolor artist at the zoo fence
and I lefthandedly discuss right brain theories
redefining the role of discipline and art.
I came here in order to write
so far, it's all rubbish, twaddle,
but I'm collecting so much data,
I feel viscerally ill at the end of the day.
I keep losing things: camera, keys, wallet,
camera bag, and I an far too laid-back.
Polynesian paralysis takes hold of you
while you sleep, it stealthily slips in-
between the sheets, like an errant lover,
right into your waiting arms.

8/5/84

SOUTHERN CROSS

SOUTHERN CROSS

It's hard to rearrange the stars
of the Southern Cross
to make them fit into my mind.
At the Tropic of Cancer,
I align the planets
and lose my way along the constellations
Where is true north? The Big Dipper?
The stars of the Northern hemisphere,
their indelible location,
hardwired as breathing,
have gone and moved on me.

8/5/84
rev. slightly 12/4/15

Oahu, Hawaii Journal, 8/5/84

In the hotel I am meeting no one but the shopkeepers and I swap tales of homeland and of journey. Traveling alone, feeling safe, no need for more of the same.

At the zoo fence, a watercolor artist  and I discussed left-handedness and right brain theories. We are defining the role of discipline and art.

I came here to write. So far it's all been rubbish. But I'm collecting so much data I feel viscerally ill after each day. I keep losing my camera, my keys, my wallet, camera bag, and I am nonplussed. I'm not losing them, I keep misplacing them and then can't remember where I've put them.

Polynesian paralysis has taken ahold, slowly it comes when you sleep, and it stealthily slips in like an errant lover into your waiting arms.

Small kids clamber over and say hi hi hi. We smile, the best of friends. Kathy's nephew Mike and I putter around Hanamua Bay on a raft, we're sharing a snorkel. It's if they were all my children and we are all friends. I discovered how easy it is to be 10 years old again.

I think of Jim, and Lee, my fat stomach. I notice my tits rest on my rib cage for the first time. Still there's a hole somewhere dark and soft, for a man, for a family. I push the feeling aside, once again I push it deep into the valley where there is no measuring of time, there is no future, and I stroll across the parking lot saying to myself I'm here. I'm right here.

Is this the way it is because I am an artist? Is this a myth? Can one have both? Have I already slipped imperceptibly into another life? There were so many could have been's. Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.

I left Jim at the airport, saying, Don't worry I don't want a relationship either. Three weeks ago, I was convinced I was still in love—but then there are those who stretch holes in my heart, ripping them a little wider

I discovered for the 87th time I once again confused. I can't tell if these periodic storms of love are real, or is the confusion that is real? We can't ask others to love us no more than we can ask our hearts to love someone who wants us to love them in return and we can't. The more experience love, the less I know of love, life, and what I want.

Lee, Jim it's all the same rock wall story. We're like picky fish on a piece of fruit on the edges of love, and then declare the center to be rotten, to be pithy, a void. The shifting sands whisper will it never stop?

For women, there is a different kind of time then with men. A different way of viewing love, and acceptance if somewhat a fatalistic stance. With men, it's a non-declaration. But we see it in their eyes. Are they cut off from their emotions? Is logic the only language? Left brain dominant.

How is it that we see, when they don't? We spend years arguing over how they won't love us. They make us a point of it, and continue on until one suspect that yes is no, and no is yes. Yes dear, I don't love you but tell me again anyway.

8/5/1984

The objective eye

Some bridge is always being built across the chasm. With these safety webs, comes love, and compassion, but it makes me mistrusts the lip of the gorge.

In this process of understanding, and renewal of love, I step back a bit further back from the edge. Deep inside, the objective eye takes note.

8/5 

WALKING MEDITATION, WAIKIKI, 2 poems, drawing,

WALKING MEDITATION, WAIKIKI

After snorkeling all day
at Hanamua Bay
I spend the next 24 hours
in a rigid Mo'ai stance.
All that fire raging
on the backs of my thighs
and no way to put it out.
The sun's revenge.
I cannot sit on the bus,
how will I ride the plane:
I recline my way across the waters.
What I'd give for an easy chair
lined with icepacks.

8/4/84


HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Waikīkī is a perpetual Mardi Gras
the party never stops
tourists of every tongue
get down to the basics.

8/4/84

It is difficult to ride the bus, drive a car, eat a meal, ride a plane, or even write when you can't sit down. Lee asks, "Your ass?" Yes. It's 48 hours later, and I still can't sit, even slathered with so much Solarcane, it's given me the chills. After spending time either prone on my stomach, or standing so long, that my ankles have swelled, and my feet throb.

8/5/84

Postcard to Donna from Waikikii

CLOUDS OVER MOLOKAI

CLOUDS OVER MOLOKAI, II

Clouds tower over Molokai 

flat tongue of Molokai rolls from the feet of Maui, 

where reefs break, boats and whitecaps of Pacific lint.

If you look the wrong direction all there is, is endless ocean.

August/84?  No idea

added 9/15/2016

CLOUDS OVER MOLOKAI, 1

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.

I found this in a 1983 journal, but I also found a poem written in 1984. So I am not sure of the date.

Letter to Jim Byrd: Mid-Ocean, Enroute to Oahu (Hawaii journal) 7/31/84

Mid-ocean, somewhere,  July 31, 1984

Jailbyrd –

The only problem with initiating a conversation about the ends of relationships on the steps of BART and then leaving, is that all that gets left unsaid, rolls around in my head as if in dreams, unresolved. I guess if I hadn't said anything it wouldn't have made any difference – I still would've known what Zara said… Leave me hanging here.

Well, there's land out there— Must be getting close. Mauna Kea. Through the clouds, the low flat tongues of Molokai's shore.

Much later: tthe water is so warm, I had forgotten the sheer joy of it all. I spent last night at Kaiser Emergency Center, three fucking hours for a self-diagnosed yeast infection from the antibiotics. (And they will leave me with a gift in return: pinkeye.)

Welcome to Hawaii. I'd forgotten about the slow pace here. Fun, hokey tourist stuff. In spite of  9 million tourists, Waikiki is still manages to be friendly. Sure, they want the tourist dollars, but it's not just the shaka-buck shakedown. Actually, I like it. Sort of like television serials becoming reality— everyone relates to Tom Selleck and Hawaii 5-O.

Waikiki is like Disneyland, or LA shrunk into a dream. That dumb stuff on Fantasy Island seems to be be for reals here, and I can't believe that businesses are run this way. I suspect California was laid-back like this not too long ago. The ones who hustle don't have Polynesian paralysis. Can you imagine New Yorkers struck with Polynesian paralysis? Businesses still functioning?

The reason for all this trivia is that I am an involuntary prisoner, shut in for the day. I'm surviving on one orientation breakfast. You know, buy this, buy that, etc. I'm in a room crammed with first-time haoles and not so haole visitors. So my mind's very trivial. No, relaxed. Very difficult to think. Heavy. Pacalolo means I no can remembah, with an H. So much for intellect.

Continental breakfast means one donut, Styrofoam coffee, and Hawaiian punch. Not Kona coffee. It's too bad I have to sit through this, but it's the only time I can find out who I made my reservations with. She-it.

Somehow I don't think I'm ever going to get out of here, much less finish what I started to write about in the beginning of this letter. I am practicing writing meditation to withstand the deluge. Wish I could leave. Hanamua Bay is waiting, and all those fish. Trouble with drinking coffee and being the captive is that you go crazy faster.

Oh God I'm losing it. Bananas, mangoes, and coconuts, give me some strength. Mahalo.

Real life, like a loose tooth with a mercenary bench for the tooth fairy, they shake it out of you. National pastime is to spend money. I'm part of a Third World group, practically the only white person in the room and I feel more and more uncomfortable with them— they are the polyester class. All these honky bitches.

Did you know they take photos of you at the airport while you're getting lei'd? Five hours of sardine mentality on World Airways and a quick lei, everyone looks worse than wash-and-wear. For eight dollars you can have Kodak moment permanently reminding you of how you don't want to look.

Everyone buys a photo of themselves. Something I find astounding. Something for a washed up unemployed photographer to look forward to?

You should see this hot Chinese number I'm looking at in red heels and very short white jumpsuit. The man she's with seems to have two women. Or is it three?

Like I said, being in the city is a trip – too much visual stimuli. I'm beginning to reel from voyeur mentality. I can't seem to stop creating fictitious backgrounds for everyone. Just let me out of here… 

The bus is coming. Help! I'm being held captive in someone else's material dream. Sometimes I get a little flipped out being alone in a strange surroundings. Not here, not today, the observer behind the camera sans camera. Taking imaginary photos.

This seething, wriggling mass of humanity, I'm part of, astounds me. Being related to all that imperfect flesh. Earlier, on the crowded bus, a man was standing, he dripped sweat from his forearms onto the seat of the passengers below him, who recoiled in horror at that liquid. Having nowhere to wipe off his fellow passenger's sweat, he fastidiously avoided looking at it.

The standing passenger lifted his shirt to cool off, showing the twisted, melted flesh. Pahoehoe lava, seared pockets of flesh. Scar tissue cannot sweat having no sweat glands. The only places that this man could sweat was from his forearms and his belly. What napalm melted his flesh? We are all veterans carrying the war damaged flesh from one place or another.

The reason why I travel is because memory jogs, and random action becomes significant when patterns are created. Our bus arrives. Aloha!

On the bus, a middle-aged woman named Gladys asks: how does this look? Smart with biwah pearls. The reality of it is locked away in tablecloth mentality. A dapper gentleman in an Indonesian wedding shirt, white linen pants, white shoes with holes punched out, smiles at me with gold teeth, his pigeon blood ruby ring, worth a lot of blood.

She leans on me, cowlike, obliviously her cheap perfume fighting against the odor of her plumaria lei.

Something happens here, an imagined reality. For a moment I know longer know what it is I am writing, nor to whom I write, or why.

This letter, if it is one, has taken hold of its own reality, is consuming its own history, its fictitious past.

If that odious woman plants her green and gold heels on my bare foot one more time, I'm going to bite her ass off, but then there would be no comprehension for the dead.

It is so crowded, and hot, I cross my legs with a fellow passenger as her fat presses against my inner thigh. Violation of space. I am very touchy about personal space. They are German, it is difficult to be rude to foreigners.

I am a bitch. I bite my tongue. I carefully fold the tips of my fingernails over my fingers, testing their tensile strength into the palm of my hand—where is the breaking point? It is different for each of us.

How many of us eat before we are truly hungry to sate some trivial god of greed? And I still haven’t sent what I mean set out to say in this letter. It’s a case of the avoidance syndrome for the both of us.

July 31, 1984

• Hawaii Journal, August 5 -12, 1984
• Kamapua'a and Pele on Kilauea

The sound of crickets or frogs

The sound of crickets or frogs,
the croak comes out of a bag
filled with dried vertebrae
Each croak demands one neckbone
for its passage.

7.84
Napa

Invisible Boundaries 1984 NO eFile! Type!

this is definitely NOT the same poem as my Soviet poem by the same name in 1989!
INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES

Desolation Wilderness, no efile bad copy

WAYFARER

     The boat lay fixed, resting on the rope,
     the deep bosomed ship, fast at anchor. 

                                      —from Beowulf

How many years has it been since
Ebbe rescue the drydocked Egyptian dhow
from the battering ram and burning?
I remember the story about how he had to wait
for the full winter moon and king tides
to float it up the shallow channels of Bolinas Creek.
Its carvel-built sides furrowed the bay mud,
as it sailed under stars.

In the darkness of winter, his wife
Angela, sat sewing the sails by hand,
the painted sun blazed on the walls
of the loft as the heavy fog
tongued the windows and doors.

Ebbe hammered his poetry into that boat.
And each year it was not quite ready,
needing more revision and finishing
before the spray of the sea
could baptize that sailing sun.
And his girl-child needed tending-to
on solid ground.

Soon she will be old enough to sail —
she's the steadfast anchor
that keeps her father surely shored.
In his arms, her slight weight
is a more solid metal than iron.

7/9/1984

LETTER FROM BILL BERKSON

LETTER FROM BILL BERKSON

Today I got a letter from Bill Berkson.
He says, it's been a while. Too long.
Not much has changed—
He says, Ebbe is still around,
and Will you come to visit soon?

How that time has come and gone,
vanished beneath night's cover,
just as if it never had been.
The wanderer said,
The story never changes much,
only the times are different.

7/9/84

Obligatory Hug, July, 1984, Luther Burbank Activity Center, Sebastopol (poem)

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

TO ALL THE PHOENICIANS LOST AT SEA

TO ALL THE PHOENICIANS LOST AT SEA

        "The worst day of violence

          since the Muslim revolt in February."

        – San Francisco Chronicle, 6/121984

June 11, 1984

The dead lay on bloodsoaked stretchers
in corporate doorways

Doctors shouted for more beds

There was no space left
in the hospital morgue

Witnesses said women –
some in nightgowns and slippers,
rushed out to bring
their children home
from school
and two men wept
in a Beirut parking lot.

Poets write of Central America

I can't talk about El Salvador

I have no Nicaraguan poems

My Central America is Beirut.

6/11/1984

Press Democrat: Rainbow Rally for Jesse Jackson, Maureen Hurley reads

Obligatory Hug, June, 1984, Russian River Writers' Guild, Maureen Hurley

LETTER TO “CRAPPA”

For Roger Kent 1906-1982

Who are we, and where are we going?

—Gauguin

We called you Crappa with a “C”

& you roared with laughter

until your milky eyes watered & your lungs failed.

You said, A toothless son couldn't get it right,

& like a typo, the name Crappa stuck.

While the oxygen tank stood guard by your bedside,

you returned the war trophies:

the New Guinean stone axes to the Bishop Museum,

& the yosegaki banner of heavy raw silk,

with its faded orange sun, to Japan.

Beneath the signatures, rust stains,

or was it old blood?

I wanted to ask: What village, whose son?

Someone translated: Given to ____

in the Great Pacific War fought to the end.

If you believe in it you win.

With the flag, you sent a snapshot of you on the beach:

a young man holding the enemy flag

& the Japanese prisoners all smiling

smiling for the unseen camera. Silent, posed.

Like a knife, the shutter severed a moment from time.

These tropics suck marrow from bone.

You told us about those boxes of freight

marked TYPEWRITERS—FRAGILE, DO NOT DROP.

Inside those boxes, whiskey.

The news nearly leaked out

when someone dropped a box & said, Damned heavy!

Why the hell you need all those typewriters for?

In our dreams we are always traveling towards paradise.

All those dead waiting in Iron Bottom Bay,*

their bones like coral—

All those names calligraphed on the sun,

& the islands: Guadalcanal, Tinian, Iwo Jima

needed witnesses.

But you never told us how it really was:

the ocean, the palm trees & the inevitable waiting.

Generations of fish have spawned in the iron reefs,

grinning skulls, & stained coral sand—

rusted war trophies no one will return.

As coral ages, it whitens like hair.

Like the sky must have done

that terrible second dawn.

Who will tell us the stories

when all the old men are gone?

When the Japanese sent a photo

of the family & flag reunited,

you tried to keep your hand

on top of the new flag from trembling.

The alizarin disc was brighter

than new blood without history,

the thin silk breathed & quivered,

waiting to make an escape.

Honolulu, HI

6/1984,
rev87 (was there a first draft in 82?)
rev. 8/95

AFTER CÚNLA

What is left of me?

Don't take the thighs of me,

Only take the bones of me. . .

Only bones, says Cúnla.

—from an Irish song

Spavin and shankle the moss

to the north sides of the oaks

so we won't get lost.

A bridge of light sways

beneath a canopy of trees.

a path, a lantern for Diogenes

blossoms beneath our feet.

Who is counting the bones

among these fallen years?

Who is counting the bones?

And the piny woods whisper

among the dead

and the dead are whispering

among the piny woods.

Can you not hear them?

They listen to the rhythm of your bones.

It keeps them still on this earth.

Beat the bodhrán slowly.

Knuckle bone, thigh.

Play the all songs

to show them the way home.

Can you not hear the bones of me?

Can you not feel the hands of me

as we crawl barefoot through the snow

towards Savannah?

Only bones, says Cúnla.

6/84

Trail of Tears

I tried to revise and expand this 11/92.

Magabark/ Medicine Bundle collaborative art show at the Falkirk Center

My poem was a version of In the San Geronimo Valley, Ann Faught of Woodacre was my collaborative artist. Bill Witherup curated the collaborative show. His artist was William T. Wiley. Carl Dern's poet was Susan Kennedy. Kathy Evans also had poems in the show at the Falkirk Center. Don't know the artist.

My poem  In the San Geronimo Valley, Ann Faught, visual artist.

I made art postcards as personal invitations to the show.

I also created a collaborative poem scroll.

Bill Witherup's medicine bundle, which was the genesis of the show.

Bill Wiley's piece based on Bill Witherup's poem

 

I didn't label slides, thinking I could read them. Carl Dern & ? poet

Tess Gallagher photo in the San Francisco Chronicle

It seems the San Francisco Chronicle was happy to pay Jim Paul for the article, but stiffed me for my photo not once but twice.

Letter from Marc Naftalin

 

Ken Larsen's MA Thesis, Art and the Bourgeoise, a dissertation presented on ribbons

Conceptual art piece, Ken Larsen's Thesis, Art and the Bourgeoisie, a hand-calligraphed dissertation presented on silk ribbons attached to a sunhat, and read aloud to his thesis advisor, Bruce Hackett in J St. Park, Sacramento, CA, in May, 1984. I got tired of Ken's procrastination, so I interviewed him, and distilled his dissertation down into a dozen threads. Bruce read the entire dissertation aloud. It took us several walks around the park to complete the process. Ken got his MA.

DELUGE

DELUGE


Just as I was beginning to forget,
you arrived at my doorstep
and music burst from your eyes
even before I could hear the wings of Icarus
whisper danger from the sun.
Broken wheels in the desert are as useless
as the arms of a saguaro's embrace.
The yucca-pale dreams brought a deluge of rain
and I am drifting in the lake of your eye
once more.


5/1984

WITH THESE WORDS: REDEMPTION

WITH THESE WORDS: REDEMPTION

All right, it's over. With these words
I redeem the human body.
We rise to the surface like parasitic fish,
leap clear of the water and fall heavily back
 to shake loose from the depths
 the snot in our lungs.
Light, like faith healing these cancerous bodies,
 brings us forth into day.

In a school drill, we crouched under our desks,
shielding our eyes and necks with chubby arms.
We sat in rows on the playground to watch the flash
drain color from the sky
when they tested the bombs at Jackass Flats.

At the hospital, the black toilet seat
is split like the thighs of some hairy sex.
A nurse keeps me from falling down
the long, cool tubes where consciousness
is an escaped bubble trapped in the bends of a pipe.
The coriolis effect on water swirls it to the right.
The opposite is true south of the equator
but there are flaws in every system, including the weather.
Remember that durning nuclear winter.

The frozen wings of starched hospital gowns
 threaten to carry us off,
but the nurse brings in the choke chains
 and we tumble from air,
 tumble from water,
 tumble from grace.
 Virgil, Prospero, Icarus—
we're too close to the light.
 Return us to the waxed plain
 of checkered hospital floors
with beds arranged according to patterns
where an enormous game of chess is in progress
and the beds are the only pawns left playing.

8/84
Falkirk Center, San Rafael


Another old ascii riddled rescue piece. Date? I'm making them all 1/180. Hopefully I'll find my lost MSS binder. Otherwise there's no hard copy of most of my work for 2 decades. Yikes.

Miracle, I found two typed versions for lines.

POEM IN Eb FOR TCHAIKOVSKY

POEM IN Eb FOR TCHAIKOVSKY

Stillness in the air/not a rustling sound

—from "Moscow Nights"

1. On sleepless night

I resurrect well-dressed paper

and write poetry on blank checks,

old second notices & the backs of old poems

while thinking of the tropics: Tahiti.

The morning light filters through the curtain

of Bar Mitzva silk stolen

from the chest of a dead grandmother

and I am not an artist when I don't write—

all those children go unborn.

Words are strewn across the floor

burning holes in the carpet,

into my eyes.

I sometimes think I will sink

beneath the churning weight of ploughs

or feel beneath my feet

a braille concerto on paper—

2. We continue to breathe air

and smile at the sun

on the Baltic, on the Adriatic, the Pacific

a floral carpet of fish in Tahiti

a field of blue flowers in California

And today they ploughed the lupines under.

Light walks before the harnesses of ploughs

and is resurrected in the oceans and the sky.

Who can afford all this light

except the fish in coral lagoons?

The tropics call me home at night.

I am swimming in the indigo air of sleep

collecting flowers before the fall.

God knows, it's spring,

the mad wind blows hair into my eyes

as I ressurect lupines before the plough

to plant in the garden.

3. As I write this poem,

the creole shrimp becomes carbon.

Brilliant colored lobsters crawl from my clothes.

Wait! I am coming, I am coming...

as the wet sigh of banana leaves doles out sleep.

Sometimes I think of burning holes beneath my feet,

live coals. Words too hot, bursting their genetic code

on the roof of my mouth, in my eyes--

this troubled land of sleep.

When I awaken I am always dead

because I forget what the pattern looks like.

4. As I write this poem I think

I never meant to write long poems.

They're like leaves falling.

5. It's not the cat who sits on my negatives

and knocks piles of paper from each shelf

that keeps me awake.

It's not me throwing sleep across the room

to smash her accusing eyes

and then watch it drip lifeless down the wall.

It's not the reason why I wait for the wind

or go mad before the mistral

during the cruel months before April

or look for etherized sunsets.

Tchaikovsky is not a violin concerto

to stir the carpet of sleep.

The mad wind blows in Eb making us all a little restless.

Tchaikovsky is a noun, a name for Russian spring.

The cat on the bureau orchestrates the papers

in D Major for the months to come.

4/26/84
Forestville

I played Tchaikovsky's concerto over and over—I was mad for it. I couldn't get enough of its wildness. Something very disturbing about it. His madness. I read his letters. I had no idea that I would be going to the USSR five years later.

The revision is not that much different, I think I was afraid of the poem. I was pretty traumatized when the landlord's minion ploughed the lupines under. They never, ever came back.

UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS

AFTER NERUDA’S UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS 

If the sky bent over to paint robins’ eggs and breathed 

cerulean madness into the breasts of bluebirds, 

did it shun the fatted bluejays asleep in the laurels? 

When the wind blew through the Wife of Bath‘s teeth, 

and Malvolio cross gartered his stockings for his lady love, 

what dark secret love was offered to the moon? 

When the rhinoceri returned where did they all run to? 

Where did he hang his wrinkled skin 

when the sand in the hourglass ran out of time, 

and the door wouldn’t lock? 

Who took the measurements indicated in figure #1, 

when trilateral symmetry, like fish in a mirror, 

breathes fog on the slopes of Haleakala? 

Giraffes harbor entire continents on their backs. 

Trees once stretched in a continuous line from coast to coast. 

Now squirrels have nowhere left to leap, 

they are flattened casualties of the road, 

and PG&E continues to construct Diablo Canyon, 

Livermore, San Onofre, while the wildflowers sway 

like laborious guilt on the salt breeze. 

Where am I going, getting there by the wind 

filling my head with the secrets of trees? 

The door of my heart isn’t marked with a neon exit sign 

darkened by shadows of bounced checks and kites. 

If the moon were full of holes and made of green cheese, 

and money became obsolete, 

how will the chicken Cordon Bleu? 

Freud already tried to analyze the dark side 

of the moon and failed. Miserably. 

Look where that got him.

spring 1984

SLEEP

SLEEP

 —for Geoff Davis

Sleeping beneath the window,

the tongues of darkness

melted into morning mist;

as he tended a fire of smoke & fog.

I arose like a dancer,

the dog softly groaned,

the cat pushed the blackness

back from his bones.

Plucked by the feet of birds,

the barbed wire hummed like a harp.

In the canyon I overheard

the endless conversation of the Eel River,

but not the distant song

eroding the shore at our feet.

Longridge, CA

4/15/84
rev. 87, 2012

                 —For Geoff Davis

Sleeping beneath the window,

the tongues of darkness

melted into morning mist;

your smile, soft as dawn,

as you tended the fire

of smoke and fog.

I arose like a dancer,

the dog softly groaned,

the cat pushed the blackness

back from his bones.

Plucked by the feet of birds,

the barbed wire hummed.

In the canyon I overheard

the endless conversations

of the Eel River, but not

the distant song eroding

the shore at our feet.

Longridge, CA

spring 84