MONA THE ONE-EYED CAT

Jannie Dresser lost her one-eyed wonder,
Mona, a tuxedo cat, who went missing
on a souped-up Saturday night.
She slipped out, thin as a shadow 
through the crack of the door 
into the darkness that beckoned.
Her lone eye fixed on the siren moon
while Jannie, heartbroken, walked the alleys
crooning for her lost cat. I said:
Cats sometimes go on walkabout,
and return a little worse for wear. 
Perhaps she's searching 
for the lost dreams of her other eye.
What tall tales she'll have.

4/23/18
(the cat returned five nights later)

MIRAGE

I am saddened to report that,
having fallen sufficiently behind in my writing
while on the road, I can't seem to close the gap.
I'm always a fortnight out of sequence,
no matter how I try to bridge the distance.
The adage, you can never make up for lost time,
is true. I'm sad to say. Sadder still,
are all the lost lines that spontaneously arose
as we hurtled across interstates,
I never wrote them down, said I'd remember them.
But they disappeared, like the ephemeral
mirage on a dry playa in the mid-day sun.
Crossing the valley I couldn't tell the difference
between solar panels and ghost lakes.
I am left with a thirst for those lost lines
that I will never quench.

4/25/18

IRATE BEES haiku

Carpenter bees shred
red sage blossoms trying
to get to nectar.

5/2/18
NECTAR THIEVES, haiku

EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

Donkeys were our early warning system.
No one could sneak into the barn, or the tack room
without a hefty announcement from the burros.
Full moons set them off too,
you could hear their cackle and haw
all the way down Arroyo Road.
Pity the would-be thief who forgets the mordida
when the desert nightingales are on patrol.
They take no prisoners.
Sneak up on you with no warning.
Demand their pay in oats.
Unless there are carrots.
Then it's all bets off.

4/21/18

RUNNING ON EMPTY

I'm running on empty,
where will I pay for the dawn lights?
My grandmother whispered
and the waves answered
while the fish flew with the doves
into the somber clouds.
The moon rose, pirouetted,
a symbol of the divine dance.

4/11/19 2018
from word cards

VENIAL SINS

I'll make you a deal,
you can have all my past sins,
all those dark hosannas
that I flung along the country road
like a trail of venial stars
while walking a mile and a half home
from catechism on Thursday afternoons.

4.10.18

Bill the Bass

The first time I met Bill, the Big Mouth Bass, was in a guest loo at a small dinner party.  Bill was a game fish, hung above the toilet tank. I thought it an odd place to hang a hunting trophy. And even odder to name the fish. I wondered if my host ate him before he was stuffed. Coincidentally, we were having fish for dinner. I guess my host admired his trophy fish anew whenever he took a piss. I must've been talking to myself in the bathroom, because suddenly the fish went postal. I shrieked, and then giggled. I had no idea there was even such a thing as an animated fish. He slapped his tail, looked me in the eye, opened his mouth wide, then began to sing Take me to the river. Put me in the water. When I emerged several minutes later, after a good singalong with Bill, everyone was asking me if I enjoyed my pitstop and meeting Bill. I was red-faced, caught in the act of singing in the loo with a talking fish.

HOUSE OF THE SUN

While scanning old photos, I found one of me
sitting on top of the world, at the Kalahaku Overlook,
Puʻu ʻUlaʻula on Haleakalā, the House of the Sun.

The crater at the summit was Māui's grandmother's home.
Māui's mother Hina, complained that her kapa bark cloth
wouldn't dry because the days were too short. All that work ruined.
So his blind grandmother helped him snare the sun with a net
made of his sister's hair to slow its journey across the sky.
The sun pleaded for its life, they came to an arrangement
that the days would be long in summer and shorter in winter.
It 's a good story, no matter that we're close to the equator,
where the days and nights are nearly equal.

Going down the Sliding Sands Trail into the volcanic desert
was the easy part, like schussing in snow,
only it was made of red pumice.... We took giant strides
where each step took us one body height downward.
It was like walking on the moon as we descended 2000 ft
to the crater floor in minutes. Our ears strained like divers.

Will Staple and Gary Snyder opted to take the trail
down the mountain out the bottom of the crater.
I had to hike back up to the observatory by myself.
I felt abandoned. I was alone on the steep slope,
with only my restless thoughts to accompany me.
The sun scorched my arms, until I was on fire.
The thin air at 10,000 feet whistled,
my tongue was like a dry stone.

I had opportunity to study the rare 'ahinahina,
or Haleakalā silverswords, looking like porcupines
or a bouquet of swords tipped in the purple blood of flowers.
They may live a century, but only bloom once,
one chance to make seeds, no multiple families.

I slid back down the trail backwards a half-step
for every step forward. Pumice singing beneath my feet.
Then I had to face the long drive back down the mountain,
jelly-thighed, I just wanted to sleep by the side of the road,
become part of the mountain, and wait for Māui to push up the sky.

4/8/18
rev. 4/21/18

BIRTHDAY HAIKU FOR PETE SUTTON

My heart is achin'
for trout dressed in bacon caught
by the stream of life.

Broken winds behind
your back and the road is long
without such good friends.

On Route 66
may you always find your way
back to the garden.

4/8/18

SECRET FALLS

SECRET FALLS 

Deep in a slot canyon Trümmelbach creek 
drains the meltwaters of three glaciers.
You can hear the thundering and roaring falls
from the Lauterbrunnen Valley, the valley of 72 falls,
but you can't see the ten waterfalls 
because they're hidden deep inside the mountain,
You have to enter the darkness in order to see 
the brilliant light of the subterranean falls.
It all boils down to black and white.

5/1/18

this evolved into TRÜMMELBACH FALLS

For the complete list of prompts, visit Robert Lee Brewer's A Poem a Day challenge. I have a jammed month, then we're off to Vegas, so these are placeholders for when I can get back to them later. If I've a poem, the title is in caps, if it's lower case, then I haven't written the poem. It's merely the prompt. The only problem with filling in the poems after the fact, is that the creation date will be different. So I'll date when I wrote the poems at the bottom.

Unused Robert Lee Brewer Poem a Day Prompts

I deleted these prompts as separate posts because I never got back to them to write poems for each of them, and my blog is hard enough to navigate as it is. The links will take you back to Robert Lee Brewer's original posts.

On researching my Irish patronyms

 
This blogpost evolved in response to some comments on a Facebook West Cork Genealogy site. One woman insisted that the variations in patronym spelling, was because everyone was illiterate and only went to school a few days of their lives, because they had to work on the farm—back in the day. Another poster assumed the clerks were just too lazy to add those pesky apostrophes. Not necessarily so.

Good Friday translation rant, aka an odd insomnia cure

I awoke 4 AM, with a blinding headache, from pulling recalcitrant honeysuckle vines from the engulfed Meyer lemon tree. I was in dire pain and the Advil hadn't yet kicked in, so there I was, with full-on insomnia, resurrecting my rusty Irish translation skills on a Facebook genealogy site. Perfect thing to do on the aftermath of Good Friday, no?

It's almost impossible to resurrect the meaning of Irish placenames as they've been Englishified and phoneticized to death. The English attempt to destroy a language. With no small thanks to the Royal Engineers and the 1833 Ordnance Survey. Irish playwright Brian Friel's play,Translations, tackles the systematic disembowelment of the Irish language by the English hellbent on cultural imperialism. But sometime enough of the original ghost Irish remains behind to see the meaning behind a placename.

WHAT THE EASTER BUNNY SAID

Well, Doctor, I don't know where the eggs come from,
and I have no idea why I feel a compulsion to hide them.
And this year, some April fools are yelling White Rabbit!
I'm not sure how I feel about that. Go ask Alice, he said.
And no, I am not sleeping with the chickens.

3.30.18

Putting the grant to bed

Didn't sleep at all last night, too keyed up with grant writing. I came home & crashed—only to be wakened by a phonecall at 10PM, I thought it was time to get up again? Now what? Exhausted doesn’t even cover it. At least I managed to nod off again around midnight, and scored 12 hours sleep! Since I average 6 hours per night, that’s a grand slam. Grant to bed. Me to bed too. Recovery is Act III. Salmon and wine on the horizon.

Updating old technology for tax season: The horror! The horror!

I'm about to upgrade to El Capitán/High Sierra, as my trusty Mac OS companion of 8.5 years, Snow Leopard, is no longer long of tooth, but bereft of any pearly whites whatsoever. The latest discovery that the Intel chip has a back door, much to the delight of Hackers Anon, means every technological agency is tightening up bootstraps in order to stick their big toes (and cocks—whatever is largest) to shoal up the wall of data vulnerability.

And in turn, data service providers are also tightening things up. This translates to my web browser Firefox being no longer upgradeable, Safari  5 is next to useless, having long since lost The Great Browser Race. I can't even load a Daily Kos petition because my browser's too old and therefore "vulnerable." I can see tighter security needed if I'm actually donating money (I'm not), but to fill out a petition? And who knew that MacWorld articles were top secret documents FYEO fergawdsakes? (For your eyes only.)

Then there's the new and improved software: take TurboTax. Ah, yes, the tax season rears its ugly head, and shoves it up yer arse looking for fool's gold. That's the litmus I use to update software. When I need to load TurboTax. That's how I updated another hard drive to Mountain Lion, and later, to Mavericks.

Suffice to say, I hated both Mountain Lion, and Mavericks with a passion (I hated all the OS updates until Catalina), but I managed to convince TurboTax to play nicely on my MacBook, so I could file my taxes. Sort of. (BTW, TurboTax did not require such stringent hoops for Windows users during this time. And we KNOW how vulnerable Windows is. My partner has an old PC laptop with a crusty virus-ridden version of Windows that still runs TurboTax. What's with that?)

So, after I blithely purchased this year's version of TurboTax, I read the FINE PRINT. Minuscule. Unreadable without a microscope, or #2 readers, whatever's handiest. Minimum system requirements, written in 6 point white type on grey background: such secretive minimum operating system requirement: OS 10.11. Whoa, Nellie! That's El Capitán. O Captain! My Captain! Decapitate me now.

We went from the rogue sneaker waves of Mavericks, that's OS 10.9 to you, to the heights of Machu Pucchu, I mean—that mile-high monolith, that sheer granite wall of El Capitán, AKA OS 10.11, that has challenged so many climbers—in one fell swoop? In one year? What happened to OS 10.10? Holy crappy crampons! The Krampus came late this year. Or he came back for seconds.

So, (remembering to breathe), I took a shot, and steeled my nerves. I girded my loins, and began to upgrade a hard drive to El Capitán. Painful. After more than an hour of upgrading, it worked swimmingly. Until it didn't. This I found out after I went two OS'es further down the plankety-plank road to perdition, to the holiest grail of OS of time present—High Sierra, AKA OS 10.13. Lucky 13, it wasn't. I was locked out. Epic password fail. Black screen. Spinning cursor of death. Random restarts. Complete disappearance of the Finder. Again. And again. And again.

So I spent an entire day (and most of the next day too), trying to coax two fussy operating systems to play nicely on my souped-up 2011 MacBook Pro. I learned some things. New tricks, old dawg. I practiced deep rebuilds and even deeper cleanses. I gnashed my teeth. I invented new portmanteaus swearwords. Corrupted kext files? I found combo update fixes. Suffice to say, El Capitán is now working. Or at least, I can load it. I haven't even opened TurboTax. Too exhausted. I'm afraid to even restart High Sierra.

Ah, well, there's always next year.

Night heron on the Petaluma River, photo

Night heron. He’s no singing canary. I told him not to give up his day job. With a voice like that, he could wind up in Sing-sing. The song of his people is somewhere between an Edgar Allen Poe inspired death rattle, and someone being vigorously strangled. Looks can be deceiving. He’s got a long neck stuffed underneath that feather ruff. Like a jack in the box. Otherwise, he’d starve to death as his beak couldn't reach the ground.

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

CONE FLOWER, OPEN VALENTINE, BLUEBIRD, CORONA, 4 concrete poems

OPEN VALENTINE

My heart on a string

tugging the heartstrings

of the sky

but the pen no longer writes

my heart….

Archer and arrow pierces

feather

feather

feather

CORONA

The corona of the sun

shone like a diamond ring.

we could see the mountains

of the moon.

The moon passed in front of the sun

it was as if time stood still.

I'd never witnessed 

an eclipse like that

totality

and when night fell

again in the morning

the birds they all

stopped singing

and so did the tide.

All was still.

Fish slept in my arms

like pale autumn leaves

their gills, small half-moons

Moon and stars, the sky

was one vast quilt of stars

and then the corona

burst into petals.

I was looking at 

vast tongues of fire licking

the sky.

It was as if…

we could see the mountains

of the moon.

The corona of the sun

shone like a diamond ring.

CONE FLOWER

in the sky

and my dreams

are like thorns

in the book

of memory

the petals

they shine

like gold

in the sun

and my heart 

is like kite

cone flower

flying

stem grows

to the earth

BLUEBIRD

May the bluebird of happiness

fly fly fly

wing wing wing

fly fly fly

eye

tail tail tail

feathers feathers feathers

delicate toes legs

delicate toes legs

up your nose

and may your nose

fly off into the sunset.

I'm not sure when these concrete poems were done, at Glenview School, possibly spring 2018.

Will Durst asked: How many of your high school teachers would you have confidently armed?

Will Durst asked: How many of your high school teachers would you have confidently armed? The ex- Marine wrestling coach? The English teacher who spaced out during John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn?” The librarian regularly hitting her flask behind the stacks? Sister Mary Uzi?

I replied: Our English teacher Ms. Mary McKay spaced out over Eleanor Rigby, and got a contact high from Kubla Khan. But then, she wore rose-colored glasses, had a permanent headcold, and lived in her own personal Xanadu in the Haight. No telling how she managed to get to school and back on her own. She was always enveloped in blue smoke, her aim would be clouded.

Music teacher Darryl Parker laced his coffee so heavily, it was a wonder he could drive over White's Hill at the end of the day, let alone, aim a gun. Art teacher Warren Fairbanks who sampled the ample wares of one classmate, was also an imbiber of sorts. His aim was sexual. The school narc married a classmate. His gun was always loaded. Kelly was one hot redhead.

Maybe I would trust my math teacher Archie Williams, who won the 1936 Olympic gold medal, and shook Hitler's hand, but he was far too kind a man to pull the trigger. I never did learn much math in his classroom but loved him anyway.

Maybe the Dean of Girls, Miss Ann West. She suspended me for wearing culottes, and for cutting class to hitch to Stinson Beach in February (the sunburn gave it away). She could have handled being armed. She had plenty of ammo. No problemo.

Philosopher Jerry Lucy taught us to question everything. I can't imagine twin Uzis mounted to his wheelchair. But hey, something he said must've resonated, we shut down the San Rafael Draft board and said no to war. But then, Michael Rossman's little brother was our school president, we had a direct line to the Free Speech movement even though we were tweeny-twerps.

The FBI was very interested in us, and well-armed right from the very beginning.

Mad donkeys

Someone posted photos of donkeys wearing floral headbands, they looked so angelic. But looks can be deceiving.

My donkey Joshua was one of the mean ones who didn't like kids. She plotted all forms of nefarious revenge for riding her. One time I was feeding her a carrot and she latched onto my finger, knowing it was my finger, and then ground away, and sawed her jaw back and forth, hell-bent on severing my finger. I had to pound on her somewhat hollow head in order to get my finger back.

Josh was plain old mean to the bone. She didn't like kids, and I was stuck with her because no one else could, or would ride her. Or get past her teeth. Born under the mean tree. She taught me to be wily. She'd dump me in the most awful of places. Ditches, briar patches, thistles. 

She'd bloat, would wait for the cinch to loosen up, hit a gallop (she was otherwise lazy and dawdled), then slam on the breaks at a strategic spot. She even broke my arm (but I never knew it until I was in an accident in 1997, as I hid all wounds from my granny....) 

There are many sour donkeys out there. I love Jim Dodge's descriptions of Ol' Pissgums in Not Fade Away. Our neighbors had tall grey donkeys who were sweet. More like Irish donkeys. I wonder if it was the particular breed that was so ornery? Josh was the smaller brown Spanish type. She had the Latin temperament down cold.

 I'd rather take my clever, scheming Shetlands (who kept me up nights) any day. Luckily Joshua's lame daughter Nay-nay was sweet. My horses were sweeter yet. I understand there are sweet donkeys out there...but Josh was not of that tribe. 

One of the few times Josh was a good donkey was when we were part of a Christmas pageant in Marin City. We began at the top of the hill, and there I was, Joseph, decked out in white sheets (al la KKK) leading Josh down the hill with my friend Step as Mary on her back.... (everything hinges on the location location location...I knew something was off, but I didn't know what.)

I do wonder if the type of donkey has something to do with their temperament. When I was young, I thought there was only one breed, I was astounded to discover there were many breeds of donkeys. I suspect Josh was a Spanish donkey, the donkey breed of the American West, and of prospectors. She came from Clear Lake, and lived a very long time...

A photo of my friend Steph and Nay-nay, caught diving through the fence. (She got stuck...) Sadly, I don't have a photo of Josh.

Donkey Wars
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

ODE FOR JOHN OLIVER SIMON

May you always dream
of the freedom of clouds
scutting across the sky.
May your laughter be
raucous as the crows at sunset
and carry their dark wisdom forth.
May you sleep soundly
with wild birds in your heart.
And may your thoughts be
like godbeams of the sun
at daybreak to pierce
the ordinary and the mundane.
And may the mountains rise up
to hold you on their crests
so that the stars may find you
shining among them
like a thought bearing witness
to your words shedding light
on this earthly plane.

2/14/2018

Almost Ten Years a Bloggin'

Wow! My blogpage counter whirled past 500,000 hits in January and I didn't even witness it. I never imagined having that many readers, ever. I know that people are reading my blog, I just don't know who my audience is—whether they're avid readers, or merely flybys. About the only thing I do know is what people are reading.

I added the blog counter in 2010, I would imagine that I didn't have all that many visits during the first two years, perhaps 40-50,000. But it's 517,056, right now, and whirring up. It boggles the senses. My most popular post, The Viking-Irish Redhead Gene Myth 3/23/2009, has garnered 87,113 hits. Does anybody actually read it, or do they just click on it? Gratified to see Mill Valley's Unknown Museum and the Gluers Junk Art move up to fourth position. The art movement was important, and there was very little about it on the internet.

I've been blogging for nearly ten years. I began blogging in 2008, though I founded the blog in January of  2007, I let it lay fallow for a year. I was a slow adopter. To be fair, I really didn't begin blogging until August, 20, 2008, so I guess this is a bit of a preamble.

Since ca. 2015, I've been actively filling in the backstory timeline, posting work from the early years. (Groan.) I've still got a long way to go, as I am gleaning old journals. I'm branching out to include prose—and especially my travel journals.

Right now I'm focusing on the John Oliver Simon years (1985-89). Not that there were that many solid years, as I ran far from him when things went south, but he continued to influence my life and we finally buried the hatched, to become deep friends again.

My goal is have at least 52 posts a year, some years' worth of material is rather slim on content (especially 2005 and 2006), but most years are robust.

Because I've given myself permission to also post freewrites, vs. polished poems, I'm beginning to see crossover connections between posts (and also anchoring the actual date some of the early writing was written.) Matrix. Matrices? Who knew my Tengo Dinero piece had its roots in a CPITS workshop on Marge Piercy's Charm for Attracting Wild Money?

I still hold a vague hope that some of those early corrupted files where I lost vast swaths of work, will resurface, at least in draft form as I glean my old journals.

Thank you Guy Kawasaki for getting me into this mess. It's been a fascinating journey. LITERRATA or Veritas and the art of Memoir.

Happy blogaversery!
Sort of.

NB In case you're wondering why I even bother posting all these blog milestones, it's so I can keep track, and it's a way to measure my progress. Otherwise, I despair. It becomes a morass, and when self-doubt kicks in, it becomes a raft, and a memory aid. And as an added bonus: a timeline!

• Blogger stats (23)

Changing my Facebook name

Kewl, I can change my name on Facebook. I am now the Mighty Mo. My friends said, you have always been The Mighty Mo. See, I was called Maureen when I was in deep trouble, and it was my public name at school, and that was a permanent case of deep trouble. My real name was Baba when I was growing up. Maureen was my mother, her nickname was More. I resisted the nickname Mo for decades, It began with the publicity on the Beatles, Ringo Starr’s wife was called Mo, but by the time I got involved with John Oliver Simon, I quit fighting the nickname, and have grown quite accustomed to its face... Someone quipped, I assume you know that is the name of a battleship? And I replied, If the battleship fits! It’s in Oahu, at Pearl Harbor, and yes, I have the photos  to prove it. A survivor.

Porque Anadrio!

I am re-reading Otto-Raúl González'
Diez Colores Nuevos en Españo, aloud, badly.
Porque Anadrio es el color allegria!

Re-reading old journal entries from 1985, I was surprised to discover that John told me about Otto-Raúl's poem, Anadrio, when we first hooked up. No wonder I've been fulminating over that poem lately.

Funny, how the mind works circuitously, and circles back to settle like an old dog in front of the hearth. I guess I am seeking joy in a time of sorrow.

After I had helped John's daughter Kia scan photos last Thursday for the memorial, she was browsing John's bookshelf, and out of the blue, handed me the book. Of all the books on John's bookshelf, why that one, the one I wanted? Surely it was fate.

Looking up into that exact blueness of sky, I say, I begin to understand the how the theory of time and space continuum began. You say the word, Anadrio, an invented name for a new color for joy. You tell me of a Mexican poet, Otto-Raúl González, who invented ten new colors, and you said Anadrio is the color of joy and of good luck. —from Long Distance Relationship, 1985

see also Mexico Journal: getting our Guatemalan visas

It took several years for De Diez Colores Nuevos to be published (1993), and John was beginning to translate them in 1985.

Anadrio

Quien primero vio una nube de color anadrio
era un joven pastor de diecisiete abriles
que más tarde fue monarca de su reino
y hombre feliz hasta decir ya no,
porque el anadrio es el color de la alegría
y de la buena suerte.

¡Y de la buena suerte!
¡Y de la buena suerte!
¡Y de la buena suerte!

En mil quinientos veinte
un español porquerizo de Castilla
vino a América y cuando se internó en la selva
vio un árbol de color anadrio
ese mismo soldado de fortuna
más tarde comió con Carlos V
y fue virrey;
porque el anadrio es el color de la alegría
y de la buena suerte.

¡Y de la buena suerte!
¡Y de la buena suerte!
¡Y de la buena suerte!

En la época moderna otras personas
han visto objetos de color anadrio
y su suerte ha cambiado en forma radical.

Un pescador vio una sirena cuya cola
era anadria y desde entonces
pescó y pescó y pescó y pescó y ahora
es dueño de una flota ballenera;
porque el anadrio es el color de la alegría
y de la buena suerte.

¡Y de la buena suerte!
¡Y de la buena suerte!
¡Y de la buena suerte!

Vendía periódicos un niño,
rapaz sin desayuno, de pobreza trajeado,
un día en su camino vio una piedra
que era, por supuesto, de color anadrio.
Ese niño actualmente es accionista
de una inmensa cadena de periódicos;
porque el anadrio es el color de la alegría
y de la buena suerte.

Pinte usted
las paredes de su casa
de color anadrio
y le irá bien.

(Otto-Raúl González, De Diez colores nuevos, Editorial Praxis, 1993)

White amaryllis photo

White amaryllis, it was scented, but overly so. Kathryn Mapps gave me a bulb many hears ago, and it didn't do much other than grow leaves the first couple of years, so I stuck it outside. Then last year, it made its debut, one small flower, and this year, many flowers. Coming into its own, finally.

Scanner woes

OK, so my very, very elderly technology is biting me in the butt bigtime. The scanner I have does not have high enough resolution to scan negatives, and now the light table is off, so one side scans darker. So not OK.

I either need a GoFundMe project or find Patreon support (or both) to get a decent scanner that also scans negatives (Epson V800/850, around $1k used), and the time to scan. Any takers/supporters out there? I have some incredible photos of poets spanning 30+ years.

Luckily, I had already scanned most of the travel photos of John Oliver Simon earlier...

In the box: Harry Mattison & a poet flasher (aren't they all?), Will Staple & Gary Snyder at poet Robert Aitken Roshi's zendo on Maui...and that box is filled with photos. Mostly from Napa Poetry Conferences, and National Poetry Week, but also other events. Nice ones of Carolyn Kizer, Carolyn Forché, Galway Kinnell, Tess Gallagher, Frank Bidart, Janice Mirikitani & Cecil Williams, Jessamyn West, Meridel LeSeuer, Dennis Banks, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Ann Waldman, Alan Ginsberg, Larry Ferlinghetti, Bobby Kaufman, Gene Ruggles, Judy Grahn, Derek Walcott, Shirley Kaufman, etc...

And somewhere I have negatives of Alberto Blanco, Otto Raúl Gonzalez, Elsa Cross, Carlos Orellano, etc.

Then there's Poetry International negatives as well: Seamus Heaney, Dmitri Prigovv, Iosip Brodsky, Breyten Breytenbach, Miroslav Holub, the two Adrians....Henri, and?

Happy Imbolc, let there be light.

AFTER SCANNING PHOTOS of an ex for his memorial (haiku)

Haffa bottle of wine
and a haffa cheesy pizza
and I'm right as rain.

2/1/18

Epic Facebook fail (again) JOS obit flagged as spam

 

I got dinged this morning for posting spam when I was posting the name of the photographer that took a photo of John Oliver Simon who died today. I’ve noticed that the Facebook AI spambots troll particularly heavily around any personal death stuff. It’s as if the smell the blood of compassion or sorrow and strive to delete it. Here is my offending post that the FB spambots have been relentlessly attacking this morning.

So the FB spam censorship works both ways, Hector Berebguer's post too was marked as spam here on this thread.  Hector's post on John's page was one of the posts where my post was marked as spam. Reciprocal?

Hector wrote: Aquí te va un enlace a la página que John Oliver Simon y Lorena Lobita con muchas de las traducciones que John y Lorena hicimos juntos...                              https://poetasjuntosalrio.blogspot.mx/#!

Dear Facebook, what constitutes spam if you don’t randomly post links? Is it the length of the post, the number of times you repost information on friends’ sites? If we post memes till the cows come home, you don’t flag people for spam, so what gives? Clearly spamalot.

RIP John Oliver Simon 23 April 1942 - 16 Jan 2018

¡Presente! Mi corazón de los sueños. Buen viaje mi amor viejo. This was the back cover photo of our bilingual chapbook, Falling to Sea Level, Aldebaran Press, 1986. A chronicle of our many journeys to Mexico and beyond. Jorge Luján photo. Safe journey, old friend. 23 April 1942 - 16 Jan 2018.

JOS poet teaching article in T&W

JOS in Argentina 2012

JOS OBIT
John Oliver Simon, one of the Bay Area’s most beloved poets, died in the early hours of Jan. 16th, from cancer, in the home of his fiancée Susie Kepner. He is survived by daughters Kia Simon and Lorelei Bosserman, son-in-law J.D. Moyer, granddaughter Tesla Rose Moyer, and former wives Pam Simon Hazel, Alta, and Jan Courtright Simon. He was 75.
Born in New York City in 1942, he wrote his first poem under a full moon in 1956. Educated at The Putney School, Swarthmore College (Phi Beta Kappa), and the University of California Berkeley, Simon was mentored by John C. Adler, Jeffrey Campbell, Daniel Hoffman, Gary Snyder, Lew Welch and Carol Lee Sanchez.
While at Cal and after, Simon was active in the Free Speech Movement and in the famous struggle to liberate Berkeley’s People’s Park. Of this time, he wrote “I was a newcomer to the Bay Area, having arrived in Berkeley in September 1964 in time to sit down in the crowd on Sproul Plaza surrounding the police car which was holding Jack Weinberg prisoner in the back seat in the first act of what would become the Free Speech Movement. I came west three months after graduating from Swarthmore College, planning to get my Ph.D. in English at Cal since I had not been accepted to graduate school at Harvard, and because my mother’s forebears had arrived in San Francisco a 110 years before that and California was my terrain of legend.”
Simon’s nine full-length books of poetry included Caminante (praised by Gary Snyder and Juan Felipe Herrera), Roads to Dawn Lake (Oyez Press, 1968), Rattlesnake Grass (Hanging Loose Press, 1978), Lord of the House of Dawn (Bombshelter Press, 1991), and Grandpa’s Syllables (White Violet Press, 2015). His poetry was published in numerous literary journals and reviews, “from Abraxas to Zyzzyva.” He also co-founded and edited the poetry magazine Aldebaran Review, which ran from 1967 to 1978.
In 1989, Simon was awarded an Individual Artist’s Fellowship by the California Arts Council. He also received an NEA Fellowship in Translation for his work with the great Chilean surrealist poet Gonzalo Rojas (1917-2011). On Jan. 20, 2015, Simon’s contributions to the Bay Area writing and educational community were recognized by the city of Berkeley with “John Oliver Simon Day.” On May 14, 2016, the Berkeley Poetry Festival presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
As an educator, Simon devoted himself to teaching children to write poetry. He co-founded and taught at the People’s Community School in Berkeley, 1969-1973. He was a former president and board member of California Poets in the Schools (CalPoets) and served as the artistic director of Poetry Inside Out, a program of the Center for the Art of Translation. In 2013, he was named the River of Words Teacher of the Year by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass.
Despite not learning Spanish until the age of 40, Simon became a noted translator specializing in contemporary Latin American poetry. His cultural reporting was featured in Poetry Flash and American Poetry Review. In 2017, he traveled to Madrid to attend a conference of translators of Gonzalo Rojas.
In addition to his daily writing practice, Simon was an avid backpacker, kayaker, gardener, and baseball fan.
John Oliver Simon touched the lives of thousands with his teaching, friendship, and poems. Mexican poet Alberto Blanco wrote, “The poems of John Oliver Simon, like all true poems, trace a map, a psychography, which allows us to enter, not only into another life but into the voyage of that life, and not only into another culture, but into other cultures: into another point of view.”
Simon himself wrote, “Language is the central human invention, the hive which we are ceaselessly elaborating, even as I speak.”
A memorial service will be held at the Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, on Feb. 3rd, at 2 p.m.

A video of John produced by Érica Goss.

John Oliver Simon dream

Last night (or rather, this morning) I dreamed that John Oliver Simon and I were on the road. I'm not sure where we were but it was something like New Mexico, or it could've been Nevada. I don't think it was Mexico. We were in a new white VW Beetle, crammed to the gills with all our gear. I must've been driving, because when we parked the car, he took my face in his hands, and tenderly kissed my cheek, saying, I love you. It was so tenderly sweet. He was so present. Not his ambivalent self. I said, I love you too.

We pulled into the driveway of a sagging two-story house that spoke of the Southwest. We clamered up the steps to meet some poets, and were talking for hours. I went out to get my camera gear and the car was gone. John joined me on the porch, as we looked all over the yard for the car.

Someone had stolen it with all our gear, electronics, cameras, clothes—everything. I was too shocked to be angry. Then as I looked around the yard, John had disappeared. I was alone, cameraless, in a strange town, in a strange state, or country, utterly alone, with no way home. He had left me. He had left me.

I awoke feeling utterly bereft. Abandoned. It was almost 4 AM, I couldn't go back to sleep.

That afternoon, as we were headed to Savers in Dublin to get rid of old clothes, and buy some new ones, I told Neil about the dream. I said I think it's a warning that John is dying. The doctors gave him a year or two, but I had a bad feeling. I couldn't shake John from my mind.

Next morning, Tina from CPITS called to tell me the news and I said, I already know. I could feel it. His leaving. She said he died between 2 and 3 AM on Tuesday. I knew. Irish clairvoyance at work. We dream of the dead. They come to us in dreams to say goodbye. Somehow I thought we'd have a little more time together.

I am so grateful we had such a sweet goodbye after our Emerson after school class on the eve of the Winter solstice. Complete and total melding into each other's arms. I said, I love you John. He said I love you too, Maureen. He didn't shove me away, or do the ambivalent hug.

He said, I want you to meet Susie. I haven't told her about our star-crossed path, but she knows about you. You'll come to our wedding. I said, I'm still wrapping my mind around that one. He laughed, and said, Yeah, me too. I held his face in my hands, and wished him well on his upcoming chemo. I said I will hold healing thoughts for you, We want to keep you for a good while longer. He laughed and said, Me too. That was the last time I saw John alive.

TO SLEEP, perchance to dream (haiku)

TO SLEEP, perchance to dream (haiku)

Good news: I slept 8 hours last night.
Bad news: It's  2:30AM
So, how does the full night's sleep thing work?

What fresh hell is this?
Resist mid-winter, sleepless
& cranky as a bear.

I resorted to
watching Hawaii 5-0, 
worked like a charm. Zzzzzx. 

A rockabye shake
from a 4.5 quake
thus murdered sleep.

1.4.18

I strive for 7 hours sleep a night. So I was excited that I got in a full 8 hours on NYD eve (even if it was in two shifts), I woke up at 5:30 AM and was so tired, after 5 hours sleep, I actually went back to sleep until 9 AM, which is pretty rare.  

I don't want to embrace my sleeplessness at 3 AM. But I've been so tired, averaging 5-6 hours sleep a night. So I was excited that I got in a full 8 hours (in two shifts. Then, with a full 8 hours sleep under my belt, I couldn't go back to sleep last night. Pie owl-eyed.


Reading articles doesn't work, BTW, no matter how boring they are....

I can't nap. If I do, then I usually feel awful (hung-over), when I awaken. Then I have to redo the full morning wake-up routine at dinner time—sans tea (a miracle drug.) No flasks of tea are ever harmed after about 1 PM. 

It could've been the wee bit o midnight chocolate. Apparently I slept on a piece of fudge. (I do make a mean bittersweett fudge, flavored with Kahalua.) I don't recommend sleeping on bittersweett fudge, a batard adaption of a See's recipe from when my aunt worked at C&H. See's was a very good client. But when they sent her the bill, she nearly fainted, it was something like $250 in 1960s economy. So she sold copies of the recipe for $5 ea.

Why it's all such a big deal, besides being permanently cranky, if I don't get enough sleep, (7+ hours), then I fall prey to every virus that comes along. In fact, one of the signs that I'm getting a virus is when I nap! Two bad colds in December.

On second thought, it was probably the full wolf moon, as my bed is locked away in a dark recess, where no streetlights or moonlight falls, I'm extremely sensitive to light at night. But to be fair, I was editing photos til late last night, and that tends to amp me up, as it's such intense work.


If only I could schedule sleep...well, every once and a while I meet the sleep quota.

Preparing for The Big One, 'QUAKE! (and other qaiku)

Last night, or rather, this morning, I had just fallen asleep around 2 AM, but I had trouble sleeping as I was having odd pre-'quake symptoms—like before the 1989 6.9M Loma Prieta, and the 2014 6.0M Napa earthquakes struck. I felt ill all over right before this earthquake. A weird musty smell was wafting from the closet. It was so strong (something like mold hitching a ride on argon, or radon gas?), but the closet door was firmly shut. What's with that? I firmly resolved to clean up my bedroom.

I buried my head under the covers, but I could still smell it. The odor was coming up from the floorboards, and from under the bed. I was so queasy so I swigged some Pepto-Abysmol. But it was more than GI indigestion. I was uncomfortable all over, prickly, as if I wanted to run away from my own body. It was just like before the Loma Prieta, and Napa 'quakes. But I was also so tired, I just wanted to sleep.

I dozed off, then the earthquake struck, practically beneath my pillow. A magnitude 4.5M, and 8 miles deep, with the epicenter under the Claremont Hotel. OK, so the earthquake wasn't under my pillow, but it was less than 4 miles away. 

There was a big cataclysmic jolt, southwest to northeast, then when I ran to the door, the wooden  floor was undulating, making me stumble as I headed to the doorframe.  

A real bitch-slapper. It hit so hard, I thought there was no way there wouldn't be another aftershock. I was positive this was a precursor to The Big One. Nada. A one-off. I was thoroughly awake—but I found myself shakily counting quaiku syllables at 3AM. Most of the 8 million of us who call the Bay Area home, were awake at the same time.

Big 4.5M 'quake, Hayward Fault, Berkeley.
House lurched, a sharp jolt, but nothing fell.
And I was waiting for another strike.

A rockabye shake
from a 4.5 earthquake
it doth murder sleep.

Big 'quake slapped us awake
The house lurched, and settled down.
We wait for the Big One.

I invent a new poetic art form
quaiku haiku—after the quake—
to measure a magnitude of words.

Jack Gilder asks: So, how's that insomnia coming along? I had to laugh as I got a rare 8-hours'-worth of sleep NYD eve, only to be up all hours last night. Again. We're a right buncha loony nightowls on FB. I wrote back:

Good news: I slept 8 hours last night.
Bad news: It's now 2:30 in the morning.
So, how does the full night's sleep thing work? 

The problem is that the Hayward Fault north of Berkeley has not budged in more than 175 years, meanwhile the bottom end of the fault from Fremont to Oakland is creeping north at about one-fifth of an inch a year. And the San Andreas Fault, which moves north about 1.5 to 2 inches a year, is dragging the Hayward Fault along with it. This can't end well.

The last major earthquake on the Hayward Fault was October 21st, 1868, flattening Hayward (then the Alameda County seat), and San Francisco. The estimated 6.8M temblor was called the "Great Earthquake" until April, 1906, when it lost its heavyweight title. I imagine Santa Rosa too sustained significant damage, as the Rogers' Fault may actually be the Hayward Fault. Since the Hayward Fault has erupted on average, every 140 years, we're all sitting ducks waiting for The Big One.

The last big middle of the night temblor was the 6.0M Napa earthquake, Aug. 24, 2014. I was visiting a friend in Point Reyes at the time and was flung from his couch. We thought the San Andreas Fault had ruptured. A brand new fault was discovered, much of Napa was destroyed, and a lot of wine was spilled.

You can bet I went through the food cabinets the next day to check my food stores. And I carefully restacked my wine—preparing for The Big One.

WELCOME, RAIN

I hear mayhem and people cooing in the street
like fat pigeons strutting in figure eights.
I'm playing a useless messiah line 
in my head like a broken record.

Is that the slender rain I hear
thrumming a staccato beat
after having gone missing in the fall,
and all the the winter too?
The sirens, our city bred wolves, 
begin a lonesome chorus.

We danced to fallen embers
and we breathed the hellish smoke,
while the infernos raged, both north & south,
and we wondered who was left to count
among the missing and the dead.
The cats of Coffey Park keep close vigil
where their home hearths once stood.
When the wind blows, love letters,
in the form of singed pages of books
continue to fall from the sky.

So many of homeless, and so many more,
living in parking lots, under bushes, and underpasses.
They say that after the fires died back
their hearts were still intact.
But the ranks have swelled like an angry river
at full flood. King tides and new rain
under a full werewolf moon.
O welcome. Welcome, Rain! Oh!

3 Jan 2018

Happy Perihelion Day!

Happy Perihelion Day! Today, tho it be mid-winter,
the earth (in the northern hemisphere) is close to the sun
than any other day of the year. Let there be light.
Let Apollo race his chariot across the sky.
And may his pale horses fly like the wind.

After Kliban

 I once met Kilban at a picnic table in Tiburon....drawing cats, of course. I was an insta-fan. None are wearing red sneakers here, though, but it might make climbing trees out of the question.

I dedicate this cartoon to all the firestorm cats and other critters that survived the California wildfires of 2017. So many have found their owners, so many have not and are still orphans, so many perished.

Something I wrote a long time ago. One of my first published pieces. I didn't think it was any good, and was surprised it was selected.

 The Cat Wears Red Sneakers

                    —After Kliban 

The cat wears red sneakers. He's been hanging around here for some time now. He's heard that on the streets of Guerneville, it's a good place to hang out. He's as good as any punk. As he rolls up his tiger stripe socks and shirt cuffs with such an air of nonchalance, you suddenly realize that you've met him before. Was it in the park when the fog rolled in in in grey cat feet? No, he's wearing red sneakers. Still, his feet could be grey underneath. If only you could induce him to remove one sneaker, then you could be sure.  But how can you ask him such an indelicate question? He may take offense, and depending on the moon, he may want to rumble or even have a good caterwaul. Just look at his tattered ears. You know he can whip out a claw with switchblade precision. Suppose you are a ladycat, you could walk right up to him real cool and drape your tail right across his shoulders and say...How about a little red sneaker, baby? But somehow you sense he's not in the mood, so you stroll up to him real cool, toothpick hanging out of your mouth and say, Hey man, got a light?

9/10/1979

Published in Shadowbox/Sonoma Mandala

http://mohurley.blogspot.com/1979/01/the-cat-wears-red-sneakers.html

MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2017

Dear Ones,

Thank you for stopping by and reading my ebook reviews. I am primarily interested in women's fiction and the well-crafted murder mystery genre. I delve into historical fiction, and cozy mysteries, sometimes even alpha make action adventure series, but I am no fan of chick-lit Regency bodice rippers, nor am I a fan of sugary cupcake who-dun-its, though I will read them if there's nothing else to read.

End of year writing stats 2017

So I washed my hair at noon
making ready for the New Year,
I wasn't expecting it to be freezing all day.
Only to say, Stay cold, Pony Boy.

Of my 137 entries for 2017, at least 60 to 90 are poems (some posts have multiple poems), a few are prose poems, a few are themed haiku. I try & tag all my poems. I'm not always successful. Standard poems have BLOCK CAPITALS for titles.

My Facebook words aggregate 2017

Dear Facebook, stop blocking me

Dear Facebook:

Nearly every time I post a link anywhere on Facebook these days, it is marked as spam. Your newest spambot algorithm sucks. Usually it is a link to one of my own blog posts that sets it off, and now even a friend's very benign YouTube link was marked as spam.

Zima, Russian winter, trading sides

When I was doing a big poetry and art exchange with the former USSR, we collected poetry from the people (vs State-sanctioned poetry), and translated it. We remarked upon the fact that so many poems were filled with images of snow and winter (zima), for the winter of their discontent was still upon the Soviets in 1990, then the putscht brought a thaw of sorts. Then the NEA Jesse Helms-Mapplethorpe art scandal. My Soviet friends laughed and said, this is how it begins, and they said that the US and the USSR were trading places. What strange times we live in, trading sides like that. We are reliving the winter of our discontent, brought on by the Republicans, who were once so rabidly anti soviet, they blackmailed a whole generation of artists, and executed the Rosenbergs for treason—for conspiring with the enemy. Pogo was right. We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

A MADRIGAL FOR THE MILLENNIUM

The conch sounds

calling the distant sailors home.
The waves curl and beckon.
The sailors chant. 

The gulls dive and weave 

the air into nets.
The fish rise, 

they rise up 

and gather in the clouds.

Something holy and profound—

the clouds part.

I tell John Godbeams 

pierce the sky's heart,

in Gregorian time

while roses bloom midwinter.

Milagros de Guadalupe!

A madrigal for the millennium

an open mind of music.

Insects practice percussive 

dance steps. The scent 

of roses in an empty room.

12/20/17

Winter Solstice
CATHEDRAL OF SOUND
Last time 

CATHEDRAL OF SOUND

Bird voices find the wind
speaking in tongues.
The trees shake off the night,
stretches a little closer to the sky.
The clouds shed their tears,
the memory of water,
a rainstick takes us deeper
into the cathedral of sound.
Peace comes dropping slow.

12/20/2017
Winter Solstice
A MADRIGAL FOR THE MILLENNIUM
Last time

RED HERRINGS

RED HERRINGS

—for Sara Menefee

our iPhones

seeking shoals

of lost words
to compose small poems

catch unschooled fish

inappropriate

placeholders

leading us astray.

12/8

She gathers
purse seine nets
on the city streets
where the homeless
tell her stories
small poems
flashing a silver
currency
of hope
in the gutters
of despair.

SINGING BETWEEN THE LINES

Because there weren't enough altos in the choir

my high school music teacher, Mr. Parker,

shipped me off to the meager alto section

where I sang Handel's Messiah in monotone riffs 

like a scald crow, or a ploughman at the fields.

Never the white dove soaring in the vaulted sky.

Decades later, after an accident, a punctured lung 

left me breathless, my therapy was to join a choir, 

where I discovered that all this time that

I was a soprano. I felt cheated at both ends: 

I was given no melody line when I was young,

singing a supportive third below the gilded flock 

who preened their swansong feathers, 

& screeched high notes because they could.

Mr. Parker's nose was as red as that fictional reindeer,
as he spiked his coffee with endless libations.

And now, with no way to reach the upper arpeggios,

I stagger between the two parts, a switch hitter

baying out all the song lines.

No wonder I was always trying to braid 

the alto and soprano lines together all at once, 

splitting the difference between the sour notes. 

No wonder I still can't sing to save my life.

12/8/17

No alto, I sang
the Messiah in flat notes
no melody line

to soar in the vault

of the soprano songbirds

preening their voices.

12/8/17

Firestorm of Words reading in Healdsburg

I'm still feeling a bit under the weather, after a week of intense headaches and earaches. Smoke inhalation takes its toll. Trying to muster energy to drive to Healdsburg for our big Firestorm of Words reading at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts, organized by Penelope la Montagne to honor Brian’s dad,  Monte Kervin who died in the Tubbs Fire. 

Bea & Fran Hawkes in the 2017 anthology, Singing the Feathers of Freedom. 

I was almost about to cancel, but as Sean Folsom flagellated me on Facebook, and said, The show must go on. So, I girded my loins, I rallied the ponies and had a great time. My Alexander Valley students were stellar. A good reading all round, and I wasn't as tired! I went back to Nicasio and spent the night there, as Sinead was driving. Emotional times.

Alexander Valley School students in both California Poets in the Schools 2016 & 2017 poetry anthologies!

Historic Alexander Valley Schoolhouse by Frances Hawkes, 1st Grade

WAITING FOR LAUNDRY

Waiting for laundry: the clothes in the dryer 

go round & round, round & round, 

round & round—they don't dry any faster 

no matter how hard I watch.

Internet again!

Yay! After three days of no internet and no landline phone, Elvis from Romania, I kid you not, got us up and running at top speed. You vant I should fix, yes, he asked? I looked at his shoes. Blue. Suede. You have got to be kidding. He shimmied up the pole, cleaned out the cruft. Voilá, dial tone, internet again. AT&T insisted the problem was at our end, blamed faulty house wiring. Elvis is now a personal friend, Neil gives him a CD after a mini concert in his honor. Our little ponies are happy. The squirrels, less so. Private acorn stashes and squirrel larders in power boxes may have been involved. Yes, AT&T, that’s it, always blame the customer—we often shimmy up the telephone poles late at night and stuff our nuts into the cable boxes. We’d love to shove yours instead. Reciprocity, and all that.