ON TURNING 35 IN CABO

On turning 35 in Cabo, I reflect back.

In this life, I've stood on pahoehoe and aa,

new lava at the crater of Kilauea, steam forests and ferns.

I've watched the sunset from Haleakala,
a volcano that rises 30,000 feet above the sea floor.

I've seen the tongue of the ocean from the air,
swam in the Caribbean where a shark followed me home.

The aurora borealis glowed, but I didn't understand
northern latitudes when the sun set at midnight.

At the end of California, El Arco,
I watched frigate birds with 8 foot wingspans soar overhead.
I walked in rain forests of Kauaii and the Olympic Peninsula.

From Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain
in the continental US, I witnessed a forest fire.

I stood barefoot at Badwater, 282 feet below sea level,
and I followed worn trails in the salt flats
to hidden streams where pupfish from an earlier sea
still swim.

It took me 20 years to get to Tenochitlán,
the ancient lakebed of Mexico City,
And in the Yucatán, I climbed the pyramids
and crawled inside El Caracól, the observatory
during the winter solstice. The sun danced.

I rode to the stars while on ether, farther than
the combined distance of all my horses.

In Switzerland I climbed the Jungfrau,
rode the highest cog railway in the world
to crawl inside a crevasse in the glacier
to see the layers of ice and striations of every blue imaginable.

At the Columbia Ice Fields, I listened to the growl and hiss
of the great wall of ice that created its own cloud system.

I bathed in the Skeena River on an Indian reservation
where the glacial river numbed my skull til it cracked.

A week in the Sierras, a black bear slept on me,
I was too tired to get up and run. Probably saved my life.

I stood on the lips of Glacier Peak
and Half Dome without a rope or harness.

Half Dome I climb twice because
I forgot what it was like the first time.

At Loch Ness I didn't see Nessie
but I crawled through a dungeon in an abbey.

I had tea with the governor's wife in the Bahamas.

I didn't know that when Taikaido drummers danced
my relationship was about to end
but it took me two years to find out.

My first abortion at 24, my second at 27.
I meddled with nature, paid the price, lost the men,
stayed sick for two years, kidneys, uterus,
then a whiplash. My body weakened. My knee tore.

It took me eight years before I could ski again.

I rode an Icelandic pony called Helgar,
fiercely primitive, like a Celtic pony.

The fossils of clam shells in Central Valley cliffs
convinced me of an inland sea, but at 10,000 feet,
there are freshwater clams, how do you explain that,
or the reef fish in the sacred cenote well at Chichen Itza,
trapped miles from the sea, or hidden rivers.

The circle of candlewax in front of the stela at Cobá,
With the odor of sacred copal we welcomed the New Year.

We saw he two cuatemundis cross the road,
we ran over another one that night,
running over an endangered species.
Third time's a charm. I won't mention the turtle steak.

I saw the edge of night, the bell curve of the earth,
I saw stars and a daytime sky all at once,
sunset from an airplane flying over the North Pole.

From the air, the rift of the Grand Canyon
looked like a vast crack in the earth.

At Tikal, the temple of the Jaguar,
the howler monkey kept hidden in the canopy of trees.

Soldiers stopped our car searching for undesirables,
800 peasants have disappeared in Chiapas.

All for agrarian reform.
In downtown Mexico City, armed guards
in bulletproof vests direct traffic.

And the blood that didn't come with the moon
and the question rises once again.
The end of another relationship.
Few couples can survive the guilt.
Until I return home, I won't know if the slow bleeding
is a sign of division or multiplication.

Guerillas hide in the forests of Tikal,
the Indians, stoic in the face of soldiers,
On the Harmonic Convergence,
we celebrated at the Mayan church of Chamula,
all these roads less traveled,
but the universe unraveled....

November 24/1987
Cabo San Lucas
It looks like a page and the ending was lost, I found this in my sketchpad.
added 10.16 minor revisions.

Andes Dream Sequence

ANDES DREAM SEQUENCE

We had almost missed the walruses who put in a sudden, rare, unexpected appearance, beached and shining like seals. We mistook them for seals until someone pointed out the glint of enormous tusks, like horns. They weren't quite like walruses. They became seals too.

I galloped my pony down to the creek but there were only some loose sheep trotting and browsing under the trees. I had some trouble with his gear. The places of this dream world are like home only grander, wilder.

At first I mistook them for familiar places. There is fear, death, creativity, flying, the horses we ride—everything is magnificent. The very weather is a force to be reckoned with. The large volcanic peak rises up thousands of feet above the sea. We took an overland short-cut over the summit of the mountain to the bay.

The road or path with its many gates and switchbacks is a bright red zigzagging gash, like warpaint against the pale green chapparal and mist-covered grasses. It faces west.

We passed between twin volcanic peaks--cones covered with bright red dirt and strange plants. Bromeliads. Sometime we'd take strenuous hikes to the top just to see the silver glimmer of the sea and the distant specks of islands and the coast. It was as if the sky were a huge inverted bowl and the islands reached up the sides until they seemed almost eye level with the mountain we were on.

We returned home to reconnoiter and pack for the journey. A young woman on horseback with a chestnut filly on a lead, galloped north up the box canyon. The filly's tiny hooves clattered on the gray cobbles. The coolness of stones like water, the secret spots sun-warmed beneath our feet. I yelled at her for galloping on pavement but she didn’t hear.

There were many people who came and went in the dream. Some were like family, others were like long lost friends. Some we never saw again. Our walrus hunting party contained a collection of beings who drifted in and out. Some were constant companions like the Siamese cat perched on my backpack. He was a scout, with his cheek rubbing the back of my neck. He'd confide in me, telling me the best trail to take. Any wrong trail would loose us the chance to follow the walrus.

We reached the shore uneventfully and began to climb a steep ridge to the south. I seem preoccupied with direction in this dream. The early morning sun was to my left shoulder and the receding shadows to the west quickly crawled into their lairs to hide from the day. At dusk they crawled quickly west but the sun was an inexorable task master.

We know they reach those distant shores because we have dreams and are able to walk upon this landscape again and again. My psyche is very much tied to this place. I live in another place. Perhaps even in another time. It is an extraordinary world like through the eyes of a child with the memory of an adult.

All this time we were hurrying at breakneck speed toward the world like runaway trains. The clatter of wheels. Steel rails humming and screeching. Breathless. Vanishing point of tracks in the distance.

Each evening at sunset I feel the loss of something unnamable. Twilight. Anything can happen then. Perhaps this is why my grandmother chose to die dreaming towards evening-- the hour when long shadows form a bridge between the islands. New moon with its silver crescent resting on the tops of trees.

The cat guide was making sure we didn't wind up in another place, or we'd lose the thread of this dream. The trail up the ridge was extraordinarily steep. I would look up to the skies trying to follow the progression of the trail.

An occasional hiker above us like a small dot, gave me some idea of scale. We climbed those ridges in search of those walruses—they were more akin to narwhals and unicorns than walruses. The ridge was steep, nearly a sheer drop into the turquoise sea.

The mountains are volcanic, scoured by glaciers in some cases. But the sea is bright turquoise blue. Tropical water like Big Sur or Hawaii. Not northern water. Odd. I stopped to rest, lying with my face buried in the close cropped dew-soaked grass because the Siamese cat was whimpering. I thought he might be thirsty, or needed to pee. Or was even a bit motion sick.

His head would bob and sway, his blue eyes narrowed to slits, fixed on some distant horizon. His mind (such as it is) intent on keeping the horizon in place. We stopped on a narrow ledge. He said, you didn't even invite me to the ocean. You left me here, alone, worried." I said, "cat, I remember how much you hated the sauna. How miserable you were with your fur coat while we sweated and laughed. Some things a cat can't do because he is a cat." He sighed and said, "perhaps I'll enjoy snorkeling. At least invite me."

We could see shapes in the water. Shadows of whales and seals. I said, "can we continue our conversation in a safer place? I want to take a photo first. Could you move the backpack up a bit where it's safer and not in the picture?" He dragged the pack off the trail and he turned into a slender furry young man, his graceful markings elongating his legs.

I fumbled with my camera. At the top, we forgot the conversation. He was just a cat again. At the crest was a mountain hostel/hut of stone. Perhaps a former fort or bunker, ancient reminder of when there were terrible wars. The scars on the hill have long since healed.

A tall, gray-headed man hummed louder and louder until the hall was filled with the resonance of rubbed crystal glass. Someone spoke. I made an outrageous pun about poets. A woman who looked like Sara was there laughing. leaving my backpack on the bed with the cat, I grabbed my camera and ran down the corridor leaping into the air until I flew, feet first wobbling a little out of control because my coat I'd found on the trail was flapping out behind me like a cavernous black bird trying to fly the other way.

There was the ever-present danger of falling off the cliffs. In fact, during most of this dream I was having to be extra careful because I was afraid of slipping off the edge. It was like Switzerland at sea level. People were there from other countries. Canada, I think. Lots of accents.

It was as if the clock had been turned back to the migrations of the 60's and 70's when we all traveled without fear. Women were dressed in full skirts like the peasants of the middle ages. They had red prayer rugs among their sleeping gear. They sat in alpine meadows as if they were outdoor living rooms. I was amazed by their casual use of something so valuable as a rug to go trekking.

The rain, or a thief might ruin all this loveliness. When the rugs were spread out against the pale winter grass it was lovely. The women left their possessions freely scattered about. It was difficult to tell the difference between someone's personal belongings from those who had already left—who no longer needing them, leaving them as a gift for those yet to come.

I wanted to gather up all those rugs (mantas?) and take them home. I found a small fragment of material, a rug so worn, a weft of daylight was sewn through it. The steep hillside meadows glimmered like the green of the Guatemalan highlands. On a crag, at the crest, for warmth, I used the greatcoat of heavy wool—the color was of distant forests so full of green they appear black. It was like trying to name the deep blue of nightfall before the stars pierce it through.

For the lava tunnels, I found a Duracell flashlight. Black and orange with AA batteries. We practiced leaping and flying through the tunnels that opened to the north. I think the cat wanted to join us. This time I remembered to invite him. He was appreciative and bounded along in that silly rocking horse way of cats.

Later, we went to observe the southern ocean on the other side of the terraced cliff. I was amazed by the steepness of the hill. Even the trail sloped downward enough to keep us walking deliberate and careful. The point jutted out enough to make a shallow cove protected from the northerly winds.

The mammoth flukes of a whale rose up and silently slipped into the sea without a sound. Dolphins and seals everywhere. Fumbling for a shot, I nearly drop my camera. A lone rust-colored submarine (or sunken ship?) devoid of crew, drifted in the turquoise waters like a phantom ship. We hear familiar gurgles, groans and clicks. Did they come from some Argentinean shore or were they all dead inside, their bones entombed in the hull of a floating iron ship never released from their journey?

rev 11/7/87
This was dreamt and written down before I knew I was going to South America, or the Galapagos

WILD CANARY

The cat dragged in a wild canary, a finch really. Its tiny beak opening and closing. I rescue it, knowing it will die of shock but at least, it will be easier this way. Soon, he grows quiet in my hand and I know I will paint him for all those yellows and delicate tracings of white. And in this way he will live forever.

11 /7/1987 ? no date

(written at the same time as my weird walrus dream sequence piece)

added 9/15/2016

last line was added. I meant it, but never scribed it.

Letter to the editor, nuclear free zone, measure B, (need tear sheet & date)

Dear editor:

Q. How many cinnamons does it take to change a lightbulb? A. None. They just glow in the dark. I was under the impression that I lived in an enlightened county. Election results confirm Sonoma county voters are so “enlightened” they voted not to live in a nuclear free zone. Long live radiation! This is an oxymoron, but I don’t want to talk over some voters’ heads.

The opponents of Measure B were astoundingly well financed, and organized. News reporters duly noted this and commented that the well-heeled efforts of Measure B is responsible for its failure. Money still talks.

The two other nuclear free zone initiatives on the State Ballot passed with flying colors. In the city of Berkeley, “the home of nuclear research,” and in Marin County, two areas that will be economically affected by the measure, strongly supported the advocacy of a nuclear free zone. 

Remember Chernobyl? It wasn’t that long ago. How many of you were just a teensy bit nervous about all those isotopes? A nuclear accident can’t happen here, you say? Ever follow a speeding trucker, carrying radioactive “waste “down the freeway? I have. Ever drive up to the Geysers… You know, that winding one-lane semi-paved stage coach road with hairpin turns, only to meet a careening truck also carrying radioactive material? Geyser officials assured me that radioactive drill bits were perfectly safe, but I couldn’t help but notice the stream and the water coming out of the well site.

How many of the voters who voted not to live in a nuclear free zone considered who the backers of No on Measure B were? Silicon Valley and Star Wars clone corporations obviously have big plans for us. Growth. And I’m not just talking population growth. We won’t need lightbulbs anymore. We’ll just glow in the dark! Or better yet, throw all the lightbulbs in the river after Silicon Valley North has another little spill. Then we won’t need headlights to drive in the dark. I have a great idea: move all the corporations and supporters who want to live in a nuclear zone to Kiev and leave the lightbulbs at home and don’t forget your iodine pills.

Cazadero benefit poetry reading for the Cazadero Academy (art)

10/18  Cazadero benefit poetry reading for the Cazadero Academy.

Readers include myself, Mike Tuggle, Susan Kennedy, John Oliver Simon, Richard Garcia, Pam Singer, and Stephen Torre. Not everybody was on the flyer. It turned into a marathon. Bill Witherup, Michael Syles, Jim Dodge.

I very much like Stephen Torre's work. I think he would make a good guest artist for my CAC project. This poem about logging on the Navarro River is incredible. He's the lumberjack I was looking for.

87 or 88?

There is so Much We Save from Childhood

Stephanie's mother died in the fire. A beam caught her on the forehead. She fell behind the door and Joe Bianchi never saw her until it was too late. They said the smoke killed her. They later blamed a faulty wire from a clothes drier, they blamed her drinking.

Smoke rose up like a thick black dragon snake to the empty blue sky as we walked through the fields from the bus stop. We were home from school. When he saw the source of the smoke, her brother Eric darted towards the house and the adults came running out from all sides trying to head us off but we were errant calves headed toward the barn, toward the burning light.

Steph and I stood by the corral trying to find a way to comprehend what we couldn't understand. I was almost ten. The oldest one. I held her hand. We retreated to the lower field and watched the flames eat the sky.

In the glistening cinders, we found a dog-eared photograph, an armless doll, the bent tricycle wheel, some hair tied with a grubby ribbon the color of rust and baby roses. Johanna's childhood toy horses covered with real fur and had real manes and tails that were miraculously unharmed. We indiscriminately admired the beauty of charcoal and emerald green sprouts of winter grass amid the rusted nails and glass rubble.

The end of a life, of an era. Of childhood. No more late afternoons, where we dozed off, bees buzzing to Brahm's Lullaby, when sonorous sleep blanketed the eye with the pale light of summer. The familiar gesture of a stranger, the face of a father. Not my own.

When we were impatient to grow up. Her father said, Stay children always. Stay young. His spaniel voice hung mournfully from our ears as we played. Stephanie listened and found that if she quit feeling, quit eating, Time stood still. While I hid the shame of my hunger, she denied its existence. She had climbed up out of this carnal world to a higher plane of existence. She left no ladder for me to follow.

One morning, Les placed the sick lab puppy with the blue tongue and cold feet on the oak stump to ripen in the winter sun. Its tender black ears like velvet moleskin gathered in no sound as the hatchet bit into the oak. We suspected the worst.

Somehow we got through it. We placed one foot in front of the other. As one foot lifted from the earth, we compensated for the earth's pull. We developed a trust for the way our feet brushed the surface and though we tottered on stilts always falling forward or backward, we caught ourselves at each step.

I have a vague memory of my own father asleep with his head on my mother's lap. She stroked his hair, the ocean pounded and the windows covered with spume.

When Stephanie's mother Johanna rode Binty, she let down her long black hair, a night waterfall. Binty pricked up her ears and tail, gathered in her haunches and leaped from the earth to fly up the driveway. She was no longer of this earthly plane with that precious cargo on her back.

And Binty's sister, Sununu, the red Arabian swallow, whinnied out a welcome as if her heart were about to burst.

Gravel scuttled in all directions, like our childhood.

Stephanie confided in me that her mother was a Russian translator for the United Nations. Johanna majored in Slavic languages at UC Berkeley. She was being watched by the government. We overheard words like McCarthy and FBI. Mimi spoke little English. Devuchka, she'd say.

Speaking the language of the enemy was enough to condemn a person during the purges. This I learned later. Hellman. Hammett taking the Fifth. Red diaper baby! It became a dream to go to Russia because of Johanna but I never rode troikas in the snow.

Astride Binty, Stephanie's thin legs barely reached half-way to the mare's sides. Binty knew the weight of the rider was not of Johanna, so she ran us into the sides of barns, and off cliffs to rid us of the memory.

Soon no one but Steph would ride her. Whether by grief or boredom, Binty began to chew on the barn. First the manger disappeared, then the stalls, soon the barn was as hollow as our hearts.

Binty turned white with age. Stephanie got married, moved away to the desert, got thin after the children were born, it was as if the Arizona sun sucked all the moisture from her bones. Later the cancer would come and drink the marrow from her bones but on some level, Steph was already gone.

They said Binty died with a splinter in her throat from chewing on too many fences. She'd eaten most of the barn with her nervous cribbing. They tried everything to make her stop. Creosote, electric fences, but she chewed that wood as if she was trying to devour every last molecule of scent from her lost mistress.

Johanna no longer needed watching. But sometimes Binty would raise her tail like a banner and run in the pasture as if Johanna were astride.

Stephanie and her two brothers moved into their grandmother Mimi's house at the foot of the road. We made daily pilgrimages past the charred house to feed the horses. Scoured, blackened wood glistening in the rain-heavy grass mesmerized us with its jewel-like splendor.

Perhaps it was because we were both raised by grandmothers, my mother was alive but not present, or because we born a year and two days apart, we were psychic twins.

I remember Johanna so clearly. In spring, she drove us the long way to the store. Sometimes we took the low road to Forest Knolls or the back road around Mt. Barnabe to Olema. As she pointed to Bolinas Ridge, the dark green oldsmobile gently nosed into the stonecrop-covered cliff for a closer look.

Next spring, I took Johanna's name for my conformation name. When it was my turn to approach the Bishop, I solemnly marched up to the altar and kissed his alexandrite ring, but he stopped and said it wasn't a Christian saint's name. He said he couldn't confirm me. The music stopped. Mortified, I replied I didn't care. She was someone I loved. My best friend's mother. She was with grace.

He asked, Would I take Jane? NO. I was so frightened I nearly peed myself but I didn't waver, though it meant excommunication. Eyes of the church upon me. The horrified nuns buzzed in each other's ears, they came up with a solution, and put Joanne, a diminutive Joan of Arc, on my certificate.

Stephanie's horse, Gay Girl, the thoroughbred, didn't get up one winter morning. Steph's brother placed the muzzle of the rifle very carefully over her small white star. A part of our childhood disappeared, locked into memory, as close as kin, as close as air.

A rusted snaffle bit hangs on a nail inside the barn where the swallows gather cobwebs ladened with powdered hay dung. I can't bear to look at the ridge without remembering the way Johanna admired the view of the purple fringed hills and dark shadowy forests on the north slopes. This place, a refuge.

Poor Johanna, living in the country, trapped by domestic life, a brilliant mind, branded by fire. I never knew her maiden name. That day when the house burned to the ground, Stephanie and I became blood sisters, we both had open wounds.

© Maureen Hurley. A shorter version of this was printed in Creative Discourse, Petaluma, CA 1988.

Other horse bits

Horse chestnuts

Sitting Deep

Helgar the Horrible

The Little Shits

There is so Much We Save from Childhood

AFTER THE SOLSTICE, MACHU PICCHU 

WILD HORSES IN THE RAIN 

LATE HOUSEWARMING POEM TO WM.T.WILEY 

HORSES RUNNING THROUGH THE STREETS OF ZENIA AT NIGHT

Oahu’s red cardinals, Hawaii journal, 9/25/87

September 25,

Returning to Oahu was a time for watching the cardinals, those impossible northern birds of snow, hopping beneath the plumeria trees amid the scattered blossoms. Some with their gray bodies separated from the redheads by a white collar, so clerical.

I left for the tropics the week the pope visited San Francisco. Kathie and I walked along the beach dipping our legs into the aquamarine shade and we talked of possibilities and limitations.

A lone red cardinal hops at my feet in the midst of a sea of gray-frocked redheads. I try to imagine the sand as snow. These incongruous birds transplanted here because someone was homesick for dark Minnesota winters, and brought the birds here to the tropics where winter never comes.

Do they still have the urge to migrate? And where would they fly to, 5000 miles from shore? The Pope makes his journey up the California coast. My grandmother and aunt get as close as they can—the first time was when I was in Rome, my grandmother said. I have never been to Rome. If I were in California, I would probably protest his stand on AIDS, homosexuals, abortion, and the rights of women. This is where I stepped out of religion.

The Pope returns home and there is very little media coverage on his visit.

The plumerias on the crabgrass are browning at the edges under the tropical sun. It is near the equinox, the time of balance, when an egg will stand on its head for several minutes on end. One boy said his egg stood for 10 minutes before falling, but at 6:45 AM, I was asleep after a long night of fitfullness. And that small life inside making its presence known.

(abridged from a longer journal entry)

VOICE OF THE DEAD POET AT CITY HALL: FIRST SAN FRANCISCO ARTS COMMISSION FAIRE POETRY DAY IN HONOR OF BOB KAUFMAN

SF Arts Commission festival organizer, Allen Cohen 

VOICE OF THE DEAD POET AT CITY HALL
FIRST SAN FRANCISCO ARTS COMMISSION FAIRE POETRY DAY IN HONOR OF BOB KAUFMAN  (no tear sheet)

The small but steady crowd scattered amid the trees and sculpture gardens attended a day-long poetry event held in honor of the late poet Bob Kaufman in front of San Francisco City Hall, on Sept. 20. The event was designated as the first official Poetry Day at the San Francisco Arts Commission Festival "as an important step forward in recognition of the importance of poetry in our society," stated S.F.A.C. Festival Director Michael Bell, he continued, it's "…a milestone event." According to Poetry Day organizers Allen Cohen and Neeli Cherkovski, this was the first literary event ever sponsored by the Arts Commission in its 40 year history. A milestone event indeed.

Tributes to the acclaimed "American Rimbaud" and avant garde jazz poet Bob Kaufman who died January 12th, 1986 at the age of 60, included music, plays, and poetry. Saxophonist Richie Flores and playwright-biographer Mel Clay, who wrote Would You Wear My Eyes? a biography of Bob Kaufman, joined numerous luminous Bay Area poets including Janice Mirikitani, James Broughton, Jack Hirschman, John Oliver Simon, Kush, Julia Vinograd, Maureen Hurley, Jack Michelene, and Q.R. Hand—to name a few.

Kaufman's former wife of 26 years, Eileen Kaufman; and friend/companion Lynn Wildey both reminisced about Kaufman, and also read selections from his poetry.

Of the 16 poets who read at the Poetry Day Tribute, eight poets were winners from a juried poetry contest (I was one of those poets), and eight were chosen to represent a cross-section of San Francisco Bay Area ethnic communities for this first literary event, Michael Bell stated.

"The original BeBop Man," Kaufman, a legendary figure of San Francisco's "Beat Generation", was supposed to have coined the word "Beatnik." (Columnist Herb Caen made it a household word.) Kaufman was the first jazz-rap poet who brought the oral art of poetry to attention. His social political poetry "Second April," "Ancient Rain," and "The "Abomunist Manifesto" are considered to be among his finest writings.  Many of Kaufman's poems have jazzlike rhythms, riffs and synchopation he learned from the jazz greats—including Charlie "Bird" Parker.

Acclaimed in France as "THE  American Black Poet", Kaufman never received the poetic recognition he deserved in America. In France, his books are as avidly read as Rimbaud's, Kerouac's, Bukowski, or  Ginsberg's  poetry.  Because of the international recognition he has received, Bob was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1960 to continue his work, but failing physical and mental health had already taken its toll.

Always an outspoken critic,  Kaufman experienced many brutal confrontations with the police which he documented in "Jail Poems" and "Would You wear My Eyes?" Kaufman's explosive and elegant outpourings ignited the San Francisco "Beat" poetry scene.

Kaufman was one of the founders of Beatitude Magazine, now in its 33rd year.  Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and Kerouac were deeply influenced by his work. Kaufman published numerous broadsides and his three books, Golden Sardines, Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness, and Ancient Rain are still available through City Lights Books.

In 1963, after the assassination of J.F. Kennedy, Kaufman took a Buddhist vow of silence neither speaking nor writing for ten years until the Vietnam war ended.

...
Let the voices of the dead poets
Ring louder in your- ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries
Rising above the mushroom time.

—Bob Kaufman
    from "Believe, Believe."

On Sept. 20th, the stage in front of City Hall rang out with the words of "THE American Black Poet." The S.F.A.C. has made a first step forward in recognition of the importance of poetry in our society." Poetry Day should be an annual event. Will the S.F.A.C. continue to support literary events or will poets have to wait another 40 years to be heard?

SIDEBAR/PHOTO: A giant bar of Ivory soap carved into the likeness of the "Venus de Milo" by sculptor Art Grant and a roped-off section of grass sown with thousands of bullets representing our nuclear warheads, were some of the conceptual art pieces on display—suitingly surrealistic—for the event. Kaufman should have been there. It's too bad he had to die first in order to gain recognition as San Francisco's Poet. "Let the voices of the dead poets/ ring louder in your ears."

9/87

Journal, Enroute to Hawaii, Bearing Witness

Having returned from Guatemala, and unable to write about it, I depart for Hawaii and I marvel at the strange turn of events. I'm still on the road seven weeks later. This fast life and I'm not sure why the images won't come to me.

Yesterday, at the CPITS conference in Ben Lomond, I got a copy of American writers abroad edited by Carolyn Forché, from Tomi Nagai Roth, whom I know from the Napa Poetry Conference, and I haven't written about Dave Evans' death yet, or the one I am about to commit in two weeks.

And while reading prose, one of the things that struck me was that muteness is not singular. Carolyn Forché calls it "conscious preoccupation." It's as if (war correspondent) Harry's camera suddenly became too heavy to record yet another atrocity. 

My camera didn't record it all all those National Geographic shots of peasants being held at gunpoint, nor did it record them being quaintly ethnic either.

I didn't want to document this, become a witness, so that I, too could say I've been there. The shock value of the unreal postcards – somewhere between the two is what I wish to record. This muteness that lives inside me remembers much and I have to trust that it will all come out in poetry.

It's hard to find lyric images from the soldiers with Uzis stats who stopped the jeep for the third time in 6 miles, or when the women lying on the sidewalk in rags, hold up a gnarled hand for cambio, her milky eyes can no longer focus, from too much alcohol and abuse. Our bag ladies are quite yuppie by comparison.

Next to me, a man in uniform is reading a Star Trek novel while waiting for his flight. I wonder how many men he directs towards the war machine with his three color bars like so many Guatemalan belts. The title of his book is called Deep Domain. 

Two men discuss the existence of potential planets. One, an astronomer, complains of light pollution. The other sells airline insurance. I've been in so many planes the past few weeks I'm afraid the chances of being in the crash have increased. 

I can't forget those flaming horses falling from the sky in Mexico City when the Belize cargo plane crashed. I can't help but think of the irony of those six legged gods conquering the Indios one more time. 42 dead. All this numbs one.

I am preoccupied by what I have seen to the point of muteness. How can I begin to write these things? Also, the knowledge of what I already know to be true, I bring to my writing. Bearing witness.

The soldiers have Uzis, they got them from Israel, with US money to make those weapons. Therefore the US is offering military aid to them, albeit indirectly. 

This also means that guerillas have AK-47s because of the nature of the war beast. I don't know what AK-47s look like. I know that the guerillas of El Salvador and Nicaragua are armed with AK-47s. And I assume that they are Russian guns. I dont' want this knowledge in my head. But I can't unlearn it.

After two weeks ranging fires, the air is finally clearing a bit. The sun was a red ball in the gray sky. On August 30, 15,000 lightning strikes lit 1300 fires. Most of the northern state is on fire. The moon is filled with dragon blood at night. This smoke blends in with the night sky. The stars are imperceptibly less visible.

I amuse myself with scientific metaphors. How to demonstrate gravity with a bucket of water and a rope swinging it overhead.

Or how to demonstrate how a black hole can swallow light. Inconceivable to me until I remember learning how to go into a fast spin on ice skates, one leg at an angle helps to gather speed putting me into an orbit, then lifting it off the ice, drawing it in at a right angle, along with my arms, closer to my body, until the spin becomes a blur. 

It's so hard to hold oneself in. The centrifugal force wants to pull your limbs back out and slow the speed in which you spin.

An imploding star condenses, becomes heavier like the ice skates— PSI. Spin faster than the speed of light so that nothing escapes. Like these events that frame our lives, the actions, louder than words. We are not in control of our destiny after all.

9/14/1987

In November, John broke up with me, leaving me desolate.

Journal returning from Mexico and Guatemala

I'm back from Mexico and Guatemala, and I'm plagued by bad dreams. The red light of the digital clock becomes a fire burning at the top of the temple of the Jaguar at Tikal.

I have a hard time convincing myself that I'm home again. Reverse culture shock. I wake up, not knowing where I am, or who I am. The feeling of utter desolateness doesn't leave me. The soldiers with their Uzis continue to patrol my the perimiter of my dreams.

Meanwhile, thousands of forest fires burn in Northern California. The sun is a red ball in a gray sky, an angry eye in the temple.

9/9/1987

HIDDEN LOGIC (Random Access)

1. Why it took so long to leave and get back

bears testament to the tenacity of astronomers

racing for a mystery, who worry over a rare look

at the Milky Way's inner secrets, and like clairvoyants,

they focus on the trivial magic of a planet

nursery, or the one that got away.

We may solve or witness the speed of morning light

as we board the remains of a ship

to watch the future play itself out like a giant harp.

Inside a comet's tail 500 light years away,

the notion of comprehensive life may be a lark.

Man seems destined to serve time

somewhere for his rapacity.

Who wants to halt the sale of front row seats

for a chance to win an emerald mine in guerilla territory?

Bring out the lions. Little remains of the next frontier.

When taking chances, strike for sleep or death.

It is the same thing as building worlds of crystal.

And who hasn't entertained ideas

of having taken Paris by storm

or wishing they'd slept on a train

New Orleans bound, or finding

a passage home for sunken ships

from the Bermuda Triangle?

They still seem like good ideas.

When there was a glove shortage in Hollywood

we collected shadows, stray bullets, laundry lists,

and talked of strange events like Einstein's Theory

or nude girls who start riots at airpoirts.

At the movies, it's not the woman with the golden

irrisistable charm who gets the last laugh.

The latest news of breast reduction strips us bare.

There are other secret lists.

We leave our notion of beauty and call

it everything but imperialism.

2. After a night in a hollow tree struck by lightning,

it hurt to feel my dream, a prisoner

of the morning cup of coffee,

yet you save your life by

sampling the farm-raised local delicacies.

Puberty arrived before the mail in Paris.

You'd better find another way out of the country

or face false charges for smuggling

opium-filled artifacts.

Democracy leads rebels to their deaths.

One slip could decide the manner

in which you live or die. Ask the Rosenbergs.

How lovely, this green made for springtime.

In the creole tradition,

when talking with the dead, remember

voodoo priestess send messages

with more compassion than magic

and it is good because laughter

is a sign of forgiveness.

Beneath the sea, rain disrupts the promise

of spring, and in the form of singing fish,

the dead roar back to life, finding a passage

that lures the curious like distant memories.

The world's hidden logic is another aspect

of Carnival and the infinite possibility

of an inquiring mind is riding high

on the blues in overtime

because there are patterns for everything.

Sept. 1987? 88?
If Wofitbuta, then September, 87?
original is dot matrix.

part 2, new poem?
see RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY outake

Mexico City – Enroute to the Airport

A young man (a joven) in a blue lab coat, bloodied, and smeared, gazes out the back of the meat truck  driving down the Malecón, the ribs of the butchered cow, like a bloodied harp, playing at the strings of war.

9/1987? 88?

Dave Evans poem, Perspective, calligraphy

Mexico Journal: Aug. 31, Elsa Cross, Mexico City

August 31, 1987

Comida at Elsa Cross's home. Elsa, Alberto Blanco, and Sandra Cohen are working on John's latest book. Discussion leads to the maldito artists, the bad ones who write good books. Neruda, Pound Dalí, Melville. I've just written a very wicked book and I feel clean as snow.

We leave for home in a few hours, loaded up with John's boxes of books, from the International Mexican Poetry Festival, which was fairly conservative.

Last night John knocked on the door and we talked most of the night as we did on the first night that we had arrived here. We were jockeying for position on both sides. He thought we had reconciled and I thought we were off. So finally, a slow reconciliation. And we fall into an uneasy sleep under the moon, perhaps reconciliation will come in the morning.

This is the last page of this notebook. I hate to end it on reconciliation. I hate to use all the pages of my notebooks, and this is probably the first time it's happened. I began this journal last day of December and at completed it on the last day of August. There are many lapses in between, a record of the rocky months between us, and yet we persevere.

Mexico Journal: Aug. 30, Elsa Cross, Mexico City

Elsa said she liked my work very much. Gloria, also. I'm pleased and surprised that they've even read my work. Jorge Luján will present his third espectaculo in November at the Book Faire in Mexico City, our work set to music. I wish I could be there to hear and see it.

When Lordes sang Horseflesh, my poem to John, I was moved beyond words. She sang so effortlessly. We attended her solo performance at the National Palace last night. She is not only really good, she is fantastic.

Elsa and I talked of the writing process and we discovered that men tend to write daily while women write in spurts. Whenever we can. Being a poet is more than just writing poems, it's the other living that we do that we must bring to our work. Because there is a long time between poems, I feel guilty. I'm not a poet…

Elsa said her first husband wrote two or three poems a day, and she felt she was not a poet. Elsa Cross! I feel all these lines churning in me, a month's worth of images, but what I want to say, I have no idea, it hasn't distilled yet.

---

The other night, in my tirade against the Ladino culture, comparing it to the US, I noted how they've taken our bad habits and made them their own: the drunk in the street, the greasy Guatemalan or Mexican ogling, molesting women, the use of banned herbicide, the salesman on the plane selling 24D to the Guatemalan peasants so their corn will be pest free. But he doesn't tell them their children will have birth defects.

We are poisoning the earth in the name of progress. Why can't there be potable water here? Why do they accept so much filth? The bathrooms in even the upscale restaurants, can only be imagined. It isn't just the poverty, and there's plenty of it, it's an attitude towards the personal self, and the global environment, that sets my teeth on edge.

I accused John of being in love with this Ladino culture that is so shortsighted. He's defensive, taken aback, but I sent him to thinking, challenging him. His poem Poison, broaches the subject

All this street sweeping of ancient men with brooms made of branches, all this rain, it pours out of summer skies, flooding the streets, but it won't scrub the centuries of grime and oppression from this city. Every city is covered with the same carbon and diesel soot, the difference between Guatemala and Mexico is in name only.

The same peasants move to the outskirts, outwaiting the weather, hoping to seek a better life. Yet death comes anyway in corrugated tin and plastic shantytowns that grow like a malignant fungus on the outskirts of the city. But life is surely better than being dirt poor in the campo. Cambio, is change in both senses of the word.

I use the price of a cup of coffee to keep things in perspective.

The price of 4 cups of coffee buys the time of two maids for four hours. A movie cost less than a cup. The woman who owns the largest coffee finca in Antigua, runs a bookshop.

When we come to this place, open armed, bearing books, the natives treasure them, making a pleased fuss. John says our job as poets is to report back to the gringos our observations. As Carolyn Forché told us, bearing witness. Full circle.

In the taxi, there was a commercial for Laguna Verde, Mexico's first atomic plant, scheduled to go online in September. It spews out facts: the safety and the cleanliness of nuclear energy. I tell Gloria Novio of the huge sponges growing off the Farallone Islands mutated by radioactivity.

I imagine Mexico disposing of radioactive wastes in the local basurera, the garbage pit. I can't imagine them disposing of it properly. There is no proper way. They can't even clean up their own gas crisis, the smog in Mexico City is incredible. And it isn't even necessary.

The excuse is always a lack of money, or the money that never comes trickling down to where it's needed. The fat-cats claiming at all. That's why there are no toilet seats in the public bathrooms, nor toilet paper. Priorities: wipe your ass with newsprint, use yellow journalism journalism, put it to good use.

I was appalled by how the natives of Tikal lived. The outhouses are alive with flies, the single room partitions with thin wood and blankets divided into sleeping compartments, mosquito netting over the beds. At a low white table, an old man puts the finishing touches on his morning shave, and steps out of his hovel, looking for fresh and wholesome. Such contrasts.

My period is days late, it comes slowly, one months to the date. I'm afraid of being pregnant. If I have the kid I raise it alone. If I have the abortion I'll probably break up with John. Either way, I lose.

The women here just have babies, they don't have the agony of choice. I state that I don't want to raise a child alone. It's an unacceptable alternative. John tries to place as much distance as possible between his responsibilities, the idea of me having a baby is too threatening for him, and to his daughter. He claims first loyalty to his daughter, and is jealous of that role.

The women here just have babies. If the water were potable, if there was enough food, if they'd quit destroying the jungle, the birthrate would soar. Eliminate disease, the population explodes. But it's exploding anyway, why not to improve the quality of life?

Some of the Indians don't understand why we have spent all our money to visit all those remote villages. Others assume we are all rich and deserve to be ripped off. How can I explain the concept of rent? Jorge's three-bedroom apartment cost $65 a month. John's cottage, at $600 a month?

In the US, the cost of a cup of coffee is 15 times that of Mexico. I think of all those coffee bushes growing under the jungle canopy, some of the berries are turning red now. Cherry coffee ready to pick. What are a day's wages for a coffee picker in relation to the price of a cup of coffee in the US?

Coming from the jungles of Tikal to Mexico City in the same day, at 7000 feet, I get a head cold and can barely understand Spanish. My English is broken too.

People here sell sweets, and newspaper on the streets. We're all sitting targets at red lights. People here are not unemployed, just chronically underemployed. How many chicles does a little girl have to sell just to break even? When does she still have to sell enough to help feed her family? While she's working the stoplights, others more fortunate than her attends school. Later she will discover it's more lucrative to sell herself at the red lights.

There are 20 million chalangos living in this underbelly of the world. In less than a century, the lake has long since dried up and and now the only the remnants of the lake are in the city sewers. Downtown, at the Zocalo, one can see the same level of water throughout all the grates, and some of the sunken, flooded buildings.

Most of the sidewalks have healed themselves since the 1986 earthquake, but the buildings look as if a giant hand had pushed them off-center. It makes one giddy trying to decide which is level, the buildings or the sewers? The answer is the sewers. Under the streets of Mexico City, water seeks its own spirit level.

Mexico Journal, August 30, Sunday, Alberto Blanco's house, Mexico City

August 30, Sunday

We have a long cena at Alberto Blanco's house Elsa Cross, Jorge Luján, his wife, Rebbe, Gloria Givertz, etc. Such talent all in one room. I'm not sure I'll ever see them again.

Last night John did the sea-cucumber whole gut-spilling again, said he was looking forward to a two-month separation. This morning he was contrite, he says he does want to be with me.

I dreamt I was on a chair chain ladder, I was able to climb up it. But not down. John was at the top. There was no way to grasp the smooth surface without letting go of the chain. No transition to firm ground, terra firma to such lofty heights. John reached over to help me but began slipping in his rival persona, his alter ego rescued him. And he was resentful.

Always the dilemma of yes but no. There are two of him, two sides fighting, one on firm ground, the other on more treacherous ground, with me in the middle, with the most danger of falling. I stand the most to lose.

Tonight John wanted to make love. I said I didn't want to because we were separating for two months as agreed upon in Oaxaca, and it was easier this way for me. Apparently, he thought because he had redeclared his love, though amended, the arrangement was off, but he forgot to tell me that.

So I spent the day severing myself from him, I'm always hurt by his sea-cumbering, the repetition only serves to make me isolate and wall off the pain in the same manner as I do for my chronic neck and back pain. The cellular approach. How do I feel inside? I honestly don't know. The thought of separation is painful, but I'm also really tired of this routine. I'm less willing to put up with it.

He moves to the couch for the second night in a row. I don't sleep well either way. I want things more concrete. If he says separation, then let's do it, not use it as a morbid bait. I almost don't even want to commit the details to paper because it seems so counterproductive to be in this space again. Oh God, not again.

My last night in Mexico ends the same way my first night here began, in separate beds, with the threat or the idea of the impending breakup looming over our heads.

Guatemala Journal: 26 Aug., Tikal, Guatemala City

26 August

Guatemala airport, we're waiting to get out of here on standby. John bribes the airline ticket clerks. I sit atop a pile of luggage. The latest US invasion of Honduras has thrown the airport into chaos.

I can't believe how much we got screwed by Avioteca's travel agent, Señor Gamboa. He overcharged us for the hotels and the taxi we paid for, never came to pick us up.

John raised hell this morning. We got 80 quetzales back, that about covers the fraudulent taxes we paid. Their attitude is that we're all rich and we deserve to be ripped off. Not exactly great for the travel industry.

I forgot to mention the amazing toucans flying from tree to tree with their ridiculous rainbow striped banana shaped bills, or last nights dinner of venison, puerco, and some piglike animal, tepasquintle, it sounds like the Honduran capital that we didn't get to visit. I'm sure it was either a tapir or a large rodent (like agouti).

We're all a little weak need from the trots and various ailments. I slipped on the Flores dock with my sandals on slick wood, and my heavy backpack threw me off balance. At one point I barely managed to keep from falling over the rail into the lake at Petén.

I was cinched into my backpack with bellyband and breastband, wondering if I could unhook it in time, or drown trying. I'm about to fall overboard, and no one sees me, they'll wonder where I went off to. They'll never think to look in the dirty lake. I compromised and did the splits, landing on my operated knee. It's swelling, but I think it's okay. Better than the alternative.

The woman doctor drinking coffee in the airport, bandaged my knees. We talked of the troubles in the Petén. She said it's very dangerous there because of the soldiers. I couldn't quite get it correct, the language barrier. Anyway, it's a bit scary here and we're rocking the boat with this travel problem. What are we supposed to do? Smile when they rip us off because we're gringos? And we don't want to be disappeared?

The Indians or the Indios, have a stoic attitude "live for today "that's all they have to look forward to, is today. The now.

Guatemala City Aug 26 postcard

26 August. Guatemala City airport. Hi gang! Well, no one can say this hasn't been an eventful trip. The Guatemalan highlands are beautiful and the Indians are amazing. They are the most Mayan of all the tribes we've seen so far. The 20th century has landed softer here than in Mexico proper. But there is lots of racial tension between the Indios and the Ladinos. There are soldiers all over. Tikal is occupied by the Guatemalan Army. Roadblocks everywhere – soldiers with machine guns horsing around – some as young as 15 years old – themselves, Indians guarding the other Indians who have a stoic practiced calm attitude about them. The motto of "live for today" is all that they have. After of couple of exciting jungle adventures with the local travel, make that robbery industry, and the US invading Tegucigalpa, it's too hot. We decided we've had enough of Guatemala, and are trying to get out today on standby. My advice to future travelers is to avoid the cities: Antigua and Guatemala City have too much going on. The civil war is very present. The villages are wonderful, but the guerilla activity and the roadblocks are too unnerving. Too many people disappearing.

Guatemala Journal: Tikal (photos)

August 25 — Another Mayan mishap. Maya International Travel didn't pick us up from Tikal. If it weren't for Eric, a Frenchman with a Suzuki jeep, offering us a lift out of the jungle, we'd still be in Tikal waiting for a taxi that will never come.

We passed three or four roadblocks. The soldiers are more scary than the guerillas. And the Tikal guards were the worst. One flagged us down looking for subversives. Five gringos and way too much luggage piled up the roof of the jeep, there's no place to hide a guerilla.

We kept thinking about the Guatemalan archaeologist who was killed last week for running a red light. The police fired one warning shot and when she didn't stop, they open fire and killing her, and a lawyer friend. A stink was raised only because she was a prominent person.

The story of the two French girls comes back to me. The war here is very real. Eric is looking for his sister, a nurse who has disappeared. He fears the worst.

Two soldiers gather water from the alligator pond this morning in a huge 20 gallon aluminum pot. Ugh. Strain the water. A bush camp in the Tikal jungle, is a military training camp—halfway between Flores and Tikal.

The peasants and soldiers alike are constructing new palapas, new houses, or Mayan na. This raw jungle is new homestead land, they are relocating the peasants from the guerilla war zone.

All studied calm expression, the soldiers horseplay with their guns waving wildly at all of us. They are Uzis, that's how you can tell the difference between one group and another.

Another soldier casually points his gun at a the peasant lying on the ground. They too are Indios and everyone is so young. Children with guns.  The boy who flagged us down at the jungle roadblock, was no older than 16.

We hope we don't witness anything unusual for that would invite certain death.

Guatemala notes

We learn firsthand of the multinationals. Think Kraft, Wonder, Kentucky Fried. Monsanto invented 2–4 D, the pesticide that's killing the campesinos. The United Fruit Company has vast holdings in Guatemala. The stock market adds new meaning to the idea of a Banana Republic.

Then there's CIA intervention. With the help of the CIA (Operation PBSUCCESS), Guatemala fell back into the throes of dictatorship. And past direct military aid from the US, the UFC has kept them in power. The Bank of the Army is the largest bank in Guatemala.

The cutback began during the Carter era. Which changed the country's wealth.

An independent peace policy is not part of the US ballgame, like in Honduras. US support in the Petén jungle is anti-guerrilla. It has fallen to the role of the Armed Forces to resist the communist guerillas who have ties with Nicaragua and Cuba.

Prensa Libre, the anti-Nicaraguan columns, a conservative rag, and the FMLN in El Salvador, are enemies of the state. The elite class vs the farmers and the campesinos.

Missionaries in Oaxaca are converting the campesinos, in Antigua it's insidious. The evangelist take is all about hellfire and brimstone, domination, and Armageddon. Right wing religion is alive and well in Guatemala. Jehovah's Witnesses in Antigua, it's an imperialist takeover. The Catholic conservative liberal theology of upholding basic human rights has been completely subsumed. Washed in the blood of the lamb.

Evangelical protestants are extremely right wing. There is God, and there is politics. The premise of the evangelical movement: the Apocalypse is upon us. Ironically it really is upon us, thanks to the doings of Monsanto, the United Fruit Company and the Guatemalan Army fighting the campesinos.

Who gets saved, it comes down to individual initiative and free enterprise— it's a wide-open field to save all those souls and make some money on the side. It's all about money in the end. The primeval Mayan Lacondones are now the prime target of the Seventh Day Adventists. Just leave them alone. They don't need your religion.

Guatemala is the overseas empire for religious zealots. What's in it for them besides saving 7 million souls? Why are all these conservative Christian millionaires dying to save so many souls? Does it all come down to United Fruit stock? What is the position of United Fruit in the community? There is that evangelical savage attitude toward Indian communities. There are goon squads waiting to kill those who step out of line, or protest.

At Santa María de Jesús the missionaries were looking so superior, so smug, wearing those false pious faces. The evangelicals and the soldiers have teamed up against the Indios. They plan to break the resistance with religion and guns and bad rock and roll.

Tikal is a strategic hamlet, an outpost of soldiers, while the guerilla are back of the volcanoes in the highlands. Otto-Raúl González, the former communist Minister of Agricultural Reform was fighting for peasants' rights. Human rights. His law degree thesis was on the socioeconomic reality of indigenous peoples, and agrarian reform—placing the ownership of land back into the hands of those who work it, not UFC.

Peaceful peasant groups organized, and were killed. Robertija Nunchu's younger brother was lit on fire. The Guatemalan military has absolute government power to eradicate what it perceives as enemies of the state from every walk of life. And we put it there. Opponents of the state are disappeared.

At the ruins near the zócalo at Huehuetenango, the birthplace of the ancient ancestors, the campesinos gather. The children are not in school, they are selling their pulseras on the streets. There is not enough to eat. Visions of the future. The status symbol of who grows up to be soldiers, versus guerillas.

Soldiers of the Criollo-run Guatemalan Army, the Ladinos, carry the Uzis. The guerillas, the Indios, and the left-wing students, carry AKAs which is a Czech version based on Soviet AK-47s. I now know the difference between UZIs and AK-47s. This isn't going to end well.

We have entered the politically correct country, a dictatorship of US-owned bananas and coffee.

Guatemalan Highlands, postcards

Indigenas mercado de Chichicastenango

Mercado de Palin