RRWG 10th annual erotic poetry reading at the Burbank Activity Center

Napa Poetry Conference, 1981-1987

I've been scanning and organizing old files. Yesterday's gem. Once upon a time we were an extraordinary group of poets who met each summer in Napa. Organizing poets for this photo shoot was like herding cats. My photo traveled far and wide, so I made a parody drawing of it. Can you recognize any of the poets? It's 1985. Some of the poets no longer walk with us.

Napa Valley College English Chair, Dave Evans founded the Napa Poetry Conference in the summer of 1981. It began as a collective of Berkeley poets and students who came together to share their expertise and perfect writing skills.

I'm not sure how I got roped in, probably to do a potential story. But I attended most. if not all, the conferences through 1987; Dave kept the tuition low. In my case, he waived it entirely in exchange for photographic documentation. At first, I merely observed, but then, Dave brought me in as a participant and presenter. My writing life was irrevocably changed.

Word got out and poets from all over the US and beyond attended the workshops. Several came from the Bahamas, of all places. So during the spring of 1985, we all packed up and flew south—to Nassau, for an international conference. Extraordinary times.

One of the unique aspects of the Napa Poetry Conference was that we were all housed within the community, no motels. I stayed as some extraordinary homes, one place on top of Mt. Veder, another ranch in the Mayacamas, replete with lake and rowboat, our hosts were a medic and a combat helicopter pilot, each was carrying on a secret affair, so life was intense. Because we were all poet-roommates, we made deeper bonds.

After Dave died, John Leggett took over, and the direction of the Napa Poetry Conference drastically changed. It became the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Some of the old guard were invited back; Frank Bidart, Robert Pinsky, but the flavor had changed, with Dave Evans gone, there was no community housing offered, and tuition was stiff. A tony new era was ushered in. I never went back.

10.23.13

Russian River Writers' Guild

RUSSIAN RIVER WRITERS' GUILD POETRY AND PROSE SERIES; A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

With early west county beginnings in bakeries, bars, and bookstores, the poetry and prose series of the Russian River Writers' Guild (RRWG) is the oldest ongoing reading series in the greater Bay Area and north coast. 

The RRWG has kept the "literatii" entertained in most west county towns, from Monte Rio, its first home, to Occidental, Guerneville, Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. 

Since the early '70's, both famous and infamous poets across the nation have shared the podium with local poets. Literally, hundreds of poets—from nationally recognized names such as McArthur prize recipient Robert Hass; Robert Bly whose translations of Rilke were published by Calliopea Press; and 95-year-old Meridel LeSueur, a McCarthy era blacklisted writer rediscovered in the 70's by the women's movement—to the real unknowns who have just discovered the power of the written word. 

Since the San Francisco literary renaissance of the '50's, when Kenneth Rexroth introduced experimental jazz and "Beat" poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to the literary world of New York, the Bay Area poetry scene has blossomed. 

Hundreds of small presses abound and Poetry Flash, the Bay Area's literary calendar of events lists scores of readings for each day of the week. (needs transition ...)

One former RRWG coordinator, Andrei Codrescu, Rumanian poet and editor of numerous books and anthologies including Up Late: American Poetry since 1970, is best known as the poetry correspondant for National Public Radio's weekly series, All Things Considered. His fellow coordinator, Pat Nolan has poems and translations published in Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry, Paris Review, Rolling Stone, and Up Late. Codrescu lists Nolan as a leader of the "California School of Writing" according to Nolan's wife, Gail King, also a former Guild coordinator. 

Guild co-founder and "jewish mother", Marianne Ware, whose chapbook, Bodies Nearly Touching, published by Nolan and King (Doris Green Editions), was printed in the 1987 Editor's Choice II anthology highlighting small presses. The obligatory hug she gave each reader in greeting was dubbed by coordinator Jim Montrose the "obligatory hug" and became the name of the Guild's monthly newsletter which lists upcoming poetic events, prose, and poetry of featured readers. 

Former coordinators Lee Perron and Maureen Hurley said the heyday of the series ('79 to '82) was when novelist Margie Summerfield offered them a free space with a stage, lighting and sophistocated sound system at Garbo's Cabaret & Bar in Guernewood Park. Many customers who came in for a drink were startled at first, but soon took to poetry. 

Perron and Hurley booked many poetry and arts events that would appeal to larger audiences who traditionally didn't attend poetry readings. Poets and musicians, dancers and actors all performed their poetic works. Folksinger-poets U. Utah Phillips and Ed Balchowsky, Bobbie Louise Hawkins and Rosalie Sorrels; actor-director Fred Curchak, artist Greer Upton, dancer Jere Graham and songwriter Michael Beargrease Hansen were also part of the line up. 

Some poetry events drew crowds of more than 200 such as the poetry and musical extravaganza by Elizabeth Herron, Fran Carbonaro and Rick Duvall. It was raining like hell and the river was rising but Robert Bly who flew in for his book party at Sonoma State cosponsored by the Guild and Public Poetry Center, wandered in. They didn't charge him admission. 

For many, the Guild provides a platform to explore and develop new ideas and areers. Perron, published in American Poetry Review, and CoEvolution Quarterly developed Sun Moon Bear Productions, a small business which distributes prints and fine press poetry across the nation. 

Hurley, who wrote her first grant for RRWG, received artist-in-residency grants from national, state and private funders. From ad hoc RRWG documentor, she became a photojournalist and is published in San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, and Oakland Museum Magazine. 

Other coordinators from the RRWG's 17-year-history include Mark Clagett, Donna Champion, Bonnie Olsen, Claire Josefine, Ellen Appel, Gil Helmik and Hunce Voelker. 

Readers have included Sonoma poet Paul Mariah, publisher of 47 titles from Manroot Press; Pushcart Prize winners David Bromige and Sharon Doubiago; David Fisher, winner of the William Carlos Williams award; Beat poets Jack Michelene, and the late Bob Kaufman—who coined the word "Beatnik;" Jim Dodge of Fup fame; Gerald Haslam who wrote The Oakies; the late Boschka Layton and Helen Luster; and Canadian Poet Laureate Irving Layton, and Jorge Lujan from Mexico City 

The work of the Guild-- whether booking readings, editing and publishing, or soliticing memberships is all facilitated by dedicated volunteers. RRWG's strength and longevity is a statement of the commitment of local poets to the organization. 

In 1985, RRWG entered the book publishing business with Tracks in the Widest Orbit, selected poems of J. H. Montrose, Jim was a Guild coordinator who died of cancer. In 1986, in Conjunction with Aldebaran Press, Falling to Sea Level, a bilingual edition of poems by Maureen Hurley and John Oliver Simon, now in its third printing, was released. 

Upcoming projects include the first ever RRWG anthology of participating poets and Sonoma county writers. The deadline for submission of poems, artwork, fiction and non-fiction is February 1, 1988. (See address below). 

Poetry is ideal entertainment for the traditional "blue Monday" night of the week when restaurants and cabarets close. Warning. Poetry can be addicting. Many of the Guild's followers have exclaimed, "I didn't know I even liked poetry!" 

The 8th annual Neurotic/Erotic Valentine Open Reading to be MC'd by the Madame of Poetry, Marianne Ware, is guaranteed to draw a large audience of poets of all persuasions. 

Readings at the Burbank Activities Center, 167 North High Street, Sebastopol are on the first and third Mondays of each month, 7:30 p.m., with a half-hour open mike followed by two featured readers. Admission is $2 at the door. 

In addition to the regular series, the Guild sponsors other events from time to time. Currently, on alternate Mondays, there are also readings at the Guerneville Veterans Memorial Building. Membership, participation and attendance of events are open to everyone. Language, lace cuff, surreal, dada, street, serious, academic, frivolous, and poets of all persuasions and opinions are welcome. 

For more information about the readings, workshops, publications, membership, or to volunteer, please call or write to Mark Claggett, Coordinator, Russian River Writers' Guild, 5P.O. Box 1123, Sebastopol, CA 95473. (707) 829-0237.

RRWG archives here.

Sonoma County cultural arts calendar, RRWG photos

LIKE SO MANY BOARD FEET

LIKE SO MANY BOARD FEET

My Irish grandmother said every house
needs a front duir and felling the oaks
brought bad luck because under golden boughs
was how ancient knowledge was passed on.
From beneath stones, the cycle
of small green claws grasp the sky,
taproot heartline—
sweet red sap, a coursing river
dying in a sea of shadows.
Felled patriarchs in a forced march
across fields in spring,
meteors in the burning night,
the final star gasp of diamond before carbon
returns to base minerals and ash—
how can they regenerate
when we've furrowed the earth
with houses, utility poles and roads?
I remember dreaming the lions
were coming, and the front door, too small
for the doorjam, swung free in the breeze.



89
88


1993 Mother Earth Journal
1990 Green Fuse

Ascii jumble. Must've revised it in 89got the line breaks right by guessing

American Poetry Association publication BUT WHEN?

Well, this is awkward, no date, and no full title of poem. Did I even receive a copy of the book? Sometime between 1982 and 1990, I had a poem published.... Well, that narrows it down. Here is a list from Abe Books, no ToC. Another reference at the Internet Archive. Not in the 1982, 1985,1989,1990 issues... Shall we go with 1988, just for the hell of it? What about 1983, or 84?

But I found another delightful rabbit hole at Internet Archive when I used my name as a search. I discovered I also had a few photos published in anthologies. I had to stop.

Added 1/2023

Baja, Mulegé, Cabo San Lucas, watercolors

QUARTZ—dream journal sequence

QUARTZ journal entry

My night terrors all began with the Zebra Killer. The bad dreams, the waking up, the screaming, the paralysis, the terror of being perused, and then strangled. My grandmother said that I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. More like the living. When my brother was woken by my screams, he said he'd wait to hear if there was an intruder before he'd get out of bed. Either way, he'd hide under the covers.

I thought I was losing my marbles. My mother is schizophrenic and though they keep telling me it isn't hereditary, some part of me can never let go of the idea. Needless to say, I analyze things to the point of death.

My mother is also a clarivoyant. Second Sight runs in the family. Bad enough to be crazy,  but clarivoyant too? A self-negating double whammy. When she predicts or finds something, I want to make a rational case for it. Nothing to do with the supernatural or intuition.

I became a non-believer of the supernatural during the wee hours while trying to sneak into the house—the door hinge cracked like someone knocking—I inadvertantly became one of my grandmother's famous banshee ghosts—the ones who knock at the door when death approaches.

Within the week, someone in the family did die, I don't remember who. Her brother Bill? So there I was, both a believer and a non-believer, and also a witness. I toyed with the idea that my real events might be linked up with events yet to happen, and perhaps we provide the link that makes it seem like precognition.

How else to explain the time my high school girlfriends and I were joyriding down Mt. Tam and suddenly, there were a weird dreamlike image of black tires spinning in front of me—distracting me to the point that I said, I don't want to alarm you guys, but I keep seeing spinning tires. They all laughed, called me names and seconds later, the brakes gave out. The owner of the antique red Mercedes in front of us was not happy to be our brake shoe at the T stop. But it kept us from going through the fence and the house below.

Many dreams that I described in detail to my friends would come true. Sometimes I'd misinterpret what I saw, What distinguished them from regular dreams was that they were lucid--no fantastic dream imagery. Normal boring everyday events. Looking back, I blame the dreams on the enormous amounts of grass we used to smoke—it was the late 60's and we were in the middle of it all. But that 's another story.

My hooded dream-murderer demon evolved into other images. I grew bold, or rather, weary of it, so I tried asking it what it wanted with me. I even asked it to unveil itself. Once it changed sex and it became my aunt Jane with whom I was having trouble, and later, it became me. Fear: my own worst enemy.

Through the years the dream image plagued me but I've never written down when these dreams happened. Location doesn't seem to matter—I've had them while in Europe and in Mexico. Imagine what a bloodcurdling scream in the middle of the night will do to the morale of the hotel clientele. Guests lined the hall, some dressed only in sheets looking like real ghosts with white faces! Pardon, I said. Was my face red.

My boyfriends learned not to grab me when the night terrors happened. Besides learning how to scream, I learned to fight in my sleep too. There's a section of the brain that paralyses nearly everyone who has nightmares—so the won't physically respond and hurt themselves or sleeping partner. But I figured out a workaround. I also have thin boundaries. I can fight with the best of street brawlers in my sleep.

Those cliff falling dreams when one wakes up stiff, in a cold sweat and can't move, is an example of this sleep paralysis-- only I, a small statistic, have learned how to move like a ninja warrior.

I even went to my doctor and a therapist who both said I was sane as can be expected, and that it was a result of stress and illness. It seems to happen in cycles. Each time it happened, I thought I should check into the local mental institution— was there something that horribly wrong with me to give me this night terror?

When some friends died, two patterns emerged. One type had symbolic dreams in which the clues of two friend's tragic deaths were hidden. I found out about the deaths after the fact.

My mother banged at my door early one morning. I was in the grips of a dream so horrible and dark I refused to wake u or even remember it but I remember that my cousin Ricky was in it. I remember how the red lights cut through darkness like knives, the sound of metal and cars. He had died in a motorcycle accident on 4th Street in Santa Rosa earler in the morning. I was there. I witnessed it. I saw him slumped over the parked car. Red, red everywhere.

Not all the dream experiences were terrifying. One night, after a wedding and too much champagne, I imagined dwarves marching through my kitchen stacking up crockery, and fixing the sink all night long. I expected to see a lot of dishes in the morning—along with a hangover. My landlady said that was Emilio Celli, her father-in-law. He loved to fix the plumbing. I saw him again and again at the bathroom sink. It was leaking.

When a friend's mother, Betty Lang Wall drowned in Noyo River, I dreamed I talked with her underwater—I remember the salt stung my eyes. With a knife, I cut a baby from my belly. Then Micaela called to say Betty was gone. Washed out to sea.

Another time, Boschka Layton, ill with cancer, died of a heart attack at nine AM, right when I dreamed I rode a black horse through warm dark tunnels, His hooves thundered louder and louder and louder until we reached the opening but it was almost too small for us to squeeze through. We were reborn into bright light in a green garden, the horse was now a colt. I suppose I was younger because I had no sense of age. Rebirth.

It became harder for me to explain it all away as mere coincidence. Either I was crazy or I wasn’t. 

Obligatory Hug, Dec. 1987, my calligraphy (not my layout!)

 

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