The jockey's baton

Whenever I find myself getting longwinded on Facebook, I save my rambling comments because they're always potential fodder for a blogpost. Lawd knows people make a dubious career of writing about less titillating drivel.

Trouble is, my Facebook comments are stacking up fast and furious, never to be transcribed to my blog because I'm lazy, and because that would require even more work to whip them into shape. A beginning, middle and end. You know, a framework? Not to mention polishing the dubious merit of the content. 

The fun part is how I find myself writing about absurd things I would never otherwise dream of as appropriate fodder—like the judicious use of jockey's batons on horse’s butts in races, for example.

(See this ABC video: A jockey knocked from his mount mid-race manages to leap back in the saddle—to win the race at the last second.)

Well, that Kiwi horseracing video brought out all the bleeding hearts who perceived the race as a perfect exemplar of animal cruelty. They whinged, whined, and condemned every jockey within a 3-million-mile radius, for using a riding baton, so, naturally I wrote back:

A jockey perched atop a horse has zero leg contact with the horse at all. Only reins and his riding crop. At that speed, voice commands are useless. He can't use his legs to communicate. The popping sound of the riding crop, or baton, is often his only form of communication with the horse. And there are so many variables. Also, a jockey may not be familiar with his mount, and effective communication is needed.

A riding crop is also used as a communication tool—to move right, left, change leads, etc. Even buggy whips are not used to whip a horse, they're used for steering, and for the noise factor]. If a horse doesn’t want to run, it won't run. They can be real headcases. You can't make a horse win a race by whipping it. The horse has to want to win. Seabiscuit is a case in point. It's a partnership.

One Facebook reader, Luke Broadbent liked my point and wrote: "Thank God someone knows what they are talking about!" Well, you know that only spurred me on. Wait. The subject was riding crops. These spurs were made for jangling....

Another reader took umbrage at my statement, and said," I call BS on "using the crop properly". She said, "My horses preformed beautifully on voice commands and hand cues. Never had to touch her with anything. We did barrels."

Well since the bullshit was flying fast and furious anyway, I asked Kristina, "Do you sit deep in a western saddle when barrel racing? Do your legs touch the horse's sides, do you use leg or hand commands? Do you ride an unfamiliar horse for each race? I sure used leg commands when I barrel raced. A jockey has no leg contact at all. He's up there on top like a human fly. With only reins and crop. At that speed, trust me, voice commands are useless."

Someone else with a modicum of common sense piped in: "Why would you use a crop barrel racing? Your analogy makes no sense." And Mike Childers, who rode a mount called Charlie Horse to victory at Churchill Downs, said to her, "I don't remember you winning the Kentucky Derby." I had to laugh. 

Another commenter needed a serious horse anatomy lesson. I said: Jockeys don't whip the horse in the flank, or belly, that would be near impossible (and illegal) to do, no matter how long the crop was. Besides, a jockey is sanctioned for improper usage of the baton. The racing industry is well regulated.

Using the baton is allowed on young horses everywhere—even in Norway, where the crop has been otherwise banned for use on older racehorses who are a little more track savvy. And two-year olds do need that abrupt form of communication—especially on the turns—to prevent pile-ups. They're dumb as fenceposts. Sometimes they even think they're fenceposts. I didn't even mention the horses' quirky personalities and running styles...or that most are stud colts with plenty attitude.

But even mature racehorses horses aren't always savvy judges when it comes to making split-second decisions: hugging the rail, threading the needle, or getting out of a tight knot of hoses packed in on the turn.That's where the jockey comes in. One misstep, and they all go down, ass over tea kettle—with dire consequences.

Jockeys have to read the track and the situation, often astride an unfamiliar horse. It's a high speed strategies game. Enter the riding crop. Think of it as a turn signal. And a good jockey can save the life of his horse.

 Most people envision the whip as something used to inflict maximum pain for corporal punishment, like a cat-o-none-tails‚ not to be confused with the House Whip. Dressage whips, a true whip, are strictly used for signaling, and hunting whips aren't even used on the horse, but for opening gates. A riding crop, or baton, made of fiberglass, has a flat leather tongue, or keeper. The baton stings if used wrong, but it's more about the POP factor. There are two flat leather padded parts at the end that snap together, like a quirt. It's more like a loud hand clap.

In Britain, a maximum of five strokes can be used during the last furlong or from the final obstacle, or seven strokes total. Improper or excess usage gets jockeys sanctioned, or even banned from racing. Apparently there's a groundswell to ban using the bat at all—not because it's inhumane, but because it looks bad, and the betting public is what feeds horse racing. A PR nightmare.

Also, appearances can be deceiving. It may have looked like American Pharoah's jockey Victor Espinoza, was beating the stuffing out of his mount at the 2015 Kentucky Derby, his arm was whirring like a helicopter. But post-race analysis showed that he was hitting the horse's saddle towel. The Blood-Horse writer Steve Haskin, who condems whip overuse, said that Espinoza "did a lot of waving with the whip" and may not have actually hit the horse as many times as it seemed." Espinoza did not use his whip at all in the Preakness, and the horse still won.

 Triple Crown winner, American Pharoah, first horse to win Grand Slam

So, because of all this controversy, of course I had to Google the pros and cons of using the riding baton. Oh, how kinky! No, wait, I mean, it looks like the jockeys are striking back against Australia’s animal rights activists, literally. I found an article on the proper usage of the bat, with a jockey spanking a reporter's hands to demonstrate how it didn't hurt. I kid you not. So of course I had to post that link. Now, to kick back and wait for the uproar to commence.

Aren't you glad you asked? And today, because I wrote a comment about jockeys, I was flagged with a Facebook ad for a job as a wagering assistant at Golden Gate Fields. Coinciodence? I think not. Now Facebook is spying on the content of my comments as well? Maybe I need to flog Facebook. With a cat-o-nine-tails. Kinky!

Bread & Roses award for volunteer service

My connection with Bread & Roses began when I landed a job through my childhood friend, Micaela Wall to clean the Mill Valley office for Mimi Fariña in the late 1970s.

When Mimi discovered I was also a calligrapher, she put me to work making all the signage for the big benefit concerts (1979-82?) at the Berkeley Greek Theatre. I was promoted to calligrapher-in-residence and chief hooverer. I still have all the vintage B&R T-shirts designed by Stanley Mouse, and my backstage passes. (They all mysteriously shrank! Hmmmm.)

When College of Marin classmate Robin Williams spotted me backstage after a concert (we survived Jim Dunn's theater bootcamp together), he gave me a bone-crushing sweaty hug, introduced me to Eric Idle, of Monyt Python fame, who reminded me of a Siamese cat, and local comedian "Big Mike" Michael Pritchard. I can't remember a thing—other than I laughed so hard I wet my pants.

In the long run, the annual B&R weekend benefit concerts proved costly to produce (but they were memorable—a musician's wet dream) so Mimi began producing local benefit concerts in Marin. I moved to Sonoma Co. We lost touch. But Mimi did write me a glowing letter of recommendation.

Fast forward, about a decade later, I met musicians Neil O'Neill and Wendy Worsley, who, coincidentally, were performers for B&R. Which led me right back to B&R. I was the background roadie getting Neil ready for concerts, etc. Sadly, Mimi got cancer, and stepped down from B&R... The end of an era.

Then, ca. 2004, B&R staff asked Neil and me to sing in the holiday concerts for the old folks. I think I missed a few years due to viruses (no sharing colds with the old folks).

Also, beginning in 2004, Neil and I volunteered at the B&R booth at the Kate Wolf Music Festival, and we've attended that festival off and on since then.

I mentioned to one of the B&R coordinators, Lisa Starbird, that I used to work for Mimi way back when, and she immediately put me on the Appreciation list, as a form of documentation. And now I'm actually getting an award for something like 40 years of service! OK, so I missed a decade, plus change, and was incognito for another decade...but I was always rattling around in the bushes.

I'm floored and flabbergasted and honored to be getting this award this afternoon at the annual B&R jam. So, if I hadn't whined to Lisa that I wanted my own invite to the annual B&R Jam, vs always being Neil's plus one, this award recognition would've never happened.

So many fantastic folks I've met through B&R: Peter Mertz, Jeannie Bogardis, Ken Harrison, B&R coordinator Marian Huebler, Brenda Laribee, and Dennis McIntyre, have been my steadfast and stalwart connections throughout all this. So many dedicated folks at B&R. I am honored to be among them. If not for them... Just wow!

Who knew that hoovering and spit-polishing Mimi's B&R office so many years ago would lead to all this? Give us bread and gives us roses. And vacuum cleaners too. It really was a Hoover.

Just say no to two spaces after a period

Just say no to those two spaces after a period unless you're typing in a fixed width font, like, say, Courier. Typesetting does not require two spaces. Ever. Two spaces after proportionally spaced typeset periods creates distracting white rivers.

It comes down to this. Two spaces is fine on an old school typewriter, but nothing else. Not even calligraphy.

As a practicing dyslexic, I completely disagree with Rebecca Johnson's harebrained notion that two spaces after a period facilitates reading comprehension. Saying that it "drastically hurts our ability to read fluently" is utter rubbish. People couldn't read fluently before the advent of the fixed-spaced font typewriter? I think not.

If she had a modicum of historical perspective on typography, she'd know the origin of the two spaces after a period and how it came to be accepted. The typewriter pool. Yes. To keep keys from jamming. That's how it came to be. A freakish accident.

I too find two spaces after a period unsettling. I would question her data. And 60 people (from Skidmore) is far too slender a pool of test subjects. In the age of proportional fonts, using two spaces is retro, a dinosaur's nod to the typing pool, and it needs to stop.

Steve Jobs sat at the feet of master calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds, and then invented the proportionally spaced fonts that we ALL use today via computers, based on calligraphy, so why would we even want to go back to those mono-spaced fonts? Let the dinosaur die.

PRO-FOUND MEMORY BANKS haiku

Once we were the old timers;
we could find & remember everything—
But now we have found Alzheimer's.

Or perhaps it has found us.

7/28/2018

Growing up redneck in Nevada County

Nevada County was fiercely and proudly redneck during the 1970s—even towards their own prodigal white native sons, born and raised in the fold s of their tight-knit community. There was no place for their returning sons who were drafted, and fought for their country—when they returned. They, who saw the light and grew their hair long. This was no county that recognized a passport for weirdness, or otherness. This is why my Sweet Old Bob didn't move back home, he was harassed for his hair. In those days they hurled epithets and beer bottles at us as we drove by in our VW bus. Xenophobia was alive and well and living in Grass Valley. Why we never moved back and settled down. Of course, not it the epicenter for coolness. Not not for those of us who were among the first to return home to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range, what Ansel Adams, dubbed The Range of Light.

CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

I once stood toe-to-toe with the Columbia Icefield,

we were stuck beside it for days, hitching south.

It was like standing in an open sky refrigerator, 

we feared we might freeze to death at its foot.

I wore every bit of clothing I had in my backpack, 

and my upside-down sleeping bag as a shawl,

looking like the Michelin Man with strange headgear,
the toe of the bag, a lofty orange helmet.

In that odd get-up, I scared off all the prospective rides.

We were so grateful when the redneck PG&E worker

that picked us up in Oregon, came to our rescue. 

Lord knows why they ever stopped. Maybe
they felt sorry for me, but Bob, with long hair & beard,
was from the camp across the river from status quo.

Over the campfire, we sipped coffee, and were humbled, 

not realizing we too were redneck in our own way.

For a while, the divide between us was diminished.

The vast Columbia Icefield, older than Mankind
taking its first steps, moaned and groaned and seethed
like an old dog on its last legs, rising from the hearth.

We parted company again in Banff, they were like family,

we meant to keep in touch, never did send that postcard.

The idea of global warming hadn't yet been parsed,

nor had it begun its irrevocable spiral. The ice is melting.

Now, you need to take a bus to the glacier's edge.

Soon it will be gone, like all the rest. 

Another snapshot lost in time.

7/8 & 8/15/18

FACEBOOK EGO-WARRIORS

Nothing quite like fully-developed 

male egos stoked with half-baked opinions 

trying to prove themselves right.

It's like pissing in round corners.

We are officially in drought mode again

It's official, we are officially in a drought, again. I fear this is the way of the future. We have more or less been experiencing a series of long-term droughts inter-spliced with a few deluge years in between since the beginning of the 1970s. It’s either drought or flood. Not to mention wildfire.  The idea of normal rainfall is a thing of the past I fear. 

Northern California does substantially better with rainfall than Southern California. Especially the North Bay. After all, from Marin County north, we are part of the Pacific Northwest bioregion, though the Pacific Northwest folks would vehemently deny that. But biologically, and ecologically, as well as geographically speaking, we are all one large entity, sharing the same resources and weather patterns.

True, we are at the extreme southern end of the Pacific Northwest region. But when we do get rain, we get more rain than Seattle. The rest of California suffers much more from the lack of rain. So it comes as no surprise that we have entered extreme drought mode across the state—especially Southern California. But now it’s affecting the Southbay area and the central California coast as well. New victims of the drought.

Poem, Kublai Khan published in spectrum 15 Mise en Scene

It will take six months before I get a copy, a mis-scribed address, 295A became 2957! No such place. But this is the actual publication date and announcement.

• Spectrum 15 Mise en Scene, Kublai Khan does LA 
• KUBLAI KHAN DOES LA

Barn swallow nest

Oops! Yet another generation of Nicasio barn swallows bites the dust. Apparently enough barn swallows survive to return each year to nest on top of the porch light electric box circuit. I returned the nest to the top of the warm porch light, it stays lit 24-7, the light doesn’t seem to bother her, perhaps she'll lay another clutch.

Porch sitting

This morning I was buzzed by a bald eagle at Nicasio Reservoir—magical. Porch sitting, watching the cars cruize by on a Sunday afternoon listening to an afternoon concert by Pablo Cruz from across the square for free—It doesn't get any better than this. I was wondering who the copycat band was. Couldn't figure out why they couldn't get Black Magic Woman chords all lined up in the right order. Why they were riffing. Then it dawned on me, albeit slowly, it was the real deal. Pablo, himself, cruising for a bruising.

Memorial flowers, Penelope la Montagne, drawings

When it came to writing a memoir about Penelope, no words came, just these two drawings.

Mt St. Helena drawing

TWO BLUEBIRD MORNING

Today was a two-bluebird morning.
They swooped at dawn, then crashed
into the bay window where I sat
blearily typing up student poems—racing the clock.
Fallen on the bright grass, they were archetypal.
I picked them up, cradled them in my hands,
I held them, and my breath,
I was literally holding the heart of the sky in my hands,
Then they awoke, and flew off into the mist.
I was not the same person I was a few minutes ago.

5/15/18
rev. 5/20

I never got around to writing the poem. Too busy meeting deadlines.Two bluebird morning. As I typed poems, they crashed into the window where I sat, I held the heart of the sky in my hands, then they flew off. Two pieces of the sky, a pair, the male was indescribably blue. The female, drab. Scared the shit out of me, I saw them out of the corner of my eye right before they struck, coming straight for my head, like kamakazi pilots, then kabam! We've been having some earthquakes so loud noises are always suspect. Duck and cover? They were both stunned, with wings spread on the grass, they seemed almost mythical, so I cradled them in my hands to keep them warm, and calm them until they recovered. I now have tiny feathers down the front of my sweater. No way to get a photo of them as my hands were full of birds with racing hearts.

Ethan Hay said  those poems are beginning to affect the Earth's magnetic field. Best get them typed up quickly and distributed, for the sake and continued health of your local flora and fauna. It is an incredible blue, isn't it? As if a piece of the sky had sprouted wings and taken flight. Yet the sky was never so warm, so soft, so vulnerable to panes of glass.

5/15/20 I love Facebook memories. I find bits of writing that never made it to my blog. A fleeting moment from two years ago still brings back the magic. Maybe this time I will write that poem. But I need to teach in a few moments. Some thing remain the same. Who could ever have imagined we’d all be sequestered like this two years later?

Carnyxes on my mind

Imagine a Roman legionary encamped in enemy territory, awakening to the otherworldly Gallic sounds of war. As myriad carnyx tongues flutter eerily in the predawn mist, you are reminded of the saying, The enemy of your enemy is my friend. Visiting UC Berkeley scholar, musicologist Simon O Dwyer made a replica carnyx and when he played it for us, my hackles rose. I tried to play it, they're hinged, on a pivot, mid-point, and are exceedingly heavy. You need serious upper body strength to carry and play them. The sine curve is well balanced. Let's just say I lost my balance and went careening off into the walls, for a mad Monty Python moment, but I managed to not crash the instrument. Pretty much. Any composure I might have had was lost. The looks on their faces, their mouths and eyes, silent white Os. I always meant to transcribe my notes but got hopelessly lost, they were so convoluted.

A video where musician John Kenny demonstrates a Celtic carnyx. You can also see Celtic warriors playing  the carnyxes on the Gundestrup cauldron. And on this rare Celtic gold coin that depicts both a chariot and carnyx.

"Fig. 2 Gold quarter stater of Ambiani tribe. On one side is the head of Apollo with a lyre hidden in his curly hair. On the other we see a Celtic hammer-god driving his chariot across the sky. He has long flowing hair and holds a large hammer in his right hand. He may be Sucellos ‘the good striker’. A big bee – the Celts made mead with honey – buzzes before the horse’s snout. Only one other specimen of this coin is known and that is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. The above coin will be sold by auction early in March." The link is dead.

See my story 

• Prehistoric Irish music notes with Simon O'Dwyer

GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES: Cultural appropriation?

GYPSIES, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES
by Parris Afton Bonds

Cultural appropriation? Irish Travellers are not Roma Gypsies
By MoHurley on May 12, 2018

I'm a little more than concerned that Irish Travellers, who are NOT, I repeat, NOT Roma, in any way, shape or form, are conflated into this story.

There are a handful of Roma people in Ireland, it's a recent migration, but we're talking less than 3000 people in all of Ireland, in 2004, the census was 1700 Roma people.

The real Irish Travellers, formerly called Tinkers, probably date back to Neolithic times. But they are ethnically Irish. Today there are about 10,000 to 40,000 Travellers in Ireland. There is one school of thought that the Travellers arose as a distinct class of people during the Cromwellian, and/or during the Famine. Some Irish Travellers immigrated to Scotland, as well as to America. Eddie Izzard portrays an American Irish Traveller grifter in "The Riches."

Irish Travellers are NOT Roma. Recent DNA analysis has proven this beyond a doubt. It's bad enough that Irish cobb horses are now called Gypsy vanners, and this latest conflation will only serve to further confuse people. Cultural appropriation at its worst. Just don't.

The author writes: "True gypsies, Romany folk and Irish Travellers, were adept at storytelling. For a thousand years, although most of the Gypsy clans could neither read no write, they had kept historical records of their odyssey by word of mouth." Bonds then conflates Roma with Travellers. She couldn't be more wrong. She makes no attempt to untangle the two distinctly genetically different peoples. Being itinerant does not make them upper case Gypsies.

"The [DNA] study clearly showed there was no significant genetic contribution made by Roma Gypsies to Traveller DNA. This disproves a view held by some that the two groups were genetically related." —Irish Times

• Irish Travellers are not related to gypsies
• DNA study

CPITS teaching journal

I always tell the kids I can teach you simile, but I can't teach you metaphor, it has to come from within you. That's the real poet's work. Then Josiah wrote: Our friendship is a rope that can't be cut. I about died. Today's poem. Hot off the press, as it were. If I can't get original language from them, then what am I doing teaching them?

One first grader was lost in daydream-land, I got tired of prompting him and threatened to have a tantrum like a baby kicking and screaming. And the class began to chant: do it! do it! do it! Teacher threatened to join me. I laughed so hard. Stand-up comedy for first graders. A tough crowd to please. Kids were rolling in the aisles laughing.

The daydreamer came through with flying colors & finished his poem. Wrote a second one. I guess the thought of us screaming away on the floor was way too visual. The things we do for poetry.

Beyond knackered, I am. I've read, commented upon, and typed up 3 classes' worth of poems. But can't seem to begin the 4th class. Frog brain. Ribbit.
 

NEW MOWN HAY, RAISED BY HORSES, ODE TO STEPHANIE,CPITS in class poems

NEW MOWN HAY

I awoke to the clattering
of hooves on pavement,

the jingle of halter rings,

the secret whispering of horses 

as they cropped the moonlit grass 

still damp and glistening with dew, 

their coats, silken in the velvet night. 

The bright stars dazzle my eyes 

with their icy glint, and breath,
the scent of new mown hay

and that primal animal warmth
rises up to tickle the senses.

5/10/18


RAISED BY HORSES

I was a wild child, raised by horses. 

I chewed on grass sweet at the knuckle 

and nibbled upon molasses oats. 

I pawed at the ground and whinnied

collecting my gait at the canter 

and hand-gallop. A pencil for snaffle bit 

a belt for surcingle, and ribbons for reins.

We believed we were circus ponies 

we pranced to invisible music 

and we bowed to an invisible crowd.

5/10/18

 

ODE TO STEPHANIE

Stephanie who always met 

kindness with kindness 

and anger with kindness,

her abiding love for animals 

carried her forth
until the day of no return 

that brought a deep abiding sadness.
The mother who died too soon, 

the fire consuming more than dreams. 

I remember how we
used to sneak into the barn 

with a box of cake mix
and water it down 

and slurp it up like a frosting 

our sweet tooth
making us petty thieves. 

And the time I got a pet rat 

a spotted baby,
my grandmother said No 

so I took it to Steph's house 

and we made a pact,
we kept it in a shoebox 

but it ate its way through
the cardboard to freedom

and one night it escaped
to the sweet beyond.

5/10/18

RAISED BY HORSES

 RAISED BY HORSES

I was a wild child, raised by horses. 

I chewed on grass sweet at the knuckle 

and nibbled upon molasses oats. 

I pawed at the ground and whinnied

collecting my gait at the canter 

and hand-gallop. A pencil for snaffle bit 

a belt for surcingle, and ribbons for reins.

We believed we were circus ponies 

we pranced to invisible music 

and we bowed to an invisible crowd.

5/10/18

Earthquakes

View from my base camp for one more week. Alpenglow. The ever-changing face of the goddess. And poetry, of course.

This evening, as I ambled up the hill to the water tank, to take photos of wildflowers; sunflowers, blue-eyed grass, Ithuriel's spears, brodiaea, vetch, owl's clover, a bevy of small birds, I stumbled and  ground-nesting fledglings, perhaps wrens, tumbled clumsily about my feet, having cascaded down the bank at the base of a bay tree, from their nest.

I stood stock still, afraid to step, as the fallen angels found their way to safety, their parents uttering their one-note call of distress, like the clacker that the nuns used to cue us up as we prepared for conformation. 

The mosquitoes drilled deep to quench their bloodlust, and ate me alive. I stumbled again, thinking it was my crocks, not the earth itself. This time the earth quivered like a horse with sensitive skin. The bevy of birds huddled in the tall grasses.

I marveled at the perfect circle, the ground nest lined with soft grasses, like a basket. The pattern is at hand. Then, the grand finale, the carcass of a rattler, fresh kill, vivid diamond patterns, like a basket woven pattern, at my feet.

Sometime you just have to step outside the circle, if only for a few moments, and everything changes, yet remains the same. 

A holiness within.

(as I was walking back in the gloaming, I stumbled, almost lost my footing, blamed it on my crocs, but it was a series of jolts from The Geysers. A 4.0, and a 4.2 back-to-back, plus several tremors in the 2 range. The geysers are just around the corner to the left of the photo.)

NECTAR SEEKERS , 1

NECTAR SEEKERS

Hummingbird, bumble, and honeybee
take turns sipping lemon blossom nectar.
Lizard zips in for a consultation.
Mosquito takes more blood samples.

5/7/18

A HOUSE MADE OF LEAVES, CPITS poem after Juan Felipe

1. Go to where the wind endures
the teething rocks on the horizon.

2. Soothe the wild grasses
and braid their dreams into stories.

3. Listen to the heartbeat of birds
conversing in foreign tongues.

4. Record the endless beauty
that shall always go unnamed.

5. Arrive all out of breath
to see a house made of leaves.

6. I said count, count the words. 

When I'm stressed, it soothes me,
this sublime numbering of days.

5/7/18
CPITS poem after Juan Felipe

TIRE SHOP ODE

My tire has developed a slow leak,

it hisses like a snake in search of a snack,
will it make it through the night?
Will my aging chariot transport me

to Healdsburg in the morning

to teach poetry to little kids?

or will I be writing tire shop odes 

to the road not taken?

5.6.18

FISSURE

It all began with the tremors,
the earth shaking beneath their feet,
then the massive dancing 'quakes.
She tossed a feathered boa of pink smoke
into the sky, she was stepping out.
The fissures opened like zippers
to reveal her molten skin and her hunger
devoured the cat scratches of civilization.
Pele's stepping out for a leisurely stroll
and she wants all her treasures back,
every single rock the tourists stole.
Will they never learn, she wonders,
throws a fiery shawl over her shoulder
and tends to her garden of fire.

5/6/18

ODE FOR CAMILLE

     after Neruda

She used to
braid my hair
in class
like a pony
I was
transfixed,
ground tied.
I couldn't move.
She brushed
and yanked
my hair so hard
it was as if I was
strung up
like a marionette.
The teacher got mad,
said, Leave her
hair alone,
but it was the only way
I could get the girl
to tell me a poem.
She said the wind
is like a rose
flying across my mind.
She said my mind
is like the earth.
She said my heart
is like the sky
playing in a garden of stars.
She said beyond the sky
is my life.
I said only the birds know
the song of the air.
And my hair took flight
across the sky
for a girl
with the name
of flowers.

5/2/18
Emerson ES 

NECTAR THIEVES, haiku

Carpenter bees shred
the sage blossoms trying
to swill sweet nectar.

Angrily they buzz,
squeezing their girth into size
zero red dresses.

Yellow shawl thorax,
taut abdomen shines like jet
beads caked with pollen.

Pollen pantaloons,
fishnet stockings, tiny heels
they're decked out, on the town.

Nectar wasp dangles
delicate honeysuckle
sips frilly blossoms.

The bombadier bee
prefers the tight red trumpet—
it's all about color.

It chases the bees off
No honeybees, no matter
how sweet, will dine here.

No bumblebees either.
Flower market is crowded
with desperate shoppers.

Surreptitious bee-
flies sneak in to steal the show
make off with the goods.

Swallowtail swoops down
to find the pantry empty,
flits off in a huff.

Cabbage moth could care
less, she has other errands
to run, like laying some eggs,

While the skipper flits,
it careens from leaf to flower
just because it can.

Hungry hummingbird
misses out, and lets me know
that it's all my fault,

Squawking and flitting
her tail in indignation,
with ruby throat aflame.

5/2/18

KITCHEN CHICKEN

Towhees are like little chickens,
they like to pecks and scratch.
They think our kitchen floor
is the happy hunting ground.
I remember my grandmother
sitting by the stove, coffee mug in hand
while the towhees pecked at her feet.
Lately our drab towhee has taken a shine
to the Afghani rug in the living room
that matches her orange ass.
Perhaps she looking for a place
to nest, or she's the nestling
I once raised in the lemon bush.
Today she examined the floorboards,
dragging her wing along the molding
as if making a statement
about my housekeeping habits,
then exits, singing an aria of disapproval
with her one-note song.

5/2/18

RUSHES AND HEDGES

My biology teacher Dr. Fat 

from Finland used to say:

Rrrrushes are rrround,

and sedges have hedges.
Tight, compact.
Easy to remember.

Someone says, 
I thought sedges 
had wedges!
That too works.

It's an open field 

when it comes to 
remembering the grasses.

We could add:

grasses have sheathes  

all the way to the ground

and knobby knees.
or
grasses are jointed, 
all the way
down to the ground
or 

Grasses, like asses,

have holes and grow

right down to the ground.

With all these variations,
no wonder I couldn't remember
the mnemonic memory aid for grasses.
Where is Mnemosyne when you need her?
I can't remember.

5/2/18

Last time

While doing CPITS paperwork for John's CAC grants, I found two poems scrawled on foolscap. Then I realized it was the last poem I will ever write with John. It was the last time I ever saw John alive. It was the last time I hugged and held him and said I loved him. It was also a hellish class at Emerson, I was supposed to take over in January. I dreaded it. The kids were all over the place. John was very patient. We wrote to music from Chiapas, the kids were crazy with the thought of freedom and Christmas vacation looming on the horizon. Little did I know that the new year would also bring such loss and sorrow. I am sad beyond despair. I still cannot believe he is gone. Gone. Just like that.

CATHEDRAL OF SOUND
A MADRIGAL FOR THE MILLENNIUM

TRÜMMELBACH FALLS

Deep in a slot canyon, where the Trümmelbach creek 
drains the meltwaters of three mountain glaciers,
you can hear the primal orchestra of the falls
but you can't see the ten waterfalls 
because they're hidden deep inside the mountain.
You have to enter the darkness to see the molten light 
of the subterranean falls, gilded with pale rainbows.
One's mind wanders to the idea of orcs 
and goblins hiding out in the limestone folds.

The Trümmelbach drains the Lauterbrunnen Valley,
once called in claro fonte, or the Liuterbrunnon,
or the place of bright or clear springs.
or perhaps the place of many loud springs,
people still argue over the origin of the name—
the Helvetii Celtic name is as lost
as the single Roman coin found in the Blumental—
The creeks drain to Zweilütschinen, the place of two rivers,
where the Weisse Lütschine joins the Schwarze Lütschine
and the mixing waters turns an aqua tint
a color like you've never before seen,
it's as if that blueness from inside glaciers
was painting the river with the memory of the sky.

When JRR Tolkien first hiked into this deep valley,
he modeled Rivendell, the Middle Earth dwelling place
of Elrond and the half-elves, after it.
But it is said that the villagers on the Schwarze Lütschine
were so dirty that they stained the river black,
but the villagers on the Schwarze Lütschine
claimed the Weisse Lütschine never bathed at all,
so the other river remained perfectly clean.

It all boils down to magic in the end.

5/1/18

Poem a Day challenge wrap

Well, for April's Poem a Day challenge, I managed to knock out 30 pieces of writing, 25 of which are poems. Which is amazing in that I really didn't begin writing in earnest until April 20. It was the devil trying to play catch-up. Some pieces began as prose and were later shaped into poems. Many of the poems were spontaneous combustion of words, not at all related to Robert Lee Brewer's PAD challenge. Not that he'd mind, in that his prompts are merely a jumping off point. So I have several more assignments to work on during the month ahead, filling in the gaps. A stockpile. I'll post the correct date beneath each late addition. Just because.  Check out Robert Lee Brewer's Facebook page, he's made hand-written cards for each of his prompts. Wish I had known earlier, as they're inspiring.

Trumpery

Cleaning up junkmail on an old account, I accidentally opened an AWAD email from Oct 19, 2016. Of the 1500 or so emails, this is the one had to open. The universe works in strange ways. Synchronicity at its best.

trumpery

PRONUNCIATION:
(TRUHM-puh-ree)

MEANING:
noun:
1. Something showy but worthless.
2. Nonsense or rubbish.
3. Deceit; fraud; trickery.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French tromper (to deceive). Earliest documented use: 1481.

USAGE:
“The room was crowded with a chilly miscellany of knick-knacks and ornaments, gewgaws, and trumpery of every kind.”
Leo Bruce; Case for Three Detectives; Academy Chicago; 1980.

“History, made up as it is of so much trumpery, treachery, and tyranny, needs deeds of valor, of sacrifice, and of heroism if it is to be palatable.”
The Medal of Honor: A History of Service Above and Beyond; Zenith Press; 2014.

See more usage examples of trumpery in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

B/G Sandwich Shops plate, or the tale of Ralph Moody who wrote Come On Seabiscuit!

To coin, or resurrect a word, I'm a nostalgist, I prefer old, used things to the shiny and new. Chipped crockery lives out its last days on my shelves, and when it finally breaks, it lives a second life mounted on my wooden fence outside the kitchen window—not a wall of shame, but an honored spot for venerable service rendered.

I have an old B/G Sandwich Shop plate from San Francisco. I knew it was old but I had no idea that it dated back to the Depression era, or that B/G Sandwich Shop ushered in the era of counter lunch sandwiches. My plate is from the ancestor of the lunch counter sandwich and apple pie with a mug of java joe era. Move over Subway. And fast food.

B/Gs motto was "A meal a minute" "A National Institution," "Purely American," and "A place for nice food."And they served it up in 40 cities across the nation. Nobody knows how many B/Gs there were, LA had six, Chicago had at least ten, and Milwaukee had two shops. What began as a toasted sandwich joint in 1926, expanded into hundreds of railroad car styled diners in 40 cities. By the end of the 1960s early 1970s, most had disappeared. Enter the era of McDonald's.

END OF AN ERA

In the garden, I found an old plate
encrusted with dirt, from my family home,
chipped, and stained, it had seen better days.
But I couldn't bring myself to toss it out.
It's an old school cafeteria-style plate
with a plain boring logo on it: B/G
and two blue lines like railroad tracks.
I thought the initials stood for my brother and I,
so we fought over who got to use the plate,
and it fell to the floor with that ringing sound
and hubub of a train leaving the station,
but it never broke. I never once thought
to turn the plate over to find the logo,
of an Indian hunkered down making pots
for B/G Sandwich Shops, in PA.
Who says plates can't talk?
So I Googled it and found a story
of a man who came out west, Ralph Moody
to manage a sandwich shop on Market St.
When things got tough, my family would yell:
Come on Seabiscuit! He was a rebellious horse
who won races but only when he put his mind to it.
Ralph lived between Tanforan and Bay Meadows,
and because he'd tell tales of his storied life
as a ranch hand, a hobo, a stunt rider for the movies,
someone suggested a night class in creative writing.
It became a book, followed by another,  17 in all.
He penned a story, Come On Sea Biscuit!
Guess that old plate had a story to tell after all.

 4/3018

MY ANTI-BUCKET LIST

Climbing Half Dome a 3rd time is on my anti-bucket list.
Never again. What was I thinking the 2nd time around?
On the way back down, I developed a fear of heights.
I sat on the ledge at Glacier Point, beyond the guardrail. 
I also sat on the lip of Half Dome. What was I thinking?

When I climbed Yosemite Falls, I had a high fever,
the view from above was to die for, but not worth dying for.
Coming down the slot canyon was a total bitch.

I probably won't climb Mt. Whitney again.
I  crawled on hands and knees, across the summit,
a knifeback ridge with a straight drop off on either side.
I practically kissed the rocks at the top.
Then I had to descend. What was I thinking?

I will never again climb the crevice at Sonora Pass,
the view from the ridgetop was stunning,
but then I had to back down the chimney,
I was fatigued, with overtaxed muscles.
My boyfriend guided me down, step by step,
but to fall, sans ropes, would be certain death.

I have literally scaled the heights of Machu Picchu.
Another climb I will not do again, is Huayna Picchu,
with that loose steel cable barely anchored to the cliff,
I probably won't hike the Machu Picchu trail again either.
My knees simply wouldn't make it.
Ah, impetuous youth, well-spent.

4/27/18

Guernica

The power of art: 81 years ago, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, the most political and polemic artwork of its time, was painted for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris in the summer of 1937.

Picasso refused to set foot in Spain as long as Franco was in power. By the time the exhibition took place, the Spanish Civil War had been raging for a year, Madrid was under siege by Franco.

The Republican Government commissioned Picasso in Paris to make a mural, tentatively called, Dreams and Lies of Franco. But during the spring of 1937, Hitler carpet-bombed the small Basque town of Guernica into rubble on Franco’s orders, ushering in a new kind of warfare, terror from the sky, indiscriminately killing 300 civilians on market day.

This war crime became a symbol of fascist barbarity.

When Franco’s propaganda machine tried to blame on the Basques, Picasso set to work to tell the truth of Guernica. The painting became a world-famous icon against fascist barbarity and the horrors of war.

Following Picasso’s wishes, Guernica was eventually housed in the Prado, Spain, behind a bullet-proof glass screen, once Franco had died and democracy had been restored.

Picasso said, “a painting isn’t made to decorate rooms. It’s an offensive and defensive instrument in the war against the enemy…”

Like Goya's Los Disastros de la Guerra, reduced to the stark reportage of black and white, Picasso's painting Guernica denounces the bloodshed without using a drop of red, it's painted in monochromes, to resemble newsprint.

It is difficult getting the news....

I have seen Guernica twice, and I have wept, more than twice. The first time I did not know the full backstory, the second time was during the second Gulf War, when carpet-bombing had become the norm.

And now, Syria.

NICOTATING MEMBRANE

Notty Bumbo handed me 
a word to poemize: nictitating.
as in nictitating membrane, 
the translucent inner eyelids of cats
(from Latin nictare, to blink). 
I knew the word since childhood,
when my cat lost his eye in a catfight, 
love gone all wrong in the night.
I learned how to clean the hideous wound,
and was plagued with recurring nightmares.
But I always thought it was spelled
nicotating membrane, which also means 
I've been saying it wrong for decades,
and I wondered what nicotine 
had to do with caterwauling,
or the inner eyelids of cats, 
other than they were smoky 
as ghost topaz and burnt quartz.
The smoking after sex part
would escape my attention 
for several years to come.

4/26/18

BUDAPEST, 1992

Ken said: How about using respectable, 

unmade-up terms that sound archaic & obscure, 

like escutcheon? It's short, to the point

& still polysyllabic! I love the sound 

of escutcheons, flanges, and finials—

But such odd words for a poem to make.

Take, for instance, Gül Baba's tomb

on the banks of the Danube, 
on Turkish soil in the middle of Budapest,

with its finial, a spire & crescent moon

against a breathless summer sky.

And the roses. Oh, the roses!
As Ken held the camera steady,
I nearly swooned in the midday sun.

4/26/18

THE ORIGINAL NIGHTSTALKER

In Law & Order, the characters discuss pathology, 
how a perp has to escalates the gruesomeness 
of his crime because the thrill is gone. 
He has to keep upping the ante to get the rush. 
If all the crimes attributed to this perp are indeed his, 
it follows a pattern from peeping into windows, to burglary 
to rape, to murder, to kinky murder/rape (with dishes on top), 
but then it all stops, dead. The trail went cold. Why? 
What made him quit? Time? Or did he reform? 
What else don't we know? How did this Nightstalker 
go clean 30 years on the straight and narrow?
This despicable man with an angelic pseudonym,
who dispatched his victims with cudgels and ropes,
who balanced stacks of dinner plates on the naked backs 
of husbands, to keep them quiet under threat of death,
while he raped their wives, but murdered them anyway.
DeAngelo told them if he heard one plate drop—or even rattle
he’d kill them both, then he tucked in, raping the wife.
One victim said he left her ravaged in the living room,
stomped into the kitchen chanting, I’ll kill ‘em, I’ll kill ‘em.
One couple’s Christmas turkey leftovers were taken
from the fridge. The killer stayed for a snack.
During one rape, he paused for a slice of apple pie.
Another victim said he mentioned his mother,
sobbing, mummy, mummy, over and over again.
Sometimes he called his victims to chat. A former cop,
and perhaps a thwarted poet, he's said to have penned,
“Excitement’s Crave."

Sacramento should make an offer.

To make a movie of my life
That will pay for my planned exile... 
See you in the press or on T.V....
Your East Area Rapist.
Well, he finally got his day in the sun. 
Surely there will be a movie yet to come.
What will it be called? The Golden State Killer,
The Original Nightstalker was a play
on serial killer Richard Ramirez’s nickname.
Did his friends call him Jim? If he had any, that is.
His downfall, he collected memento morii: ID cards,
engraved wedding bands, and monogrammed cufflinks. 
He was caught up by his own DNA, on national DNA Day,
from a partial match of a relative's DNA profile,
and now his surviving victims may finally sleep at night.
So many friends of friends terrorized by deAngelo.
Is there any such thing as a reformed serial killer? 
Of course, it's harder to imagine a fat 72-year-old 
crawling through windows at night, let alone, 
getting it up. But that's probably how it all began,
stalking single women living alone, for the thrill.
How did he live with himself all these years,
knowing what he had done? 
And what of his daughters? 

4/25/18

LITERARY PERDITION

—with thanks to Stephen King

The literary road to hell
is paved with weak verbs,
flaccid nouns, excessive adverbs,
anemic adjectives, Latinate words,
and gratuitous exclamation marks!

4/25/18

OBSCURE WORDS, takes one, 2, and so on....b

OBSCURE WORDS

Overfond that I am of obsolete, 
chiasmic subjunctive-sentence constructions, 
like Would it were true! I have been known to gambol
among the the dulcet chimeric inversions of speech,
and I have lost entire days perusing the OED 
for Anglo-Saxon onomatopoetic imagery,
and the desuetude of obscure Latinate words.
Call these vagaries of speech antediluvian if you must,
but these defenestrations of language 
are sometimes more pellucid
than the vainglorious riposte tongues
of our so-called modern argot.

4/25/18

BUDAPEST 1992

Escutcheons, flanges, sconces, and finials

such odd words for a poem to make.

Take, for instance, Gül Baba's tomb

on the banks of the Danube, 

in the very heart of Budapest,

with its finial, a spire and crescent moon

against a breathless summer sky.

And the roses. Oh, the roses!
As you held the camera steady,
I nearly swooned in the midday sun.

4/26/18

NICOTATING MEMBRANE

Notty Bumbo handed me 
a word to poemize: nictitating.
as in nictitating membrane, 
the translucent inner eyelids of cats
(from Latin nictare, to blink). 
I knew the word since childhood,
when my cat lost his eye in a catfight, 
love gone all wrong in the night.
I learned how to clean the hideous wound,
and was plagued by nightmares from it,
but I always thought it was spelled
nicotating membrane, 
and I wondered what nicotine 
had to do with the inner eyelids of cats, 
other than both were smoky 
as burnt quartz.

4/26/18 

OBSCURE WORDS, TAKE ONE, or what passes for word-wanking

Unable to pull a suitable obscure word out of my hat, I Googled Google for Googlisciously weird words. I found a list of 30 weird words, but I've already used some of them like crepuscular, and petrichor already in poems. The rest are boring palimpsests, not that I can pronounce palimpsest, repurposed skin burdened with multiple stories, each obscuring the other, it's a bit chcthonic, so much of this is underground, where is Cthulhu when you need him?

I too dislike that Eliza Doolittle schwa-sound that drove 'Enry 'Iggins to drink, oenopihile, that he was. Dipsomaniac, more like. Any cook worth her salt knows what umami is without knowing the word for that bitter yet savory mouthy feel. The four sacred sensations of the tongue, plus one.

That leaves tmesis, which I ab-so-fucking-lutely do not want to use, or say, ever. Is the t silent or not? I'm too much of a nebbish to use that word. How about skeuomorph, that plastic Adirondack chair, a form of mimesis, or lucubration? Pedantic writing created in the wee hours while burning the midnight oil. Writing that sheds little light for all its efforts. But who works by lamplight these days, er, nights? Gaslight, maybe.

We all know far too many ultra-crepidarians on social media opining away, over their heads, offering free advice. The Greek painter Apelles overheard a cobbler criticizing the way he had rendered a foot, so he chapped the cobbler's hide for presuming to judge beyond the sole. A bit like how all this piece is cobbled together.

The idea of zeugma intrigues me, I like the economy of two-for-ones. She stole his heart, and his wallet. Poetry banks on that one. That's right up there with synecdoche, that simultaneous understanding where one thing stands for another.  That's poetry's bread and butter, a form of metonymy, a subclass of metaphor. Hoover it up, boys. Which brings me to flahoolick, from flaithulach, Irish, that is throwing your money about. Not that I have any money to squander.

As to chiasmus, like being dyslexic, it's a story of my life, but Kennedy said it best, "Ask not what your country can do for you," or to Byron's "Pleasure is a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure." The sin is all mine, I'm sure.

This frivolous persiflage is right up there with the aeolist, or the dark, secret cultist, who meets up with the panglossian singing "Always look on the bright side of life." Brian, is that yew? Chalk it up to the rhetorical pretensions of paralipsis—did I fucking say that out loud? Again?

Hiraeth, a notion I am intimately familiar with —the nostalgia of the past, a home that one cannot return to, hiraeth informs my writing, while I yearn for another undiscovered country, wanting the couthy comfort of hygge. The warmth of a fire, a cat, a book mid-winter, with the storm lashing at all the windows and doors. Nesh means being unusually susceptible to the cold, it has no synonym, but the freezing sensation that my days are numbered, is not. This is no time for cold feet.

Zugzwang is a a no-win chess move. It all comes down to loss in the end. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. Just don't indulge in schadenfreude, that malicious joy. Whatever happened to non-zero-sum?

And who can even pronounce Eisenbahnscheinbewegung, it makes my eyes spin. It's that false sensation of movement when you're sitting in a parked train, and see another train depart. And the train hasn't even left the station. Is leaving the station. Will never leave the station. Sort of like Pogo's statement: I have met the enemy and he is us.

TG Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft wasn't on the list. Hint: Danube steamboats and electricity are involved. That's the second-longest word in German, BTW. 

German dropped its longest word in 2013, rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz, a beef label, after an EU law change.

The longest word in English has 189,819 letters, and takes 3.5 hours to pronounce, which is a chemical name for the titin protein found in humans. Is that really necessary?

The second longest word in English, at a svelte 45 letters long, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or silicosis from inhaling too much volcanic smoke, or vog, for short. The citizens of Pompeii never stood a chance. What's with this scientific oneupmanship on naming lengthy diseases? Nanner-nanner-nanner, my disease name is longer than yours.

Here on the Big Island today,
cough, cough, gone to Maui.

It bumped the previous lengthy contender, electrophotomicrographically for a loop. At least you can grasp the meaning of this word. Squirrel it away for Scrabble.

And all this time I thought that antidisestablishmentarianism was the longest word in English. I got it right in a third grade spelling bee.

I won't mention Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, (that's llan-vire-pooll-guin-gill-go-ger-u-queern-drob-ooll-llandus-ilio-gogo-goch), or Saint Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio of the red cave, an-18 syllable word longer than the trainstop itself. I've been to Llanfair-pwll, for short, but I've never successfully pronounced it. Talk about Eisenbahnscheinbewegung!

Steatopygous should never be used to describe a woman's bottom, no matter how callipygous it is, unless it's Queen singing Fat Bottom Girls. And who the hell describes a sliced papaya as yonic anyway? I'll take mine with lime.

But I digress, this piece has become tediously prolixian and persiflageous, I'm in danger of becoming dunandunateous. This is going nowhere fast. All this work, and I still did not get a suitably obscure word for a poem. There's a reason why most of these words are obscure, and perhaps they should stay that way. Begin again.