RRWG reading at the Burbank Activity Center with John Oliver Simon & Maureen Hurley

First Draft of Bob Kaufman poem, Mantle

               April 18, 1925 to Jan 12, 1986

Bobby, this whole week 

I've been looking for you 

stumbling down Telegraph, 

darkened streets and alleyways
Every bent head, every ragged step 

it drags sleep across 

the shadows of pushers
Your dark face in the darkness 

The news travels slowly 

in the time it took God to make the earth, 

you died and there's Jack on stage 

reading a poem to you,

dead all this week.

Jan 12, or 17? 1986
first journal entry is 2/3/86, but it was originally written on a napkin at Cafe Triest


see Bob Kaufman poem
MANTLE

INTENT ON THE NEWS

INTENT ON THE NEWS

Intent on their newspapers
they read with furrowed brows.
The white man is reading a lingerie catalog.
The black man is reading about ML King.
The same brow ridge repetitions.
What forests we did we climb out of?
This jungle of desire.


Jan 12, or 17? 1986
CAC workshops, SF

RRWG reading at the Burbank Activity Center, John Oliver Simon, Maureen Hurley

ANY GIVEN MAGIC (Carolyn Lau workshop)

ANY GIVEN MAGIC

Living in present time

This lump of earth 

makes fine red marks 

on the cave walls.

This one makes the colors 

of spring pine pollen.

This burned wood works best 

if it is burned slowly.

These marks here represent teeth.

This is for the sun.

See how it follows the arc of the moon?

And that northstar 

brightens every fourth day. 

This window overlooks utter blackness

Stars, such infinite wanderers, 

yet fixed in their orbits.

You can see the blur of distant novae 

there in the center of the night sky 

No, it's not your eyes 

blurring in the coldness.

I have taken photos of the moon 

under the eclipse.

It sheds its skin like a molting snake.

Sometimes it's red, sometimes blue.

Did you know that the rainbow 

lives in snakes' eyes?

Color that bison in more 

now, add black. 

Given magic

This cold eats our bowlines, 

this hearth fire, a place to sleep

This afterglow, 

this dying ember of the earth. 

1/16/1986

From Carolyn Lau's dance poetry workshop 

CAC workshop, I worked with Luisa Tish

imagine yourself being in two worlds, the past and the present, or the present at the future, at the same time. Use rhythm, music, imagination, plan to sing one line in the class.

CALLIOPE HORSE

CALLIOPE HORSE

What small hands
have pulled at that bit
what balancing children
have leaned forward
to catch the brass ring
and what jaunty tune played
on the calliope of the mind?

O horse of joined wood
painted with a lion's tail,
who holds the bit without reins
between wooden teeth
while I hold him firm
between my runaway
thighs?

1/10/1986
Oakland Museum
added, rev. 3/18

3 Freewrites

My revolution is a synonym of arguing
but my youthful virgin eyes turn with the sun
and the karma of mutineers and thieves
hailing us, lonely for the cultural palaces,
laden with pretensions and validations
of villas and money and mantillas.
Soon there will be a Taj Mahals in every yurt
and on the killing fields, only the Russians
laden with raiments of politics,
will slice open the heart of the country
under an ancient earth.

 1/9/1986

No school today again.
Herefords wary of our methods
meander away from us.
They say his mother was worried
because the wilderness father saw
goshawks dipping from the ladle of the sky.
Who arrested the sun for idolizing itself?
The black bear awakens from slumber.
I think: heart and health, hailing stipends
in the motherland, firmly folded
in monosyllabic words
dripping day after day.

1/9/1986


FAN PALM

Enclose your yards with words,
close your mind to syllables,
count the vowels moaning
in the deepest throat of the night.

Independent drugs on Thursdays
will provide nothing as usual.
it is necessary to offset the cost.
There is no end to this relief.

Memories slip under the cogs
and movie star voices trespass
through thin hotel walls
to enter the surreal stirrup
of sound in the ear canal.

But the instant ocean of sand at our feet
continues its cease and surcease.
The fan palm outside the window stands vigil,
keeps rhythm to the sound of rain.

1/9/1986
added, rev. 3/18

AT NACHITA'S HOSPIDAJE, and FIRST RAIN

 AT NACHITA'S HOSPIDAJE

Towering mountains, sleepy clouds.
In Nachita's hospidaje, against the coral walls
is a cobalt bench where John sits
playing Schuman on the recorder.

The wild birds stop to listen
to this strange kindred singing
in their sultry desert after rain
in Nachita's courtyard. 

Palm trees under the stars
beat a staccato in the breeze,
tarpon asleep in the river, shadows
rise and fall to the beat of the fronds.

This is Mulegé in winter. A small backwater.
The slow green edges of palm fronds
slice color into the water, it blushes,
and the lagoon talks back to the sky.

At sunset, the dark triangle of a man
immersed in a book, hunkers down on a peak
overlooking Nachita's courtyard.
Pale yellow lines in the muddy streets
open like a musical score sheet.

The first rain notes in this desert are soft.
A woman tells her small son to be good
or the owls of the highway
will eat him during the night

She says, this is the first of three rains
that comes each winter. Mark it well.
The earth is drunk, on a trinity of rain,
and soon the ocotillos will catch fire.

1/8/1986


FIRST RAIN

Like seasonal birds
the feathered fingers of the lagoons
fan out and caress the orchards and crops
and what's left of the summer grasses.

The gray green rumble of vines
on the forest floor awaken, and twig
fingers yank strands of my hair
for bird souvenirs.

In and out of the circles, we move
like planets, the heave and cry of cycles
quailing at the headman, these stars
have drenched the sky with their tears.

The night brings apparitions
veiled against the darkness.
The comet emerges from behind the sun
with its tail between its legs
like there was no tomorrow.

Some code on the board, archaic numbers.
But the rivers were here first,
long before there were mountains.
What of the ancient riverbeds,
now a cobbled field?

1/9/1986
added, rev. 3/18

Three Transliterations from Rilke's Vorgetful

SHADOWS
      —after RIlke

Shadows carry us through the hard times
when the sky falls, and the moon fills
with green leaves like quaking cottonwoods.
With this verdant light comes hope,
clusters of sunlight fill the sky.
Sunlight so bright that it shatters the darkness
into mirrored shards and light surpasses stars
chasing them through eons of space and time;
time which cannot be brought back to itself.
Ah, to catch the world in the palm of the hand.
Shadows dissolve, and the souls of gods
reincarnate in the glistening rivers
which once stood for time indefinite.

1/8/1986

TRANSLITERATIONS
     —from Rilke's Vorgetful

I've been waiting in a frenzy
but underneath the slick exterior
I am the dying wind
falling under the spell of the music of love
while wandering the knotted trails
along the cliffs of the Dingle Peninsula
under the suchness of night
that magic was afoot.
The crenulated turrets teething the wind
are keening, and the red deer stands
frozen in time, the forest slips into the night
and the sun no longer shines.
The well is silent in the storm
and the tall egrets look out to sea like sailors.
One bright glance might let them fall behind,
and the wives without the strength of gazelles
will always gaze into those green trees.

1/8/1986


THE GRIEF OF GREEN LEAVES

When clusters of sunlight
shatter the darkness into fifths
the shadows of the moon
carries us through the hard times.
The moon fills up with green leaves
and time cannot be brought back to itself.
Shadows dissolve and the gods
have reincarnated in the ageless rivers.
With the light comes hope.

1/8/1986
MWS Mrs. Milia's class
added, rev. slightly 3/18
fake translations

EATING PAINT

On the white mountain of sheets
with the washing machine chugging
women's voices filled the air
and all that reference to she
the soothing sounds of ocean
and I learned it was a name for me
as if I wasn't there
I thought myself invisible
all that sssshhhh like
sleep in the afternoon
I could hear the white paint on my face
giving away secrets
Me, eater of white paint
in search of the small glass vial
of ice cream so magical
it never needed the polar north
of iceboxes to keep it firm,
and the burning white coat
coating my tongue
Baba baba baby in the laundry pile
eater of paint
making a metaphor of white
the handwriting of the x
not quite formed
the shape of writing
marking the spot
to sculpt writing from the white field
and later, small dark stains on sheets
once the flame of full blown roses
in midday sun
bringing death into the house
my grandfather going to the hospital
carrying a suitcase
who wouldn't let me come with him
and I wondered about the need for suitcases
in the world to come
There is something so still, so timeless
about midwinter light
a tangible quality that almost hangs in the air
like the sharp scent of bay or sage
and the slow shaping of all this white
toward the lucid scrawl of writing

86/87?
draft

The weight of this poem... (collaborative poem with JOS)

The weight of this poem in air
floats away & away from the world
to settle in the outfields of the
unicorn whose syllables are
like steel teeth ready to
nibble on the cookie of your ear
in front of some sweet
flower or sunrise or factory
or even on this mountain where
nothing is real except
the air, and even the air
is heavier than this poem.

Maureen Hurley & John Oliver Simon

no idea as to date, but probably late 1985. Or 86.
I'll never know—unless I find the original in a journal.
so I'm adding it to 1/1/86, as 1986 has so few poems.

added 11/16

WHO, INDEED; ON RITUAL COURTSHIP OF POETS; FRAGMENTS OF THE MOON; three short poems

WHO, INDEED

Who is this beast breathing beside me

Like some long forgotten ancestor

Coming for recognition in the night

To give me new colors for dreams

That continue to shake me from the cradle

Where breathing came from

Beneath the skin of the ocean

1986

ON RITUAL COURTSHIP OF POETS

Returning from the mountains

I find poems taped to my fridge,

Words left to do their work

like an invocation

or a long, slow seduction

in case climbing the mountains

wasn't enough.

1986

1989 Poetry USA

FRAGMENTS OF THE MOON

Who will ask the gypsys how to line the edge of the moon

Who sobs for untold fortunes and greased lightning

to increase the weight of the sky

where dreams crackle like fresh dollar bills

The river is silvered with the coinage of fish

Wait cloud, a winter rooster wants to dance in the sun  

1986

don't know when