TANGERINES

TANGERINES

                  —After Lorca
                    for Bob Hass

1. While you told me what was wrong with me

I watched TV. What I could have said, you said for me.

Because of your style for building circumstantial evidence 

into a tight case, a lawyer would have trouble searching 

for loopholes. Reminiscent of an eye for an eye, 

any game is best played when both players know the rules. 

2. She said all the tangerines in the world 

won't shed any more light on the subject

& slipped into the night because the moon's
face in the pond was hers. 

He noticed how like the frost his breath was. 

The odor of tangerines in a cold room
 made him more humble.

3. I direct my thoughts to the mountains 

where rock altars are hidden among the trees. 

I direct my thoughts to the mountain with its collar 

of early morning fog warmed by the sun.

I direct my thoughts to that place in childhood 

where god lives in the leaves of the bay tree, 

the oak, the grasses and rock.

4. Long shadows. 

Slabs of rock pointing like autumnal sundials. 

After the leaves turn color, they're cast off. 

A quick flamboyant burst. 

Shadows tend toward blue and orange. 

Chainsaw stacking of days. 

How like the body of a woman is the madrone in fall. 

Then, there are the trees which never lose their leaves. 

Oak, pine, & bay dress the hills. 

Shadows of trees keep the sun 

from the hoarfrost buckled earth. 

Harvest fills the storage shed.  

5. I say to myself, you musn't let obligations and responsibilities stack up. And then, because I'm afraid to answer the phone, I let it ring and ring. Invent excuses. Or, why you're late—small lies. When there's a valid delay, no one wants to hear them. 

6. The escalator where the dragon lived kept its teeth sharpened on lost children. I was afraid to step over the stairs. When I was lost, I thought you were hidden behind the next row of clothes. Mommy, I parted their wooly depths, their dark secrets closed around me until I struggled for air but you never came back. Endless. Row after row of coats and hangers making ghostly metallic judgements. Crying seemed the best solution. Often, I'd retrace my steps but I was afraid to step over the cracks. Now, every act is an archetypal betrayal. When I choke and scream in the night, no one comes. 

7. There is a point before tears, 

when fear warms the cheeks 

and the chin grows numb. 

Breathing is labored and shallow. 

Time, between each moment, 

takes infinite pauses. Video replay. 

The blood rushes in my ears 

like high tide, and she comes, 

smiling, laughing; all mother. 

The camera fades.

8. The odor of tangerines 

makes me feel humble 

in the cold room 

because the odor 

of tangerines is humble. 

Cold room the color 

of tangerines 

and she is eating. 

9. Lenador, this is the song of the dry orange, 

round and beautiful as the sun 

who wanted to be like the other oranges

who couldn't sing. Come to the fire.

Stay as you are. Stay the child.

10 a. So what if I did eat it? I

t was there for the taking.

Who's asking you anyway?

Who are you? 

10 b. Divorce her. Move forward. Marry her. 

Do you want to spend the next year in translation? 

Settle down into yourself and take root. 

It will not chain you down like marriage or divorce

11. We slip into the night. The frozen air breathes halos around the moon.

Hidden in the leaves, the odor of tangerines. This has nothing to do with tangerines or songs of dry oranges. Our faces reflected in the pond makes us humble enough if we take the time to look. How, like our breath, they are shedding light.

 Spring 1985
Falkirk Cultural center, San Rafael/Napa
I salvaged this from SimpleText—lots of ascii. No idea what the line breaks were.

Press Democrat interview: Music, art, poetry all in a School Day’s work

JAMES WRIGHT'S DEATH

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF JAMES WRIGHT'S DEATH

On the night stand, a postcard of Maui

from John Logan who wrote of Merwin's place—

how the angle of ceiling to sea cliff

affects the colors of sky and cloud

like pulverized shells of robin's eggs.

What I remember of that beach was not

the twinned hands of sea and sky or robin's eggs,

but the bright multiple wounds of tiny flowers

and cardinals against the shadowed depths of jungle.

On the anniversary of James Wright's death,

he said they burned incense in the dojo,

Buddha's belly glowed red,

& the geckos; careless parents—

left their eggs on the lanai, in the kitchen,
on the ceiling of the zendo, where I swept them up—

imperfect eyes of the sun.

3/25/1985
rev. 1989

1989 Chaminade Literary Review 

Journal entry, The anniversary of James Wright’s death

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

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

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

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

Celtic History & Music at the Petaluma Museum, Chris Caswell, Maureen Hurley

IMPOSSIBLE QUESTIONS, AFTER NERUDA

Why is it so difficult
 to fit an elephant under your desk?
Why is there lightning first, 
when thunder sound so dark?
Why do leaves grow upward 
when gravity keeps us in check?
Why do pencil stay slim 
when somebody shouts insanities?
Should we use paper for houses, 
when glass is hard to write on?
Are we really here 
when Gertrude Stein said there is no there there?
What you come out tonight like teeth in the jar?
Why didn't the three blind mice come home 
when the three Wiseman went stargazing?
Why does September begin the shellfish season 
when shellfish, who aren't fish, 
can't turn the pages of a calendar?
How can you listen to the tundra tumbling in summer 
when the ears of the desert are frozen shut?

March 1985 
Mrs. Milia's class 
Mark West School
added 2/18

DARK SHORE

DARK SHORE

—from Matisse's Goldfish

—for Roger Kent

Philodendron, hibiscus,

and a lemon geranium jungle

explode on a tropical sunrise

against the pink wall.

Four bored tangerine-colored fish

in a round tank mouth food

and spit it out again

where it settles on pale green rocks;

a luminous fog on the pink table

near the rattan chair

filled with blue shadows.

In the black & white tiled hall

of the colonial mansion

we stir baskets of fragrant maile leaves.

The basement elevator shaft

belches decay into the hall.

The wheezing lift

and Roger's emphysemic breathing

keep time as he shuffles to the bedroom

for his late afternoon nap.

Thin-ribbed philodendron vines climb

to the tall ceiling, piscine leaves

fan delicate membranes,

slow dancers feeding on air.

The hissing oxygen tanks

reflect fiery hibiscus fish;

the small pebbles of their eyes

along a dark shore make no sound

against the barely discernible rise

and fall of sheets.

2/22/1985
rev. 6/85
after a CPITS class with Duane BigEagle

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

All back in breast, your mouth,
my mind semicolon slow velvet clouds,
sweet, almost painfully tender,
like two people in the same dream.

Our arms encircled the ground—

Shaken from the herd,
pine needles shudder in summer wind.

There's that moment between dreaming and waking
where time and consciousness don't exist.
Like the hearts of twin doves,
my breasts drift into a pulsing slumber
against your back—
what better place to rest?

2/22/1985
after a CPITS class with Duane BigEagle

LOVE IS LIKE, —after Breton

LOVE IS LIKE

                        —after Breton

           

My love is like a blue gardenia-scented night,

or a lone tree first seen by sailors too long at sea,

where there is no time for crowded lamps

or stars in the darkness.

My love is like a candle burning

at both ends of the church

where the darkness ends like the pavement.

My love nails the graveyard of a smile to the earth

when he is angry; cataracts skyrocket across

the liquid corridors of the Nile

and lemon sphynxes drift unheeded

inducing the dunes to mate with rocks

and with dopplered sound.

By the execution of desire, vain fruit ripens

because my love is a phantom mirror

to reflect stray music.

2/22/1985
after Duane BigEagle's CPITS class

 

RIDERS IN THE JUNGLE

RIDERS IN THE JUNGLE

  — after a painting by Gauguin, The White Horse 

By the stream of white irises,

a green bird watches a riderless white horse 

thrust his nose into the indigo water.

Splinters of sunlight flash up 

like slim birds from a fresh-cut orange. 

The man on the roan horse looks over his shoulder 

thinking he heard something fall into the water.

His friend strokes his horse's brown neck

and both horses paw grass tufts into the water

uncertain of what lies ahead.  

 2/22/85
after a CPITS class with Duane BigEagle

see Savage Dream
The White Horse

first draft

The man on the roan horse 
looks over his shoulder 
thinking he heard something 
fall into the water.
By the stream of white irises 
a green bird watches 
a riderless white horse 
thrust his nose 
into the indigo water. 
Splinters of sunlight 
flash up like slim birds 
from a fresh-cut orange. 
He strokes his horse's brown neck 
as it paws the water, uncertain 
of what lies ahead.  

 2/22/1985

BLAME IT ON THE MOON

BLAME IT ON THE MOON

During the full moon,
my birds flock to your chest
and turn into the moon's silken young—
they alight, and slide down to where
you've furrowed and tended the earth
between us and we discover 

glistening stars in the tilled darkness.

2/1985 these small poems are hard to date, as I tended to fiddle with them as I was honing my sullied craft. This calligraphed ditty is an earlier draft, probably written in a CPITS workshop

Measuring the Fall

MEASURING THE FALL



Time is like a full river standing still, going forward and backward into black oceans. Friendless ripple on the muddy pond like in the southern hemisphere where the water is upside down and the sky has fish. This river that flows past our houses leapt the dream of its banks last night. Flotsam. Jetsam. White horses after rain, wings lift off from the backs of clouds as if the race to learn how to fall as gracefully as rain were a thing learned, instead of listening at the back door for the subterranian red depths of a lone heart beating during the storm. The river covers the fields, vineyards, the tops of trees with wild abandon, and branches take root in the brown passion of it all because the flood comes before the spring tide; we can canoe over the watery roofs of orchards, and watch for rouge-tounged eddies swirling in the treetops. The past is never quite finished with us. This river measures those without fault, and those without design; this time you appear on my doorstep like an apparition, the slender seducer, the rain, flooding the way home. To fall again on the bed with you is not a waste of time but another reckoning, another beginning from where we left off.


2/1985

ARTLESS SONG

At sunrise, the winter stalks
shed the silken wraps left by the moon.
From behind flannel sheets I sing
an artless song of the night.
The houseboards crack and groan
as the gas heater hisses.
The quail scuff the oak leaves
looking for grubs and seeds.
The day-spider tugs at her webs
and the worm disappears, as if in a dream.
Already, the sounds of the highway
enter this room like a waterfall.
The pale sky holds signs of a deeper hue.

2/1985
added 11/16

The White Horse (the savage dream/riders in the jungle) no efile

no efile

RIDERS IN THE JUNGLE    

after a painting by Gauguin,

The White Horse  

By the stream of white irises,

a green bird watches a riderless white horse

thrust his nose into the indigo water.

Splinters of sunlight flash up 

(like slim birds from a fresh-cut orange.

The man on the roan horse 

looks over his shoulder 

thinking he heard something fall into the water. 

His friend strokes his horse's brown neck 

and both horses paw grass tufts into the water.

uncertain of what lies ahead.             

2/85

See The Savage Dream  filed as 2/1989; it may be older

don't know the date of expanded version, below. It was in my 1989 folder, but that's when I filed Savage Dream.

DEAR READER:

DEAR READER:

Forgive the news

for all those old sorrows

of the world

rubbed across the page

like tired cheeks

of children who

won't go down into the mines

anymore to be flogged

by yesterday's newspaper.

1/85

Blue morning glory (garbled text)

Blue morning glory 

against the sky, whale stars 

Julie dreams, Hola cuervos!

We pass the thin cows 

and talk of tequila and cordón cactus 

and blue whale blossoms               xxxx

hanging clusters like anenomes of the sea 

I was way low not sure 

something looks like blue vultures 

standing as dead as roadkill 

to see a cardinal in this desert 

is like riding a red blooming from opuntia

but this flower flies from bush to bush 

an odd ritual of spring on the wing 

and trees in full bloom.

December 2, 1985

Two poets of the vineyards awards

 No date. I still need to look up what poems.

ON OUT

ON OUT

What is better: fucking on the river rocks
in the hot sun or minutely examining
the wanderings of dung beetles
for some revelatory cipher or glyph?
After photocopying Lew's book I wrote:

To Whom it May (or May Not) Concern:
This illegal version of On Out
was photocopied during work hours
on their machine when no one was looking.
I got the original from Geoff
who got it from Chuck (Charlene) Sutton
who was, at the time seeing Grover Sales
to  whom the bok is signed—

For Grover—

If you can't  kill  it,
shoot it."
        Lew       8/19/66

who was seeing another woman
whose room mate was seeing Geoff's brother
(I think) and Geoff who is seeing me still
so I can't steal the original yet.

This thief hopes that Lew, wherever he may be
will appreciate the spirit in which this book
(and everyone else) was taken.

The steelhead rest by the banks of the Salmon River.
You thrust your hand in and  grapple;
they explode with a flash of rainbow.
The fish no longer return. Do you remember
how the fish slipped up the rapids
with a motion almost quicker than the eye?

Tonight I thought of  Satie,
who ate only what was white.
White sugar, cauliflower, wine.
An abandoned grape arbor shades
the once-tiled floor
of what we called
Lew's cabin.

I still see you
along the river, green as cat's eyes.
Strangers appear frozen on film
but we all recognize ourselves in the mirror.
The fact is that we lie.
We hold each other up
Like mirrors and Lew
walking off into the forest.
Things are not what they seem.

date?

this becomes Zenia

85?

OUT TAKES

OUT TAKES

Archers hunt for inkstained fingers

An old grandmother quilt, a rag doll

A tidal bore rushes through narrow tunnels

I am filled with a sudden chill.

1985   date?

Short Poems 1985

DEAR READER:

Forgive the news
for all those old sorrows
of the world
rubbed across the page
like tired cheeks
of children who
won't go down into the mines
anymore to be flogged
by yesterday's newspaper.

1/85


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

 LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

All back in breast, your mouth,
my mind semicolon slow velvet clouds,
sweet, almost painfully tender,
like two people in the same dream.
Our arms encircled the ground—
Shaken from the herd,
pine needles shudder in summer wind.
There's that moment between dreaming and waking
where time and consciousness don't exist.
Like the hearts of twin doves,
my breasts drift into a pulsing slumber
against your back—
what better place to rest?

2/1985




LOVE IS LIKE
                        —after Breton
          
My love is like a blue gardenia-scented night,
or a lone tree first seen by sailors too long at sea,
where there is no time for crowded lamps
or stars in the darkness.
My love is like a candle burning
at both ends of the church
where the darkness ends like the pavement.
My love nails the graveyard of a smile to the earth
when he is angry; cataracts skyrocket across
the liquid corridors of the Nile
and lemon sphynxes drift unheeded
inducing the dunes to mate with rocks
and with dopplered sound.
By the execution of desire, vain fruit ripens
because my love is a phantom mirror
to reflect stray music.

2/85



OUT TAKES

Archers hunt for inkstained fingers
An old grandmother quilt, a rag doll
A tidal bore rushes through narrow tunnels
I am filled with a sudden chill.

1985

Flowers: fuchsias and freesias, watercolors

Calligraphy doodles (art)

Lloyd Reynolds' Calligraphic Legacy

December 30, Dillon Beach; drawings (art)

Two cows weaving in the dunes at sunset, leave fine white crescents in the sharp sand. I gather crushed shells, sand dollars, and paper thin orange scallops. On the leeward side of a rock, a woman dandles a child.

Two girls run along the tops of the dunes, their screaming is like seagulls. Wind snatches a song from their mouths and pushes it back a hundred yards until they sound like they're coming from behind themselves, laughing so carelessly as if time itself stood still when the wind blew, and in that moment, an eternity. 

I survey this world of ageless youth, the same world as ours, but first it comes from the thighs, that inexorable gentle tug of the earth burdening me downwards with its weight, reminding me of my beginning and my end,

The slow tug of gravity, this slow death suckling on the toes, ankles, thighs. A clay chill carrying future memory. But I begin to run, to leap away from the quicksand time, I lift my feet off the earth, pump the blood. It keep my womb warm and ready. I'm not done yet. 

Geoff is on some warm shore. I dreamt of him last night. Donna said he sure showed a lot of pictures of me, but what about the one who had one almost ready for the oven? I said who? A dune slipped out from under my feet. 

I fell into the Roman baths at Bath. Warm water weighting me down. Rich suckle on my sheepskin vest I swim toward the edge, arms heavy with wet clothes, and I followed him with my eyes as he walked away with the group. 

He doesn't see me, though I call out to him, the wind pushes my voice a few yards back, and I realize I'm either a few days forward or a few days backward in another time. But dreams are like that.  

I'm looking at a movie or is he the one walking into my celluloid color dream splashing against the far wall?

Along the beach two spaniels run with their mirror image companions in an upside down world, until a wave breaks that image. Their barks are like pinpricks in the fluctuating surf. They trot in tandem, at play with the waves.

A couple strolling along the sand stop at a sand figure of a person reclining. The woman disengages herself from his clasp and goes back to the figure and stomps fully on the chest. I guess the boobs offended her. They are both wearing white sweaters. So out of place here. The sand woman has long hair made of seaweed and there is only the sound of the ocean.

Four men huddle between the bluffs, a blue screen of smoke designates a dimension between the cliffs. Carrying an ice chest and radio, they make to leave. 

Stephen says the game is over. I wonder who won? Further down the beach, the sand assumes a gray velvet look, where an impromptu game of football is in progress. An onlooker, someone's dog barks as if to announce the score. Or perhaps to punctuate a commercial at halftime.

The two spaniels resume their tandem dance with the sea, endlessly combing one section of the shore in a series of relays. 

The woman and her child leave the shelter of the cliff, she is carrying a bright red and orange plastic pail with a blue shovel. The child is bundled in florescent colors like the bucket. The navy blue of the woman's coat is like a black shadow trying to absorb all that unnatural color in all this gray sky.

The spaniels halfheartedly greet each group of people passing their sector of the beach, they're on a search for something familiar. As the groups leave, they resume their endless trotting and easy lope along the shore, and run parallel with the surf. 

Deeper into the dunes. the cows are grazing on saltgrass. I am reminded of the salt sheep of Camargue, an unexpected hunger arises. The wind erases their tracks in the sand. A jackrabbit exercises his options at dusk along a stretch between two dunes.

This soft sandbanks carved from the last storm, are impossible to climb. Donna's niece, Michelle, makes it to the top, but my weight crumbles the edge of it. My hands reach the top, but I am unable to ascend the bank, it is like a bad dream of pursuit and fear. Further down, a gully presents itself and I climb up. The sand is firmer more dense the inexorable weight of gravity less, age backs off a few years.

I think I have a bit more time to wait for Geoff.

The endless breathing of the sea, wave upon wave, like the sound of someone sleeping in the same room. As they shift into a deeper sleep, how it calms one and makes one sleepy too.

A wedge of shore shifts the mirrored weight of the spaniels as they gallops across the wet sand. The pressure of their weight pushes, and drives the water from the sand like a sponge wrung dry. 

No one disturbs the sandcastle, each one carefully walks around it. 

And when I write, time is suspended—the ocean, Stephan on the rock above me, the laughter of women, the football game, the incessant bark of the black lab—all this becomes timeless. If only I could suspend that moment and enter that world of half thoughts, and record it. 

It doesn't matter what I write as long as I try and define it with words, what I see and hear in the active definition. I am painting, honing my craft. Every experiment with sound and image is cumulative. 

I am preparing for the right moment. I don't know when it will come. I don't know what I'm preparing for. Like what Lee said, a startling enemy will appear. and you will both know what to do.

A synapse of mind, suddenly I'm jerked painfully back into time by some tangible form. My mind buzzes like a stretched rubber band, and I'm disturbed because I prefer the meltingly lost places of ceased time. 

But though I spend large sums of time in reality, and in that other world—the place between worlds—that fraction of a moment when the mind buzzes, hovering somewhere between the real world and the world of daydreaming. 

The spaniels have moved to another section of the beach. I am ready to move on, my mind spent, body numb. The sound of the ocean is fully inside my head like a seashell pressed to the ear. 

The spaniels return to the familiar place of the shore. Keep running into the surf. Sniffing the sand as if searching for a lost sense of something familiar, their mirrored shadows, keeping in perfect rhythm.

December 30, Dillon Beach

TWO COWS, DILLON BEACH

Two cows weave trails

through the dunes at sunset,

their hooves leave white crescents 

in the sharp sand and crushed shells.

I collect treasure: sand dollars the size of pearls,

rock oysters, and papery orange scallops.

By the lee of a rock, a woman cradles her child.
Two girls racing along the tops of the dunes

scream with laughter, so like a gull's. 

Wind snatches a song from their mouths 

and pushes it downstream until it sounds 

as if they're running behind themselves 

& they're laughing as if time itself stood still.

In that frozen moment, the wind 

consumes an eternity of ageless youth. 

I inhabit the same world as theirs, 

but the weight of it begins in the thighs, 

that inexorable gentle tug of gravity,

the earth's burden, that downward thrust, 

reminding me of my beginning 

and my end.

12/30/1984

rev. slightly 11.17.15

PERPETUAL MOTION freewrite

In the center of darkness
the red vibration of a rose.
Here, is the center of the universe.
Darkness lies between the crevices of fingers
molecular shadows in red and black
on the coffee table battery-operated toys
and gyrating gimbals churn
a perpetual kinetic dance
until the switch is thrown.
Electricity travels and dark tubes
on impulse the speed of light
across mountains, rivers, cities, continents
not heeding what was said
on a particular afternoon
before the toys stopped their dance.
Someone said there is too perpetual motion,
it's called life. Even in inanimate objects
we just can't see inside them
all those atoms bouncing
and dancing in darkness
inside each atom, a rose,
a template of the universe.

12/11/1984

BANK HOLIDAY, COUNTING BACKWARDS, 2 freewrites

Who said, take the deep
blue stars to the ball?
To get change,
one must carry shells to market,
to market, to buy a fat…
No more dinero. All this jive
the green ink odor
of lettuce on bread
gives me such a funny feeling.
Life, the best teacher,
kills all its pupils.
By the banks of the river
my love and I sat down
and I pulled out my fiddle
to watch the cash flow.
No clams on this muddy bank.
It doesn't know Sunday
from a blue Monday.

12/10/1985


Counting backwards,
I remember the halfway mark
and saying my alphabet bilaterally A2 B4
fish mirrors to catch a falling star
who never kissed the palm of my hand
who never told me how to hold a kiss
all through the night
and to never let go.
Take a fallen eyelash
Make a wish, blow on it
to the farthest fences of the world
to keep the bad dreams at bay.

12/10/1984

FLOODWATERS

In silence you sit, your eyes,
like floodwater in the bayous
A map of sorrow, in your eyes
and the creatures crawl
out of the swamp at night.

Talking has a way of covering up
all the greens like when
you close your eyes in the sun.
Green, then red flashes across the lids.

All this red talk
like fire in the pineywoods.
Pale smoke rising,
or is it early morning mist?
Bruised water on the gulf
takes a beating after the storm.
Water rises to the doorjambs
of your father's house
and stops there.

Once, you said, your father
went out into a storm
to find the highest ground
upon which to a strong foundations.

Saltspray on the lips,
parched skin turns to brined wood
impervious to fire
Bly says rub a potato across your face
to absorb the salt.
It's hard to keep a shine on old leather.
But potatoes will do.

When you're one step ahead of the law
and one step behind in your head
it's harder yet to keep a shine on leather.

Like Noah, lost at sea,
all I ever wanted to do
was to wait for the storm to end
and to see the shape of the land  reemerge.
But 40 nights is a lot of darkness.
I can smell the floodwater's
metallic dank overture
like the rancid sweat of hands
on a nickel plated brass buckle
clenched in fear.

12/1984 (85?) from a Muriel Ruckeyser lesson on science, by Zara Altair. This was in my 1985 journal but I couldn't have written it with Zara as I was in Baja in Dec of 85.

Journal entry, many moons later

Journal entry, many moons later

So, I'm writing on random blank pages in this notebook. The last time I wrote in it, was in Hawaii. Other than rain damage, there was a reason for this abandonment. There's an open letter to Geoff, and to myself. And to Ed. I know, he's asleep in Hawaii at 6 PM, west coast time, and I thought of him. 

Tonight, after three days of migraines, I had a reading at Garbo's. At first, no one showed up. I took it personally. I felt especially bad for Michael Tuggle and Susan Kennedy who are two fine poets reading with me, but we also started early. The audience grew exponentially. We read sparingly and it was a lovely reading.

Also, most of the regulars were friends who didn't show up. And I thought oh I must be a bad poet, they're not here. It came down to overcommitment, but still, no one showed up. Not Lee, Sarah, Donna, Marianne, Eady & Jim Montrose. No one there. At least the Reverend showed up late.

I get that they've all heard it all before. So much for moral support. Well it could be the time of year as it is December 3 moving into Christmas. But they could've at least shown up for moral support. Lord knows, I've done it for them enough times.

But before me is a whole new audience. People who want to hear me read, a new, fresh audience. Yes. I hate what I've read, I'm going through I'm not a real poet phase. Phobias aside, V Weinberg liked my new Tocaloma poem, something I've never read in public before.

Afterwards, around drinks, we discussed the plight of Welsh coal miners in Pennsylvania. The Reverend Bob Jones is from there. We discussed East - West mysticism and narrative prose. From ego—to being fulfilled. He said I'm laying groundwork in those narrative pieces for novels or whatever. 

We both write long narrative poems, and I think too much. So much of what gets said while deep in the cups, disappears by morning. I can't record it all, but to write every morning, and to read every day, and to party every night... I'll not hold up if I party every night. The Reverend just wants to give it all up and become a writer. I know that obsession.

We talk about agents and networking and going after what we believe in. I say be careful of what you wish for, it becomes true. He said, I'm ready. We talk some more about East - West religions and the role of enlightenment. He says without darkness there wouldn't be light. And I say, in this world there is too much talk and not enough words.

Words are like vessels. The role of the poet is to give new meaning as in original meaning to words in order to shed light. Poetry is religion, I tell him. 

Bob talks about his latest manuscript and how he can't quit preaching because he has two daughters in college. I say, you don't owe them an education. It's nice, but parents don't owe their offspring this. Education's is something one has to desire and strive for. 

I say this because no one helped me, or perhaps it was because I found my own motivation. He's just pushing along, I'm pushing along. We are still writers in spite of it all. Determination factor. 

I comment on his need for closure with his congregation. What they need, he says, is a pastor who won't bore them or frustrate them by pushing them too hard. We are all lazy. Knowledge by blood. Limited by our friends. Can we help that? 

I say go for what you want again and believe in it. He agrees, says I've done it. I say, do it again. Rilke's sonnets to Orpheus, no matter who translates them  are magnificent, because what he writes about is magnificent. How can you go wrong in believing in what you believe in? Bob says, Amen to that!

December 3, 1984

TODAY'S NEWS

A sunburst of red, yellow & orange

on the fold of pants where ass joins leg

mesmerizes me, it's like a friendly fire.

I drive to the post office, only to find it locked.
20 years ago, Maria Salvio spoke at Sproul Plaza.
Reagan and Gromako cautiously talk 

of improving US-USSR relations.

At least there was no bloodshed, or shoes thrown.

Jerry Brown and Jane Fonda make the news.

Russia think-tanks, fire in the hole.

A Scottish-Polish American soldier, 

Wladyslaw Stanislawski, awarded citizenship 

posthumously, for dying in Vietnam.

But he's already dead, I think to myself.

Berkeley Mayor Gus Newport declares 

Monday as Free Speech Day, I was there,

I didn't know the significance, I was young. 

And Chris Foley, a high school student,

receives microfiche from Russia 

on US classified missile plans.

it's a long chain of events,

today, getting the news. 

12/2/1984

rev. 17/11/15

RRWG reading at the Burbank Activity Center with Maureen Hurley, Mike Tuggle, Susan Kennedy

Obligatory Hug, Dec. 1984, Russian River Writers' Guild

NIGHT VISION

NIGHT VISION

Caught in my headlights,
eyes of young bucks
not leaving the dead body
of their mother.

12/84

Postcard collage poem to Jim Bird

There is some scientific thought
that rhinoceroses and armadillos are related.
Since last March, African black rhinoceroses
have been contemplated grazing on
on two ranches in Texas.
Rhinos are browsers like the relations,
the zebra and the horse.
They fit in very well in Texas, someone says.
Ecologically, there is little doubt
that rhinos will thrive in Texas.
Texas is perfect, he explained.

How do you move a rhino against his will?
The armadillos have not been consulted.

December, 1984
added, rev. 9/17

CPITS lesson with Zara Altair

Zara Altair said: Write about the first time you knew you were best friends, describe what was happening. What were you feeling. Intuition, understanding it. Emotionally but not logically.

Juan Felipe Hererra talks about community. He says we make up a community, a system. Notes, structure human or otherwise. Think of yourself as a member of this community, who are you? What your job, etc. What is your life function?

Why would a poet use repetition? Make a list of the feelings you have while spending time with a friend, make both a real list and also make an imaginary list.

"A poem is of necessary length." Imagination/dreams. What is an image? A dream? Dream poems have clues in them. They can help you to solve problems. Ask what's next?

Zara Altair brought out a ceramic sculpture by Michael González. She said: we have to mine our own images from art. Look at the sculpture: what dreams, or common images come to mind? Let Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird be your guide—with multiple takes. Artists are magicians, they make something out of nothing.

If you get stuck, lead the imagination use the nonsensical questioning process from Rose, Where did you get that Red? this is what yesterday's volcano looks like and then I rode in on silence, your eyes are like water, so biased. Being the voice of now is harder than you suppose.

We did a five-minute freewrite. Ben Hyatt talks of old wounds. CB Davis's grandmother poem and the James Broughton poem from Paul Mariah's This Light Will Spread, are good examples.

How are they alike? when you read Ben Hyatt's poem, what do you know about his father? What was the scariest thing? His heart.

CB Davis wrote of a boy who falls asleep in his grandmother's lap. Where do they live? What happens when he wakes up?

And in all three of these poems the poet is writing about something very important in their lives.

In your poem use two images and the five senses, and one strong emotion.
Use very clear statements about your emotions.

The poems I wrote are about the water in the bayous, I am poem and like no I lost it, see you later. All I wanted to do was wait for the storm and the salt spray on the lips. Emulate a new image
Time silence and darkness.

Meriel Ruckheiser said the universe is made of stories, not atoms. History these hours the throat of darkness what does it mean?

Think of the throat of the shower is happening to you right now. In darkness and in silence you were going to tell the rest of the world what's happening in your life. Focus on what's important to you. What do you think the world needs to know?

Holding up the world globelike I might now come up and tell the world your poem.

Silence darkness one minute of silence 20 seconds of darkness the speed of darkness the universes the palm is yet on board and then it was darkness at the end of the universe rubs like salt silk velvet each time somebody die someone dies death, not contain slowly and just like darkness travels the speed of light. Nor is it contained solely in light it travels toward sorrow, toward hatred and fear. Sacred rocks we scattered the stars and pierce holes in the velvet mantle. A viscous smile of light spreading from ear to ear. No showers persevere. No enemy arrows of mercury. The war gods consume their own sorrow. Venus. Mars. Velvet throat of these hours before dawn.

December 1984 next bonfire how does it make you feel feeling an image fire feeling image
Devorah major talks about aloneness and solitude one image and then silence I am essence of Rose solitude write a persona palm poem to stairsteps of navy blue nights. Details of pictures
Called dead music makers.

The music doesn't die solitude free right for two minutes don't let your mind get in the way now don't read what you've written and go on and then write your poem and what I wrote was that words words words typed and then just sleep on the way home with the two poems I wrote from Deforrest and so I think I put those in. Lots was stirred up, but not poems were born, Athena-like, fully fledged from the brow of Zeus. Too many cooks in the kitchen, too many open-ended prompts.

not sure of the date, dec 84? or June 1985? CPITS conference

Napa Valley Poetry Conference publishes book, Napa Valley Register, photo

ZENIA as prose poem (corrupt text)

Hmmm, found this in a prose folder. Didn't realize it was prose first, or maybe I converted it. It seems to follow the poem pretty closely. It needs cleaning up.

HORSES RUNNING THROUGH THE STREETS OF ZENIA AT NIGHT

Each particular erases from the clarity of a general idea.
--Robert Hass Meditation at Lagunitas


PART I 

 Like an Ache Out of Childhood

1. The road through narrow valley of Hayfork unravels lengths of poplar and alder trees, shaking sunlight from the sky. In the fields, a neighbor stops haying, wipes his brow, and waves. I still can't get used to the idea of snow. You say it gets old fast. We don't know this is our last time together but the silver twigs and trunks etched against grey sky are familiar like an ache out of childhood.

It is difficult to find the beginning of a poem or anything, for that matter. An abandoned grape arbor shades the once-tiled floor of what we called Lew Welch's cabin. Lew, who walked off into the forest with a pistol never returned, and so, captured our imaginations. We were sure he traveled north.

And you came here in the footsteps of a myth. In the mail today, a photo of Hayfork suspension bridge arrives holding up the sky. In photographs, friends appear as strangers frozen on film. If only we could get to the other side of the mirror in order to capture a portion of the sequence of infinite regression instead.

You write about the fish inside your heart. I remember a boy who grappled the bellies of steelhead resting on the banks of Papermill Creek. The fish no longer return. The once clear pools filled with debris. Do you remember how the fish slipped up the ladders with a motion almost quicker than the eye can see? I can still see you walking along the creek, green as cat's eyes.

2. What is better: fucking on the river rocks in the hot sun or minutely examining the wanderings of dung beetles for some revelatory cipher or glyph? After photocopying Lew's book I wrote a poem to all those whose hands that book had passed through.

To Whom it May (or May Not) Concern: This illegal version of On Out was photocopied during work hours on their machine when no one was looking.

I got the original from you who got it from Chuck (Charlene) Sutton who was, at the time seeing the book critic, Grover Sales (to whom the book is signed-- For Grover-- "If you can't kill it, shoot it." Lew 8/19/66 )

who was seeing another woman, whose roommate was seeing your brother (I think) and you who are seeing me still, so I can't steal the original yet.

This thief hopes that Lew, wherever he may be, will appreciate the spirit in which this book (and everyone else) was taken.

What grey kinship of brain, black squiggles, dunghill beetles, Cartouche of pharaohs? This writing. Who measures the sanity of psychologists or poets? One person in five is clinically insane. These dreams scare me. We need 'something to take with us before we go.

3. Our childhood friend, (I think it's Michael, not Mark) Mark De Rutte opened his door one night and the Zebra Killer pulled the trigger. As an altar boy, he served us communion. To this day, I awaken, screaming and choking with a black weight upon my chest and I see the phosphor green edges of ghosts even when the light is on. A friend blames the mirrors in my house for letting all the ghosts out and burns sage to banish them. It works for a while. Then they're back.

I dreamed my grandmother had fallen and a weight had dropped. Her lips were blue. During the night, a slag of iron pierced the sagging dewlap of her arm. I held her in my arms, as she must have held her own children and later, me.

The seals came upriver to sing memory to sleep. Father Connery died. And Marie Rexroth. As kids we thought they'd be around forever. Grandma used to point her out in church and tell us of the hikes into Devil's Gulch to visit the Rexroths. Grandma religiously clipped Kenneth Rexroth's weekly columns in the News Call Bulletin.

In old age, Marie's husband was gruff, cantankerous. He didn't remember who I was. They say Marie never got over his death and she let the cancer grow. Even after all those years of separation, and his other wives, she missed him. I remember stopping by her house in Lagunitas but there was nowhere to tie up the horse. I wanted to say to her, "bless me Marie, for I have sinned. I am a poet."

Mark De Rutte's youngest brother was convicted of raping someone's grandmother who drowned in the bathtub. Mrs. De Rutte testifies, "he was an angel. Wouldn't hurt a fly." She continued,"That old commie woman had bags of dope under her house. It was her fault."

We relived the details of Mark's death. I have friends on both sides of the courtroom. The darkness descends upon us and the dreams begin again in all their green clarity. We held no wake for my grandmother, but at the funeral, Mrs. De Rutte, armored in hot pink, paid her last respects. That beveled and clouded mirror I sent you was hers. All those dead trapped behind glass.


PART II

 "The post is the consolation of life." --Voltaire

Definition in Ten Parts for DNA

I dream a river of blood runs from my left ear. A tunnel distills the familiar world into a thin passage. I feel a little lost. Am I dreaming and the rain coming down? Definitions of love, like a moibeus strip. Occupational love, love of apples, or the way sun touches woodsmoke. The way your hand tangles in my hair. Reptile love. Mammalian love.

The acorns I gathered sprouted and died. The nights are cold and getting longer. Our bodies keep us honest if nothing else will. Without definition, I felt luminous at the sight of you. They've been reading our mail. Nothing is sacred. What makes a gambler's blood stir? The word is like time standing still or a river rushing on.

Dioxyribonucleic Acid. DNA. Taken one syllable at a time, it becomes a simple ladder. Double Helix. Specific pairing. A psychiatrist tells me craziness is not inherited but when the dreams come, I don't believe him either.

Red roe floats in the silt of Papermill Creek. Life takes strange twists and turns "until we come back to what we are. You ask who I am. At four a.m., I am not "I," but a dream, as I pour your coffee. Write me a poem about the fine line between earth and space and I will dream for you. If you return before the apples drop, it will be soon, for they are picking them now. When I come north, we'll plant trees.

Believing in myths, I fed you pomegranates to bring you back, but your yard is littered with carcases of beer cans and I have seen my aunt's face after her husband beat her during a drunk.

The story goes, "When God loves a mortal woman, pfffft! She goes up in smoke when he touches her," said the monk.

Winter is coming like a cat hunkered up on a porch rail. Every season is the mating season. After the storm, I rock back on my heels, Indian fashion, and watch the biological clock of the moon pull on my blood until I am dizzy. I don't know if I'll ever sew patches,buttons and wounds or dry apples, dishes and babies for anyone-- not even for myself.

A friend confided to me, "after the kid was born I couldn't write unless I locked him in the closet." I am afraid of what I might become. The last Wintu shaman, Tying With the Left Hand told his son he must always live right and that hell was on earth.

Lew said, "Poetry out to be as vigorous and useful as natural speech." Shall I write, sins upon the possum eating apples on the doorstep? Throw him out of the garden? That's for dreams. Take root in the garden.

Did you know Daphne's toes took root and laurel burst from her fingers and thighs as the hunter approached?

Tendrils, vines and seeds find their way into my bed. There is no separation from earth. Toes, having taken root converse in the language of trees, rock and stone while we foolishly dance with our heads in the clouds thinking we can peek into the next world. Not entirely a waste, it seeds the clouds and brings more rain. '

Tell me about the horses running through the streets of Zenia at night, their hooves shooting sparks where iron strikes stone. Tell me why you no longer bend hot iron from the forge. Was it you I fell in love with for one moment at the crest of a hill? I have a vast fear of what might have been.

Tonight I thought of Eric Satie, the composer who ate only what was white. White sugar, cauliflower, wine. Things are not as they seem. This poem, familiar, out of childhood. And Lew walking off into the forest. We hold each other up like mirrors and send occasional postcards. I am sleeping under the stories that are all true. Not true. Only fiction. The fact is, that we lie.