California Poets in the Schools student reading with Maureen Hurley, Barnes & Noble,

2 POEMS from 4Cs workshop, SSU

I am the last unicorn 

asleep in the dream of tomorrow

I would like to be the last star 

on your apron string.

My cold heart in your hands

soft as the baby sleeping, 

bones color of the sky 

with thoughts of the moon 

halfway home 

from the fantasy of the sky.

Four C's workshop 

Sonoma State University

4/28/1995

I am the stillness of deer 

under midnight meadows 

where the moon comes to think.

The grass to me the direction of the wind. 

The trees taught me the speech of grass.

From the stars I learned to memorize 

the constellations 

carried on the backs of children, 

for the sky is my home.

Four C's workshop 

Sonoma State University

4/28/1995

INSIDE MY DREAMS

Inside my dreams,
flowers bloom
in the light of the sun
like a bird flying down
to the dreams of dragons.
Inside my dreams is a field
of rainbow horses
making the spring rush.


April 25, 1995
Higham Family School

A RIFF from "The Man Who Tasted Shapes"

A RIFF on "The Man Who Tasted Shapes"

(a book about synesthesia by neurologist Richard Cytowic)


The blind man who perceives scarlet as the sound of the trumpet hears music when the sun warms his eyelids.

Newton, searched in vain for an algorithm to equate the vibrational frequency of sound with corresponding wavelengths of light. The search for universal correspondences among the senses.

A relativistic universe. Colored hearing, the idea of a correspondence between light and sound. The Theosophy of flight.

All shadows contain complementary colors of object casting shadows, think of Henche's color notes.

Alchemical zeal, transformation between I and cortex on the cellular level. A corollary.

Color consistency is an illusion. Light at sunrise is blue, at sunset it's red. What is the color of daylight from sunrise to sunset?

Decomposing light. Vision is contained a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Color, occupies an even narrower band of light.

polyopia: multiple ghost images, after the image has left the field of vision. What's not there.

palinopsia: afterimage, like seeing the sun, after the sun has set, a persistent kaliedoscope of memory. What's not there.

The act of seeing/tasting/hearing with one's own eyes is therefore an entirely subjective perception.

The idea as light, a word's taste and weight on the tongue, in the ear, in the mind's eye, is both abstract and malleable. Noetic and ineffable.

Agnosia: the not knowing. The inability to recognize things. What's really there. but not acknowledged by the brain.

Then there's the duality of the physics of light, which is simultaneously a wave and a particle. 

If you separate logic and emotion, you understand neither. It's a duality concept. 

I'm of two minds, one is wise beyond knowledge. The other is knowledge, but unwise when it comes to matters of the heart. The blackbird singing.

Conceptual systems. Metaphor based upon physics. What is real?

Try to write an objective definition of love, ontological metaphors rearrange memory, switch metaphors in midstream. Words cannot change reality. 

The physical foundations of a metaphor. The dichotomy of contradictory metaphor is up in the air. The conflict built within Plato: we are all prisoners of our feelings.

Hold fast to the sacred cord of reason, lest we be lost. Make that sacred chord. The schism between reason and emotion, you ask. Aristotle stated emotions carry their own form of logic, and that synesthesia is a subtractive experience. But it's really an additive experience. You get multiple input.

The logic of emotion is beyond our control. Valence, salience. What is most important? The sum total or what is most prominent? Collective or ego? Jamais vu, or déjà vu? What is not seen, or what is familiar? Choose.

Qualia: sub-seption, internal and subjective below our awareness, call it subconscious knowledge. What is simultaneously known and not known.

The transition between one state and another, from maximum to minimum, is the dimensionalist existence of a Cartesian point. Cogito ergo sum.

Then the idea that Plato's dichotomy between reason and emotion reenacted. 

Just don't approach the koan with intellect. One hand clapping, if a tree falls in the forest....

April 19 or 20, 1995

slightly rev. 16 Nov, 2015

But, though this piece is slightly revised for clarity's sake, such as it is, some of this prose piece, as did much of my writing during 1995, found its way into my long prose poem Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year (I posted it as a Jan., 1995 entry, but I was still working on it in April, and beyond). I was fixated on physics and synaesthesia. And the vagaries of the mind, love, the human heart. The poem grew to 36 entries. And then some. I couldn't stop writing about it.

POEM IN TWO VOICES: IMAGO

IMAGO

Declaration: poem in two voices

I believe in the image 

of the wind when the moon 

opens to the vast ink of the sky.

I am the voices of the wind
circumscribing the trees.
I am the mind of false shadows.

Once I believed in the ceremonies 

around the trees at dusk.

I am the watch devouring time
on the mantelpiece of desire.

I wanted to trace the shadows 

of the moon when it sang of death 

in the trees at dawn.

Were you the howling night
wolfing down the last crumbs
of the moon, leaving me here? 

I believe in the random order 

of constellations 

calling our destinies forth. 

What small mice sleep 

in my fingertips?

Once I was the voice of the night
calling you to sleep in my arms,
calling it love, but the fields
swallowed your name.

Alexander Valley School 

March 31, 1995

EKPHRASTIC POEMS 3 poems from Magritte

—From The False Mirror:

Not to be Reproduced, 1928, 

by René Magritte 

I remember the way the eyes of the sky 

stared at me as if I was always in trouble, 

staring at the back of my own head

as if in a two-way mirror going nowhere,  

always watching myself departing 

like a train without tracks.

I come from a world of windows 

opening endlessly onto each other, 

like a Chinese puzzle.
My mind was shaving its chin 

in a cold water walk up flat,

and doves flew from my eyes.

March 30, 1995 

Higham Family School, Santa Rosa

RIFFS FORM SEVERAL MAGRITTE PAINTINTGS

My eyes became the silhouette of clouds. 

I have my reasons for wanting to chase 

the origin of light from my dreams. 

How infinite is the sound of clocks 

reverberating in empty rooms.

Once I dreamed the buildings of the city 

became huge mantle clocks,

and the mountain grew new peaks 

in the form of nesting eagles.

As if the reckless sleeper had lost its night horse. 

Where does it start? The life of a dream, 

the end in the source. Dusk and day light. 

Silence reigns with the perfection of an empire, 

its face forever to the sun.

March 30, 1995 

Higham Family School, Santa Rosa

How many windows in your name?
Within me, apples tumble from green rooms,

roses wrestle with the unspoken thoughts.

The doings of bird and sky.
I have made my rocky bed 

amid the stones of the past.
This world of bone and skull 

and the perfection of green rain 

penetrating the endless night.
The train finds its way home alone 

even though the birds sleep. 

If the worn-out words find us mouthless,

will they become the thoughts of birds 

opening towards the unknown father?

March 30, 1995 

Higham Family School, Santa Rosa

slightly revised 11/16/2015

THINGS TO DO WHILE DRIVING TO WORK, LATE

Things to do while driving to work, late.
Leave for work five minutes late

because you just couldn't quite get it together

and you dithered your morning ablutions.
Try to balance 2 cups of tea in one hand 

while downshifting around curves 

more dangerous than Marilyn Monroe's.

Pretend to obey the speed limit 

but as soon as the coast is clear, 

figure out if your toes really will reach 

all the way down to the engine block.

Take a quick peek in your rearview mirror, 

there are still sleep wrinkles on your cheeks.

Notice how you forgot to put on makeup 

and this time you really do need it.
Stare at the crows feet developing under your eyes 

and wonder if a whole flock of birds

descended during the night, looking for corn.

Talk about a murder of crows. 

It looks like they murdered more than sleep.
And they mistook your eyes for chocolate chips. 

Put on makeup while driving like a demon from hell 

and hope that you don't wind up there yourself

for driving while putting on makeup. 

The eyeliner's the hardest maneuver of all.

Try to rearrange the floor of your truck, 

put the audio tapes in alphabetical order, 

and sing along to Leonard Cohen's gravelly voice, 

daydreaming about your neighbors cat.
Notice that you have cat hair all over you,

and you're already five minutes behind.

You move the late clock up by three whole minutes 

gaining time by speeding down narrow backroads,

shaving inside & outside curves with reckless abandon.

But then, an unscheduled tractor robbed you blind,

it took back all the time you gained. And then some. 

You floored it on a straight stretch of road,

overtaking him as if he were standing still.

Then you slid into the parking lot, spraying gravel, 

breathless, you made a run for it.

But the door' was locked, no one there to let you in. 

The school, empty. Then you came to find out, 

it's Saturday. The empty lot should've given it away.

Go home. Go back to bed. Don't tell a soul.

March 25, 1995

rev. slightly 16/11/2015

FORGIVE ME

Forgive me,

the mythical animal inside

is wanting out. 

And over my door 

the coinage of words 

struggling to attain flight
My talisman is the absence of light.
I return again and again 

to the last place on earth 

where the violins 

are masked with questions.
I return again and again 

to that place of fields, secret hills,

as if the rest of my life was spent 

among bird song.
I dream of eagles slipping off 

the shoulders of quarters, 

slipping off their species, 

taking no quarter. 

When he came knocking at my door, 

lit was like sleek fish seeking entry 

to the moist center of the storm. 

I wished for a smattering of stars 

across the bed sheets at night

his touch guiding my heart. 

March 23, 1995

4 BLUES RIFFS

Have I been sentenced

to death by the blues?

Is this Vienna? 

I cannot find the end of the rope. 

The dead chill of fingers. 

Alone we come into the world. 

My room is filled with the past. 

The past is a graveyard. 

Thoughts are the burden of my existence.
The end of the room,

the beginning of the world.
The end of darkness 

is the beginning of life.
My heart, asleep in the fibers of music. 

A world movement, 

a concerto, oblivion changed.  

Nothing persists like the secrets of stones 

singing their way towards the ocean
The stranger has his suitcase, 

vinegar has its sting, 

the twilight has its iguana 

hunting down the night.

March 23, 1995

I am crawling on all fours 

inexorably toward old age 

Who left pomegranate seeds on the shelf?
Escaped rainbows dance in the cage of my room 

Crystal prisms spinning like a comment
My heart is still asleep in the wind.

The sun will dry the rain's tears.

March 23, 1995


I am seeking the pathway to the stars
The dark hearts of stone 

sing of other dreams where 

the velvet tongue of grass 

under the stars of summer
whispers other secrets to the wind.

The rose forgets how to sleep.
Thirst finds us wanting for words. 

Beneath the soil they are singing;

seeking another way out.
The subterranean fires 

stir the embers of the heart. 

The rain repeats itself endlessly. 

The death of birds is equal 

to the death of shadows.

What's the use of knowing 

the answer when there are
no questions?

March 23, 1995

For I sit crosslegged for hours on end 

reading the scribbled words of children, 

seeking small flames to nurture, 

afraid that in my own life that I risk
becoming what I hated in others. 

March 23, 1995

2 MOTHER DEATH POEMS

On the other side of the poem I wrote:

Was it easy to die? The birds know.

Seeking the double life 

I practice letting go.
Can the dead communicate with the living?
I remember saying to my aunt, 

She is already dead inside. 

The long vowels slide off the tongue.
A voice stitched inside the throat of memory
The mother – daughter distance, 

The past is always a graveyard, 

thoughts, the burden of existence.

Stones sing their way toward the ocean.
Nothing persists like silence, 

the end of the room,

the beginning of the world. 

28 March 1995

It's the 6 month anniversary 

of my mother's death. 

She is still with me.

Death brushes my shoulders. 

My truck spins out of control, 

slick roads, & the gnawing hunger 

of precipitous cliffs.

But she is driving me.

So for now, we are safe.

28 March 1995

rev. slightly 16/11/2015

LUNCH WITH EINSTEIN

LUNCH WITH EINSTEIN

My poem isn’t a story about my life,

it’s petty silent dictator

making its own reality sandwich

in the middle of the night

holding sliced words hostage

at the edge of a razor blade.

Ergot on rye. Hold the mayo.

Until you, dear reader,

dog it down to the bone.

My poem isn’t the edge of night

seeking daybreak in another solar system.

It’s asleep at the wheel, or corrupting time,

teaching it to bend, taking no prisoners

until it becomes an acrobat

leaving the world tied in knots

for an eternity to come.

My poem isn’t the cool depths of the sea,

it’s the raging heart of the volcano

shedding scalding tears into the ocean

to whip up some primordial soup.

It’s out to lunch with Einstein,

noshing infinite storylines,

breathless and late for work

breaking the speed of light,

without a licence

because there’s no tomorrow

holding it in check.

3/8/95



first draft
PETTY DICTATOR

My poem isn't my life, 

it's small dictator 

making its own reality sandwich 

in the middle of the night.

holding sliced words hostage on rye,

until you, dear reader, 

devour it down to the bone.

My poem isn't the edge of the night 

seeking the beginning of day 

in another solar system, 

it's the speed of light corrupting time itself, 

telling it to bend the past 

until it becomes an acrobat 

in the shape of a human pretzel

and the world's tied up in knots

or an eternity to come.

My poem isn't that cool depths of the sea, 

it's the roaring heart of a volcano 

pouring scalding tears into the sea 

to create the primordial dance of life.

It's recess, it's out to lunch, 

it's always breathless and late for work, 

wanting to spend the day nibbling on storylines 

as if there were no tomorrow. 

March 8, 1995

ODE TO MY TRUCK (2 versions)

ODE TO MY TRUCK

For you take me everywhere
your flanks shot through with blue
your red wheels burning
down the freeways and onramps
of my mind
For you’ve tried to attain flight
when the cops weren’t looking
For you crawled with the patience of snails
divining rush hour traffic
like Moses parting the red sea
For you’ve stopped true as an arrow
piercing the heart of the matter
when I wasn’t paying attention.

1995

(I took a few words from 2nd draft (above), but I think I like the original journal entry better.)

For you take me everywhere,
your flanks shot through with blue,
your red wheels burning
down the freeways
and on-ramps of my mind.
For you've tried to retain flight
when the cops weren't looking.
For you've crawled with the patience
of snails during rush hour traffic.
like Moses parting the red sea.
For you've stopped true
as an arrow piercing the heart
when I wasn't paying attention,
saving me from uncertain death.
Your abrupt song of tires
calligraphing the streets.

Once you became a bird
when the black ice deceived you,
tricked you into the false security
of quick stops, and firmament.
Once I betrayed you
letting someone else slip
between the wheel and pedal,
his foot, not sensitive to your needs,
and like a bird, you made a valiant attempt
to fly off the cliff but the fence was too thick,
the bank to steep, the reflexes too slow,
and that day we were wounded you,
who snorted steam and blue smoke
into the void, and learned to let go.

3/8/1995
 added 10/15

PETTY DICTATOR (see Einstein poem)

My poem isn't my life,

it's small dictator

making its own reality sandwich 

in the middle of the night.

holding sliced words hostage on rye,

until you, dear reader, 

devour it down to the bone.

My poem isn't the edge of the night 

seeking the beginning of day 

in another solar system, 

it's the speed of light corrupting time itself, 

telling it to bend the past 

until it becomes an acrobat 

in the shape of a human pretzel

and the world's tied up in knots

or an eternity to come.

My poem isn't that cool depths of the sea, 

it's the roaring heart of a volcano 

pouring scalding tears into the sea 

to create the primordial dance of life.
It's recess, it's out to lunch, 

it's always breathless and late for work, 

wanting to spend the day nibbling on storylines 

as if there were no tomorrow. 

March 8, 1995



this poem was recycled into

LUNCH WITH EINSTEIN

Call of the Muse, RRWG at the Johnny Otis Club

I DIDN'T KNOW I LOVED—after Hikmet

I didn’t know I loved the way
his eyes repeated the color
of weathered stone

or how, unlike stone, they ripen
into dark clouds when he smiles.

Or the way his son’s eyes
are the clear promise of summer skies.

Stolen kisses at 4 am, I sleep alone;
she comes, spreading her body.

Sometimes I see how the division begins
in the darkness

when we pull our hearts in,
afraid of the eventual loss that inevitably comes.

Sometimes I too think the heart
is something to protect—

like death, it cannot be saved for later.

I’m stuck, this rock,
this tree becomes the center.

His voice like smooth stone against my thoughts.

The boy and I go walking on the headlands
trying to find the summit.

I envy the way water knows its predestined course,

for the heart is always hovering like a hawk,

the hunter’s eye seeking small clues in the grass.

On this side of the San Andreas Fault,
the sea breathes us in.

Seeking completion,
he is afraid of arbitrary divisions.

The trouble with unrequited lust
this full valentine moon,

is that I’m liable to develop
carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists.

Say “master painter” five times real fast. . .

When I howl at the moon, t
hey gather downwind. But he is afraid.

Polly, pretty Polly. . . 
The volunteer sent to serve ice cream

for the class party—Polly’s father—
wore a heart sticker on his sleeve,

redigging his daughter’s grave
with each scoop.

With careful steps anyone can find
the center of the heart

Like waves crashing against the rocks
disturbed swallows rise

like dark clouds before the storm

making me believe the heart
is always hard to approach.

Where do we go from here?
What of Polly’s father?

The chambers of the heart
grow infinitely larger to accomodate love.

inside the heart of the rose
is a secret chamber

where the silent worm waits

for darkness to creep out of the sky

because there are no other parallels

for death; it feeds upon the pollen

that falls into the center of life.

Beyond the edges of the petals

a whole green universe
is waiting for the sun to rise

above it, to take it towards completion.

The voices of birds move away
from the thoughts of roses.

How am I supposed to act now?
He has to come of his own volition.

The cat curls in my arms, chews his fleas.
The child and I hold onto each other.

We paste glowing constellations on the ceiling.
I cannot divide this love.

At least he knows the rooms of his own heart.

Returning home from the mountains
I bring snow for the child,

afraid of the father’s eyes, how like glaciers.

I can’t stop the mind from anticipating.

Confused by the non-eye in poetry,
I was a bird caught in a church bell

he’s the tongue on the harmonica
between my legs.

I can’t tell if we’re moving away,
or closer to each other.

Who is stalking the dreams
I wish I had as a child.

Perhaps we are sideways rain;
a squall of momentary jealousy,

a patch of weather on a glassy sea.
Someone served us delusion.

He named it island. Called it lonely.
Said, What if it doesn’t work out?

What if it does, and 7 years later
I’m on the road playing music? Then what?

They talk about moving.
What about Maureen? the son asks.

If you take out the “I”,
delusion is a seven-letter word.

Prime numbers aside,
it took God 7 days. Aye. Aiii. I. . . sing

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. . .

After I fell, I couldn’t breathe.
The longest word in English is a lung disease.

He comes to massage me,
leaves me fingering the crack in his bed.

Crawls in with his son.
I dreamed he sawed the legs off his son’s bed

until there was no place left for them to rest.

2/15 - 20/95  

From several in class writing assignments, and prose journal entries. I do not know which I prefer, in hindsight,
4 untitled VALENTINE POEMS
INSIDE THE HEART OF THE ROSE

INSIDE THE HEART OF THE ROSE (see Hikmet poem)

Inside the heart of the rose

is a secret chamber
Where is the where the silent worm waits 

for darkness to creep out of the sky
Because there are no other parallels 

for death, it feeds upon the pollen 

that falls into the center of life. 

Beyond the edges of the petals

a whole green universe is waiting 

for the sun to rise above it, 

to take it toward completion.

The voices of birds move away 

from the thoughts of roses.

Higham Family School

16 February 1995


I recycled this in a longer poem
I DIDN'T KNOW I LOVED—after Hikmet

4 untitled VALENTINE POEMS (see Hikmet poem)

I'm stuck, this rock, this tree
His voice like smooth stone
The way water follows

its predestined course
We go walking on the headlands
trying to find the summit 

for the heart is always 

hovering like a hawk

Hunter's eye seek small clues 

in the grass.

15 February 1995

I didn't know I loved the way 

his eyes repeated the color 

of weathered stone.
Or how, unlike stone, they soften 

into the clouds when he smiles.

Or the way his son's eyes
are summer skies.
Sometimes I see
how the division begins 

in darkness when we 

pull our hearts in from old pastures.
I'm afraid of the eventual loss 

that always comes. 

Sometimes I think too, 

that my heart is something 

I can protect, but like with death, 

it cannot be saved.

February 15, 1995

The trouble with unrequited lust 

under a full Valentine's Day moon 

is that one is liable to develop 

carpal tunnels syndrome in both wrists.

February 15, 1995


With careful steps anyone can find 

the center of the heart.
Waves keep crashing against the rocks;

disturbed swallows rise like dark clouds 

before the storm, making me believe 

the heart is always hard to approach.

February 15, 1995




I recycled all of these in a longer poem
I DIDN'T KNOW I LOVED—after Hikmet

LIGHTHOUSE

In the crystal cave
I wanted to crush the baleen

of the moon's heart.
The survival of golden mapping codes 

unleashes the body diagram
in the lighthouse of your imagination. 

February 1995

RRWG reading Maureen Hurley, Terry Ehret, Arthur Dawson, Johnny Otis Club

Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year

(I was obsessed with the overlap of science and poetry, so these fragments represent at least a half a year’s writing, if not the entire year…At first it was an ark, a winter of massive floods of epic proportions, then it became an arc.)

—for Max "Sonny" Lowe

The story of rain begins and ends in the oceans. The river, called St. Ignacio, Slavianka, el Río Russo, the Russian River—leaps its banks, pays us a neighborly visit. Divulges its real name to the sea. Encircling each tree, the rising river claims small, vertical kingdoms. Mountains caught in the act of becoming islands & isthmuses again. Ancient shores & riverbeds unveiled. Centuries of mud erode in the afternoon, fossils come to light. We’re marooned. Again. After a decade, or two—depending upon who’s keeping score—the great California drought officially ends. The cats bitterly complain about the weather. My neighbor notes it’s been 40 days since we’ve seen the sun. On the eve of the Epiphany we measure rain falling in biblical proportions by the foot, & threaten to build an arc for when our cabins fail us.

When I found Paleolithic fossils of raindrops frozen in stone, I envied the age of redwoods on the 100-year flood plane recording weather in annular increments—decades but a moment in time. The warrior rain on the roof drums up a tattoo of words to engulf the muse. My poor drowned heart.

AURAL FIXATION

AURAL FIXATION
    —for Sonny Lowe

If I were a harmonica
Tell me, how would you play me?
Your sweet breath on my lips
Hard mouth on my body

12/23/1994

EATING BAMBI, OR GROWING UP REDNECK

EATING BAMBI, OR GROWING UP REDNECK

                                     for Bill Dinsmore,   1933-1994,

                                                                              Maureen Reilly, 1932-1994,

                                                                             & Joseph Hurley, 1926-1993.

Several ranchers drop in to pay their respects,

discuss boundaries: dairy vs. beef cattle, wild & domestic hogs,

the last buffalo, the growing herds of deer,

and who’s able to hold onto the last of the open range.

It’s a dry wake; we’re all second- or third-degree Celts—

the displaced white indians of Europe who still can’t hold our liquor.

Someone asks how my uncle died. Closing familial ranks,

my cousin Sinead and I echo, “Alcohol.” We don’t add

how her father drowned in his own bed.

The Gallagher brothers take turns slaking their terrible thirst

at the Rancho Nicasio bar across the town square—if you can call it that—

drinking in the geographic isolation and psychic distance

of several lifelines with measured precision.

Here, we’re all related to someone or another by blood or marriage.

When winter grass circles the outcroppings, it could be Ireland.

We hold onto our “R”s, aspirate “S” into sh. Hold our liquor by the ears.

One rancher wears a “Native Sons of Nicasio” emblem on his jacket.

No one can explain why we locals pronounce it “Nicashio.”

To tell the natives from the newcomers, Mrs. Farley volunteers.

I’m not satisfied with dialectic explanations.

What did  Chief Marin and Nicasius call this place?

When newcomers arrive in the country of death,

what do they speak? Irish? Miwok? Slainte Gael macushla mo chroidhe.

A toast to my Gaelic heart’s blood. I keep a Joycean rendezvous

with the dead in Nicasio, the geographic epicenter of Marin.

Last month, during my mother’s wake, a forest fire broke out,

helicopters dragged tarps of reservoir water for the parched trees.

Last week my uncle’s roomate’s heart failed him.

Last night Alan McIsaac’s mother died; they gather knee-deep at the bar

after mass. His father invites me over, but I’ve another death to attend to.

(Once I was 16, kissing Alan, cattle tongued the steep hillsides.)

Sinead asks what happened to the last buffalo at the church pasture.

Shot, someone volunteers. A neighbor bought another buffalo

named it “Nickel” who mouthed french bread cigars like Churchill.

Lonesome, he took off overland, looking for ghost kin.

The venial abstraction of fences didn’t stop him.

Someone talks about goin’ huntin’, dropping his “G”s.

The speculum of potential opens us up, pushes us back to root origins,

we revert to generational patterns—the good old boys

who paid regards to Bambi on the plate and in the pasture.

I remember my uncle bringing home haunches of roadkill venison.

The newcomers close ranks, carving our land into prime estates.

We’ve killed off all the predators, and the herds suffer.

Somewhere on the plains a white buffalo calf is born.

This is the seventh and final generation before the millennium.

The wooden Indian at the Ranch House, silent as smoke.

Last full moon before the solstice:

The DUI brothers hitch home alone at dusk.

A slow driver cramps my style, the spiral of Petaluma hill

unwinds in low gear like a yellow ribbon, taking no prisoners.

I dreamed of a fork in the road, my truck leaked hydraulic fluid,

and of the final cry of a wild goose who died in my arms

as I wailed in sorrow—for he was my father come to warn me.

An owl banks its wings against the velocity of my car.

Doesn’t quite cross my path. I shudder, dismissing superstition.

Sinead says, All things come in threes. Prime numbers offer little solace.

Her father chose the week after his friend’s passing,

my mother, the seventh year after our grandmother’s burial,

my father chose the day after his own birth.

At least today isn’t Thursday; they died on a Thursday

like the exiled poet, the Paris rain quenching his bones.

Backbone of the drought broken after a half-life of thirsty skies.

The dream decodes itself: the brakes fail after I arrive home.

It’s been that kind of day, that kind of winter, keeping score, the river rising.

Maybe we could abolish Thursdays, but not the rain.

We’re the last ones, displaced by those who’ve come,

and those who’ve died; the gap closing in on each of us,

a double helix of owl feathers fluxing the laden wind.

12/19/94

Around Forestville, Sonoma West Times, Maureen Hurley Honorable Mention

Uniting the World Through Poetry:The feast of words consumed: intro for the African poetry edition, vol. 2, no. 4

THE FEAST OF WORDS CONSUMED vol. 2, #4, 1993
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
        —Muriel Rukeyser

It is no longer news that Africa suffers from go-political, ecological, and cultural neglect. Or that of UNESCO's 15 top endangered World Heritage sites with "outstanding universal value to mankind," six are located in Africa. This continent whose writers are imprisoned for acts of terrorism, in South African poet Breyten Breytenbach's terms, is a country "doomed to extinction…gobbled up by the sands of silence—and for the second time. The first time there was the black silence of shame about slavery, now it is the indifferent silence of an unavowed real-politik." He writes: "The feast of words has been consumed/ No one is guilty of innocence." But the poems offered here embody hope & a steadfast faith in Africa's future.

It is said that exiles live in one country while dreaming of another. Africa, a country of families, ironically, is also a borderless continent of exiles where those of the Diaspora write longingly of home. Breytenbach suffers from "an incurable nostalgia..." where "ancient flames infest the unconscious... images scald the eyelids." Like Breytenbach who was nine-years imprisoned, poets whose work is featured here were/are also political prisoners: Abellatif Laâbi of Morocco, Jack Mapanje of Malawi, and Muhammed Afifi Matar of Egypt, to name a few.

Mapanje asks us, "Is it worth assembling another voice?" Paul Dakeyo of Cameroon replies, "Let my breath/ rise from the deepest of dark carth/ upright words/ with only clear vocals/ of my rebellious voice." Here, the griots, the poets are calling us to action—for political commitment towards alleviating Africa's suffering. The Bantu saying, "the strength of the crocodile is water," reverberates in the depth and breadth of the voices presented here.

The noted Nigerian poct Niyi Osundare, who received the 1986 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, wrote in a recent issue of West Africa magazine: " ... there is something essentially universal about the genius of human creativity, no matter what its provenance. No part of the world has a right to lay a monopolistic claim to that genius... Africa needs to discover her own name without making other continents anonymous; she needs to find her center." Kofi Anyidoho of Ghana writes that the legacy of literature is the ability to move the human mind and spirit; a visionary world in which human creativity can overcome the persistent despair blocked by the savageries of life. Tayu Olafioye of Nigeria said, "A mother gives conscience to her child; poetry is the air with which we eat ideas." 

One can ask the age-old questions; for whom do we write, and where is the poem directed? The poet is the eye of time, the historian, the teacher, Olafioye asserts: "African poetry today... is socially conscious, using the pen as a hoe that exhumes..: and exposes... Poetry is the custodian of justice and social conscience in the face of this decadence." He asks, "What is it occupied with now? What new visions, if any, and ideologies might it have experienced lately? Each age occupies its poctry with particular regional or universal interests germane to its thinking but such a preoccupation is not exclusive..." 

Publishing is another problem: after receiving the 1990 Commonwealth Prize, Syl Cheney-Coker bemoaned the fact that in Sierra Leone, “There is no writing industry…manuscripts gather dust in cupboards." He stated Africa's governients "don't give a damn about literature or any aspects of culture.... We live in a country where a capital city hasn't a single decent bookshop or publishing house…We've joined the league of the most despicable countries because of the politics we've had in this country."

The task of gathering the poems for this anthology of African poetry was like reaching for the moon in order to plough the reflections of stars. We are grateful to all the poets who scattered their words through the universe to alight here in the temporary abode of these pages. Tanure Ojaide who single-handedly contacted many of the poets whose work appears in the Mother Earth & African Poetry issues, writes "I have tried to reach the women poets I know. The women writers tend to complain that they are overlooked or neglected." According to Chency-Coker, "The problem of female representation in African poetry is one that feminists would find interesting." In the 1990 Heinemann Book of African Poetry, (ed., Adewale Maja Pearce), out of a total of 22 poets, only three were women!

"I don't think the editor was biased in having so few women in a major anthology. Except for South Africa, few women poets are being published. Unfortunately this situation hasn't changed in the last 30 years." We delayed publication for late-arriving poems in order to include a wider representation of African women poets.

We are especially indebted to Frank Chipasula of Malawi who is the editor of the fine anthology, When My Brothers Come Home: Poems from Central and South Africa. Frank and Stella Chipasula, who are currently editing the first ever anthology of African women poets, and their publisher Heinemann, have graciously agreed to share some of the new poems with us. Mother Tongues: the Heinemann Book of African Women Poets, will be released May 1995. Andrée Chelid writes: "Stir up that word Which does not turn away from men/ But shapes itself towards them." 

Decades ahcad of schedule, the world's population has surpassed the 50-billion mark—a line of people stacked head-over-heels to the moon and back nine times. If the words of these poems were people, would there be enough to reach to the moon? Or beyond! Poems, the moon's children, calling us to arns. Once I dreamed I walked barefoot on African earth. Geographically and culturally diverse Africa, the cradle of civilization, torn and plundered by colonialism, war, and strife, still manages to kep the oral tradition of poetry central to every private and public function of life. May this feast of words consume us.

Maureen Hurley, Co-Editor
Uniting the World Through Poetry

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L' Are Musiol, Tchikaya U Tam'si, Congo Republic Al-Ahran Weekley, Egypt 1991
Al-Kamel, Union of Palestine Writers, 1984
Bird Black South African Poetry
Black & White in Love, Mbella Sonne Dipoko, Heinemann 1982
Of Chameleons & Gods, Jock Mopanje, Helnemann
Dreamseeker on a Divining Chain, Okinba Launko, Kraft Books, Nigeria 1992
The Eye of the Earth, Niyi Osundare, Heinemann, Nigeria 1986
Familiar Ground, I. de Cox, Raven Press, South Africa

The Graveyard also has Teeth, Syl Cheney-Coker, Sierra Leone

COMMUNITY LIFE, Honors, Maureen Hurley, Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, Press Democrat,

COMMUNITY LIFE, Honors, Maureen Hurley, Press Democrat

November 27, 1994 | Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)
Page: D5 | Section: FEATURES | Column: Community Life 

Honorable mention for poem

Maureen Hurley of Forestville earned an honorable mention with her poem ``Horseflesh'' in the 1994 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award competition for poems on the Jewish Experience, a nationwide event.

Winning poems will be read Thursday in Berkeley. The competition was established in 1986 by the Magnes Museum and the children of Anna Davidson Rosenberg, who came to California at the turn of the century and became a volunteer community leader.

The free public readings will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Cody's Books, 2408 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley.

SAMHAIN OR HALLOWE'EN

—in dreams begins responsibility. Old Play 

In the days of old in Eire (Ireland) men and fairyfolk inhabited the same earthly plane. A god of love, Angus Og was of beautiful appearance, a tall, red-haired handsome warrior king; four birds representing his kisses always hovered over his head. His kingdom was in Brugh a Boinne at New Grange by the river Boyne. One day he gravely insulted the Mórrigan or Cailleach (who was in her womanly form (Badbh)-sometimes this triple goddess appeared as a crow or an old hag think the idea of witches came from stories of her. She was the wife of Lugh, the sun god of arts and crafts).

Down by the stream, she put a dream curse upon him and gave him some cryptic advice. (Advice from the Callleach was always riddled with danger: she never lied, but her words always held trickery).

In a dream he fell sick in love for a maiden, Càer Ibormeith, daughter of Ethal Anubhail of the De Danaan of Connacht. He went out to find her (after barely winning a huge battle with her father who was helped by the Cailleach-the battle and its treachery takes up most of the story . . .) but Caer Ibormeith lived in the shape of a swan, and on the Feast of Samhain* (Oct. 31) she would be found with 150 other swans on Loch Bel Dragon. If he could identify her and she liked him (but she had vowed to forever despise the man who destroyed her father's kingdom), then, and only then he could marry her. She had a change of heart, and they did marry despite the Cailleach's curse.

*Samhain Feis na Samhna (named after a primary god) began on the eve of Oct. 31 and ended on Nov. 1) marked the end of the pastoral year and the beginning of the new year. The Celtic New Year was an intensely spiritual time, the only period when the Otherworld became visible to mankind and when spiritual forces were let loose on the human world. Gods, fairies and the dead could visit our world and we could visit their world. In Celtic countries all hearth fires were extinguished and could only be relit from a ceremonial fire lit by the druids. (Our calendar's shifted a little, Nov. 4 is now the real date for Samhain).

Christianity later made this festival into a harvest festival called St. Martin's Mass (Martinmas), All Saints, or All Hallows Day; the evening before was called Halloween- when spirits, witches and ghosts could wander and wreak mischief on the world. In Ireland my grandmother said Jack-o-lanterns were carved from large turnips (pumpkins are from the New World) and placed in every window. Evergreen plants trimmed each window holly, ivy, mistletoe). Kids dressed up in rags with masks and carried lit turnips, noisemakers and bull-roarers on long sticks made from pig's bladders to scare away the evil spirits, knocking on doors, saying the familiar Trick or Treat. If they did a good trick (sang a song, told a joke, recited a poem, or danced), & entertained the master and mistress of the house, they were then rewarded with coins and food- it was the end of the harvest season. No trick? well, no treat either!

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

I went out to the hazel wood.
Because a fire was in my head, 

And cut and peeled a hazel wand, 

And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing, 

And moth-like stars were flickering out,
dropped the berry in a stream 

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor 

I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl 

With apple blossoms in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran 

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 

I will find out where she has gone, 

And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass, 

And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon, 

The golden apples of the sun.

William Butler Yeats
THE WIND AMONG THE REEDS (1899)

Green Day: Green Fuse review (end of article is missing) fan Mail from Barbara Meyn

The Sonoma County Independent • October 27 - Nov 2, 1994    P25

Keeper of the Fire: Ten years ago, poet and Santa Rosa Junior College instructor Brian Bold inherited the editorship of "Green Fuse," the county's most enduring poetry journal.

Green Day
The tiny "Green Fuse" poetry journal isn't exactly setting the world afire-or is it? By Mauren Hurley

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age. —DYLAN THOMAS

The poems found in Sonomas longest-lived literary magazine, Green Fuse, are not coyly veiled in the dusty deep-throat metaphor of academia; they explode the DNA of words onto the world, they take
to the streets, they broadcast the news in the tradition of the doctor poet William Carlos Williams, who said, "It is difficult getting the news from poetry/ but men die miserably/ every day /for lack of what is found there."

It's impossible to write about the driving force behind Green Fuse without mentioning its founding editor, progressive psychologist/poet/artist Ralph Smith, who befriended many of the poets whose work appeared in his magazine.

The current editor in chief, Santa Rosa poet Brian Boldt--a Santa Rosa Junior College instructor who was a frequent contributor to Green Fuse-recalls his first meeting with Smith: "I met Ralph at the Peace and Justice Center, and the first thing he asked me was “What do you think of Ferlinghetti's work?' It was a test.

FROM THE BEGINNING, Green Fuse was a strictly grassroots affair. Smith, who founded the magazine in 1983 while in his late 70s, collected all the material often discovered by word of mouth. He typed the poems, coordinated the printing, and scheduled collating and book parties, all on a shoestring budget and with assistance from his wife, Marcia Keller-Smith, and a handful of faithful followers.

In 1988, Smith invited Boldt to become an associate editor. The following year, Boldt inherited the editorship from Smith who, dying of can-cer, wanted to ensure the magazine's continued survival. "I did three issues with Ralph and suddenly he was gone," Bold says, adding that Smith spent a significant portion of the last day of life going over the pedantic details of operating the journal he loved so much.

The biannual Green Fuse celebrates a full decade of publishing this month with issue No. 21, and the number of poets represented in each issue has jumped from approximately 35 poets to some 50. Smith envisioned bringing many Sonoma County poets and artists into the fold. The result was mostly good poetry and funky art. Under the guidance of Boldt, Green Fuse has evolved from a funky, stapled chapbook (printed on copy machines liberated from the mundane, late at night when the office was closed) to a handsomely bound 64-page format with a press run of 600 copies.

It is now more sophisticated in appearance; the upscale cover of one recent Green Fuse issue was chosen to illustrate an article on small mag. azines in the prestigious Writer's Digest. Green Fuse also is listed in several other trade magazines, including The Poet's Market and Fact Sheet Five. Bookpeople, an Oakland distributor for small presses, distributes Green Fuse nationally. The magazine is also available in Paris and London. And the poets represented are no longer limited to Sonoma County. Poets nationwide and around the world- Hungary, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia submit over 1,000 poems a year, but the vision first set forth by Smith continues to shape the magazine

"The best poetry always surfaces," Boldt says, "and is timeless."

For many writers, Green Fuse continues to serve as a platform to voice not only environmental concerns, but currently hot political and social issues as well. According to Boldt, "Themes are not chosen, they arise." Popular themes have included land use in Costa Rica, U.S. involvement in Nicaragua, Vietnam veterans' crises, the effects of logging on the spotted owl, the Gulf War. But these polemic kinds of issues often evoke diatribes, not poetry.

"Green Fuse poems are well-crafted lyrical works that also get the message across comments associate editor Marianne Ware. "Green Fuse reflects my own philosophical and political leanings. But I want to be associated with the magazine if the poems were didactic, or if the message were more important than the craft, the poem. “It’s the message in the craft working together in harmony that singles out a green fuse poem.

Says associate editor, Karen Eberhart on future trends: “I’d love to see green fruits, really get big, become a first flight rate top flight environmental poetry magazine. 

Rest of article is missing….

SIDEBAR Rest of article is missing….
Sonoma Zine Scene

THE TRADITION of publishing small literary magazines in the Bay Area exploded in the late '50s in response to the elitism of the corporate publishing world in New York, which preferred its poets dead or academic preferably both at the same time.

Poets on the West Coast got tired of waiting for New York to notice them and created hundreds of small of magazines. Some of them, like Sonoma County's Green Fuse, are enduring. It evolved as a reaction to the ecological devastation sanctioned during the Reagan-era. Others rise up like randy weeds poking through pavement, only to quickly go to seed for lack of funds or energy.

Petaluma poet  Richard Benbrook's The Tomcat, and such other fine publications as First Leaves, Grandmother Spider, Loon, Backroads, Life of Crime, Windmill, Paper Pudding, and California Oranges all are history now.  And dozens of new punk and spoken-word 'zines with prosaic names like Wyrd Zar Joose, Neurotic Girl, Bread, and First Person have emerged and died like mayflies before the frost.

Poets who want to get down to the business end of writing may submit three to five typed poems (include a self- addressed stamped envelope to the following:

AVEC c/o Cydney Chadwick, Editor, P.O. Box 1059, Penngrove
95495. Published twice a year. Tends toward "language poetry" and avant-garde French and Russian translation.

Copperfield's Literary Magazine c/o Editor, 153 Kentucky St, Petaluma 94952. Published sporadically; year-round submissions. Free at all Copperfield's bookstores.

Cyanosis c/o Darin de Stefano, Editor, 318 Mendocino Ave., Suite 30, Santa Rosa 95401. Published very sporadically.

Green Fuse c/o Brian Boldt, Editor, 3365 Holland Drive, Santa Rosa 95404. $5 an issue (includes postage). Published twice a year. Submit poems by Jan. 15 and July 15.

Mother Earth Journal c/o Maureen Hurley, National Poetry Association …

Rest of article is missing…. Also Brian wrote a nasty letter to the editor because I mentioned Kay Ryan.

MIA Sonoma Mandala & Tight

TO A NEIGHBOR

TO A NEIGHBOR

                  Je pense donc je suis

                   —Descartes, 1637

                       For Sonny Lowe

Because of your small son we find ourselves

inducted, offering meals at the rude altar.

Within his frenzied orbit we find ourselves

trading dishes across the truce of doorways,

sharing intimacies, bartering the intangible.

Coming home from the niteclubs,

at the changing of the guard, you slip

into the evacuated shroud of my body heat:

in this way we learn the odor of each other’s skin.

On the clothesline, garments whip small plots

of insurrection against the approaching storm.

I saw you with the wounded face of a stranger

test the loneliness of granite. Bluesman or poet:

we each have a vested interest in the art of suffering.

The cats crave the simple praise of hands before they’ll eat.

To hold what is good also requires merciless attention.

On the anniversary of my grandmother’s death

I learned the name of my mother’s death; took refuge

in the ordinary: a boy carving pumpkins, the tv’s baleful stare.

Not the lump in my breast, or the generational patterns

we belabored and distrusted.  The mirror of the son in your eyes.

What truth faced my father (like yours) who raised

another jar against the darkness until it swallowed him?

Over coffee, laundered secrets struggle against

daylight like young birds, or new-born planets—

The juxtaposition of distance against the kenning,

the knowing; the fatal separation of mind and body:

I suffer, therefore I am has kept so many of us safe for years—

The cup of coffee, a fragrant vessel across the River Styx.

Death eats my mother’s bones until they shine 

with the purity of snow while we gather stones

to build walls against the coming of winter,

no longer able to shrug off the inevitable—

the genetic cloth of familial patterns

unravels us with the same mistakes.

Early warning signals do not efface the reflection

of your son’s eyes against the mirrored river.

None of us chooses family, neighbors, or love.

Despite everything, like death, the spectacle

of hope persists, colors everything we do.

10/24/94