SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND

SLOW DANCE ON THE KILLING GROUND

in the kingdom of the blind,
the one eyed man is a freak.

8/83?
Napa

RETURN FLIGHT

RETURN FLIGHT

My grandmother, they planted lilies

at the foot of your bed

before I understood the meaning of loss.

A chill in the air puts summer to rest.

White against the moon, an owl takes flight

across the valley & the echo of his cry

scatters light from the stars.

To the dancers, we leave our feathers of return flight.

The small candles of barn owl feathers drift down

from the moon's edge to light the way for your feet.

The slow breathing of soil before the frost

leaves a faint trail like the undeciphered tracks of mice in snow.

This is why we dance on the graves of our grandmothers.

The earth spreads sonorous wings over you,

shakes rubies from her blood

& your long dark hair tumbles swift like a waterfall

until it turns white in the garden of your grandchildren.

& the night horses who pasture in your hair

all turned east, toward that softer danger, the sun.

At dawn the white rooster crows over sand dunes,

leaving an echo almost tasted on the tongue.

He crows, Gallo, gallo, gallo blanco.

The web that connects us moves slowly.

Wind in the cottonwoods marks a passage of time.

When my best friend was killed by a horse,

you said, “Think of all the death in the trees

and in the fields in fall.”

The rooster cried, “My insides return to earth

so that my life may continue,”

before the axe swung.

My grandmother, now I know the earth receives us.

She watches the flowers of her children catch fire in the wind.

She kindles our slow bones so they too

will send roots down deep & drink from the stream.

She stands at the lintel with arms open wide,

waiting for us to return home

so she can close the door.

The return to earth is a quiet song

when water trickles down after the storm.

8/27/83

rev. 86
this was from reading three grandfather poems in a New Mexico magazine, by Rudolfo Anayar, Estévan Arellano, and EA Mares. I later changed it to reflect my grandmother.

1990 Red Bluff Daily News, July 23
1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1986 Under the Bridge of Silence
1983 Across the Generations


VUELO DE VUELTA/RETURN FLIGHT

Mi abuelo, plantaron los lirios  
al pie de tu cama  
antes de que yo entendiera  
el sentido de la pérdida.  
El aíre frio entierra al verano.

Blanco contra la luna, un buho alza el vuelo  
a través de la valle y el eco de su grito  
esparce la luz de las estrellas.

A los bailiadores dejamos nuestras plumas del vuelo de vuelta.  
Las velitas de plumas de buho flotan a la deriva  
desde el filo de la luna para aluzar el camino de tus pies.

El aliento despacio del suelo ante la escarcha  
deja huellas ligeras como rastros indecifrados  
de los ratones en la nieve.  
Por eso bailamos en las tumbas de nuestros abuelos.

La tierra extiende alas sonor as sobre tí,  
sacude los rubís de su sangre  
y tus cabellos largos v negros se caen rápida como cascada  
hasta volverse blancos en los jardines de tus nietos.

Y los caballos de noche, que pastorean en tus cabellos  
todos miraban hacia el oriente—
hacia ese peligro mas suave, el sol.

En el alba, el gallo blanco cacarea sobre la arena  
dejando un eco que casi se saborea en la lengua.  
Cacarea, "gallo, gallo, gallo blanco."

La tela que nos relaciona se mueve despacio.  
El viento en los álamos marca un pasaje del tiempo.

Cuando mi mejor amiga la mató un caballo,  
dijiste, piensa en toda la muerte en los árboles  
y en los campos del otono.

El gallo gritaba, "Mis adentros regresan a la tierra  
para que la viad continúe," antes de la hacha se cayera.

Mi abuelo, yo sé ahora que la tierra nos recibe.  
Mira las flores de sus hijos encenderse en el viento.  
Lentamente incendia nuestros huesos para que ellos también  
envíen las raices hasta lo profundo y beban del corriente.  

Se para en el dinltel con los brazos abiertos  
esperando hasta que volvamos  
para que cierre la puerta.

La vuelta a la tierra es una canción quieta  
cuando el agua discurre después de ia tormenta.
  —traduccion John Oliver Simon

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

Isis Oasis Resort reading, Lee Perron, Maureen Hurley, Zara Altair, Kit Aldrich, Patty Truxaw, Mickey Sheehan

 

Poetry class on August 21 at Isis Oasis

The Isis Oasis Poetry Workshop convenes again on Sunday, Aug. 21 on the grounds of the Isis Oasis Lodge in Geyserville. The Isis workshop is an open gathering of Sonoma County language artists This month's agenda includes: "Unplanned Poetry," a community of words led by Mickey Sheehan and Patsy Truxaw: and readings by Russian River poets Lee Perron, Maureen Hurley,Zara Altaire and Truxaw. Actor, poet and musician Kit Aldrich will use the workshop to introduce and rehearse his latest work, a mixed media dada troubadour experiment. Sheehan and Terry Boucher plan to act out their favorite scene from Inherit the Wind. Tommy Thompson and Michael Welch may also attend the event. The Isis workshop is open to the public and both participants and observers are encouraged to attend. The group will be discussing the possibility of organizing a chamber music/poetry/fine wine afternoon during a Sunday in the fall. Anyone interested in reading or participating on Isis Poetry Sundays may either show up or call Truxaw at 433-1907 or Sheehan at 433-5835 for more information.

Fragment MARGUERITES

Marguerites growing
amid the marble soils of Crete.
Amid the large columns of bones.
Marguerites strewn across the soil of Crete
blooming between marble columns
and the bones of the temples.
Marguerites holding the clouds up
and keeping the sky at bay.

8/13/1983
added 10/16
revised

Two marginalia drawings, RAS meeting, Lakeport

SATURN’S PRODIGAL RETURN

1. Saturn’s prodigal return straight from the heart,
the light well dips silver ink from the moon,
a nightly repetition of black time,
countless nights of washing
The seahorse cracked like a Crab Nebula.
Best eaten cold on ice.
Light, the silent snowfall of stars
whose silver lining is in question.

2. I saw the mountains on the edge of the moon
casting 10,000-foot shadows
into an empty Sea of Tranquility.
Space maps, interstellar dust, meteor showers
on the backside of the moon.
Perseus complained in a binary language.
What of the spacial folds in the Milky Way?
Who is blessing the Southern Cross,
was there really something to the back
side of the moon?

3. What is the color of blood in the dark?
Women’s blood is thicker than men’s.
Each month we try to hold onto it.
What oracles will the trees listen to
after all the leaves fall?
My tears become like leaves
and flow away and whole forests
have been decimated.
The earth is still bleeding
and we are always thirsty.

No date, 1983, probably the Perseid showers, So, August 12.

FIRST TIME

FIRST TIME
              —for Jim Byrd

Our canoe rounded a sheltered river bend—
collecting calm emerald water
'til it glistened in a slow, curved smile.
The towering trees punctuated its mirrored speech.

From our raised paddles words escaped—
unannounced as water droplets
spawning concentric ripples
in an undulating desire towards shore.

Who is naming these silent tremblings,
sneaking up, canoe-like along the river,
where,  coming down for their evening drink,
our hearts stopped,  afraid to slake their thirst?

Who will stand guard over them
so they can safely come down to the shore
and ask the river where the trees stop
and the reflection begins?
Through the trees the wind is trickling.
Only the shore answers in a slow, curved smile.

8/4/1983
added 10/16

VIRGO

VIRGO

In the moonlight,
naked,
I will cook fish

8/1983

CORNWALL

CORNWALL

The sea shakes the cliffs,
loosening rocks like teeth.
The pitched roofs of the manor
toss the air back to clouds
as the sea shoves against the moor.

Beyond the window
is the lone figure of a man
wending his way towards shore.

A girl in a blue shift
leans against another window
gazing at the sea
marking his progress.

The curtains luff like sails.
Facing the afternoon sea,
her eyes, mirrors
reflecting back the purchase of the sea. 

8/1983

TOBACCO

TOBACCO

From the campfire, flames leap and dance
as if the devil's fiddle were made of smoke.
A cigarette dangles from the gypsy's mouth.

The earth pushes up a cornerstone
in a slow rotation of silence.
The thin red wailing of a siren
heralds the dusk in another part of town.

She stops to light her cigarette.
The horses lean toward her,
hungry for tobacco.  

8/83

Poetry Reading with Crawdad Nelson, Vincent Peluso, Maureen Hurley, Humboldt Bay Coffee Company, Old Town Eureka

Journal entry, Driven

Journal,  Driven

 With unfinished work hanging over my head, I can’t get it together to fix my storage room so I can move the boxes out of my house. It’s too hard. I hate the world. I hate these boxes and more. I don’t feel good. I wanted a Jewish Mama. I want to forget everything and play. I can’t seem to forget anything except all the unfinished work over my head. I need to go somewhere and do nothing for three days. I go nuts if I have nothing to do for three hours, let alone three days. I don’t want A Jewish mama, unless she can type but then she’ll nag me about this and that and the other. I want to do something interesting for a change. I’m bored with myself. Oh man are schmucks. No, they’re not – just the ones that I know. No, just the ones I fall in love with. Maybe I should quit falling in love. And fall off barstools instead. What good is it? I am a hopeless romantic. Romantics are idealists. Idealism is dead. Long live romanticism. When did the Romans have to deal with antics? Is it a kin to Greek antics? How do you seat four guys on a barstool, turn it over. Turn over a new leaf. Figleaf. Get a heart on. I’m bored with my friends. The last time I wielded a hammer, a board fell on my foot. I’m falling over boxes and my feet hurt. And my head hurts. It’s too hot. I want to go home, my feet are in boxes and I can’t reach the clutch.

7/11/83

ODD JULY FRAGMENTS

Birds in random patterns in the sky 

bitter leaves buffeted by the winds 

9/18/1983?

Somewhere, deep in the jungle, 

an overripe mango falls. 

The almost perfume taste of a white peach 

and the bastard progeny of nectarines 

from the unnatural passion 

of plums and peaches

like  the acacia beating 

in the desert heartwood.

In the soft lavender dreams 

of your heart

what geckoes dream, 

what chameleons of thought 

rest there, unturned, 

waiting for respite 

from the long night of memory 

and language?

In the subtle home language of dreams, 

a steaming bear turd at dawn tells me 

more of the future

than the tea leaves of your cup.

This is a quiet place for remorse.

It's as if the feet of fallen angels 

made no more noise 

than crickets in the grass.

7/2 1983  or 84

A gopher has much reason 

to be the victim of thought.

7/2 1983  or 84

I am always suspicious of places 

where the tables are well padded 

and the chairs are not. 

7/3/1983  or 84

The sound of crickets 

or the shape frogs, 

the croak coming out 

of a bag filled with vertebrae, 

each croak demands 

one neckbone 

for its passage.

7/8/1983 or 84?

Wilbur Hot Springs

The snake carries the minnow 

from the stream like a dog 

with a bone and swallows it 

headfirst on the hot rocks.

7/13/1983

Invisible boundaries

These hills carry all their secrets 

with them to and from the sea.

Trees suspended from rocks 

for no reason whatsoever, 

it's like the next of giraffes 

7/8/1983 or 84   

Tomales

To cross invisible boundaries

What are invisible boundaries?

Our eyes travel into forbidden scenes 

to peer into a garage where someone 

changes the baby on a dirty carpet, 

where a phlemetic old man 

spumes in the gutter, breath in short supply, 

or to eavesdrop in on the conversations 

of others in restaurants.

Or the way the side of the building, 

painted blue, loses its constraints 

against the sky.

Outdoor windows mirroring back the room.

Within the span of three minutes 

a middle-aged man confesses 

the hospital a wedding, his daughter,

an affair gone wrong while his companion 

spreads butter and nods in silent affirmation.

I never thought of you as middle-aged.

7/30/1984

The plums on the table 

the soft burst of fruit 

against the platter 

too suddenly ripened.

Scratches on the outside of plane windows 

from the ash of Mount Saint Helens.

Clouds over Molokai 

flat tongue of Molokai 

rolls from the feet of Maui 

white boats and whitecaps 

Pacific lint. If you look 

in the wrong direction 

all there is is endless ocean 

where reefs break.

1983 or 84?

I can't believe I interleaved 1983 and 84 in the same journal. I think most are form 1983, and  I used up a page or two in 84...

FREEWRITE

FREEWRITE

I have found terror in my own thinking

I shall have dominion over my own thoughts
the dominion of fear, he said, I see myself.

An obsession of a dream
which becomes the world.

The heart can only understand
what it understands
because they're only the thoughts
of the corporeal body.

The terror of my life
is not like the fear of my own thinking

Speech – visits – the sleeping
I have in speech for love I see myself

The love I have of life.

7/2/1983, or 1984 probably 83
rev. 2/17

When the mind gets remodeled
 the residents of walking
with arms synchronized
with the stretch of opposite leg,
a crossing over occurs.
My mind frees itself of tangled debris,
the way Highwater floats the flotsam off the shore,
sweeping its meaning,
and deposits it on some other shore.

Unknown date says 730 possibly 1984



sleeping in the kitchen a.k.a.
David bricklayer
we are all friends in this double bed,
this is a submerged reef
in the middle rises as if in low tide,
a wall of bed in the kitchen,
you have long conversations with my best friend
and we fear over the fresh market
bricks like The Mending Wall
How does fear rise so quickly
our moods and consulates Unpredictable?

In your refrigerator
Three jars of jam,
One jar of butter,
a questionable cube of butter,
some birdseed
 (for the cats)
 Snowbird
a celibate interior

In the deep freeze,
amaretto and coffee,
ice cream, coffee beans
and the dope cookies crusted in frost.

I am hungry but it is too cold in the kitchen

You said you'd hang a door for five home-cooked meals.

We cross invisible boundaries
what are the invisible boundaries
our eyes travel in forbidden service
seems to appear into
a garage where someone changes the baby
on a dusty carpet

 tight says where philological man sings in the gutter
rest in short supply
or to eavesdrop into the conversation
of others in restaurants.

For the way I saw side of the building
slanted back loses its constraints against the sky
outdoor shadows mirrored back into the room
and then there's another section
within the span of three minutes

7/30/1984 

CHICO TO SF BY TWIN PROPELLER PLANE

CHICO TO SF BY TWIN PROPELLER PLANE

The Sacramento river wanders like a snake
through the great Central Valley,

leaving winter trails of oxbows, cirques, and disks;
serpentine shapes stranded amid the levees.

Fields run east to west to the mountains.

Rice levees, an organic mosaic. Earth artists.

The Marysville Buttes rise up like decayed teeth
disrupting the verdant velvet of fields.
We fly over the buttes. Inside the Marysville Buttes
are even more buttes and hidden jeweled lakes,
inside the decayed heart of an old volcano.

The Inner Coastal Range,
a scalloped shelf—like Zabrisky point.
Ocean sculpted by the great California Sea.
A spill of coastal mountains near Winters
disrupts the parallel symmetry of mountains
pushing against a sea of air and green caps.

Odd July snow on the coastal mountains.

Mt. Knocti, on Clearlake, pushes a black horizon,
bas relief of rice paddy patterns in the fields.
The rice farmers will never know that Mt. St. Helena
is pushing the sky up with her woman's body.

Dry washes of feathered snakes, dendritic memory
coming down the mountains to drink from the valley floor.

Napa Valley on the other side of the divide, an oasis.

Those dry hills hiding black gold, red gold, white gold;

hayfields, plowed earth, a valley of dust.
Then, the slate teeth of Mt. Berryessa gnawing the sky.

A singer in the fjord, Lake Berryessa laps
at the feet of the Mayacamas, like a cat.

In the dry regions, yellow pasturage,
the north slopes to the summit, open to the wind.

The lone thumb of Mount Tamalpais, guardian of the bay.

Point Reyes Peninsula, that island in time, a misty sentinel.
Home. I have full access to the plane, it only holds 12,
and there are only four of us, including the pilot.

Mt. Diablo, gatekeeper of the Bay's rivers.
Livermore, on the fault, the nuclear reactor, asleep.
So that's how the great Sacramento drains
into the Bay, over Diablo's feet.
Engulfing one half of the Central Valley

Lowlands—I'm surprised to see nothing grows
in the hills between Vallejo and Vacaville, except grass.

Cross currents in the Bay, a sudden insight,
the realization that the waves take turns
to mesh into each other like a massive weaving.

To the south, the Coyote Hills and and Mission Peak
barely visible beneath the morning fog.

A passenger asks if I take photos to remind myself of home.
He's late for his date with the US government.
He reads The Art of War. Off to the killing fields.

The plane plane doesn't want to land,
the pilot yells at the plane, Come on, land, goddamnit!
What you don't want to hear a pilot yelling.
The passenger thinks maybe he won't have to serve,
but the wheels reluctantly touch the asphalt.
We shudder to a stop, mere mortals again.

7/9/1983
minor surgery 9/2016 b/c I couldn't read it.



CHICO SF

the river wanders through the great central valley
carving a level journey leaving winter trails
ox bows cirques, discs serpentine shapes
fields outlined in even boundaries 

running east west to the mountains
rice levees
Marysville buttes rise up like a decayed tooth 

disrupting the verdant velvet of fields
Inside the buttes, more buttes
a hidden lake inside the decayed heart of an old volcano
Inner coastal ranges scalloped shelf like Zabriski point
ocean sculpted by the great California sea
Coastal mountains spill into the Valley near Winters

UNDER POSSESSION OF POETRY

Under the possession of poetry, 

under the influence of words, 

You commute a life sentence of voyeurism, 

no center stage for those who document the living. 

They arrest you for possession of words, 

under the lethal influence of poetry. 

You break down during interrogation 

and the code is broken. You stand trial 

and are hung for perjuring the lives of others. 

Your camera eye pans the audience, 

giving you an excuse to look – 

your camera is a useful disguise, 

and still they upstage you by arresting you 

for possession of poetry.

1983?  No date, from my NPC journal

Journal entry, friends with benefits

Sleeping with close friends, never a good idea. Voracious sex consumes the friendship, and hollow-eyed, we search for what isn’t there in each others eyes. We are most often alone after making love. New expectations, and hope makes monsters of our psyches, and we mistrust each other the most when we are the closest. Cruelty among lovers. Uncertain, we push them away. Anonymity – not knowing is safer. To kiss someone on a regular basis is not safe. We panic. One lover said, I want it always to be a surprise. Don’t expect me back, and yet he comes, night after night. Does he expect a huge net? He writes his fear. What are the rules? We gave up rules when we put someone on the moon. Men walked across her face. The technology that put in there, put us all in the fast lane. We drive our emotions like Maseratis on the speedway. Quick Exodus. Our engines run hot, our spark plugs need changing too soon, so we can keep up with ourselves. Huge spiders live in my sink, and they drown whenever I do the dishes. Sometimes the smaller male spider gets it first. A day later, the huge female still stands guard over the shriveled body of her mate. When the water rises again, she makes no attempt to escape, and her last resting place is against the drain screen, with her desiccated mate, her legs trailing behind her, squid-like. Every day she dies in my sink and every morning she is back again with her mate. oh how we drown in each others eyes.

No date, possibly June, 1983, could be 84, from my Napa Poetry Conference journal. No idea even who it’s to....if it’s from 1983, it’s probably to Richard Salzman. Or not.

A LEMONADE STAND OF NEWSPAPERS

A LEMONADE STAND OF NEWSPAPERS
At the Santa Rosa Press Club awards ceremony

And it's goodbye to Guttenberg,
the cradle, the incunabula rocks
for video games. Ma Bell
dispenses the news via silicone chips.

Print becomes obsolete,
like the round faces of the clock.

Eyes don't need print,
or clocks without hands,
digital newspapers terminally ill
succumb to the screen
while Ma Bell burps the electronic baby.

6/1983
don't know the day
added 9/2016

AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Arte, my hand is in Madrid,

a rebellion calls for notations 

in the low constellation of the air.

The windows are a portal

for performers, a window on the whole day.

And all four directions, 

variations of a self-portrait. 

I dream of the air that explodes into grace.

A definition of birds shapes the shards.

 6/29/1983 

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

added 10/16  really odd bit

FOR MARILYN

FOR MARILYN

Time is scented,

secret pearl hidden within the folds

of the oyster

The leaf of a blackbird

shaken loose

flutters down toward its own death

Corpses of flowers

rose petals beneath

Marilyn's staccato heels

    6/83

WATERMELON

WATERMELON

Past that joint
Eat some more watermelon
Don't you know if you eat those seeds

they'll grow in your stomach?
Jack talks about voice.
Now the water ones bide
CB Davis takes care of
the Will Staple Memorial Joint.
The way that I conduct my voice
nurturing interjections.
A match strikes.
Does anybody remember the part
about the voice issue?
We are always trying to plan
All they want is you
Poetry is human and alive
That's all
Bernie banks another seed

into the can.

6/25/1983?

Camp Cazadero 

CPITS Jack Grapes workshop

If this was 1983, then the poems listed under 6/11 belong here.

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

Home Language, Another Gopher Rescue

While my neighbor Richard played Mozart on the piano, a tiny gopher dragged himself across the piano strings, adding an Aeolian touch. The cat had re-caught its prey, and let it loose in the house. Surprise guest appearance. A musical one, at that. After getting over the shock, we fished it out of the piano. A chorus of eager cats resounded an unfinished sonata.

Instead of letting nature take its course, I retrieved the bedraggled, broken gopher and took it home. Sensing refuge, the gophers nestled deep in my hand, and I made it a home in the birthday gift Richard gave me. It's wonderful to receive presents in June even though my birthday was in November. The gift of fishing tackle box for my calligraphy pens, became an apartment for the baby gopher.

On the second day of captivity, he began to eat. He was enough of a baby. that solid food gave him pause. So, I fed him milk, the language all mammals understand. Seeing him his crippled state, the way he dragged his hind end, I wondered if nature should have just taken its course.

I seem to attract wounded baby animals who no longer can go back home, nor can they fully join the world of humans. This is my second gopher rescue for in six months.

In November, a gopher, the color of champagne, was lost above ground, scurrying in the oak leaves after dark. I mistook him for a wild hamster because of his odd coloration. He lived in a glass salad bowl. I drew him from several angles, and fed him grapes.

Biting the bullet, I couldn't release him. He wasn't taming up. What was I going to do with a rare leukistic gopher? I called the animal sanctuary. (One of there servals had camped out in the garbage, so we were on first-name basis). They were happy to take him. I imagine he lived out his days in the lap of luxury at the preserve.

But this one was an ordinary gopher. Besides, two gophers in six months was a little suspicious.

By Thursday, the injured golfer clearly understood the bond of milk and allowed me to stroke him without flinching, the way a mother strokes her young. The way we put pet animals is the equivalent of mammal mothers bathing their young—going back to a universal language.

As I write, he sleeps in the warm hollow of my left hand. Sated from his meal. His tail sticking out the back. He's so gentle. I am amazed how quickly he has tamed up.

But then I realize gophers have no desire to challenge. They spend the course of their lives pushing dirt around and nibbling on routes, unaware of the havoc they wreak on our gardens above.

Gentle creatures with tiny earlets—not like a hamster's, and mouse-like fur, more like burrowing hamsters. They readily respond to affection like any other rodent.

This state we call domesticity, is the language of gentleness asleep in my hand. He dreams and grinds his teeth. This tiny trust of sleep. This country cousin of the hamster cleans his dreaming in his home language, the language of roots.

6/21/1983? It could be July 17, poems are out of sequence. for June
cleaned up a bit 9/2016
He must've died. I didn't write about what happened to him.

MUSIC TO WATER THE GARDEN

MUSIC TO WATER THE GARDEN

Clawing clay notes from the piano,
spreading earth tones from the keys,
a cacophony resounds
in the discordant rhythms
like flocks of blackbirds, off time.

Notes played off each other
too close for comfort,
discordant rubble resounds
in the inner ear,
close to the home of thought.

In the waterfalls of the ear,
you push the notes higher
until they yield their last drop.

6/21/1983
added9/2016

THE DANCER, v 1 & 2

THE DANCER

On the bare wood floor

of the demolished building

in the center of town,

she lifted both arms skyward with hands,

fragile birds, the pulse of her wrist,

on either side, she kept a slow rhythm

to the open air as she turned,

in a lengthy rhythm towards the street,

where an invisible audience

began to hear the music as she danced.

As if each note took on shape and coloration,

there was a sculptural effect to her movements.

The invisible audience in the street

slowly became visible as she danced,

bathed in the soft purplish tones of Aflat.

6/21/1983

added 9/2016

another version

The dancer sits with her legs splayed
on the wooden dance floor.
She bends down head to knee
and back to sitting position
with arms outstretched,
surveying herself in the mirror,
only to see her reflection
slide off the wall.

9/1/1983

ON NATIVE LANGUAGES text FIND hard copy

ON NATIVE LANGUAGES
       No one is ever an expert
       on evening air...

                —C.B. Davis

In the country we speak native languages.       

The languages the birds speak               

are different than the languages of air.

Have you heard the red language of trees in Nova Scotia        

where the tide listens to the wind

blow each day in the Bay of Fundy

Bluejays speak in synchopated rhythm

like sultry evenings in New Orleans            

where a solo clarinet breathes

another kind of speech.

What is the language of moonlight on trees

or of a wounded animal crawling from the piano

after listening three days to Mozart's sonatas.

Who is listening to the language of cells-

reproducing, mutating and dying at will

taking the future brainsong with them?

Je te aime  un petit chat       langue d' Oc

cat’s tongues. The language of yes.

The blue resonance of flowers

keeps careful time with the sky.

When I was a child, each evening I sang:

Here kitty kitties, here kit-kits, here kitty-wits.

The cats knew their song.

The native language of cats,  a memory

following you at dawn

    through the orchard.

The translucent ear looking like a shell 

in need of a tongue.

A deluge of words singing

waiting for delivery

A stirrup-cup of sound:       

White noise draped cat-like

over an armchair.

Have you heard the language of hibiscus  

Plumeria behind the ear proclaiming love:

   follow me.

Or the tilted spiraling language                 

of cantilevered hawk wings                    

leaving small resting places in the air    

for the soft notes of feathers to resound.

Who is listening to the heavy-lidded language of eyes?      

The sky language of a woman 

sleeping alone, dreaming     
whole bars of music
and understanding what the source is.   

On a continual journey with no destination
the air speaks the only native language
the singing language of a single heart beating
of clouds, of thunder, tornadoes
the language of air calling you a song.

Birds of the air are closer to the source.
Air is the only true language.
perhaps the scimtar winged swallows
in their sanskrit flight
beating a cadence across the sky
are the only true experts on evening air.

date? guessing 83?

INTELLECTUAL TITILLATION

intellectual titillation 

   —to Patty Trucksaw and other writers

Stop your

Mind

We

Want

To get

Off.

Father's Day 

6/19/1983

CPITS WORKSHOP POEMS, CAMP CAZADERO, 1983

Ideas from Lou Welch, Jack Grapes workshop

Step out onto the planet

Draw a circle hundred feet round

Inside the circle there are 300 things
no one has ever seen before

And maybe no one even knows about

How many can you write about?

Ever since I lived in the woods
I've had a passion for Mozart

Didn't you know he composed in the woods?

Grass collectively bends toward light

Crow feather sheen on labs room

Collision of relief on wood

Circular prisms of sunlight
parallel inversion

on delineated shadows of leaves on earth

Spoor tracks of trucks

Chicken wire roof, a net to catch sunlight
from falling too hard against the earth.

Wrinkled pachyderm skin
the arch of a limbo

Woodpecker delineations

Shadows of trees keeping them in check.

The leaves maiden journey through the air,
branch tips circling up to light,
breaking away from gravity.

Gentle blur of aqueous tale,
synchronization of grass and wind.
A jungle for thought.

Pattern of blowing desert sand
frozen within the plywood.

All those pillars of sand
locked within an oak,
frozen dreamtime in the Sahara.

LEW WELCH VARIATIONS, 1

Crack of wood elongated grain
shadow of paint
dark red resting on forest grass
curdled cream skies
white clouds floating on wood

Mozart asleep in the woods

"Ever since I lived in the woods,
I've had a passion for Mozart"
                      —Mary Norbert Korte

Grass collectively bends toward sunlight,
a grace note of on delineated shadows
this parallax conversion.

Circular presence of sunlight,
a repetition of melody weaving patterns,
beliefs maiden voyage through air.

Branch tips circling up to light,
breaking away from gravity,
a bird measuring these truths.
Woodpecker delineations
shadows of leaves keeping them in check
the trees asleep
Mozart in the woods

a wire backstop,
a net to catch sunlight
to keep its notes in check

From falling too hard against the earth.

Syncopation of grass and wind,
all the patterns of the Sahara
locked inside of a note.

Frozen time, delineated,
a jungle for thought

Mozart composed this wood.

I dreamed last night the evening sky
came up on the contact sheet
in the developing studio

All my dreams began as prints
white on black and the image
emerging from under the liquid plates,
coming up in the bath
like trees shedding snow.

611/11/1983

Murder by Faberge

To catch a chicken thief, 

you need to live in the hen house.

The clown runs through the forest, 

a knife in the back, 

as he scales the bridge. 

The clown falls into the swirling waters, 

where he floats toe up 

over the rapids and pays with his life. 

The knife throwers,

the twins Mishka and Grishka 

turn toward the arena.

The clowns eyes were wet 

as a Berlin winter.

Date may be wrong on these, it could be 6/25/1983

intellectual titillation 

   —to Patty Trucksaw and other writers

Stop your

Mind

We

Want

To get

Off.

Father's Day 

6/19/1983