Artists who Teach exhibit, Santa Rosa City Council Chambers

Teachers show off their art,”Artists who Teach” by Dan Taylor

RRWG demise? The reports of its death were greatly overexaggerated

Missing page 2

First drafts and short takes

First drafts

SHORT TAKES

A tearful winter cloud waited 

while the rooster danced in winter 

Coastal cloud, a rooster wants to dance in the sun 

Winter waits while rooster tail clouds 

dance across the sky.

4/21/1986

The magician of the north 

pointed past the insectivores plants 

snapping in a rage for rare meat.

4/21/1986

During the steep night 

owls shift seasons with the moon

Ruddy sky slips from 

The western phase of the equinox.

When will we pass this way again 

and call out names 

like cattle lowing in the sun?

Horses hungrily tear at the grass 

as if it were the last handhold 

left on a sliding earth.

4/21/1986

Who is this beast breathing beside me 

like some forgotten ancestor 

coming for recognition in the night 

to give me new colors for dream

to shake me from the womb 

where breathing began 

beneath the skin of the ocean?

Sunlight surreptitiously slips out to reveal the age of reason.

Tattered cannibals devour the darkness

And the beast arises from the swamp.

Dust beneath, dust above.

Winged half-moons in symmetric repetition.

Why so sweet

Why so yellow

So sun, so moon.

Civilizations rise and fall by the edge of this fruit.

4/21/1986

4/21/1986

Added 2/17

Some of this  becomes the framework for LUNAR, ECLIPSE, MULEGE

This becomes fodder for the poem for Tengo Dinero 

Oh say can you see 

green sheep grazing 

on newly minted grass? 

On the banks of rivers 

silvered with coinages coinage of fish

Who can ask the gypsies 

how to line the edges of the moon? 

Who sobs for untold fortunes 

and greased lightning 

to increase the weight of the moon 

and the sky where dreams crackle 

and rustle like freshly minted bills 

hot off the press to spread thin across the night.

4/21/ 1986

added 2/17

Walking between the wooden boats 

she tests the white coral sands with her heel 

the delicate inner arch 

like the inside of a conch shell 

the thin brown leg 

long muscled, fleet, deer-like.

The carbon blue sword edged horizon 

floats above her head.

She holds her hand to her face, 

a shy gesture, 

as if to balance the angle of her heel 

or her head.

After spreading the nets to dry,

the fisherman walks over to greet her 

the curve of the boat 

is like the curve of her cheek.

unbelievable blue skin of the ocean.

The earth beside me 

like a sea breathing on sand 

I place my hand upon 

the cow like vision of trees 

grazing on the sky 

their trunks, vast straws 

to suck up particles of the sky 

that have fallen into the lake.

Saratoga 

April 1986

AMONG BLACKBIRDS

AMONG BLACKBIRDS

Movements among the blackbirds 

golden flecks and mica lakes 

captured in the corner of the eye.

In this way, words swell like an evening tide 

across a desert of granite and cactus 

and Russian caviar....

and then it all escapes into the dream.

4/23/1986

added/rev. 2/17

OBSCURE CLARITY

OBSCURE CLARITY

Listen to the luft and rattle 

of palm trees across the pond.

Only the wind can obscure the moon.

Lean towards the center.

The approach is like the obscure clarity

of dream of the first water.

Night rises from the well,

so like the sound of wind.

Incredible as it seems 

the caesura and the notes 

stretch across time and space,

to play a melody we can all comprehend.

4/23/1986

added 2/17

re to make tenses agree

SHORT TAKES

SHORT TAKES 

A tearful winter cloud waited 
while the rooster danced in winter 
Coastal clouds, 
a rooster wants to dance in the sun 
Winter patiently waits while roostertail 

clouds dance across the sky.

4/21/1986




The magician of the north
pointed past the insectivores plants
snapping in a rage for rare meat.

4/21/1986 

added 2/17

SHORT TAKES: prewrite for LUNAR, ECLIPSE, MULEGE

During the steep night
owls shift seasons with the moon
Ruddy sky slips from
The western phase of the equinox.
When will we pass this way again
and call out names
like cattle lowing in the sun?
Horses hungrily tear at the grass
as if it were the last handhold
left on a sliding earth.

4/21/1986


Who is this beast breathing beside me
like some forgotten ancestor
coming for recognition in the night
to give me new colors for dream
to shake me from the womb
where breathing began
beneath the skin of the ocean?

Sunlight surreptitiously slips 

out to reveal the age of reason.
Tattered cannibals devour the darkness
And the beast arises from the swamp.

Dust beneath, dust above.
Winged half-moons in symmetric repetition.


Why so sweet
Why so yellow
So sun, so moon.

Civilizations rise and fall 

by the edge of this fruit.


4/21/1986
Added 2/17

Some of this writing becomes the framework for LUNAR, ECLIPSE, MULEGE

RUSH HOUR

RUSH HOUR

As we approach the Bay Bridge toll plaza

the guy driving the red Honda 

finishes up a close shave. Pats his cheeks.

In another lane, a man is poring over 

the stock exchange, the newspaper

slumped over the steering wheel like a blanket.

He's squinting, I worry about his eyesight, 

and the relative safety of driving during rush hour.

I finish off my apple down to the core.

Spin it on its axis. El mundo.

Two Mexicans roll down their window 

and ask, Si? and laugh. Please.

Another driver adjusts his headphones, 

taps out a complicated beat on his steering wheel 

with dueling pens. I can see that he's a drummer.

Everybody's multi-tasking while driving 

in their hermetically sealed cars. 

I'm the only one with my car window open,

and I worry about what eating happy meals 

while commuting does to one's digestion.

I marvel at the dexterity of those businessmen 

while I, the poet, haphazardly scribe it all down

between the blue lines of my notebook,

glancing up at the last minute, just in time

to see the warning flash of the red taillights 

of the car in front of me.

4/21/1986

added/rev. 2/17

LUNAR ECLIPSE, MULEGE, BAJA

LUNAR ECLIPSE, MULEGE, BAJA 

Sunlight surreptitiously
slips out from under rocks
to reveal the age of trees.

Dust beneath us,
dust above.
Pale green bloom on leaves
like spores.
Winged half-moons
in symmetrical repetition.

why so sweet
why so yellow
sun and moon

The beast rises from the swamp.
Tattered cannibals
devour this darkness.

Civilizations rise and fall
by the edge of this fruit.

When will we pass this way again
calling out the names of cattle
on the last handhold of sliding earth?

4/21/ 1986

Broadside: Homage to Ken Poff, by David Fisher

April is the cruelest month. A broadside found in Donna Champion’s copy of Boschka Layton’s book, Prodigal Son, published in 1982. So, I suspect we were having a memorial reading for Boschka at the Russian River Writers’ Guild or perhaps a memorial at Paul Mariah’s place in Sonoma—some time in April of 1984, and David Fisher must’ve showed up to read as well. Hence the broadside in her book, marking the title poem of the book. Manroot Press’s Love Poems: Homage to Houseman by Samuel M Steward. So, though I found this in 2018, on somewhat of a pilgrimage of remembrance, I’m posting it on the date of Ken’s death. I remember Ken as a slight, grey sort of man. Dear friend and lover of Paul Mariah. And Paul’s guilt, of course. And the certainty he lived with that he too would follow Ken, so every day he survived the dread disease was filled with grace and guilt. Those who survived the longest shouldered that burden of grief unto the next decade. Or century. I'm not sure when Ken died, but he was still alive and kicking at Helen Luster's memorial in March ofo 1985. His big, beautiful grin shedding light.

Ironically, Paul didn't contract AIDS, He refused to get tested for years, but died of pneumonia in January 1996.




Posted 10/24/18




See Letter to David Fisher

Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children

More Than Words CPITS NEWSLETTER
CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS
Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children 
by Maureen Hurley

"We are continually invited to become what we are," wrote Thoreau. What does this mean? Why do we, as poets, need to be in the schools?

Poet Gerald Stern (American Poetry Review, May, 1985), suggests that PITS is simply a device to help build future poetry audiences, to give poets Income and attention, to modernize curricula, or to discover budding Rimbauds among the masses. He expresses a certain doubt about the enterprise of "making" poets. Stern's doubts about the goals and purposes of PITS programs and their validity nationwide may come from the fact that he only worked three days with selected high school students.

As a California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) poet-teacher, I am interested in the development of similar programs across the country. CPITS is the largest artist in residence program of its kind. CPITS is successful because it's community-based. We spend more time in the classroom and we work several years within a given school or community. We start "teaching" poetry to kindergarteners. We don't wait until they're in high school.

Sonoma County poet Lee Perron sees the role of a PITS poet to be that of a disseminator of culture. In Forgotten Languages (CPITS 1985 Statewide Anthology), he writes that artists and poets represent a culture not present in schools and "its purpose is to nurture all people, especially the young." Whether or not we as poet-teachers can bring culture and creativity into the schools is a question we continually have to ask ourselves. Then there's the argument of "artist" versus "teacher." "Those who can paint, paint. Those who can't, teach," said my mother. Gerald Stern argues that one can't really "teach" poetry; only a select
few students are ^chosen" to become poets—with or without help from us. 

The philosophy of CPITS is that every child has a creative potential to become a poet because we speak the beginnings of poetry with the same tool: oral tradition. Its roots reach into the paleolithic past. Why are people with strong literary commitments working in the schools? We live in a specialized society that inhibits and negates creative self expression.

TREES

TREES

The earth beside me

like a sea breathing on sand

I place my hand upon

the cowlike vision of trees

grazing on the sky

their trunks, vast straws

to suck up particles of the sky

that have fallen into the lake.

Saratoga

April 1986 

added 2/17

WOODEN BOATS

WOODEN BOATS

Walking between the wooden boats

she tests the white coral sands with her heel

her delicate inner arch

like the inside of a conch shell

her thin brown leg

long muscled, fleet, deer-like.

The carbon blue sword edged horizon

floats above her head.

She holds her hand to her face,

a shy gesture,

as if to balance the angle of her heel

or her head against gravity.

After spreading the nets to dry,

the fisherman walks over to greet her

the curve of the boat

is like the curve of her cheek.

And the unbelievable blue skin of the ocean.

Saratoga

April 1986
added 2/17

Freewrite on anger

It's a lot of work
to be mad inside all the time
like when you get steamed
and everything seems wrong
and you want to take on
the whole human race
in a free-for-all
like there was nothing else
to die for.

Pulling knives each time it hurts my mind,
this postal warning of death
sent to the wrong address with postage due.
We fold small memories
and put them inside manila envelopes
because at the time
it seemed like the logical thing to do.
These difficult sad things
we've all had somebody die
at one time or another.

When I get mad,
I throw a tantrum
and expect everything
to take care of itself.
And when it doesn't
I get sick to my stomach
and nothing will make it go away.
She was dead couldn't stamp her feet
nor cry
and it stayed all inside
until one day there was an explosion
like when a flowerpot drops.

1 April 1986
John Oliver Simon's workshop on nothing

GOOD FRIDAY IN SAN IGNACIO

GOOD FRIDAY IN SAN IGNACIO

We're back in Baja, Sur
at the Hotel Presidente, riding on empty,
and it's 65 miles to the next Pemex.
We stalled at a granite oasis
where a Roberto Acosta died at age 21.
His blue iron cross bleeding with rust
etched with his dates 1956-1977.
Born after me, died before me.
Did he live a life worth choosing?

At the San Ignacio Mission
we walk amid pastel shrines,
carapaces to house the dead,
on Good Friday, under a waning moon,
listening to the rosary in Spanish,
the padre's face, lit by candles
and the dark gold sheen of the altar,
a subtle coinage of faith.



28 March, 1986
San Ignacio, Baja California Sur
added & revised 2/17

We are the Children, photo exhibit, Santa Rosa City Hall,

PHOTO EXHIBIT — “We Are the Children" is the theme for a photography exhibit illustrating Sonoma County's ethnic diversity. David Buchholz, Morrie Camhi, Arlene Houghton, Maureen Hurley, Kerry Richardson and Diana Selser will exhibit their work through May 9, Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Santa Rosa City Council Chambers, 100 Santa Rosa Ave. The show is sponsored by the City of Santa Rosa and curated by the Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County

A CAGE FOR THE WIND

Claimed in the beginning faces

of defeated children,

our shadows fall

from the smoking mirror

and hurry through the window.

This harvest of bone,

and dust—wind spews debris

from which to hang the heart

under a nervous moon.

Sweet lies, shipwrecked flesh

could do no better.

Let the wind pass.

 Spring 86

How Color Came to Be—teaching notes

HOW COLOR CAME TO BE

Did you know the molecules of darkness are transparent? Reach into your pocket and grab some darkness so we can begin this story:

In the beginning it was dark, darker than night trapped in a lava tunnel. The ancestors of color were indifferentiated, they hadn't migrated yet.

The ancestor of yellow was the first to swim toward the beginning of time. It swam and swam so hard and so fast, it began to glow the color of the sun. Yellow is the color of warning. Slow down/speed up at a stop light, it's all the same to yellow.

You can't call yellow a chicken or a coward and get away with it. Yellow is the first floral reminder of spring; the sun's reminder to the earth under winter's blanket, not to forget about spring. 

The buttercup held under the chin of a child in spring; yellow is butter's secret desire to marry the sun. The descendents of yellow live in the hearts of mustard flowers, the feathers of song birds—canaries know yellow best. Sent down into the darkness of mines to warn the miners of poisonous gasses.

Everyone—those to come, and those who will die—will know at least two names for darkness. The pavement under the new houses becomes a name for darkness. Darkness of black holes so ravenous for light, nothing escapes, not even the straight arrow of light itself, the fastest known racer in the universe. The unmeasurable space between ink and paper—under the pen is a darkness that brings both light and color.

Green is the secret desire of yellow and blue, grass seeds buried under the earth dream of yellow. Then there's the rainbow to be considered, but what of the barely visible essence of indigo, and what of the colors we can't see, like infra-red? Bees see more colors than we do. What are the names of those colors we can't see, what do they look like? Can we imagine what we can't see?

Now you tell me about the invention of other colors, named and unnamed, with the darkness of your pen.




? 1986? No idea

Oakland Museum feature on teaching poetry in the galleries (photos)

RRWG 6th annual erotic poetry reading at the Burbank Activity Center

ARABESQUE

1. To be able to lift your leg
in a backwards thrust,
to extend your opposite arm
in counterbalance,
and then lean horizontally into space,
delicate as a bird in flight,
like a swan stretching

Is to know the extension of the flexing soul.

2. Stand barefoot, stand erect,
yet loose limbed with palms on thighs.
Stand with eyes focused on the future
as your right hand reaches for the rising sun.

Your left leg rises in counterpoise to the setting moon,
until you become horizontal as the land.
Then with one leg supported by the hip,
pivot, and stand like the axis of the earth,
with your toes caressing the mother
so that you may draw nourishment from her.

2/10/1986
probably a CAC workshop
added, minor rev. 9/17

BANTU COMBINATIONS on Haiti with Jim Byrd (some imaged from Mantle)

The Haiti Junta Takes Over

Rivers were here before there were mountains.

The corner of the eye sees constellations
better than looking directly at the stars.

President for life, in death, his remains
scattered in the streets.

Shifting sand slides off rocks like water after the thaw.

The trade winds carry news,
smoke can be seen on the horizon.
There are great issues which have divided us before
and there are issues that will continue to divide us again.

The sky opened up and they were gone in a flash.

They made small talk on the way to the airport.

Suitcases held tribute of their sins.
Like street fighters, mountains with sharp edges
jockey for position in the sky.

Impossible to deepen that night,
the colors of fish became a song to fisherman,
who leaned from their boats.
Hundreds toasted rum bottles,
spewing liquor on each other's heads in the form of baptism.

Rain dampens the burning palace tonight.
In dreams, old friends come to visit.
They took marble chips from the tomb for souvenirs

Bantu combinations
Maureen Hurley, Jim Byrd
2/8/86

My lines only

The Haiti Junta takes over

Rivers were here before there were mountains.

The corners of the eye see the stars more clearly.

Shifting sands slides off rocks like water after the thaw.

There are great issues which have divided us before,
and they will divide us again.

The sky opens up and they were gone like a flash.
Like street fighters, mountains with sharp edges
jockey for position on the horizon.

Impossible to deepen that night,
hundreds toted rum bottles,
spewing each other like baptisms of whales,
they took marble chips from tombsfor souvenirs.

Maureen Hurley


Jim's line only

President for life
his remains scattered on the street
the trade winds carry news.
Smoke can be seen on the horizon.

They make small talk on the way to the airport.

Suitcases help tribute to their sins.

The color of fish became a song to fishermen
who leaned from their boats.

Rain dampens the burning palace

Tonight, in dreams, old friends are revisited.

Jim Byrd


Bantu combinations 2

Like a tidal interstice, the seasons drift

Another page falls from the calendar

Clouds have no answers

Tree branches leading to meet the ground

Dig deep into the earth
as if your life depended upon it

Inside the skull of night
I hesitate to disturb the spider's web.

Inside my blood, inside my blood,
like the Nile, journeys are recalled after dark

The plans of thieves are revealed
as a hole slowly falls in on itself
floating face down, the surface of water
can be felt as blue skin.

Maureen Hurley Jim Byrd
2/8/1986
at The Hiding Place
(over huevos rancheros)

My rewrite

another page falls from the calendar
like title interstices,
like the seasons
tree branches lean to meet
the most painted roof
dig deep into the earth
as if your life depended on it

After dark, the plans of thieves
are revealed as a hole slowly falls in on itself

Inside my blood, ancient journeys
like the faces of Ophelia
floating face downward
beneath the blue skin of water.

Seasons drift in the tidal moods
dig deep into the earth
as if your life depended upon it
Inside my blood, inside my blood
rusted buckets carry pinholes of light
Escaped notes vibrate in the air
like telephone lines in the storm
Bees carry the skull of night into the hive
until the black one comes,
and darkness reveals the plans of thieves
for those who float face down
A cloak of blue skin
seeps beneath her fingernails like ink.



It was a tumultuous week: right after the Challenger disaster, there was a revolution in Haiti, Baby Doc was overthrown, Bobby Kaufman had died. My boundaries between worlds were pretty thin. It was as if I was hearing voices, and hearing the news before it was news. Since my mother really did hear voices, I was not very happy with this outcome. But as it turned out, I WAS getting the news poetically, in strange dream sequences. I madly wrote it all down as it was coming in, and it eventually became MANTLE. You can see some of the many revisions here: First Draft of Bob Kaufman poem, Mantle.
Added 11/16

INSOMNIA at 3AM, Imaginary letters to Wiley

Insomnia after the art opening at Sonoma State. We went to Christine's and I think my decaf mocha was indeed very caffeinated.

So odd the bidding started right away on my piece, a sculptor from Occidental finally bought the piece. I think it was a major shock to see how well people responded to my work. Last year's piece too. It seems that the whimsical quality of the pieces combined with the words is a major attraction.

I'm glad the writing is important because it's a challenge for me to place the words on an art piece. How do you use the words so that they don't dominate the piece? We are such illiterate society. That's what I need to work on as a series.

It's hard for me to just do a piece of art. It has to be for someone specific, the personal aspect. That's what I tell the kids in class: the personal becomes the universal.

I have the 3 AM jitters, rapid heartbeat, a breathless feeling, and a racing mind. The things that keep going around my head. I imagine that I'm writing a letter on adding machine tape inside my large fish box piece dedicated to William T. Wiley. I'm carrying on about this and that, my urge to thread the words together meld with my desire to ask him for a watercolor.

The imaginary letter goes something like this:

Dear Bill,

This is just to say, to borrow a line from the good Dr. William Carlos Williams, that I admire the work you've been doing lately as an antiwar protest. Our work's been in a few shows together. Your piece in Megabark with Jane Hirshfield's poem. Mine with Ann Faught.

Last year's valentine from the Sonoma State art show drew a lot of attention, and some of the crossover between painter and poet interest me because I was a painter and now I am a poet. A painter-poet.

I wanted to tell you for years I fantasized about writing to you, to ask you for a watercolor that you did of my grandmother's house. I'm sure you probably don't even remember it. It's a picture of a red house with a painted black crooked chimney surrounded by the hills above Baranca Road.

That painting of my grandmother's house is the family homestead. You may not know that she is the oldest settler in the Valley, she's 93. The former champion, the old Frenchman in San Geronimo, is dead.

I rode past your house a couple of weeks ago but no one's home. Probably the last time I rode past your house was when I was a child on donkeyback. No, it was on my horse.

I remember when the Raynes sold the house after she choked on a piece of steak and died. You moved in soon afterward and placed various bits of debris in the yard. I was coming from the fire trail from my usual ride. There's another house up there now, so I can no longer trespass—I didn't even remember where the road comes out anymore. But I remember the sweet sizzle of bugs. I used to think it was the grease brush singing in the heat of summer to the tortured rocks.

It was dusk, something new was visible in the crotch of the madrone. Something large and white like a ghost. I thought of Mrs. Raynes with her clipped English accent, how her horse turned up that road, sides heaving, flecks of foam on his chest, as he carried that fragile load of human flesh home.

I was terrified to go past the tree, forcing my horse closer. I thought perhaps it was a phosphor from the deadwood. So I sat outside your window on horseback and watched you in the kitchen preparing tea, until the fear subsided. I suppose I could've screamed but the horse was already nervous enough.

Once when I was coming home from second grade, we had afternoon session and I when got home around 5 PM, it at dark. The low winter light on the fallen tree trunks glowed as though ghosts were living in the limbs. I was afraid to walk home in the dark. No one believed me. And, worse, Billy Joe Bianchi laughed.

Years later he told me he went up there to see if it was true, but the trees didn't glow at night. The timing wasn't right.

As I came closer to the madrone, the apparition began to decode itself. I saw that you had placed the white Styrofoam torso of a woman in the blackened recess where the lip of the Cambrian layer eked out a dark smile.

That torso gleaming white in the winter dusk, transfixed me to the spot. I couldn't move, it follows me still. I see something white in the darkness out of the corner of my eye and when I look at it, I can see nothing.

This is why you have to look at the Andromeda Nebula or Orion's supernova shoulder, out of the corners of your eyes. The Pleiades are a blur when you view them had on. You can see more when you look indirectly. And that's also so with art too. Sublime.

And that torso trapped in the trunk of an old tree was like an escaped dream let loose in the dark woods at night. Signs of habitation, a new owner. The light from the kitchen window knocked against the darkness. From within the encircled garden below the kitchen, the clatter of deer antlers, as they lifted their heads to watch us pass.

2/7/86
added, rev. 9/17

Found poem from valentine candy hearts

Found poem from valentine candy hearts

Come closer

Don't be so sad

Dearheart

You send me
little kisses
and sweettalk

Come closer

I am getting better

Walking in the rain

I wish you would stop
teasing me

I won't tell you

I've got a secret

Come closer

Take me

Squeeze me tight

Why not say yes?
To each his own.

2/3/1986

MANTLE

           —for Bob Kaufman
              April 18, 1925 to Jan 12, 1986

News travels slowly.
In the time it took God to make the earth
you died and a voice fell from the sky.
I've been looking for you
in each bent and ragged head
of those stumbling down Telegraph,
of those ranting in Brautigan Square,
of those who live in Market Street doorways.
They say Lenin's legs were blackened
when the shroud slipped off.
I saw the map of death on your face
as you wandered the outskirts of your city.
The same map in my mother's eyes
and in the faces of those in the streets
who followed me even in sleep
but who held my hand in the dark?

A crowd laughed at the screaming woman
whose hands beat against our car window
as a man dragged her into an alley.
Another woman, still drunk, comes over
and complains of lost car keys and stolen children.
And in that order.
The sky caught fire
and seven astronauts were swallowed
by a blue-mantled snail.
Film makers converge upon us,
their eyes taking in odd angles of light.
It's like watching Kennedy shot over and over
with Jackie piecing together bits of skull and memory
with ineffective hands.

Bees carry the skull of night back into the hive.
The dead have taken to scratching poems on the water.
Even if we scatter your ashes to the wind for ten years
and listen for lyrical translations from the other side
it still won't cleanse this place.
Ten years of silence is buried.
We had a vision but the map is lost.
Who will collect the messages?
We confuse pinholes of light
leaking from rotted buckets
for the ancient rain of stars.
In my dreams they are coming and the door won't lock.

While in exile, lean closer to the sun.
Become birdlike
until you land spread-eagled
on this bone of the word
and in this endless blue
your flexing soul
will be the sound deep space sings.

2/2/86      


1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1987 San Francisco Bay Guardian, 2nd Prize
         Thread Winding the Loom CPITS

MANTO                                                                        

                                    —para Bob Kaufman

Las noticias viajan lentamente.

En el tiempo que le tomo a dios hacer la tierra

moriste y una voz cayo del cielo.

Te he buscado en cada cabeza agachada y harapienta

de los que tropiezan por la avenida Telegraph

de los que viven erl los zaguanes de la calle Market.

Dicein que 1as piernas de Lenin se ennegrecieron

cuando se deslizó el ataúd.

Vi el mapa de la muerte en tu cara

mientras vagabas por las afueras de tu ciudad.

El mismo mapa en los ojos de mi madre

y en las caras de aquellos en la calle

que me seguían incluso en el sueño

pero ¿quién me cogió la mano en la oscuridad?

La muchedumbre se rió de la mujer gritona

cuyas manos golpedban nuestro parabrisas

mientras un hombre la arrastraba hacia un callejón.

Otra mujer, todavía borracha, viene para

quejarse de las llaves perdidas y los niños robados.

El cielo se encendió y siete astronautas fueron tragados

por un caracol de mano azul.

Cineastes convergen sobre nosotros

sus ojos toman originales ángulos de luz .

Es como mirar a Kennedy tiroteado una y otra vez

mientras Jackie junta pedazos de la calavera

y la memoria con manos inefectivas.

Las abeias llevan la calavera de la noche a la colmena.

Los muertos ya están granando sus poemas en el agua.

Aunque esparéramos tus cenizas al viento por diez años

esperando traducciones líricas del otro lado

ni así se limpiaría este lugar.

Diez años de silencio están enterrados.

Teníamos una visión pero se perdió el mapa.

¿Quién reunirá los mensajes? Confundimos los agujeros de luz

goteando de las cubetas podridas

con la lluvia antigua de las estrellas.

Vienen en mis sueños y la puerta no se podrá cerrar.

En el destierro, inclínate al sol.

Hazte como pájaro

hasta que aterrices extendido en este hueso del mundo

en este azul sin  fin tu alma desdoblada

será el sonido que canta el espacio profundo.

2/2/86                        —traducción John Oliver Simon y Juvenal Acosta                                           

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

Dream journal How much yeast?

I have to wait to ask John how much yeast to put in the bucket. He has the yeast but then he'll ask me how much dough I want and I don't know that. This has something to do with my art piece. I need bread dough to complete it. How odd.

There were other dreams mostly process dreams all to do with trying to assemble pieces to complete a process. It seemed that it took a lot of work to gather all the pieces together and to remember what it was I wanted to do.

2/2/1986

CPITS Asilomar workshop,Word list freewrite

Fence sitting invariably leads to the center of the fire.

Universal truths are nothing but an ocean full of wind.

Laughter is the coinage of language.

Mountains arise from the depths of civilization.

If universal truths are nothing but an ocean full of wind, 

then fence sitting invariably leads to the center of the fire, 

and the mountains arise from the debris of civilization. 

It takes time (practice, patience, observation, a monk, truth, wisdom) 

to learn laughter is the coinage of language.

1/26/1986

At Peter Nabakov's cabin in the Carmel Highlands

John says that I sat up last night in my sleep and I said an eloquent, polished paragraph on why I was afraid. I do remember sitting up and what I said as being lucid and clear, but I can't remember what I said. John doesn't tell me.

I remember seeing the orange juice container in the semi darkness under the full moon and the color, like the edge of an oil pastel stick, seem to float right off the bottle and come out past me. That's when I leapt up and discoursed theories on this deep subconscious fear that I have. But what is it?

I remember talking about the universe, traveling to constellations, well etherized. John asked me if this fear had anything to do with relationships. I said yes and no.

Yes, a deep fear is surfacing, and yes I'm afraid of the outcome, because of my mother's madness. Logically, I know her insanity is not congenital, not inherited, but tell my psyche that. 

Was it because I wore pearls to bed? Ah, the moonlight on the trees. Distant sigh of the ocean.

The last time I was in Monterey I was with sweet old Bob, an ex-boyfriend. Being here again with John has loosened some of those fears from their moorings. 

January 24, 1986

CPITS workshops Asilomar, freewrites

The magician of the North
pointed past
the industrious planets
snapping in a hungry rage.

1/24/1986 Asilomar
from word cards
workshops with JOS and MH


during the steep night
the owl shift seasons with the moon
the ruddy sky seems to slip up
from the western faces of the equinox
when can we pass this way again
calling out names like cattle
in sunlit meadows
tearing at grass
as if it were the last handhold
left on the sliding earth?

Who is this beast breathing beside me
like a long forgotten ancestor
coming up for recognition in the night
to give me new colors for dreams
to shake me from the cradle
where breathing came from beneath
the skin of the ocean?

1/24/1986

Pineapple

Sunlight surreptitiously
slips out to reveal the age of green.
Tattered cannibals
devour the darkness.
The beast arises from the swamp.
Dust beneath, dust above,
pale green blooms on leaves
like fragile green,
like a rough tongued cat
or a satisfied roundness
in the palm of the hand.

We need half moons
in symmetric repetitions.

Why so sweet
why so yellow
why so sun
why so moon?

Civilizations rise and fall
by the edge of this fruit.

1/24/1986


Under the banks of the river
silvered with the coinage of fish
Who can ask the gypsies how not to line
the edge of the moon?
Who sobs for untold fortunes
and greased lightning
to increase the weight of the sky?
Dreams crackle like freshly minted bills
hot off the press
rubbed between the palms

1/241986
Asilomar
sounds like it's another take on Tengo Dinero

Dream Notes & Fish Boxes

Dreams I haven't recorded

Last night I realized that the goddess of green light came to stand up my bed it wasn't just the dark menace. Once I saw myself there, I was no longer afraid.
When I put my hands out to touch her, they went through the grass green substance. I slept better the rest of the night.

That night, I realized I never told my dream self that I had sold my ponies in real life. That's why they never appeared in my dreams of horses. So many dreams of horses.
Sometimes I ride them
Sometimes I can't find them
Sometimes they die in my dreams

I dreamt my horse dropped out from under me, having pushed himself too hard, and he died. I was afraid to tell the doctor who owns a horse, that I had killed him, because I didn't pull him up to rest, as we went to the top of the hill to the spring.

John says write your dreams always – they hold the keys. I've done little writing other than revision and art projects. It seems hard to write poems when I am revising or making art.

I've been making fish boxes out of Morilla Board watercolor paper. Tropical fish rendered on cubes suspended from fishing line from the ceiling. So far, I have five boxes. The turn in the breeze and remind me of the sea.

I also made two valentine fish heart postcards for the Sonoma State Valentine Art Auction, and signed them With love from the Tropic of Cancer. I scribed my poems on the surface like cuneiform. Years from now, someone will puzzle over it. (William Babula, the Dean of Humanities, bought it.)

I played around with poem and visual art with plastic typewriter ribbons. I took a red light bulb and wrapped it up in the Canon Typestar typewriter ribbon upon which I thad typed a poem of mine, Lighting the Electric Fire. You can unwind the ribbon and read it too. 

The second poem/art piece was Merwin's Inlet also typed on typewriter ribbon film wrapped around a broken conch shell. 

The third typewriter ribbon piece, Ascent of Man, was wrapped around the bleached leg bone of a cow. I hung all three pieces from the ceiling like a mobile. The ribbon was like a black mummy shroud. 

I don't know the significance of it all, but it pleases me to see the poems on the plastic tape. Something that would otherwise be discarded.

January 21 1986