Bay Area Generations Reading, Edition #15, Hotel Rex, San Francisco

For my birthday I read poems at Bay Area Generations 15th reading at the Hotel Rex, on Sutter Street in San Francisco. My intergenerational partner in crime was Bruce Moody.


It was one of those rapid turnaround events, when you no sooner applied, you were accepted, no sooner accepted, and then it was time to read. A whirlwind romance. It was also the evening of the first of the big freeway shutdowns—the protests. But we didn't know that at the time. Bruce, who was driving in from Vallejo, had to abandon his car in Richmond, and he hopped onto BART as there was a mondo traffic jam. Even so, he barely made it to the reading on time.

It was sweet to have childhood friend Micaela Wall and Scottish friend Margretta Campbell in the audience. I rarely have overlap from my myriad other lives. In fact, it was a fluke to even be reading with Bruce Moody.

An old flame, John Oliver Simon had asked me to apply to the reading committee but I couldn't think of a partner who was significantly older than me. Suddenly Bruce loomed on the horizon of the psyche. I remembered something he had said at his 80th birthday party—he didn't want gifts, he wanted people to read his poems. And so I have. I'm on his email list. Sometimes I comment on them, sometimes I let them sink into the void. (Yes, I am writing this piece post-mortem, but I wanted to post something on my birthdate. At the very least, a passing nod to a new publishing credit.)




A lot of water has passed under the bridge tonight. Being in the same room as John, and no longer hurting at the mere sight of him. I thought I'd never get to this point. Time heals all. I am glad to be at this place and time. But it did rather add up the psychic ante during the reading. Especially with Neil sitting there too.


I had a rather strange and disturbing interaction with co-reader Ellery Akers who thought I had dissed her as a teacher in this blog. It was a piece of raw reportage from a workshop she had taught for CPITS at IONS Earthrise Institute in 2012. I had no idea what she meant. I was broadsided. Then it dawned on me, she must've googled herself, and my blog post came up. I also reported on the workshops of several other poets as well. It wasn't about her. It was about my writing processes.



I thought about ameliorating it, even taking the post down but then I decided not to, as it was an honest evaluation of my reaction to her workshop. I loved meeting her, but I didn't like the way she was rushing us, nor could I read the sloppy copies of the model poems that were presented at 6 and 8 point type.

Apparently I haven't the right to say in public that it bothered me. I can safely say that she was hurt, and now I'm hurt. A sad little black raincloud for my birthday. I do apologize to Ellery, for unwittingly hurting her feelings. That was never my intention. But, after rereading the post, I've decided that I'm not taking it down.

A Cross Generational View: Transgressive! That’s the word that comes to my mind in relation to Maureen Hurley. I don’t know why that is, except that for me she embodies the democratic spirit of the Democracy in being so. An encompassing embrace. Fair-mindedness. Committed to challenging the rules when injustice rules them. I am in my 9th decade. She is timeless. —Bruce Moody

Bruce Moody: One of the original Manhattan Mad Men, he ad-libbed his way around asphalt jingles, he invented the Cheerios Kid, wrote for Look Magazine, The National Lampoon, then chucked it all for the west coast, lived on the road, where he took to playing the stage, discovered all the world’s a stage, still wordsmithing all along, he wrote plays, a novel or three: Will Work For Food Or $ won awards, and of course, poems. Whether by stage or screen, his voice transcends. On his 80th birthday he wished not for health, nor wealth, but to be read. He is quintessentially forever young.  —Maureen Hurley

Poems published:
INDIAN SUMMER
SINGING FISH
BLOOD DIAMONDS

Video: Bay Area Generations #15 » Maureen Hurley + Bruce Moody

Special thanks to all the poets who made this reading possible: Charles Kruger, Sandra Wassilie, Candy Shue, Deborah Steinberg, Fred Dodsworth, and guest curator John Oliver Simon, for insisting that I enter the contest. And of course, to Bruce Moody, and my co-readers.

Fred Dodsworth + John Oliver Simon introduce Bay Area Generations #15 at Hotel Rex in San Francisco on November 24, 2014 

Tag: Maureen Hurley
Video: Bay Area Generations Edition #15 at Hotel Rex in San Francisco, November 24, 2014
Maureen Hurley takes us on a journey to the countries of summer and Ireland and language. Bruce Moody dancers with form like a master of tango.

https://bayareagenerations.com/tag/maureen-hurley/

Reading: Maureen Hurley & John Oliver Simon, Feb. 27, Bay Area Generations, Edition #42, The Bellevue Club, Oakland

Why I Teach, or Why I am a Writer. 1st draft

WHY I TEACH, OR WHY I AM A WRITER

It's hard for me to choose or to make a distinction between teaching and writing as each process informs the other.

I was a poet before I became interested in teaching for California Poets in the schools, but just barely. The two events were nearly twinned. I arrived to poetry all out of breath, with things to say and nowhere to channel them. I wasn't a writer and I was a below average student in high school and college. I couldn't retain or access the information I learned in school. It was like a hive of bees swarming inside my head.

Gerald Stern reading at the Albany Library

Wow, what a rare evening, so many old and new friends in the audience. Poets everywhere. Thank you Joyce Jenkins, Richard Silberg, Catherine Taylor, and the Albany Library.      

In a rare West Coast appearance, Gerald Stern read from his new collection, Divine Nothingness, and from his previous book, In Beauty Bright—as well as from his latest manuscript of 60 pages and growing by the minute. Prolific and energetic,  Gerald Stern taught us with much laughter and wit, that 90 is the new 60. 

Gerald Stern is the recipient of a National Book Award, the Library of Congress 2005 Wallace Stevens Award, and the 2012 Rebekah Johynson Bobbitt National Prize. As this year’s Robert Frost Gold Medalist for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry From the Poetry Society of America, Stern is one of the country’s most honored poets. He has been writing for over seventy years, with seventeen books of verse and a memoir, Stealing History. 

Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner, introduced Gerald Stern. We had a book signing with cake at Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, hosted by Poetry at the Albany Library and co-sponsored by Poetry Flash.I also ran into Jane Hirshfield at the reading, and she gave me a big hug. We haven’t physically seen each other in decades. Al Young took a photo of us together, but it was blurred. Story of my life.

Preparing the family home for strangers

Heading out to Forest Knolls, and stepping back into the magical realm of my childhood, for a bittersweet reunion with all the cousins (who just want out) in order to eventually sell my home, my grandmother's home—to strangers. I don't know how I'll bear it, the loss, so profound, it's an acute physical pain. My last refuge.  Many people have moved, sold their family homes etc, with little sense of loss. I feel torn apart and bruised from head to toe. What solace is there? How do people do it? A fair bit of Irish history there, nearly 100 years... Liam Mallows and Eamon De Valera in our lower field. Who else from the 1916 uprising took refuge at our house in Forest Knolls?

The facebook comments are an amazing tribute to this post.

PHILAE HAIKU

           Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Interstellar probe
lands on a dusty comet—
primordial petrichor.


Precarious dance
of probe and comet, Philae
lands one, two, three times.


Indo-European
law of three equals good luck.
Philae makes touchdown.


The mothership Rosetta

translates stone musings
into origins of life.


First water, cosmic
gem harbors precious liquid
the first "I am" uttered.


Left or right handed 

twist of cosmic molecules:
an origin question.


Philae tastes the comet,
but may not survive a night
of solar shadows.


To sleep, to dream for-
ever, the plight of a drone's
dying power pack.


Interstellar dust
the stuff that dreams are made of
iridium lights.


Song of the comet
solitary oscillations
magnetic resonance.

I know—not all are 5, 7, 5, but I opted for craft over pattern.

Song of the comet caught by Rosetta

HEADACHE DENIAL

Good Lord, how much longer must I wait
before snogging some Advil for a headache?

Advil snogged, how much longer must I wait?
There must be some Murphy's Law that states,
the longer one is in denial, the longer it will take.

FB post

HAIKU HAIHU

Five, seven & five

Less is more when you count them.

The hand holds the words.

We manically count

syllables to make haiku

refrigerators!

Left-handed counter-

feit words to convey meaning—

syllabic hand jive.

Versus dexterous:

all water under the bridge

is a sinister current.

Counting syllables

is silly; Japanese count

words, not syllables.

Anglo Saxon words

paint a much broader canvas

than Latinate ones.

Polysyllabic

words too cumbersome to count

English albatross.

To sleep bilingual

with hands signing in ASL

a transmission of tongues.

Archipelago

of words tangles the eyeteeth

of haiku thought poems.

FIRST RAIN HAIKU

Petrichor and rain
primeval cadence of sound,
caesura, then silence.


Scorched stones sizzling
a negative ion song
after the first rain.


Clear skies, luminous clouds
a tapestry of weather—
woven threads of light


Storm doors are open
the sky weeps for el niño
y la lluviia.

During times of drought
pattering rain is a dream
weeping in our sleep.


Good lord, how much longer must I wait
before snogging some Advil for a headache?

Garden freewwrite

IMAGERY freewrite

The wooly thyme still suffering from the drought, pulls in and conserves, doesn't quite trust that last rain. The decorative cabbages, newly planted, are frilly dancers in tutus awaiting a cue. The orchestral soil is dark as night, secret loam, full of life-giving nutrients, rises up in hillocks to greet the sky, the concrete barrier contains it but does not hold it. Pansies and sweet alyssum bloom, though the season for blooming, is a half-year gone. A lone dragonfly searches for ponds, or hidden water, any water will do. The moss between the pavers, takes advantage of the colder nights, and the meager rains, to resurrect verdant pathways. Red and green: it vibrates in complimentary hues, as if waiting for the sun.

11/12/14

Horse Totem

Of course I chose the horse as my totem animal. I always do. All my life, horses were always at the center. I rode friends’ horses, neighbors’ horses, horses no one else would ride. I was bitten by the dreams of horses. A tattoo of hooves on the pavement, moonlit escape, horses running wild, sparks flying from their hooves, fired my imagination. I was an incurable romantic, loved everything to do with horse from eohippus to equus caballus. They were my escape from this world. Nick Kobseff, who owned the Rancho Nicasio, and my aunt Canice rescued a horse from the glue factory. She was skinny and old but she was mine. We rode her bareback, sometimes three abreast. Chiquita Banana. When she died, a neighbor bought me a sorrel mare, bred for the track, with bad knees, but she was the fastest horse in the north country. No one could beat us. We flew like the wind. There was that point where she ran so hard, it was like riding a barrel. It was all I could do to stay astride. Life was like that: barely holding on. A handful of mane. And air. When she died, it was like my wings had been clipped but I was also freed of the responsibility of feeding such hungry mouths. I was done with such childish things. The world beckoned and I followed new roads. But sometimes I still dream of horses running wild down the streets at night.

11/12/2014

LETTER TO MY KNEES

LETTER TO MY KNEES

Oh how you've betrayed me,
you who've carried me across deserts,
and led me up mountains, zigzagging
Continental Divides, and divides of the heart.
You have brought me to my knees
in the face of beauty. Call it meadow,
call it mountain, island,
or where volcano meets the sea.
Because of you, I have stood
before the face of beauty.
None of this one foot in front of the other nonsense.

You have been my loyal servants, my dimpled twins
but the world was meant for wandering.
We have scaled the heights of Machu Picchu,
we've frogkicked in the Galapagos with sea lions,
and trudged through the snows of all the Russias.
Always your were there for me, scaling Mt. Whitney,
you even went up Half Dome twice—
What was I thinking? The first time was bad enough.
You were always in supple benediction,
even in the face of adversity. On bended knee.

You guided my horses in dressage movements,
you gripped myriad lovers with a fierce passion,
you danced your way across the stages of time,
you genuflected in front of the wonders of the world,
taking me to the open trails of the heart
leading me to poetry, and beyond. To find myself.
I never thought to the future. What you were thinking?

Bot now you just want to kick back and rest,
commiserate with pain, taking turns, convalescing,
so that I am fairly hobbled to this static place,
but the Camino is waiting. Always waiting.
Ah, but the mind, it travels, it travels unfettered
by the banalities of frayed ACLS and shaved meniscii,
or unadorned patella, and bone grating against bone.
Such exquisite pain you've brought me.
Ode to my knees sidestepping the ravages of time.
There is no replacement for you.

11/12/2014

A HORSE OF NAMES

1. The animal inside me

is a horse of names

a horse of night,

a horse of the sea and stars

galloping on the strand

the sea suckling at my hooves

wanting to drag me down to the depths

but I was born of the air

and the air is my savior

those birds on the horizon

calling me to lift off and take flight.

To trust them. To trust the air.

2. I am the Saggita,

the archer and the bow,

the arrow and the flame,

the hunter and the hunted.

I was born straddling the feast

of Thanksgiving, sometimes

it comes before, sometimes after,

the shifting of days and weeks,

a movable feast & founding fathers.

Old apples in the new world.

11/5/2014

My Name

MY NAME
                     —after Cisneros & Harjo

Maureen, my name, not like the others. Never a common name like a Kathy or a Sue, the only one in the school with that name. Named after my mother. It was a finely tooled harness that her mother saddled her with, a name of a movie star, Maureen O'Sullivan. But it could have been Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man. All that feistiness.

A name of indeterminate color, sometimes red, the red flannel of the petticoats of the women of the islands. A name sometimes bathed in green, perhaps the seaweed of starvation, or the green fields of Eire.

I was born with red hair but I soon disappointed them by turning brown, no green eyes, but envy was something I knew well. Wanting simultaneously to fit in and to strike a distance, a schizophrenic stance, at best.

The animal hidden inside my name is a raven, Maureen, not little Mary from Maura, but the Morrigan, the triune goddess of battle, the warrior battle is trapped inside my name, always on the bloody field, waiting for the raven to alight and feed.

When the potatoes failed, when there was nothing else left to eat, their mouths were ringed with green, my grandmother said. Beal na blath. Out of the mouths of flowers. These things my grandmother told me at the knee. The articulate hunger, the voracious appetite, Maureen, spelled the English phonetic facsimile, easy on they eyes and tongue, not like the Irish Máirin.

With the name came the persecution: branded Catholic, denied access to Bluebirds, Girl Scouts, Rainbow Girls. No scholarships from the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution. Our immigration story to a WASP world came much later.

Small denials at play in the fields of the Lord. No Irish need apply. How the women whispered, calling my grandmother a cow. and The men remained seated on the trolly, though she was nine months pregnant, they would not offer her a seat, and her water broke. Her firstborn in the New World, welcomed thusly.

In Russia they saw that U in my name and it was all over, I was MAU-ren, like Chairman Mao, not meow. so I called myself Marina, hailed after a different saint. But, just my luck, it was Marina's feast day and they wanted to celebrate my birthday and then I had to confess I was not Marina after all. They felt betrayed, like I did when I was able to understand the meaning of my name.

But my baby name, at home was Baba, I was the baby and the grandmother all in one. And soon after I became the writer, Bei Dao will need to flee Tiananmen Square, and the only thing he will take with him is a drawing of his daughter's name: Tian Tian. the gateway to the sun, a drawing filled with red apples, and her name.

All this he will tell me over a golden beer, in a pub—the place where the Pilgrim Fathers, seeking religious freedom, left for the New World. Fleeing the homeland, taking it all with them. It was the end of beauty, as Joy Harjo said in Deer Dancer, shaking memory loose from history and the reconstruction of self from the shards.

Yes, we are deer dancing barefoot on table-tops, a staccato of hooves, and the stairway to heaven is in a frontier bar, the floor, too sticky with stale booze, wanting to hold us down to this earthly plane.

11/5/2014

I GIVE YOU BACK

1. What if I give you back, this land, this heart
this land of sirens, land of gunshots
the adrenaline cocktail that nourishes us.
What if I give you back this addiction to fear,
to death, to Fox News, because for you,
there is no other reality, other than fear itself.

What if the siren was an opera singer
stuck on the high notes of torture
a woman screaming in a dark alley
and yet you did nothing, immobile
and waterboard tears followed you in sleep.

I have heard gunshots late at night
waiting for a rain of bullets falling to earth
to water the gardens, the cemeteries.
I have learned friendly fire, they call it
fire, friendly, fire, fire away.
And what about collateral damage?
Dead is dead is dead is dead.

2. We are haunted by the acrid odor
of woodsmoke and petrochemical chasers.
We call it metaphor, call it simile.
Is it all good for our writing, no?
We make a cocktail for the guerilla & the soldier.
They are both one thing, caught in the cogs
of country and religion and idealism.

I have stood deep in the jungles of enemy territory.
I have stood on both sides of the equation.
Terror, night terrors followed me, they followed,
keeping me close as a shadow, as close as fear.
Terrior. How land shapes us.

There are things I tell no one:
At Lake Atitlán, boys melted into the selva
as we visited the islands of the saints
and he bought me that purple dress of sorrow,
of forgiveness, & a lapis heart made of sky & bone.
Sky & bone & blood & bone.

And in the Petén Jungle we learned the difference
between Uzis & AK-47s. What distant country?
I didn't want to know the difference between weapons,
but it was a matter of life & death. Of survival.

Once I was naive, but the shape of a man's
preferred weapon, & alliances made
in Israel & the USSR defined us as friend or foe.
I hardly knew what Communism was
but in Peru, the Puku Pukara followed us
wherever we went, hammer & sickle
stenciled on sacred stones, in black & red,
and in the act of running from danger,
we ran ever toward trouble.

We were dream swimmers adrift
on a political crest & trough,
the tide carrying us to distant shores
along with the rise and fall of nations,
the fire licking the sun on the intihuacana
licking it into the purity of an ideal.

10/29/2014

My Grandmother's Brooch

My grandmother's brooch,
a thorny 10-pointed bronze star,
alternating with ten 3-leaf clovers,
leads the eye to six small circles
and six black enamel petals,
leading the eye
to a small diamond, or a rhinestone.


DARK BROOCH SPEAKS:

Once I was a bit of dark sparkle holding wealthy widow veils, to a midnight hat. I was cheap costume jewelry, of no particular origin, with the acrid odor of merry go rounds. A thorny bronze star, lances, and clovers, flanked by small circles and six black enamel petals, leading the eye to a small rhinestone, or perhaps a diamond, it was that small. Then Mrs. Rixford gave me away to the maid who came on Thursdays to mend the clothing, and make Irish lace. But my eager arms snagged the silk blouses, so I was banished to the lapel of her black gaberdine coat, though I was no larger than a quarter. It was like a fishing expedition, whose scarf, whose hair, I could snag. I wanted to travel the world, perhaps get lost on a city street, or a park bench, and travel from woman to woman, but the clasp on a swivel bar, was well made. So my grandmother stuck me in a bureau drawer, and raised her kids, they came in a steady stream until there were eight of them, no place to wear me, except the time her second-born son died of a ruptured appendix at 17, and then she placed me in another drawer, as she grew older and changed houses, buried her husband, where I slept fitfully for decades amid bright cloisonne, crystal and jet beads, until the first grandchild stumbled upon me during a bout of dress-up. I loved hearing taffeta and velvet on watered silk, that sharp sound that contained so much anticipation. The grandmother who had forgotten all about me, but took me with her when she moved, said, you can have it, and the girl, kept it with her always, and wore it on the black sweater with a beaded collar, where it was a lodestone, a black star leading her home to the memory of her grandmother. Today is the 30th anniversary of the day her grandmother died. And still she remembers. She remembers.

10/28/2014
rev 11/12/2014

Bluetooth wars and harrd drive woes

For some reason, my mouse freezes every time I touch the numeric keypad (annoying). Ever the drama queen, it goes into cardiac arrest. Then I'm stuck with a frozen window. If it had tiny mouse feet, they would be sticking up in the air—dead dead dead. So I have to turn everything off and on, not a good plan. It all began innocently enough: after one crash too many, my back-up hard drives decided not to show up to the party. Of course, I went into super hyperventilate warp drive overload when my long-in-tooth Maxtor drives (which have outlasted the replacement drives) just don't want to play nice with each other at the same time. Must be having a tiff. New backup drive is on order.

I’m getting cleverer at reviving my screen. TG for the Force Quit window. As long as I kill any program, it'll unfreeze. Time to clean the keyboard—popping keys off and smacking its bottom hard is strangely satisfying. Hope it works. I think my keyboard is dying—at least the numeric pad is.. Talk about Mercury retrograde. No more frozen screen. Think I'll whack the keyboard again, just because I can. Where's that hard reset hammer when I need it?

At first I thought my typing skills went south, then I realized it's my keyboard. It's really old. I keep it clean but still, it has odd ideas as to how words are spelled and since I'm OCD about things like that.... it’s as if some of the keys went on walkabout! LOL. Some wingclipping is in order. I'm counting the days until my new backup hard drive arrives then I'll employ the hard reset tool to the old Maxtors. Solar flare might explain what’s going on. My keyboard is Bluetooth, my mouse is Bluetooth. They’re not playing nicely. And I’m far too dyslexic to use a manual typewriter...

New hard drive arrived today, just in time for the eclipse. Boy, was I ever torn between the two. Eclipse won out. Cloning old drives now. Still cloning; about half way there. I also added new RAM to the old MacBook (and a solid state drive a while back). It's tricked out with 8 MB memory. Super fast. A good way to extend life in legacy laptops, solid state hard drive (the fastest you can get), and max out the memory. Way cheaper than getting a new laptop. Of course it runs hot, which isn’t good for the motherboard, like a very hot cat on my lap. It’s only a matter of time when the motherboard goes south, and there’s no fixing that.

No Egrets, drawing (art) 2014

No egrets. No yeller feet either. It's a drawing from a photo I chose in Prathro Serrano's class at the CPITS retreat last weekend. I didn't write the poem. Didn't have the heart to add words to my drawing. He's backwards, in that if I was drawing fro real life, I'd choose a bird facing the other way. It's a handed thing. What feels right. So I was out of my comfort zone drawing him to the left. I suppose I could've transposed him. I've a mind like that. The walleyed ability to see two different directions at once. He had black legs and feet. I love the silly yellow feet of our native snowy egrets—they use them as bright decoys to shuffle out small fish resting in the shallows. We used to call them cattle egrets as they'd hitch rides on the backs of cows in pasture. I remember being so bored watching them at Audubon Canyon Ranch—everybody being all hush-hush and whispery like we were in church watching birds preening and flapping their wings in the treetops—but I am glad now for the experience. My grandmother had a hat decorated with egret plumage that she wore to church on Sundays. Back in the 1970s, I used to work for Alice Kent at Western Star Press, selling glossy prints of egrets to raise money for the Audubon Canyon Ranch, and tarot cards for the Aquarian Age. Funny, when I see them now, I am in a church of sorts.

Spent the day shuffling paper

Spent the day shuffling paper, and rearranging books, scanning notes and bits and dross. Shepherded large piles (including laundry) here & there & back again—including a cool article from Archaeology that someone had sent: Sacred Landscape of Ancient Ireland—on books, as in the ancient Irish mss, that I'm sorry to say, sat unread since 2011. Making a pile of orphaned work that needs to be typed, I found an email from a friend who wants to publish my book....I'd totally forgotten about it. In arrears, I am. Am actually nauseous from working nonstop. Didn't get to any of my pending POL tasks, but it's all related. Now if only I could find my old mss clip binder with all my poems in it.

New Cave Art

After viewing the cave paintings of Altamira, Pablo Picasso said "after Altamira, all is decadence."

Enamored by  the cave paintings of Altamira and Lascaux, I used to collect photos of cave art—I couldn't get enough of them. Usually they were poor, grainy, or worse, in black and white on newsprint.

Now we can zoom in and visit detailed images via the internet. And now there are more sites added to the list....I loved the photos of penguins in the walls at the Chauvet, France site—discovered in 1994. I'm still waiting to see a photo of the horses panel.

Celia Woloch and I once traveled the long backcountry canyons of Utah to see spectacular wall art there, petroglyphs—and also Kokopele, the water sprinkler at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

And Mouse's Tank, a winding canyon in The Valley of Fire in Nevada is a virtual garden of petroglyphs leading to a rare natural cistern in a land of no water.

I never knew about Magura Cave, Bulgaria. It even has a a solar calendar. Or the Cueva de las Manos in Argentina—a forest of left hand stencils done in the same style as Kakadu, in North Oz. Or Laas Geel, in Somalia, depicting a once lush North African landscape.

And now, the hand stencils of Sulawesi, Indonesia joins the Paleo-art hit parade.

I use Paleolithic hand stencils as an intro to poetry when I teach kids. Those stenciled hands, the first "I Am" ever written. A petroglyph of a swirled hand was once the logo for California Poets in the schools, an organization I work for, but the poets of color felt it was too negative, and now Peets coffee cups sport it.

What was the sidestory in The English Patient? The Cave of Swimmers in what is now desert? It still haunts me. All that memory of water, red deer, aurochs, mammoths, painted and written in stone. A decadent testimony on the cave walls, the megafauna that met their demise, were also immortalized by the hands of those first cave painters.

Possessed iPhone

Chris's iPhone and my cellphone are having a little tête-à-tête, a long-distance affair. It called my cellphone at least 6 times the other night—all night long. I'd no sooner get to sleep when it would ring its siren call—Mná na hÉireann—Lament of the Women of Ireland. A haunting melody.

I'd answer—no one there. We're deep in the Sonoma County hills and have poor cell reception in the canyon, so I can only send her very disturbed iPhone some random texts. Clearly, it's lonely. It called me right back within the hour and even left a few blank verse messages. Was it sexting me?

I was so tired from lack of sleep. Neil too. I thought about killing my phone but I needed it for the alarm function to wake up early in the morning for our poetry workshops. I finally put it on vibrate under my pillow. I had such strange dreams of earthquakes and horses running on paved roads.

So in desperation, I took my phone for a walk. Under the waning moon, I hiked to a ridgetop to get reception, dialed Chris, and got—Mexico. Then I began to imagine all kinds of scenarios. She was mugged, kidnapped, her phone was calling me for the ransom money, but I couldn't answer it. No one there. What then? It was relentless. Apparently my friend's iPhone was busted skinnydipping without a wetsuit in the Sea of Cortez, and now it has the hots for my prime numbered dumbphone.

It's a real long distance affair (no matter that she and the iPhone are back in Vegas, baby. A case of extreme butt-dialing. Clearly, rebooting's not working for her. 

I finally had to block her number. I shudder to think what my phone bill will be. I've pay as you go plan. Now it's pay as you went. I will contact my phone carrier and see if we can stop the random charges, Nothing like a possessed, lonely smartphone and it's nearly Halloween. Somewhere in all of this is a story buried in a phone graveyard in another country.

A few nights later:

It's 3 AM. HI! I'm awake now thankyouverymuch!

Her iPhone must really be in love. It called my cellphone 16 times so, far, and keeps leaving blank little ditties in my message box. Is there any way she can delete my number (provided that she can restore her iPhone software), as a workaround? 

Unfortunately blocking her number didn't work, the iPhone can still call me. My cellphone doesn't ring. I disabled it. It vibrates and shimmies whenever the iPhone has left a message, though. Voicemail dutifully picks up every call and records nothing—no one is ever there, of course. Merely blank verse. Meanwhile, after every voicemail, the phone buzzes and spins like a sonic hedgehog with itchy 'roids. Torrid little thing.

So I pulled out the battery and SIM card—which doesn't fix the problem, Just lets me sleep. Unfortunately I had just put in $100 so now the iPhone's having a rare old time partying with my available minutes! Sort of like an open cocaine bar at a proctologist's convention. This could go on for a while. AUGH!

Chris finally had to turn the sucker into Apple, as it wouldn't cease and desist. It even stumped them. I figured that every phone call I received was another reboot attempt—except Apple employees usually don't work at 3 AM. Certainly not house calls....but call, it did—all night long. I think they had to euthanize it. I'd recommend a warm Prozac bath cure.

8     8     8     8

Chris writes:

To all my Facebook friends: my iPhone got wet and became a psycho schizo thing from hell. It has been dialing people on my list and leaving messages from Mexico. If this happens to you and there is a cost, I will be happy to reimburse you. I have tried turning it off and doing a restore but so far nada. Otherwise, things are great! Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

8     8     8     8

Sorry,
You are not the only one. It's off and unplugged and I'll be getting a new iPhone after wishing  this one a good long rest in the looney bin. I'll send you a check for any minutes that my iPhone has been gallivanting with yours. Just let me know how much. If it's any consolation, it kept me awake buzzing too, so finally unplugged. Tori got a call at 2 am.  Thank you Mexico!

8     8     8     8

I texted Chris suggesting that she delete my number. But she can't reboot the iPhone. In desperation, I dismantled my cellphone, removing battery & SIM (stomping on it, was not a productive option). A whole lotta good that'll do. It has my number. I'm sure it's still calling my voicemail. Meanwhile, that leaves me equally cellphoneless in Gaza. So don't call me, already. OK? I'm not answering da phone. OK?

8     8     8     8

Chris writes:

And the good news is: "ding dong the old iPhone is dead and gone." Stumped all the folks at Apple with its mad antics. Better news is that I only paid $39. for a new iPhone 5, with a recycle trade in allowance. If you consider that the old iPhone was free 2 years ago, I think I'm waay ahead. Anybody who incurred charges on their phones from my wacked out old one, just let me know and I'll cover the costs.

8     8     8     8

Good news! I told Chris: Your iPhone did not burn its way through my $100 pay-as-you-go phone credit. I called T-Mobile and was only charged for five texts i sent and for an equal amount for answering/erasing the voice message box a few times. None of the calls carried Mexican long distance roaming charges (at my end, at any rate—your end may be in danger, however). The operator at T-Mobile was laughing so hard she could barely function. I'd recommend a warm Prozac bath cure. I think there's a hilarious blog piece in it. Maybe now I can finally get some sleep.

8     8     8     8

Bringing Poetry into Schools

For 50 years, bringing poetry into schools   BY KATIE WATTS

PETALUMA CORRESPONDENT

October 10, 2014, 2:11PM 

Maureen Hurley is a teacher poet with California Poets in the Schools, a collective of professional poets who bring literary craft into classrooms. This weekend they celebrated the group’s 50th anniversary with a conference at IONS retreat center in Petaluma, but before it began, Hurley took time to introduce the group and explain why and how they take poetry into classrooms.

What is the value of poetry?

Poetry allows us to examine our emotions and contemplate our thoughts. Doctor poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

Wordsworth wrote, “Poetry is human emotion recollected in tranquility.” Not that there’s much by way of tranquility to be had during this day and age. In the process of recollection, poetry gives shape and form and meaning to those constantly chattering voices inside our heads, and renders them into an art form.

What can poetry accomplish that prose cannot?

Prose is to poetry as math is to music. You need both, but prose is analytical, expository and tends toward the utilitarian. Poetry is like dancing with words.

Poetry gives shape to our innermost feelings and presents them in a tangible art form that others can enjoy and get the Aha! epiphany. The ancient Greeks dubbed poetry the mother of all arts.

How does the Poets in the School program capture and hold a child’s interest?

Poets create a personalized, standards-based grade level curriculum and infuse it with magic and mystery, often marrying theatre, music and visual arts with the literary arts.

Through the immediacy and approachability of our lesson plans, we offer poems from the great body of literature, as well as peer student poems as models. It’s a mirroring process. We write our poems based on other poems.

Imagine being a student cut off from writing about your feelings and thoughts. With the current state curriculum standards, most student writing is expository, or fill in the dots, and there’s no room for creative self-expression.

Then imagine these wild poets who come along, take language, damsel it up and shake it all about. Suddenly that stuffy poetry is equal parts theater and soap-box pulpit, coupled with innermost feelings fueled by wild imagination. Suddenly it’s fun.

Most kids discover that writing their own poetry is liberating, especially those who traditionally don’t do well in school, or have trouble accessing the language arts curriculum.

Because there’s no right or wrong way to write poetry, it’s a place they can excel. Then, their poems are published in a school handout or a book, and suddenly poetry matters.

Why do you do this?

As a poet, I’m a role model. I can reach those kids who traditionally fall through the cracks and show them how they can access their minds. Poetry creates a powerful tool for change and self actualization.

A former student from Mark West School, who didn’t think poetry was important, called me up at midnight to read me a poem he had just written out of the blue.

If the program isn’t at my child’s school, how can I help bring it there?

The best way to get poetry into the schools is through a parent volunteer, the PTA or a teacher. There are numerous school and community funding sources that can be used to fund a poet’s residency. We are trained to work with teachers to locate and develop funding sources.

Contact Sonoma-Napa Area Coordinator Meg Hamill at megmariehamill@gmail.com, (415) 221-4201 or go to cpits.org.

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3 POEMS draft

draft

She said, become the antelope
In the first days, in the very first days,
Purple and magenta were one thing.
Purple and animals were one thing 

but the antelope were strange people.
The young men, they who first saw the antelope, 

they fell in love, 

they fell from a great height.
They fell from grace 

and sanity fled on spindly legs,
Antelope, part wind, part bird,
They raced across the plains

I left I felt my face become long 

with shadows and lightning, 

the wind washing my body

and the birds, they sang of distant places.
They called to me, a siren call, 

irresistible magic.
It was the best of times
It was the worst of times
It was a time of wind and sorrow, 

and madness was a flower 

on the plains of forgetfulness.

10/11/14

Prathro's workshop

CPITS

The egret lifts its fans 

nuptial plumes, 

feathers of snow 

among the toyon berries, 

white to red, sine curve of neck, 

impossible doubled back on time, 

an eye of paleness, 

tender leaves 

inspired
a beak inside the sun of fire.

10/11/14

Prathro's workshop

CPITS

I should be going to workshops
I should be taking photos
But I'm so very tired of people, 

of being on, I was stepping in 

and out of people's lives and rooms.
It's Sunday morning, 

is the freeway never quiet?
I miss the days of stillness and solitude, 

where the mechanical world 

wasn't ever present.
Generations have grown up 

with this industrial noise of progress.

10/11/14

Prathro's workshop

CPITS

FOUND POEMS

Found Poems

Spirit
and the majesty of an idea
being equal and entitled
shines through
the latter is the impact of segregation
It struggles to make an intellectual adjustment
greater will be the impact to this country's honor
to dissolve the political bands
to assume the powers of the earth, 

separate and equal
The laws of nature
entitled them to the opinions
which impel these truths.

Arlen's workshop

That all are endowed 

with unalienable rights 

life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
It becomes distractive to these ends
To alter or abolish the foundation. 

Such form, most likely
should not be changed for light 

it causes sufferable forms 

of evidence, and evinces a design 

of patient sufferance 

which constrains them to the end.

10/11/14

so much word soup, legal language didn't quite float my boat, but it was fun coloring out the words we didn't want to keep.

SUDDEN OAK DEATH

SUDDEN OAK DEATH

Tussock moths teased the oak leaves.

He said why didn't you wake me?

I said: am I your timepiece?

I am most at home among the ridgetops.

I am more myself there than among the folds of earth.

Her shoes clattered on the road like a herd of goats.

Flies practiced vertical ascent in late afternoon.

Where does the self end and the horizon begin?

My mother said babies were more interesting than cats.

I hugged Blackie to me as if he were my only comfort.

I hid her craziness from the others.

The cancer, she said, it came back.

I didn't hear her and said something else.

I didn't see the truth in front of me.

She said You were made at sunset, 

on top of the mountain.

It was a wedding of light and sky.

The following Wednesday, her heart faltered.

My truck gears ground like millstones 

as I drove up the dirt road. 

Dust storms chasing me down.

I fought the urge to rewind time.

At the memorial, I remember what she said, 

that her eyes were to go to Stevie Wonder

and her ashes to the outgoing tide at sunset.

I left that box in the closet for 20 years

just like the way she had left me alone

so many time before. This crazy mother.

How was I supposed to deliver her eyes?

The horses of memory lipped at the straw,

it was a season of extreme drought, like now.

No time for more tears, I said.

Moth wings whispering in the oaks.

Sometimes the phone rings, no one there.

The clock is still set on Mountain Time.

What was the name of that song?

You are the Sunshine of my Life?

Plenty of time now for rest, someone said.

The darkness begins, it begins on the edges 

of sleep. The oaks facing their own death

their sap weeping red tears into the earth.

The moths holding vigil.