Medusa's Kitchen

—Photo by Brian Mahoney

—Poems by Donal Mahoney, St. Louis, MO

GRANDPARENTS IN A ZEPPELIN

We retired on the same day,
several years ago, my wife and I.
We sat around the house
drinking espresso coffee
and playing canasta till
my wife began to grouse.

We sold the house, bought an RV
and drove around the country
visiting, one by one, our five kids,
all married and in different states.
Were our grandkids doing well?
Were they getting the best?

After we had spent a few weeks
in their driveways in our RV,
the kids would politely suggest
maybe we should go back home.
Trouble is, we'd sold our house.
All we had was the RV.

Again my wife began to grouse
and so we sold the RV
and bought a zeppelin.
Now we float from state to state
over the driveways of our kids
and watch our grandkids

dashing home from school
wearing backpacks like the soldiers
landing on the beach in World War II.
The little darlings are geniuses,
I tell you, light years smarter than
our brilliant kids.

Buckingham Palace Ducks

—Anonymous Photo

RIGHT TO FLOW

One day the faucets of the world
became irate when people
turned them off too tight and so

they chose to drip in anger,
a cacophony only they could hear.
When their demonstration ended

water flowed out the windows,
down the streets, flooding villages
and cities everywhere, a tsunami

sweeping everyone away.
No faucet could refuse to flood.
They have a union now, you see.

Goose Family

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

FAMILY PICNIC

You're not normal.
You never were.
Even in kindergarten
the nun had to call
your parents about
the way you ruined
worksheet after worksheet
putting spots on zebras.
You hated stripes.

Now miles into the jungle
of your dotage, why grouse
about family coming to town
wanting to go on a picnic
before the night game.
They're only being normal.
They have no problem with ants
peppering the potato salad.
Why not tell them yesterday

the doctor said you have gout
and you plan to watch the game
on TV in your recliner,
foot propped. Maybe you'll
see them in the stands while
the Cardinals pound the Cubs,
something as certain as
the Second Coming, something
the kids from Chicago already know.

—Anonymous Photo

A SINGULAR REPAST

We are to each other now
many decades later
what we were the day

we got married, a couple
at the kitchen table on
a summer night—she

a slice of watermelon,
corners touching the ceiling,
covering my face in juice

and I the corn she butters
before she devours it.
We eat as fast as we can.

_______________________

NATURE BOY

His parents bought a special lock
to keep Nature Boy inside
but he's mechanically inclined
and loves to go outside.

Goslings

—Photo by Katy Brown

MY THERAPIST'S A LADY

It's all so simple now,
yet it took 30 years
to begin to understand.
It's as though someone
stole the primer I had
and gave me another
in my own language.
It's because you are
who you are
that I've begun
to become who I am.
That sounds too dramatic.
All you did, really, was scream
when you opened the bathroom door,
saw me wrapped in a towel,
standing at attention on a mat,
waiting in my thirtieth year
for the steam to clear
from the cabinet mirror,
waiting for someone
to shout, "At ease."

—Anonymous Photo

LOVING HER

He remembers loving her
lost in an orchard
peaches, pears, apricots

falling on his head
every day
always out of breath

stunned, dizzy
seeking shelter
he never found

then hating her
the night she sent him
whirling into space

dodging stars, planets
no sign of life anywhere
wondering whether

he would ever hear
a songbird welcome spring
or kiss her again.

Black Swan

—Photo by Katy Brown

JIMMY THE BLIND MAN SAYS HE'S IN LOVE

Remember, a blind man
can see things a sighted man can't.
So I'll tell you about her and then
you can tell me whether I'm right.

The first time a man meets her,
his eyes flicker and dart.
Desire, an appropriate reaction.
The first time a woman meets her,
her eyes pop out and coil on her forehead.
Envy, another appropriate reaction.

Today, who can blame either?
Today, who believes the canard
about the true, the good, the beautiful,
in theory or in a woman?
I never believed it

till the day that I met her.
And you won't believe it either
unless you do what I did—frisk her for flaws
that will allow you to live as you are,
as you were, as I was when I met her.
As for me, I'm no longer the same.
Perhaps you can help me.

The day that I met her, I was sitting
on pillows propped against the wall not far from Walmart.
I had my cane and my cup properly positioned.
I was ready for business.
And then I heard heels type on the pavement
the story of my life. I could hear in those heels
a woman who knew me although we had never met.

I had my baseball cap upside down on the sidewalk
between my outstretched legs.
It was full of my wares—pencils, spearmint gum
and Tootsie Pops, free, for the children.

When her heels stopped in front of my spot,
I sensed this lady had bent over my cap
and was checking my wares. Her hair
was a waterfall licking at my knees.
I was inebriated by her scent.
She selected two pencils and didn't ask price
so I knew that I had a real customer.
And then with a wave of her hand she let
paper money float through the air
into my cup. Believe me, a blind man
can see with his mind the butterfly
of paper money float to his cup.
Any denomination, large or small,
is a Monarch afloat on a zephyr.

Customers, you see, usually drop change.
A blind man can tell you what coins
a customer has dropped by the clink in his cup.
So when I heard her Monarch take to the air,
I forgot about my teeth and smiled up at her.
I usually don't smile on weekdays.
I used to smile on weekends till Mother

got hit by that Hummer. She was never the same.
On Saturdays she used to bring meals in tinfoil
labeled in braille to tuck in my freezer.
She wanted me to know which meals were where
but I was never able to read her braille
so I ate whatever the microwave served.

This new lady in heels, however,
has stolen my bereavement and taken me captive.
She has me smiling. I've been stoned on her musk
since the day that I met her and I'm getting more wobbly.
Everywhere I go her scent surrounds me.
I'm an addict now and I need my cane and my dog
just to get around the apartment.

So, please tell everyone now in the parade passing by
to listen to her as I did and in time they may hear,
as I can hear now, a year later, the cherubim sing
as she blooms with our child like a sunflower in summer
while I wonder, I try.

Shy Egret in Rushes

—Photo by Katy Brown

DIAMOND OF JELLO

From my stool in the diner I watch
the old woman with elm tree arms
command the big booth in back

and roar for a menu,
take a half hour to read it
before placing her order.

Watching her eat, I realize
life for her is a dollop of whip cream,
a twirling ballerina, on a diamond of Jello.

I raise my water glass
in a silent toast. Bravo, I whisper.
I wish her good cheer.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

AT THE HOP

Two robins hopped
across the lawn

at dawn, one
behind the other.

The first one hopped
to get away.

The second hoped
to be a father.

_______________________

Our thanks to today's contributors for brightening up our Friday, and a note that the new WTF! from Rattlesnake Press is now available. There are 20 free copies at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or you can order them for $2 (to cover postage) by clicking WTF??? in the links at the top of this page (or from rattlesnakepress.com/wtf .html). Contributors are, of course, entitled to have their copies mailed to them for free; write to me at kathykieth@hotmail.com if you haven't gotten yours yet.

And speaking of The Book Collector, there is a new open mic there now on the third Sundays of the month from 4-6pm, five minutes per reader. Head on down there this week and check it out!

—Medusa

—Photo by Katy Brown

Palm Tree Shadows, Sacramento

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

THE MORNING OF THE ANGEL

In the lands roughly
to the north, the men
with silver kites
live with their angry women.

They lay upon the soft
skin of the beaches
and whisper names of
gods long dead to one
and another.

No one comes near these places.
They look filled with evil.
Even birds do not speak of it
to their children or of the
ceremonies of blood and dreaming.

We came to these shoes
as strangers, challenging
the bearded natives with
kitchen knives and automobiles
that ate the road as they went.

No one believes, here in the sixth
generation removed, that those
who rode their horses were alive
and cut themselves on sagebrush,
spoke with such light in their
mouths that steams gave up their
cities and once, ten thousand cattle.

On Stuart's Porch

UNFAMILIAR WINGS

At some point he had reached the limit.
He still had his sword.
There was something ordinary about his dreams.
It seemed as if the seasons changed every day.
He dreamed all of the primary colors.
His faith got a loan from the morning.
He promised to repay it in bird songs.
Insomnia began to have a particular diameter.
Twice he saw the original Adam.
He was driving a car.
His body became rhetorical.
He could see dynasties in the faces of strangers.
Suddenly he knew the names of every dog he saw.
He realized how the pyramids were built.

A terrible fear that being would never cease
Overwhelmed him.
He realized there was a mistake in
The making of every afternoon.
He could see the wolves inside of every building.
Nostalgia had a boat in the harbor
But it had serious holes in its hull.
There were flags flying over every city
That were the color of skin.
He saw great tapestries celebrating wars
That had yet to happen.
Viking ships could be seen on all the horizons.
There were many clouds, but none of them
Were recognizable in any way.

Evening in Locke

TALKING TO THE STARS

I was selling fireworks to the stars.
They have no home. They were happy
To see me. They asked about piano music.
They said it had been so long since they
Heard any of it and that last night the moon
Was so silvery and golden that they remembered
How beautiful it could be. I noticed that the stars
All wore rings on their fingers. They told me
It was because they were married to so many memories
And carried them in their flaming hearts.

They told me that the Night had problems
Of its own but never grumbled. That wasn’t
Its job. They laughed when I said it kept
Things hidden. “Just like crows,” they said.

Most of the stars live in trailers.
It makes it easy to go from place to place.
I’ve seen them in lover’s eyes and whirling
Around the head of cartoon characters
And tugging onto the fishing lines of
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. Poetry
Is loaded with them. They love the attention.

—Drawing by Flor Barillas

FROM ANOTHER OBSERVATION DECK

The caves moved
their mouths and
he imagined stories
they had to tell him.

Once the elder ones had moved
their leathery forms in and out
of dark veins and pumped themselves
through arteries as though their body
was our body. They drank the cool
evening looking out from fingers and
watched the seasons warp into each other’s
long arms from behind eyes that we call our
own. Carefully, like climbing mountains, he
seated himself in a soft chair and tried reading
a book. The elder ones read for him, words
blurring, and the dark chambers of his body
revolted and spilled down his cheeks as tears.

Oh caves where loving
is an activity of children,
and blind men rove the streets
buying and selling. And quietly, so quietly
he felt he had never heard it, the
long caverns whispered in the wind
and from their throats; from his throat,
there rose a laughter quite unlike himself,
quite like himself.

______________________

CROSSING THE RIVER

And still he smiled.
The clouds hung
themselves, becoming
red then violet,
the blood drifting
through them stretching
the sky inside them.

And still he smiled.
The fish swam into
the hollows
of his head and waited
unblinking, the water
rushing past above them.

And still he smiled.
A huge bear grew in his mind
and began tearing at the brain,
his eyes clouding over, skull
bursting, the dar fish
caught in the heavy hand of the bear.

—3D Drawing by Taylor Wheaton

THE GUY WHO WENT HOME BEFORE THE PARTY WAS OVER

He said his name to himself
and took a small stick up
from the ground, carefully
touching every part of his
body with it. His body felt
like something he had once
had a dream about. The eyes
of coffin gods turned in their
small radius and leaned their
pillars closer to his mouth.

It will come, darlings. It will
sound like talking to you. It will
wear its hair in perfect braids
and have a whisper like a gun.
    "You will reach out and touch
    everything you ever owned
    and it will be so much straw
    in your rotten mind."

Angel of the good in man, send
your packages of blood and dying
home. Send us something
we can learn from. War is such
an old toy, such a stupid trick
to pull on the gods that we are.

“You dumb schmuck. Nobody in
their right mind would run off
at the mouth like that and not
expect a boot heel to match
a spot in their face. What’s
the matter baby, is this train
of thought too much like crying?
Is the sound of people in the
streets too much like being
blind?”

You are all angels, so don’t
don’t get hung up. Start reaching for
it, partner.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

a man here forgot
his lunch bucket
and it had to ride
the bus home alone
with an empty thermos
bottle in its one arm.

______________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for this edifying Saturday morning breakfast of poems and pix from him and drawings from his students, Taylor Wheaton and Flor Barillas! "From Another Observation Deck", "The Morning of the Angel", The Guy Who Went Home Before the Party Was Over", and "Crossing the River" were first published in Ampersand, 1969, edited by T.L. Kryss and R. Wolter, and "a man here forgot" was first published in The Wormwood Review.

______________________

—Medusa

Shadow on Stairs

Sinaga Tala Filipino Dancers

Sacramento Banana Festival

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

In front of me in the crowd at the Fish radio station music fest at Cal Expo
   a boy about ten years old raised his hands and started shaking along to the music of Lisa Daggs
   Suddenly his mother hit him to tell him to stop it
   I wanted to get back on that mother even though I don’t have kids
   and because the boy did nothing wrong
   I told my friends with me that I think that mother is insane
   She probably thought "Oh no, can’t have my son wave his hands around like a 'Pentecostal' now!”
   when I was glad to see a boy excited about the worship music in the first place
   It will probably be this mom’s fault too if this boy decides one day to reject Christianity
   He might reject the faith because of people like his mom who think they can’t celebrate with joy in worship

—Michelle Kunert

_______________________

—Medusa

Five Bluebirds in the Nest

—Photo by Taylor Graham

FREE PROMISES
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

No longer small—five baby blue- 

birds fill the nest-box. Air full of hissing, 

bluebird mother dive-bombing

 as I open the box to find her five nestlings 

inert but waiting to fly; hunkered down

 as I gaze inside. Bluebirds

 don’t trust me with their blue bird-sky. 

This box full of longing, full

 circle of feathered wings quiet as clock 

ticking toward fledge-time.

 I shut the lid so as not to break

 the circle. Tomorrow

 every baby will be gone. 

The sky’s full of promise: tomorrow

 bluer with birdwings, birdsong.

_____________________

BIRDS IN BOXES
—Taylor Graham

Nest Box #1: 5 titmice nestlings; #2: 2 bluebirds
on fenceposts nearby; hwy shoulder: 1 roadkill
turkey—supplier of feather-down for a swallow
nest; #3 jumble-bed of grass with yellow thread
(who knows where that came from), and skunk-
fur trim—another titmouse nest. You know
every species, I look to you for guidance.
I take field-notes, try to be scientific. Repaid
in birdsong. 1 meadowlark.

Above the confluence of creeks, revels of cliff
swallows under the bridge—silver kites too
many to count, swoop-sailing after insects
the livelong day. And look, 1 gray fox stares
at us, moves off as if to lure us away, trots across
speeding two-lane, cars & trucks eating the road,
spitting out chipseal. Fox left behind her 3 sable
kits tumbling, skittering, disappearing into dry
culvert that is their safe den. Sky full of wings. 

_____________________

WAITING FOR RAIN
—Taylor Graham  

Load up the car. Drive away

 to where open hands are filled with rain

 and our wishes stilled in the cool vastness

 of gray. 

Where are the lambs and their ewes,

 the pasturelands greening grass? No clouds, 

the skies have the blues. Nothing grows. 

All things must pass.

  Did you catch that flicker-

 arc? A half-signal, 

lightning-beam without thunder—

 a ghost gleam. 

Might a storm quicken the dark? 

_____________________

  FAIR HISTORIES
—Taylor Graham  

Bree left her scarf here, neat lavender bow

 tied around a gate-post: entrance

 to a story. “Check Bree! Track Bree!” Off we go

 as if we could unravel teenage syntax. 

Edge of lawn: cowboys recite roundup verse

 in August. A corridor of slatted trellis

 woven with vines: fashion sense inherent

 to 10th grade—she matched her scarf to wisteria

 in bloom. A trailing blossom vibrates

 with scent on a breeze; Bree’s passage 

worthy of a tale, a trail. Fence sweetening 

with berries; is this where they make

 that kosher blackberry wine to sell at the Fair? 

Fascination of the purple gate, the fair 

lane—but she didn’t turn that way. Instead, 

livestock pavilion: corridor edged

 with lamb pens, floored with dirt, Loki had her

 first lessons here as a pup. Is that Bree’s

 slim footprint, fresh as morning, headed out?

 Pick up speed getting closer to this chapter’s 

end. We’ve got all summer till the Fair.

Something Ridiculous Jugglers

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

THEO CRABTREE SELLS OUT TO THE COUNTY FAIR
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

Theo wasn’t my grandfather.
But for the rest of the Crabtrees
It didn’t matter: close-
Enough cousin.
So we were all surprised
That Sunday dinner
After fried chicken, taters
And shots (Theo liked Kentucky
Bourbon) when he told us
He’d sold the south acres
To the county fair. Had to,
He said, because wife Hattie
(She stood, blushing by the
Kitchen door) wasn’t feelin’
So good, and there might
Be doctors’ bills (Hattie outlived
Most every Crabtree in the room,
Though that was another
Matter). Was okay with us,
The Crabtree boys and myself:
Less corn detassling, less bean
Walking in the summer heat.
We became, such as it was,
Fair security—orange cone
Flashlights to guide parking,
Odd and young and flexible muscle
If there was trouble at closing.
And if there was a bear that
Caught a Crabtree’s attention
Just before the blowoff—
Three balls at the milk bottles,
And “We have a winner!”
Most all of the Crabtree boys
Eventually went into
Law enforcement.
And me, I wrote this.

Chinese Acrobats of Hebei

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

ON MEMORIAL DAY
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

After war
we invent silence
even memory,
inside the quiet rooms
of our nerves
in the recall of him or her
will find us offering a prayer
when the sunlight appears
on Memorial Day
through windows of birds
who flutter up over our windows
covering May's cool heavenly air
hands outstretch to poppies
is reflected in our mirrors
along the surf's breeze
knowing we exist as words
become our lives
in every whisper
and tiny gesture
we choose to pick flowers
as a poet's shadow
turns in the high tide
drowning a remembrance
as rainbows in the waters
rise by the sea's headstones
choosing to revere
the silver thoughts
from our angel's occupation.

_______________________

THEY STOLE MY FATHER
—Caschwa, Sacramento

My father was a good man
Raised three sons
Married over half a century
To our mom, till he died

But he never spoke
Of a certain part of
His past, a part that hurt him
Camera film overexposed on war

World War II
Seabees, semaphore
Normandy
Don’t remind me

He showed disfavor for any product
“Imported from France”
As if it was lava from a volcano
That would destroy all it touched

He took us to Navy ports
Gave us ship tours
We had mess down below
Wore sailor hats

He became a ham radio operator
Form over substance
A one-key computer
22 words a minute

The garage was his ham shack
Filled with paraphernalia
License plates from decades past
Bearing his call letters

He has been silent key now for 23 years
The war stories he never told
Are still somewhere lost at sea
Don’t remind me

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

MORNING OF THE ANGEL
—Taylor Graham

Under a clouded sky no birds sang ceremonies
of weather, though it was morning of the eve
of speaking in tongues. No wind riffled
drying grasses for the time of harvesting
first fruits. Drum-beat of heart against bone.
A sigh as if a breath were passing, gone
on unfamiliar wings; a break in clouds let
loose the eye of day, and a childless
mother howled for the angel rising away.

______________________

—Medusa, with hearty thanks to today's cooks in the Kitchen!

Musicians Candace Renee Perkins (left),

Jack Niedermann (background), Kit Chell (right)

and Eve King Lehman (not pictured)

Hard Knock Skin: a Jazz Poetry Epic at Sac. Poetry Center

Friday, May 22

—Photo by Michelle Kunert

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

WHEN I READ YOUR WORDS, I WROTE…

“As we lean over the deep well, we whisper…”
—Marie Ponsot

We would be sisters, I name you thus, living
at either ends of the vast country, you more
sophisticated perhaps (though I am depth and
surface, too). We are the same age. I claim
you. We come together in evening shadows
when talk is easy. You do not know you are
here—here with me in lines of talk and drifts
of imagining.

We come to a wishing well. I create this for
the poem. It is deep and full of terrible wishes.
If we choose one, it will come true. Who is
wise enough for this? Not you. Not me.

We watch the dark glitter. Something huge there,
full of time and timelessness. Oh, distant sister,
if we finish this discussion, one of us will die.
I must not tell you this. I suggest a walk back to
the path that leads in both directions. Here we
part and are gone from even this non-memory.

JOURNAL

Why weeping. Why not. Have you not felt the sway
of great emotion; have you not felt time slip through

before you were ready; have you not favored regret
over favor? Oh, how you like the contradiction

of the mirror—that glass of lies. Break it, and it
it multiplies. See, I say it twice—to catch up; to run

past myself; to run right through the mirror to the other
side of life—that parallel, where I am in the arms

of my mother. Time is on a wheel, rolling backward.
I go ‘round and ‘round myself, always ending up

back to the moment, which is smooth—oiled with
momentum. Ferris Wheel.

_______________________

FROM THE CARNIVAL OF DAYS AND NIGHTS

The clown arrives with his black mask
and signature; he will amuse
with his pointed humor,
wait for the laughter—
who knows him?
who asked him here?
the audience
propped in chairs—
his puppets—
he dances,
he juggles,
he rolls on the floor
to make the spotlight follow him,
he offers the flourish of his autograph
to the first one who finds him funny.
The audience cannot laugh or applaud.

PALMISTRY

Tonight I read fortunes in the dark,
tell truths and non-truths—
anything to save you.

Your hand ignites in my hand, your palm
a map that I travel with my eyes—
say words over.

Someone draws a curtain between us;
now we must lose each other—
try to remember.

________________________

QUALMS

Come with me. Read my hand. It holds nothing now.
It is not a book for you to know. But please yourself.

Say what you see. I will listen. Maybe it is true.
I open my palm. You trace your finger, frown and hum.

What to you see there? I won’t ask. You won’t say.
Thus do we keep ourselves from one another.

KNIFE-THROWER

you at the edge of everything
I in the center
a shining wheel that turns
on my life
and your eye
how I spin
to dizziness and meter

and from the blur
you throw knives at me and
laugh from the praise of your talent
an audience cheers
you raise your arms
to the applause
all your fingers are knives

________________________

NOW IN THE FUN HOUSE
(after Paul Klee’s “Death and Fire”)

Now in the fun-
house of the dream,
white ghost of
symbolic death…

shadow-texture of
scream . . . silent grasp
of light . . . side-
show of the mind . . .

and at the receding edge
of sleep, sleep-
child, hands raised
against the looming buga-

boos—which are real,
which are always there . . .
and always will be,
in the dream.

REMEDIES

This is how to relieve pain:
Pinch yourself.

    *

For tears, cry and buy
a pretty little jar to keep them in.

    *

If you love,
enjoy it or regret it.

    *

If you tell fortunes,
beware of other fortune-tellers.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

TEA LEAVES

In
my cup,
no fortune
to tell—unless
the tea bag should burst.

______________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for today's delectable delights, and noting that our new Seed of the Week is Remedies. Send your poems, photos and artwork on this (or any other subject) to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

—Photo of Tom Goff, courtesy of Gerald Thomas

RILKEMOJIS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Who that’s read the poems of Herr Rilke
hasn’t seen the oddball small emoticons
everywhere in them? Oh, not quite emojis,
yet signals pungent long before our logon-
logoff world. You know what I mean. :— und —:
punctuations for registering awe and shock
at cosmic arches, night and distance, augenblick
und earthquake-intake of breath, all das gesundheit
sweet sneeze-felicitation, agony, wonder
expressed in —. The heartfelt pause the panther
senses, the stopped-dead pulse of cage-perception,
the rose’s tremor (: ), smiling lacrymose thunder
till it exits, Mach 1 quivering out the anther,—
silencing our antennae’s weak reception.

Now the pulsation, bright blink & solemn nose —:
desists mid-message—, knows what each poet knows,
or any human: take Rilke himself (: und das,
und das ist wirklich nichts:—full stop…at last… :)?

Conversations

—Photo by Keely Dorran, Sacramento

DEAD SEMESTER
—Tom Goff

The bird is blurred that was so crisply dead.
It lies still where the one-bird bird strike occurred,
from window glass bounced as if from so much lead,
now a faded pressed bloom in the book of the Word,
flat placeholder in between onionskin air and air.
Ruined sun and rain, unreachable for disposal
high on its ledge, it answered an urge to lair,
nest, forage, pierce barricades in the unseen wind-crystal.
Oh, two semesters—starling? No, a swallow—
it’s lain, serenading no one but me, I believe,
to tell me a huge lone universe glistens in corpses,
in all the cerebral asphyxias, failures to thrive.
Bird sings how small histories blister—in schools, in coppices—
then warbles of disconnect, students I’ve failed to follow.

One

—Artwork and Photo by Keely Dorran

MY PALMYRA
—Tom Goff

Palmyra, mine for a beautiful brief era:
you grew tall pillars white and soft as legs,
grew adamant acanthus-work that pegs
your soft petal-spikes and leaf-flutes to bone-marrow

marble, grafting capitals to slim columns,
for yours is Corinthian hair done up to pillow
that sweet and oppressive blue above, whose billows
add weight to the lovely head they rest or fall on.

Your bearing more admirable since the lumbers
and burdens you uphold can’t dislodge your sense
for proportion: that abacus in you knows to flense
ideals from solids. Crowned and adorned by numbers,

you’re grace in speechless fractions displacing tons.
You live in one pair of bare legs: she leaps, she runs.

***

When you, my Palmyra, unlimber to Syrian sky
columnar fragments like so many cannons
aimed at the gods, and when I see the tannins
and acids darken your marmoreal skin,

I see still your ideality and blessing
transcendent—thanks to the man-god carving you
in beveled concaves of groove-line and volutes
of ramhorn-scrollwork—over treachery

and slaughter incarnate, empire. You are all girl,
and so like a girl most vulnerable to brutality,
disfigurement. Iconoclastic cruelty
too soon must fall on those lacy tendrils of curl

at play alongside your rose-white ear, that auricle
pregnant with ions—my voiceless almost-oracle.

***

In a long novel I read—among your columns,
a feral dog snaps, defending suckling whelps
unseen by our heroine. This wild she-dog helps
our lady somehow fathom her years of solemn
denial, trust instinct, mend a long estrangement.
Palmyra, your magic: tenderness steeped in derangement.

Collection

—Photo by Keely Dorran

TATTOO PARLANCE
—Tom Goff

Beauty so oddly adores the primal woman,
skin smooth from birth, caressable enough
—she punctures all this water-fine first human
translucence with designs, wounds, roughneck-tough
or laced like tracework gauze on sleepwalk canvas.
I blanched at first to see such weird caprices
now aquatint my Dorothy’s pure Kansas
between soft sandals & dark brown capris, Oz
over pale calves and backs of ankles with roses.
Such sweet stigmata, all non-native growth,
green stemwinders a needle-sting imposes.
Port-wine-stain petals corrupt soft kaolin earth.
Yet what have you lost? Your pearls-in-cirrus clear skin?
‪ ‬
‪I see you transfigured. Stained glass, desire & sin.‬

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

From stoplights to skyscrapers, turn anywhere in civilization and you will see imagination at work. It's in our inventions, advances and remedies and how a single parent masterminds each day. Imagination is boundless, surrounds us and resides in us all.

—Geoffrey S. Fletcher

____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Tom Goff and Keely Dorran for today's fine gourmet work!

Ceremonial Drum

—Photo by Keely Dorran

Purple Kite

—Anonymous Photo

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

HOW LIGHT THE DAY

How light the day
at the county fun fair
near the whale watchers
by spiny lobster tables
a Portuguese fisherman
proudly holds up his cache
here in sprightly Gloucester
along the Atlantic ocean
we are aware of purple kites
and lemony hot air balloons
rising suddenly by sky writing
on fitful May afternoons,
a former poetry student
in my class stretches
his gawky opaque pose
combs out his long ringlets of hair
and on the common green
plays a love song melody
on his Basque guitar
giving up his tied bloodhound
other dogs bounding
after him from the bazaar
whose senior essay on Joyce
was our valedictory choice,
motions to me to move
in the strongest light
and suddenly snaps my picture
near the near Eastern rug exhibit
and Ron disappears
on the merry-go-round
with his sunburnt
girlfriend, Leah Belle
found selling at the flea market
feldspar star crystals
and a porphyry of shells,
whom Ron saved
as a lifeguard last summer
from being drowned,
we hear Elvis look alike voices
in a rolling contest by the Bay
amid the freshest noisy air,
they are putting out trays
by the blueberry pie bake in
with Boston baked beans
and a salmon chowder
near the lemony painted gazebo
facing the bluest Bay,
we are watching a Persian cat
trying to ride a mare,
I'm looking back as a guest
at the book sale
of my poem collections
those by Whitman
and Thomas Hardy,
others romance to a love beat
carousing away
having a loud beach party
waiting in a carburetor's
parking lot
by going Dutch
on a six-mile run,
some gossiping about politics
without any smoking guns,
now near a little league game
amid a boys' boisterous crowd
reaching out to invite us
to dance the macarena
and for others a Swedish polka
on blankets of white sand
glancing over the island festival
birds sing in their own rock band
by the dunes on the harbor
as sister wanders away,
nothing could be wrong
even taking our chance at play
in the spring resonance
promised for today.

_______________________

WHEN THE RIVER

When the river
offers us a path
flooding by the walls
birds in a sky rain
sinks our letters
of Dear John or Jane
as wild roses
hide by conifer trees
cannot dispose of love
in easy words
from the winding breeze.

—Anonymous Photo

WATCHING THE STARS

Watching the stars
on their sky journey
who needs a telescope
or a green catalogue
from Forbes-Burney,
we may be alone
like a leaping leopard
behind steel bars
we have a keen bard
to keep us on an altar
from being lonely.

______________________

AFTER YOU CLEAN

After you clean
all night
drowsy yet
regularly in a cold
encapsulated study
you paint
tilting my portrait
left in my studio
by the blind windows
near the music stands
on the grand piano,
only your shadow remains.

______________________

WHO WAS THE BRIDE

Who was the blessed bride
seen all in snow white
engaged for a small part
in a hidden cameo film
made in beautiful Afrique
who spoke French
dressed up in the language
of a once colonial signature suit
in the rainy scene on the bench
drenched from head to boot
in a now forbidden apartheid age
taking her vows and bows
in a full black-and-white video
her pages read to us
as she rehearsed in review
on a past ceremonial stage
where few actors like her could go.

Green Painting

—Painting by Franz Kline

FRANZ KLINE'S "PAINTING"
Birthday May 23 (1910-1962)

Knowing that your abstracts
blur all our open eyelids
of subterranean forms and colors
with a nimbus of language
penetrating abrupt surfaces
of our subconscious
overtaking our unshaven lives
from your easy-going hands
as we stare at a standstill
not turning one glance away
captured here in the museum
in your secrets, Franz Kline
leaning gently down
at your aromatic canvas
roundly contracting our eyes
into shapes and brushing
by the matted body entangled
following your underground art
on webs of gray shadings
of pure Asian calligraphy
to open our nexus of joy
from reflected grids
of your amazing experience
at our pupil's moist eyes
give us unforgettable stares
into alembic creative moments
from your felled strokes of time.

Sara Holding a Cat

—Painting by Mary Cassatt

MARY CASSATT
May 25 (1910-1962)

Because we search for beauty
in our terrestrial quest
alone by her "Sara Holding a Cat"
a light coiled from impressionism
made us conscious of light
wandering in the museum rooms
we engage in your oiled memory
away from arbitrary
or contrary reflective thoughts
remembering your friendship
with Degas in Paris
how we celebrate you today
watching your nascent exquisite
emerging fine art details
in unveiled mirrors of color
on the canvas of Mary Cassatt.

Madonna of the Rocks, 1912

—Painted Plaster by Alekandr Archipenko

ALEKANDR ARCHIPENKO
May 30 (1887-1964)

In layers of stone
from terra cotta
your space in our time
the bent arm
of a patient genius
for a sculptured language
all its own
gave us a radiance
as we circle the walls
of your years of semblances
from art's patterns
and abstract alliances
in clarity and reality
we patrons leaning on chairs
as cool connoisseurs
celebrate your imagination
in all its mirrors.

_______________________

WHITMAN'S BIRTHDAY
May 31 (1819-1892)

Walt,
it was at seven
when I was given a copy
of your "Leaves of Grass"
under beech trees
here by the nightingales
your open words disclosed
a language of wonder
reaches out
as words to stun us,
we are your brothers
and sisters
as twin birds on
thickets of roses
hear tiny May cicadas
whispering their love
disclose to each other
your birthday's good wishes
as expression transfers
with a pair of poetry tickets
gathering all verse lovers
in every country on earth
as a star poet of the universe
to celebrate your birthday,
and all the salt of the earth
dreamers, refugees,
workers on the fields
dancers of swan lake,
jazz musicians playing
a round has your back,
whether by the sounds
of fiddles, orchestra or sax
or at the dunes
where you relax
down by the cranberry bogs
near the steamboats on the sea
as far as St. Louis, Missouri
those building bridges
on the brightest isle or eddy
or writing dialogues
for T.V. or radio
even in Japan
in Hiroshima or Nagasaki
there is a Whitman party
for our hero.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip(s):

NEVER ONE QUESTION

Never one question
or proven answer
only the fatal disclosure
you were the one who painted
the parting landscape of ambrosia
shaped and sought
your sculpture of a dancer
in intelligent thoughts
at art's accidental exposure.

* * * * *

THE POWERS THAT BE

You cannot destroy him
the powers that be

Sending him into war
there is still no peace

The poet lives on
though he longs for bread

though the world may laugh
or write too early his epitaph

The poet keeps writing
for reality, for justice, or for God

outliving the dead
though the powers that be.

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today's fine poetry!

Blue Dancer, 1913

—Bronze by Alekandr Archipenko

—Poems and Photos by Katy Brown, Davis

REMEMBERING WATER

Remember the world of water?
Emerald ponds,
aqua seas,
turquoise bays,
opal falls—

remember the meadows,
alive with garter snakes
and salamanders—

and the rain?
    gentle showers
    steely downpours
    virga that never reaches ground—

remember the world
alive with the sounds of
water in motion —

we will tell our grandchildren
about this world
on desert nights
under an arid moon.

THE DESIRE TO BECOME A STORM
(after Arnaldo Roche’s painting by the same name)

Thin women think they have power:
they use their bodies to manipulate.
They expose their skinny legs,
lift weights with their skinny arms,
show off their skinny butts.

I am a woman of a certain age
and well past worrying about
what others think or notice.

I feel the dark earth
between my stubby toes;
the wind cools my body;
I hear the green rising in new corn.

I don’t want to float, cloud-light—
I desire to become a storm:
heavy with fat raindrops;
wind-wild;
shocking as lightning;
and round with thunder.

Berkeley Poets’ Dinner First Place
(Poet's Choice), 2006

IN THESE OBLIQUE HOURS,

I count the moments, curling away
like wood shavings or peeled apple skins:
the days turning-in on themselves.

Mondays twist into February,
Noontime swelters into August.
And before I collect the memories,

Wednesday has melted into September
and my work is still undone—
notebooks and poems, still unfinished.

Somewhere on the far side of the globe
the sun is setting. Even now, that line of dusk
races toward me across the Atlantic.

I take up my pen and try to capture
dawn as it whispers
in shades of violet just beyond the Sierra.

But the moment slips by.
I try to describe seven white cranes
rising from the bypass like incense or prayers.

The day advances on me,
surely as I hear October breathing—
all the dead waiting for me at midnight.

ALL THE WORDS FOR WONDER

The moon burns a cold hole
in the sky tonight,
igniting the shredding clouds

in shades of rust and sulfur.
Sleep won’t come
under such a sky as this,

thick with portent:
somewhere a night bird cries.
The ghostly owl sways

in the top of the slender cypress.
A distant train whistle calls. Twice.
No, sleep won’t come,

no matter how many times
you count sheep, or blessings,
or all the words for wonder.

Today's LittleNip:

CROSSING LAKE BAIKAL, SIBERIA

Each of us follows a path,
treacherous as fractured ice,
into unseen futures—
away from untraveled pasts.

Make no mistake, nothing is new.
This ground has been trod before;
this air, stirred in the lungs
of those long dead.

In spite of the long cold wind,
a howling across the steppe,
we are not alone in this journey.
Look for footprints. Listen for prayer.

(first pub. in Brevities, April 2015)

_____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Katy Brown for today's wonderful poems and pix, and a note that Katy and Allegra Silberstein will be reading at Sacramento Poetry Center this coming Monday night, 7:30pm. Be there!

At Locke Memorial Park

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE OPENING OF THE

door. The cat strolled through the door on its hind legs.
Held tightly in its paws was a small revolver, hammer
pulled back, safety off.

“Hello sucker,” said the cat. “I’m here to take you out
of this life. The angel of death, as it were, and this gun
will do it. Will do it quick, will do it clean.”

I was surprised. How could I tell my friends about this one?
Certainly a hallucination of some kind. A cat with a gun.
“But why and who? and why a cat?”

“Why not a cat,” he said, leaning back against the wall.
“Life is like that. You never know what’s going to happen
next. One minute just sitting there typing and then WHAM!
in I stroll and the whole book changes. Simple stuff, man.
So simple you forget it.”

“Who sent you?"

“Uh uh, no reasons. You know better than that. Things
just happen. No reasons. You think up the reasons later.
It makes the time go together better, that’s all.”

“Would you like a bowl of milk, cat?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, I’d like a
bowl of milk.”

He walked on all fours over to the milk and began drinking.
I quickly picked up the gun and put it high on a shelf.

“Were you really going to kill me?" I asked the cat.

The cat lapped its milk. The late afternoon sun did a dance
across its long fur. He looked up at me and squinted, made
a cat noise.

Some days, I said to myself, some days it gets so real.
Cats with guns and poems with people inside of them.
What next, I said, and the room was very, very quiet.

Clouds Over Locke

“It is difficult to draw away from the face of God—
it is like a warm fire, it is like dear sleep, it is like
a great anthem; yet there is a stillness all
about it, a stillness full of lights.”
—Dunsany

We watched them from our towers
and they sparkled like the first morning.
Their hands held perfumes of deepest
rose and their eyes were full of
the sound of birds in jasmine.
Extending their cool hands to ourselves,
they bade us come in. "Come in."

Crossing the room, he saw three flowers
dangling from a broken vase. Someone
had left them for him to see, he was
sure. It was snowing outside and he
looked past the flowers, the disordered room
and there were small animals playing in the snow.
They tore at each other with tiny teeth and
became red on the snow. Whimpering.

The game was too old. He reloaded his gun
and sat down. Eventually they would come and he
would be ready for them. It had been many years.

The sun set.

“You are a maiden who is sleeping. The
voices walked 'round him and then right wore its
long coat and walked quietly on the hills.
“You are like a wanderer from Kyfouth and your
shoes show the desert in a perfection of sand.”

He moved.

The guns came up and spilt their terrible seed
upon him. He moved and the dream went deeper.
There were paths filed with things he did not know,
like Christmas. He became himself and the snow
showed a small group of men with heads like dogs,
running in tight file across a field. Even then
he didn’t stir or wipe the redness from his eyes.
A fine lady with night wound in her hair
bent close to him and said words into his ear.

“What is that way,” he said, half-rising.

“The changing of the seasons,” someone answered.
“I am moving then?”
“Yes.”

Outside, the small animals had slowly moved away,
crying softly and licking their soft bodies.

Dog Visiting Locke

GENESIS

There used to be a house right here
Where I am standing. Now there is just
Your body and my hands are surgeons.
I lift your organs and remove the part that breaks
Whenever you see me standing in the rain.

What language did we speak then?
What were those words you said?
I cannot recall them now. It seems
They were put-together places
Smelling of bleak hotel rooms,
Small tears in the imagination,
Impossible to put together once
The runs began to race toward
Your thighs, spreading the fabric
Greater and greater distances,
Until I can once more see the moon
High above whatever city we were in.

The lions still move at the bottom of the stairs,
Snakes winding about the columns.
They know we are here. They don’t have
To look for us. They know the picture
Is theirs and they will ask us, “What do you
Want more than anything?”

To fall asleep, not knowing my name.
Not knowing your name. Not having
Any name at all and to be touching
Your body with all that I am, hearing the first
Word. It is coming from your mouth.

Front Door, Locke

TINGSHA: TIBETAN CYMBALS

This could stop any second.
This is hanging in the air.
It has all of my breath in it.

As I recall, I was holding you
In my arms. The afternoon
Sun slid across your stomach,
Lighting up the perfect fine hairs,
Glowing under my fingers.

I couldn’t remember anything. There
Were, of course, all the stars above.
They had homes on your lips then.
I visited them as often as possible.

Now, when I sit, I hear the tingsha
vibrate against eternity, I feel
Your body against mine and believe
The sound of the divine winds
Are moving through me and that we
Are talking to each other intensely.

There comes a shot to the head.
I hear the stillness in the echoes.
I feel your fingers upon a harp
I once knew as my own flesh.

Electric Calla Lily

SPEAKING IN EXPLETIVES

I can drive cars into my imagination.
They have no brakes. They have
Lots of lights.

A separate rain. The burns across
The palms of my hands. I read
With my eyes closed. The night
Air fills with huge sparks.
I choose to live like this.

I can hear stars chanting.
“Shut up. People will think
You’ve caused something.”
A morning filled with old clocks.

An algebra of regrets filled with eagles.
All of this dust was once armies.
All of poetry, a concordance of possibilities.
Shadows of invisible monuments.
Decisions made by flowing water.

Fish begging for a greater understanding
Of fireflies and the history of night.
The radiant trappings draped upon the heart.
What echo says to each precious moment.

You’ll have a better idea of this
When everything is perfect.
Help me lift these words in tribute
To eternity. Eternity will remember you
For this. It will kiss you on the lips.

The tides mimic our emotions.
Long ago I walked with lions.
Just get into the boat quickly.
We will not want to miss the sunrise.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

Writing a prose poem is a bit like trying to catch a fly in a dark room. The fly probably isn’t even there, the fly is inside your head; still you keep tripping over and bumping into things while in hot pursuit. The prose poem is a burst of language following a collision with a large piece of furniture.

—Charles Simic, from his essay, "The Poetry of Village Idiots" in his book of essays, The Life of Images

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner and to Beth Chapel for their fine contributions to our morning!

Iris

—Watercolor by Beth Chapi

Key

—Photo by Keely S. Dorran, Sacramento

THE FABRIC OF FORGIVENESS
—Loch Henson, Diamond Springs

Thread by thread,
made up of varied materials
     (cotton,
        silk,
             wool,
                leather)
you do what you can to create
a strip to bandage your wounds.

Some of them call for a band-aid;
Some of them call for a tourniquet.
Some of them call for an amputation.

It was not your place to have a Kevlar heart.
It was not their place to trespass and
do harm, yet harm was done.

Then the real work begins.

You spin, and weave, and gather
and grieve for the part of yourself
that you recognize as injured after triage.

You slowly build the tool you need
with the skills you have and
the patience you are struggling to claim
as your own.

Eventually what you weave is the fabric
of forgiveness.  This is not for them.
This is for you.

It may not look glamorous at first glance,
and it might not match your entire wardrobe,
but it will save you when you need it to.

_________________________

—Medusa

Bodega Head

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

FACEBOOK ANSWERS THE $64,000 QUESTION
—Cynthia Linville

Which superhero, celebrity, rock star, Disney princess are you? 

Which Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Partridge Family character?
Which 80s song?
 Which dipping sauce?

What's your true age?
How smart are you? 

How much of a bitch?

How strong is your relationship? 

Who will you marry?
What does your name say about you?

What is your power animal?
Your true profession?
Your real personality?

Who were you in a past life?
What kind of wings do you have? 

What color is your soul? 

If you weren't you, who would you be?

Before

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

ON THE WIND
—Robert Lee Haycock

The juniper spins
A mandala of shadow
Listen, the birds pray

____________________

DAWN ON THE SAN JOAQUIN
—Robert Lee Haycock

Freighted with last night's dark
Meandering upriver
Morning swims downstream

____________________

YET
—Robert Lee Haycock

The belling of the bull elk
The blazing of the buckwheat
I do not have an answer

Morning

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

TO PHOTOGRAPH A MORNING GLORY (Hawaii)
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole, CA

Waiting for wind to realize and be still
    Waiting for wind

Waiting for dew drops to lure the sun
    Waiting for dew

Waiting for petals to unify with air
    Waiting for petals

Waiting for shadows to shift slightly
    Waiting for shadows

Waiting for the stem to bend a bit
    Waiting for the stem

    Tension ease into core
    choreography of composure

            until

    a golden pulse clicks.

_______________________

CARAVAN
—Claire J. Baker

Stay with the caravan, yet be
yourself; notice what others do,
what wise ways they take,
yet follow your own path.

Whether you ride, walk, fly,
limp, run or stumble
you are your significant other,
a lover of sun and stars,

interpreter of human nature,
celebrant of carousels—
drawn to oceans, dune grass,
waterglow, children, art.

When alone may you serve as
your own fine companion,
aware, amazed,
ecstatic to be alive.

Linear

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

Today's LittleNip:

HOME REMEDY FOR
AN UNFORTUNATE RELATIONSHIP
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

Choose carefully
A small stone.
Hold under the tongue
Until dissolved.
You are cured.

(first pub. in The Home Remedy Poems,
Lamoine Valley Press, 1975)

______________________

—Medusa

Bodega Head

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

MORNING PROCEDURE

The cat has been stroked
and has left my lap to the
lamplight in the dark morning.

Hum of early traffic begins . . .
no . . . it is only an airplane drone
—gone now.

My pencil scrapes the page with a
strange sound—whisper of language
a pen does not know . . .

A thin whine in some far background
says, Here . . . Now . . .
in my ear only.

Shall I rise to the dark morning
and put all this away,
unfinished?

Now that morning no longer
belongs to me,
I am distracted.

But the words still compel me with their
illegible scribble; time is going,
and they accuse me.

Where is the comfort-cat now—
that silent shadow
of casual existence?

Trees in the Top

DEBRIS
From May Sarton’s "Well"

Ah, yes—the old drowned doll—that mystery again. Foul
play, I’m sure—cliché of broken childhood : play turned
cruel, indifferent to the sadness of dolls. This one awkward
upon wet sand as if up-flung by a rejecting wave. Poor naked
doll, its face ground in, one arm raised as though to swim
out of this flailing—one foot dug in—the day turning cold—
night coming on, and no one to grieve its dying.

_____________________

DREAM SCRIPTS

I have never let nights go dreamless,
unsettled and strange
twisting them into scenarios
ever uncompleted—
ever dangerous.

I, the messenger, the lead, the foe,
the very direction—
without finale,
make up the dreams without ending,
knowing I can break out of sleep
at the point of my destruction.

Trees in Late Sunlight

FOR THE TREE ITSELF
After "Facing the Tree" by David Ignatow

I
O, My Tree,
let me now arrange your
leaves before they fall—
angle the light
for the shadow—
                            add a bird
or two—some music—
and call you Symphony.

II
and this tree of light—
hollow light surrounded by leaves
and branches, openings
for sunlight and birds—
for wind,
               and little breezes,    and the seasons
that have their effect, this tree that faces the window
where someone looks out year after year
upon this tree made of light.

III
I gave someone a polished leaf from a tree full of
such leaves—a perfect, new-falling leaf—shining
like a bronze reproduction—floating on the arrested
moment of air that the light caught—the other leaves
around it fixed and motionless in the shade of this
old tree. But a tiny patch of sunlight had flared
with some purpose that I recognized—and complied—
and took from the others, this little gift.

IV
Once a weariness so heavy came
upon me that I surrendered to
a yearning and sought
a tree I knew that
had vast shade and
quiet. I brought myself
to its healing and lay on the ground,
looking up through the branches
and slightly-moving leaves,
and I slept for a long
while, unwinding
and renewing.

Front Yard Trees, Fresco

MEAN LOVE

I would say sorrow waits in every love,
in every vow, in every lie, well-meant,
intensified by doubt and mean despair.
Love hurts, it cannot help itself.

Falling short of expectation lets it love
the moody rain and light, the way it loves
its tears—wept often and alone.
Forget all that. Love needs itself—

despite the woe—the absence that
it leaves in retrospect. Why else give up
the power of the risk; how else define
the indefinable for what it means?

______________________

ROCK FORMATION
After "Etretat, 1885" by Monet

Somewhere I have written words to go with this:
the hole in the rock—jagged and huge,
and through it—the boat ghosting by—

and another such rock beyond—
and another—
jutting out into the calm sea.

But why calm?
A dream-scape for a sleeper
caught in levels of benign imagination?

But, no. The dream and the sea—
the gaping tunnel in the rock—
as well as the drifting boat—all the dreamer

—all painted to bring everything to a stop:
the boat never reaches beyond the passage—
the sea stays at ebb—the dream dreams.

Only the rock-shadows quiver with surface light,
almost breathing—revealing detail;
almost making a sound—like dream music.

Somewhere I have written words, left with the sea,
lost in the seventh wave, answering everything,
even this later quarrel with recognition.

Green Tree

CHAIR-STUDY IN RUST-BLUE LIGHT

A chair in a room blue with light, back
to the window, well sat in,
its rounded contours softening
in the dim recognition of what it is—

how often have we noticed in abstraction
something as familiar as a chair, something
as patient and allowing and as
comforting as a chair?… and in the room

two windows doing what they do with view
in the rust-blue light of a fading afternoon,
and the very walls that hold everything in,
and the way the quietness simply waits…

and then we notice how long it takes
to intrude across the floor,
and we remark on this for something to say
to remove the overtaking block of silence,

for now we must open ourselves again
and let each other in and let the room
breathe around us, though it is being
very still and blue through its blue curtains—

all rust-blue—in the late light spreading
across the floor in our direction;
and the chair stretches out its shadows
even more and goes deep; and maybe now

something will become ultimate: the windows
pull us toward their lowering light
and a flood of sorrow comes from nowhere
and we lose our hold and weep.

____________________

THE SPIRAL

Once more we enter the spiral
that whirls us inward
and down

into the coil
of invisible dark
that we expect, through the

heart, bitter with love,
and the eyes that pool—
and there we are

in another whirlpool
winding
downward

through the resisting center.
So many depths to pass through,
each one a condition of time

that stays unaccountable—
we can never recall
the return of all such promise—

is erased
it seems by our
need to test once more

the spiral with its sweet vertigo
which now has become
an addiction needing us as well.

___________________

Today's LittleNip:

THE HEALING TREE

Once a weariness came
upon my being
and I surrendered to a yearning
and I sought a tree I knew
that had vast shade and quiet
and I brought myself to its healing
and lay on the ground
looking up through its branches
and silently moving leaves
and I slept for a long while
unwinding and renewing,
under the flickering sunlight.

______________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for today's poems and pix extolling Sacramento's fine trees (does anybody have a remedy for the drought that is making them suffer?), and calling attention to how Joyce's "The Healing Tree" (see LittleNip) is a reworking of the last verse of her "For the Tree Itself". Joyce has great courage about recycling parts of poems, turning prose poems into verse, stealing shamelessly from herself just to see what else can be done. This can be a very useful way of poking the muse into doing double-duty for you; give it a try sometime.

Oh, Medusa!—we forgot your birthday (May 29)! And the tenth it was, too, an especially important one. Well, I suppose it's immodest to wish oneself a happy birthday, so I guess that explains your silence on the subject, lady that you are. Anyway, DR Wagner had a fine post for us that day, which was an excellent way to celebrate. Many happy returns, Medusa, to you and all your fine poets and artists. And our new Seed of the Week shall be Birthdays, just to keep the birthday thoughts going. Tell you what—anyone who sends a poem about birthdays to kathykieth@hotmail.com before midnight on Sunday, June 7, I'll send you a free copy of our new edition of WTF! Howz THAT for a deal?

Palm Tree

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville

SUNRISE YOGA

Tree-pose, right leg rooted, left bow-cocked.
Balance. Hands arrow-prayered
pointing up. Focus on a point of light slipped
through the blinds. Breathe. Release.

Sunflower. Arms raised, seeds of praise,
of wonder. Focus on a spider walking inverted
across the ceiling. Bend. Breathe.

At last, corpse-pose. Deep breath, lights out.
Focus on that one invisible point of bright.

_____________________

FOR HIS BIRTHDAY

he wants a drum. Not one wrapped in silver
paper, ribbons tied so tight he’ll never
make them smooth again. Can’t make the Happy
Birthday paper new again either, any more
than he could unwrinkle past time. If he wants
a drum he’ll have to make it himself
from an old tin can rusting among rocks
on the wild side of the hill, left by whoever
lived here before he was born. A can too rusty
to tell what it held. He wants to make music,
even if no one wishes to hear him learning
to play the wild percussion of life. They just
want him to blow out candles and pass the cake.

_____________________

GOLD BUG PARK

Along the creek, monkey flower and blackberry
in bloom. Green flecked with white, yellow,
every shade of violet, a rusted wagon wheel.
Glimpsed through leaves, even sky blossoms
blue. Slopes cling to periwinkle, poison oak
rooted in soil rooted in bedrock. A tell
of Nature’s history. Old dog leads a journey-
way searching for the bridge, a crossing. Breeze
sweeps our footprints, weaves in our prayers.

ALIVE

The meadow’s a riot of puppy dashing after
butterflies; she and her sister, tongues lolling in
the shade of oaks. Sparse grass at the edges,
dry soil. Headache for a rancher under a full
Arid Moon. Gusts of parched air. But
these pups have their second wind, they’ll
play beyond human patience. Find my keys,
drive back home, where my old dog charts
the scent of puppies alive clinging to my arms
and ankles, legs, my hands to loose and hold.

______________________

WEEDS HAPPEN

These are the weeds beloved of sheep.
“Weed” is a human construct.
Lacking our language, sheep know better.
It’s our single shot that leaves them dead. Or,
no reason at all, just dead.
This lowly plant with silent clock-hands
we bag as noxious.
It could take me out in an instant, wham!
But see how vibrant, green.
I put it in salad. Maybe I survive
by not believing the label.
Gone six weeks, my cat will walk
in the door with adventures taller than
a black cat in boots.
How he survived hawk, coyote, owl.
I’ll listen, leave the door open.
Weeds advance.
I can see the Strawberry Moon, and Night
with a wisp of wind wound into her hair.

_____________________

CALL OF THE WILD

Coyote—that weird wild lonesome cry that haunts the night
and just keeps wailing in the mind, to echo out of sight.

They slip like spirits out of roadside weeds, a gaze
that disappears if I look twice—a springtime valley haze,

a lamb gone missing. I love coyotes as I hate the kill—
in dawning dim, a mother ewe is bleating, bleating still.

Her lamb is gone. I search down rocks along the creek,
hoping I won’t find, in that wild corner, what I seek.

What are fences to coyotes? They clear them in a bound.
That’s where I found the lamb they brought to ground.

In spring, so many hungry pups in a coyote’s den—
coyote mother’s on the hunt to fill them up again.

In spring, by bright or dark of moon, while we’re asleep,
Coyote comes. We wake and lose our count of sheep.

Still I go searching, after all the lambs are grown,
for what, I couldn’t tell you. Coyote? the wild unknown.

TYGH-BO’S BUTT-STUD

Three hundred pounds of ram, but he was advertised as mellow.
Loaded in our little car, Bam!Bam! on floorboards—what a fella!

He stomped his ram-staccato all the long drive home.
Three pretty ewes on our acres, he had no need to roam.

Poker-eyes in an iron skull struck flint when he was peeved.
Don’t turn your back on a ram, or up-side you’ll be heaved.

Then old Tygh-bo caught a cold, yellow mucus from his nose.
We bought a veterinary dose to cure him, syringe thick as a hose.

Tygh-bo’d seen that before. They say sheep don’t learn,
but he just whipped his butt around— eyes in a slow burn.

You jabbed the silver needle in. Don’t think Tygh-bo’d stand
for that! He whirled—while you just stood, syringe in hand—

Bad luck, the needle stuck, in his butt. Snazzy silver stud.
You grabbed for it, he whirled away, body-pierced for good.

So Tygh-bo wears that needle-stub, no way you dare remove it.
He’s cool, he’s groovy, hip—butt-stud in his rump to prove it.

_______________________

REMEDIES

Weather likes to be inclement. Sullen.
Lightning arrows down to strike
the highest point, your home on its advantageous
hilltop. You’ve done the drill, examined
the odds. The medical—no remedy; in the end,
life loses. Weigh that against
the ecstatic squeals leaping inside this whelping-
pen, a mother-dog telling you the glory
of her eight newborns.
You’ve been here. Not this garage, not this
dark-eyed smiling Shepherd bitch
you’ve never seen before.
It’s like film reeling itself back on the spool
for a second chance. Maybe this time
the pups won’t die before equinox.
They’ll live to find paths through the woods,
romp in mountain meadows; chase storm clouds
to test the winds, the weather.
Search for angels. Just listen to them
mewling for their mother. Watch them grow.
At last, take one home for your own.
Your remedy, life.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

ALTERNATIVE SELF-PORTRAIT

Remedy for a loggy morning,
paint yourself as a shattered mirror in shades
of mallard wing, dynamic,
begging for a lily in the armpit, grass-
hopper in the mouth. Make your
self up as you go.

_____________________

Many thanks to Taylor Graham for today's poems and pix, including her cowgirl poems (well, sheepgirl) celebrating the Highway 50 Wagon Train which is headed toward Placerville from Lake Tahoe. This annual trek will be stopping in Camino on Saturday night, where they will be holding a BBQ with western music, an open mic, and cowboy poetry from well-known cowboy poet Jim King; on Saturday they will finish up the trip by heading down to Placerville.

And don't forget—we're celebrating Medusa's Kitchen's tenth birthday this week by our Seed of the Week: Birthdays. Send poems and pix about birthdays to kathykieth@hotmail.com and I'll send you a copy of the new issue of WTF! Free!

By the way—if you haven't gotten a copy of this WTF and you're a contributor, let me know and I'll mail you one. Others may be had for $2 by clicking on WTF in the links at the top of this post, or might still be a few at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac.

—Medusa

Sebastopol Memorial Lawn, Sebastopol, CA

—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

ON MEMORIAL DAY

After every war
we invent silence
even memory,
inside the quiet rooms
of our nerves
the recall of him or her
will find us offering a prayer
when the sunlight appears
on Memorial Day
through windows of birds
who flutter up over our windows
covering May's cool heavenly air
hands' outstretch to poppies
is reflected in our mirrors
along the surf's breeze
knowing we exist as words
become our lives
in every whisper
and tiny gesture
we choose to pick flowers
as a poet's shadow
turns in the high tide
drowning a remembrance
as rainbows in the waters
rise by the sea's headstones
choosing to revere
the silver thoughts
from our angel's occupation.

____________________

AFTER WAR

After every war
or family conflict
we invent a cluster
of silence to pardon
even memory,
inside our quiet room
we will find peace
even in a gray empty sky
the sanctuary sunlight appears
through the scaffold windows,
we decide to walk
along the beach
shaping sails, shells, stones
warm as the dunes sing
out to us
as a memorial to pardon
the past and to reconcile
for our future,
we softly take our eyes
off portholes by the sea
as a poet's body of words
we fish for emerges
and a poem suddenly surfaces
knowing we exist
on every whisper's breeze
by a resinous redwood,
and tiny gestures of our face
at every dream of travel
we choose a voluntary life
following our verse's shadow
turning to swim by the dock
over the high tide
drowning our wishbones
as rainbows in the waters
by the sea's first sighs
and we wave into language
in our proofs to love.

Noah Purifoy, Joshua Tree, CA

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

A POET'S REMEDY

When we are down
and cannot think
and everything seems
to be wrong
drowning in words of ink
by broken mirrors of love
suffocating from the heat
we take a kayak
like Charon's oars
over the high sea
to enlighten us
in the cool sunlight
and breathe in ocean air
as once in the Adriatic
away from fields of wheat,
when a friend is in grief
open the doors to her
and offer Natalia a greeting
of daytime flowers,
give her no obstacles
in any dance of hours
for all miracles are welcome
in a luminous belief,
try to draw or paint
a number of pictures
as a bas relief,
when you were far
from home
and needing a plumber
in Rome

the carrara marble sink
was dripping
by your Trevi fountains art,
we choose transparency
to do my visible part
and drew Natalia in a flight
of angel bird-song above
the shimmering mountains,
when you need any remedy
drink from a parlance
to command your vocabulary
at a sunlight's window
outside the cape,
or call on the Parisian poets,
Baudelaire or Pierre Reverdy,
or give ear to Saint Malachi;
when I try to exercise
or play sax in the attic
to maintain my wise balance
by the music stand's weight
and not be sycophantic.

______________________

GLINKA'S DAY
June 1, 1804

We walked into
my neighbor's house,
that is Igor and Galina's
as her son is wildly
running down the banister
with his new schoolbag
the couple dressed up
for me
offering us tea in a glass
along with kvass
and hearing Glinka
from an orchestra
playing on their C.D.
reminding me of Russia
in my old boots
and muted fur hat and coat
when giving readings
to those who love
Akhmatova
and signed my autographs
between our tears and laughs.

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

THOMAS HARDY'S DAY
June 2 (1840-1928)

Your novels and poems
leave us melancholy
to the accidents of fate
before we make decisions
we make alterations
from any rhyme of folly
and reach any probabilities
wrestling on words to wait.

_____________________

GINSBERG'S BIRTHDAY
June 3, 1926

Beat all the way
on the breezy June third
how wild bewildering hours
pass by in Manhattan
since we celebrated
in New York City
on your birthday
that make you over-sized
we are captured again
by your sitar
and a memory of your word
how the Sixties pass
and we are breathlessly amazed
with man we wonder
alone in our walled sanctuary
at your body of language
from so many earthy pages
that we still are missed
when your earthy lips
came on us with passages
in our own birth and death
as you sang and kissed
spilling out words
we have not missed.

Urban Ore, Berkeley, CA

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

LORCA'S BIRTHDAY
June 5 (1898-1936)

Let every chorus ring
with lyrical flights of wings
and musical songbirds go higher
on a lonely rapturous branch
even during this rainy season
Garcia Lorca,
under the clouds' expanse
you gave us a chance
under the pampas
and on every campus
to lift our spirits visually
by buried injustice
from every hostile
civil war zone
by your own exile
you want us to forget
our mourning every June 5th
and to play a jazz riff
from a smiling alto saxophone
and rejoice on earth
in your inspired firmament
and poem's arrangements
of notes and words
on your day of birth.

____________________

A YEAR AGO
(for Maxine Kumin)
June 6 (1925-2014)

We're on your heart
after a short year
those whose tranquil words
filled our lightness
of language
for so many seasons
in laughter,
enchantment and loss
we still sport a tear,
is it really one year
you are gone
by a sunshine's brightness,
this morning we spied
a swan dancing in the lake
not fearing the water
rising near my kayak
trying not to forget
the moment
yet felt an ache and cried
sliding by the breakers,
after a winter of snowing here
by Vermont's woods
in the hinter's distance
spotting many fawns and deer,
gone from our sight on fields
is a woman of gentle verse
easy going in our neighborhood
as this daring life often gives us
a second chance
even though you fell off
a horse you recovered well
keeping in a nurse of care,
now in a changing season
of warmth on June sixth
with the springs at our back
we saw only music in you
where only poets dwell
it's only sleep we lack.

—Photo by Cynthia Linville

DIEGO VELAZQUEZ
June 6, 1599

As a painter of the brothers
who brought to their father
the fiery bloody coat of colors
of a disfigured Joseph
dropped once in a well
like those who once desired
to hide from their guilty crime
yet we watch Joseph raised up
in Egypt to interpret dreams
became a Jewish dreamer
and beloved prime minister
to be honored for all time
for sin is shamed in history,
yet justice reigns, it seems.

___________________

PAUL GAUGUIN
June 7, 1848

Watching your Tahitian
scenes in all shades
we stand motionless
with joy
at the museum
as sons and daughters
watch the mounting waves
in the motioning waters,
wanting to wade in.

Today's LittleNip:

Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter.

—Satchel Paige

________________________

Our thanks today's skilled contributors! Note that B.Z.'s second poem is a reworking of the first, like we talked about with two of Joyce Odam's poems last Tuesday.

Note also that there is a new photo album, Recent Sacramento Poetry Readings (from Katy Brown and Michelle Kunert), on Medusa's Facebook page today. I posted the photos in two groups, one yesterday afternoon, and one last night, so you might want to check again if you looked at the album earlier yesterday. (Like Urban Ore in Berkeley, poets are industrial-strength recyclers, turning one pretty thing into another pretty thing, yes?)

Free! Free!—we're celebrating Medusa's Kitchen's tenth birthday this week with our Seed of the Week: Birthdays. Send poems and pix about birthdays to kathykieth@hotmail.com and I'll send you a copy of the new issue of WTF! Free!

By the way—if you haven't gotten a copy of this WTF and you're a contributor (or aren't sure), let me know and I'll mail you one if you are. Copies may also be ordered for $2 by clicking on WTF??? in the links at the top of this post, or there still might be a few free ones at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac.

—Medusa

—Poems by Scott Thomas Outlar, Atlanta, GA

—Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

LEARNING TO SING THE WORD

In the beginning
was the Word
and the Word
was a vibration
and the vibration
was a sound
and the sound
was a song
and the song
was a manifestation
and the manifestation
was an image of Creation
and the Creation
took on form
and the form
was chaos
and the chaos
brought about order
and the order
led to evolution
and the evolution
learned to adapt
and the adaptation
led to humanity
and humanity
became conscious
and consciousness
became the lyric

Bee Rolls in Pollen

HEART OF HEARTS

Up the hill, out of breath
toward the sky, beyond the pale

White horses, opal eyes, diamond fangs
enter the Apocalypse

I dream of snakes in the garden
I wake to poison in my veins

Through the woods, toward the light
see the shine and follow forever

Black devil, silent faith, twisted lies
herald the Revelation

I found God in my heart of hearts
I lost the desire to sink

On to the Next

KIND OF

It's kind of rare

 It's kind of raw

 It's kind of structured

It's kind of Fall 

to the abyss

 and find the answers 

It's kind of stall

 for awhile

 then hit the gas

It's kind of a broken promise when the future comes

 It's kind of a balanced loss when the account is drawn
It's kind of stupid when you think about it

 It's kind of lovely

It's kind of a bail-out

 It's kind of a buy-in

It's kind of this

 It's kind of that

 It's kind of the other

 It's kind of a cliché

It's kind of a hardened liver

 It's kind of a big joke

It's kind of a trust fund

 It's kind of a homeless scenario

It's kind of like that time you almost did, but didn't quite, but wish you had

It's kind of a new wave

 It's kind of an old hat

It's kind of black

 It's kind of white

 It's kind of silver

 It's kind of gold electric humming vibration across ten dimensions

It's kind of a power surge

 It's kind of a fade-away

It's kind of lost 

It's kind of found

 It's kind of right where it's always been

It's kind when you're cruel

 It's kind of a buffer

It's kind of like butter melting in the sun

 It's kind of like the last moon that ever cycled

It's kind of here

 It's kind of now

 It's kind of passing

Bee Hive Cartoon

FACING THE CYCLE

Life has a way of dredging up past mistakes
and cycling circumstances back into your experience
until the point in time when you actually decide to deal with them.

The mirror will always stare back
with eyes of disappointment and anger
until you learn how to love the reflection.

I have had a tendency to quit too easily
when the going gets tough
by cutting and running instead of digging in.

But I can’t run forever
because my legs grow weary
and I lose the sense of what direction I’m heading in.

God doesn’t deal in lies, but cold hard truths,
and so if you want to know real peace
you’d better learn how to play with a straight hand.

I’ve only ever been given exactly what I need
no matter how difficult it is to recognize
that even the suffering can bring about a higher state of joy.

Sometimes it feels like the only option
is to shed the past and go the path alone,
but I’m beginning to recognize just how much I need good company.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

—Medusa, thanking today's fine contributors! Scott Outlar was featured in the Kitchen on Jan. 14, 2015, if you want to look that up. And don't forget to check out Medusa's new photo album on Facebook, featuring photos by Katy Brown and Michelle Kunert from some recent Sacramento poetry readings, including last Monday night when Keith Carey accompanied Allegra Silberstein at Sac. Poetry Center. Keith used to be with Robert Crumb's band, Cheap Suit Serenaders.

Artichoke Bloom

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

THE COSMIC ASYLUM
for Skar Plow

Something broke behind my eyes.
I was able to see great fights of birds
In a fictive space within my skull.

The day threatened rain but never
Pulled the trigger. I could taste the water
On my lips, almost swim in it, but I knew
It did not remember me at all.

When I looked down I could see
A river, with a mouth like Neruda making love.
And the sun was an evening mist that made
Color dance. I wanted my skin to be like that.

Darkness promises me particular things
But I refuse them. It begins to pursue me
With blood stains and rivers of which
I cannot see the banks. I can feel my destiny
Touch me in my most intimate places, laughing
As if it has discovered something about me
Which I cannot know without living thousands
Of days more, listening for the horsemen,
Rushing to the shadows when I hear the hooves
Thunder closer and closer. From here I can see
The circle about to close. I write furiously, attending
To the preciousness of words as if they were my children.

Amulets and Offerings

A WALL COVERED WITH LIT CANDLES

Lights begin to go off and on
Farther down the road.
We thought it best to don our cloaks.
“What are we waiting for?” asked Gabe.

“I have my horn,” she added.
“I thought I recognized someone
You knew that you had forgotten,” I added.

“Well, invite him up. It’s been a long
Time since anyone who didn’t
Know him recognized him.”

“He had a long knife,” I said.

“Oh, him,” Gabe answered.

Pomegranate

GIOTTO’S ANGELS

Their lamentations are endless.
Their garments laced with painful
Lines as they tear their clothing,
Pull their hair from their heads.
Today one can stand among them,
Draped with gold leaf and transformed.
We can be these angels. They infect
Our eyes with their twisted splendor.
We know exactly what they have seen.

Where I am today, they hover over the river.
They have become herons and egrets.
No less angels, they remain the passion
Beneath the beauty of every moment.
The gardens have sprung from the sloughs,
Sprung from the body of a dead Christ.
This can speak even here, centuries later.
We remain in the realm of angels.
We live in the next world. We lick Giotto’s
History with our tongues. The dead Christ,
Now a landscape, envelopes us completely.

We are able still to lean over the body
Of the delta and see those angels
Above us, every movement grief and anguish
Exploding in the dark sky. Each part touched
By a perfection of gold leaf and unfailing belief
In angels, always angels, always their lamentations.

Artichoke

I DRESS MYSELF IN CLOUDS

Between this world and the next one
I ask you to accept these words.

Blood runs from my mouth and I hold
An apple in my hand as an offering.
It too is red and sweeter than my mouth.

I too am a figment. I dress myself in clouds.
I have no voice but the earth herself.
She teaches me to speak in this manner.

_____________________

SKIPPING

What does one mix with tears
If not a curtain made of yesterdays.
Smiles in a closed box
No one is able to open again.
Piles of twigs heaped together,
Each pile with a dream
At its center.

One of birds.
One of the voice of fire.
One of the names of the stars.
One of broken promises.
One of decks of playing cards,
Each one lacking all aces.

I will take them all.
I will put them with my tears.
Later we will weave blankets of them.

They will keep us warm.
They will help us recall
The lovely horses,
The miles that we rode
Just to be here and see these things.

I’m skipping to the ending.
We wash our bodies,
Close our eyes
Sleep in each other's arms.

Carry me with you as you would your shadow.
I will come and go with the changing of the light.

I have come to understand fire and desire.
People on this earth tell me many things.
What should I believe about you then?

Often I am a fog or a frost upon leaves.
I will drift into your thoughts on occasion.
You may think you have heard my voice.

I will implore you to dress yourself in love
That I may know you and intuit your footsteps
In all the centuries. I will never pretend to you.

Behind Martin's Home

HORSES

There is never evidence of when
I have made love to you.
The wind addresses the sails
But the tales could be of anyone.

I am just beyond this room
Where the tops of trees
Can show me only the flights of birds.
Then the music fades as if it
Hadn’t expected anyone to be
Listening to it carefully.

So I’ll tell you once again.
This is my heart. I love you.
It washes away in the wind.
I am confused by the way words
Want to push me away here
And allow a blank white
Chariot to stand ready but unwilling
To make any move.

I grab the reins, totally uninformed.
I see you there before me.
I can learn. I will know your song.
Sing it to me.

______________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for this fine way to begin a weekend! And a note that the last issue of Len Fulton's Small Press Review, which has been a mainstay in the small press since 1964, is now available. Len himself passed in 2011, but Dustbooks has soldiered on, and it will be sorely missed. For more info, see www.dustbooks.com/spr.htm.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

MOONLIGHT

The moon has come tonight,
Raiding my bedroom.
It takes possession of the walls,
Fading the pictures hanging on them.
It changes the color of my sheets
And leaves me pale in the cool light.

“I won’t be here long,” says the moon.

“Watch me.”

_____________________

—Medusa

Full Moon Through Window

—Anonymous Photo

BLAZE WINS THE RACE
—Hatch Graham, Placerville

You speak of horses great and fast
while reading of the derby last
and tell of Man-O-War and Seattle Slew,
But when it comes to packing
you'll soon find they are lacking
and you'll bet your paycheck on only very few.
It started in the summer,
and I thought the horse a bummer,
bought by our local trail crew foreman.
He was flighty and a craze
and we had to call him Blaze,
He was tall and lanky and his nose was roman.

             It was Blaze! Blaze! Blaze!
You lanky bag of mule-bones, skinny Blaze!
Here's oats, you simple dummy!
Come fill your goldarn tummy,
you cross-bred sway-back sorrel, bony Blaze.

The season did progress
and he weighed less and less
the vet came up at last and wormed him:
the hose went down his throat,
the juice would fill a boat,
but by the fall Ol' Blaze was fit and trim.
We were riding hours on the range,
and it didn't seem too strange
to see that he could really cover ground
He'd come now to my shout
from where'er he was about
and you could depend for sure that you'd be found.

               It was Blaze! Blaze! Blaze!
You ugly maverick, you only want to graze.
It's time to saddle up.
C'mon now, hup-hup-hup!
        We've got miles to make it to the river, Blaze!

His long legs would really cover ground—
often after dark before a camp was found,
an' he'd stand by as I unsaddled him.
As I unpacked our mule and fed them oats,
cooked dinner, finished off my notes,
he'd graze unhobbled 'cause I trusted him.
Morning when I shook the sack
and whistled, he was back,
an' he'd puff up when we cinched the girth.
Though he'd often try to squash my boot,
he was a gentle old recruit,
though many years well past his birth.

               It was Blaze, Blaze, Blaze!
When I couldn't see just where he'd gone to graze
and thought our hobbled mule
had played us for the fool.
Here coming from the willows is faithful Blaze.

I'll not forget the night
when I'd ridden from first light
with seven rented horses to haul the fence crew in.
The snow had started falling,
the weather was appalling,
and we had strange horses where they'd never been.
I hobbled them and grained them late,
huddled in the tent, we could only wait;
as morning dawned, no horses could be seen.
With the trail covered by a foot of snow
And a fourteen-mile way to go,
I set out with tie ropes and thoughts obscene.

           It was Blaze! Blaze! Blaze!
You traitor, where are you in this maze?
With no tracks upon the ground
How can you e'er be found?
I thought that I could trust you. Damn you, Blaze!

The day and I were cold and gray,
when from a thicket came a neigh
and my white-faced sorrel trotted into sight.
He snuffled up his grain,
I mounted bareback, with a strain,
an' headed down the trail to catch the ones in flight.
Soon rounded up and fed,
back to the camp we led,
greeted by the crew with heartfelt praise.
They'd had a serious fright
of another freezing night,
and were glad I'd put my trust in Good Ol' Blaze.

               Yes, Blaze! Blaze! Blaze!
You roman-nosed old lanky sorrel, Blaze!
Gone now, but we all know the answer:
you weren't no Native Dancer,
but in my book, you won the race, my Good Ol' Blaze.

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking Hatch Graham for his cowboy poem as the Hwy. 50 Association Wagon Train completes yet another re-enactment of the journey from Lake Tahoe to Placerville. Some horses, like American Pharoah, are meant to win the Triple Crown, but others, like Blaze, have their own races to win...

Breakfast

—Photos by Keely S. Dorran, Sacramento

JOHNNY AND COCO FINISHED
—Richard Hansen, Sacramento

Johnny and Coco
had a long-distance
romance
failing to contain each other
at
Homecoming
Johnny lived in Houston
and had an addiction
to cocaine
Coco was in LA
Her heart soaring
high
above the population
Coco really loved
to
work her body
jumping higher with pirouettes
than anyone
in
the dance troupe
Johnny loved darkened lights
tall buildings on either side
could flow down
flights of stairs at night
really quick
when
a certain friend
was
waiting for him

Soul Mate Carnival

A GOD-FEARING MAN AND HIS PATERNITY
—Pijush Kanti Deb, Lumding, Nogaon, Assam, India

In the eve of the birth of his first child
a God-fearing man changes
his spectacle into goggles and skin into bark
to enter the Hell of abundance for his child,
his expansion into a father
contracts him into a sinner,
as he now defines himself,
for bringing an innocent life about
to suffer and die
and compelling him to pray
to the God to forgive him
and swears for something new to start
both in the name of the God and the Devil,
to purchase a new diary
immersing the old one
into the depth of the sensitive channel
he used to swim across
before mingling himself
in the vastness of a stoic ocean,
and manipulates the race competition
being held in his heart
between his vice and virtue,
as no other alternative is found,
for obtaining a surplus balance of payment
before the child starts
regretting and crying for his unwanted birth
in this world
where "Hooray" is always defeated by "Alas".

_________________________

THE BEST SINGER
—Pijush Kanti Deb

Not only
my father was soft in tuning my song
in a moderate scale to sing well
but also
my fate was generous
in blooming an appreciation
as the best son of my father.

Here,
my master was hard in dignifying my song
in a high scale to practice,
there,
my perseverance was inviting the recognition
as the best disciple of my master.

Neither
a song needs a best son to sing
nor
a best disciple gets
all appreciation and recognition
rather my singing as per my own scale
must win the title of “the best singer”.

_______________________

THE KINGDOM AND ITS DREAMS
—Pijush Kanti Deb

The kingdom deserves a dream
to become the first choice of its people
and the dream may not be so illusive
or impossible to be fulfilled
yet it is found standing last
in the waiting list
making the dream
captive in its own closed eyes,
and follow the proceedings of some special-
colossal figure with long arms
just touching even the nerves of the king
to bewitch him
when he distributes
his kindness and benevolence
for bringing the sweating kingdom
beneath the shadow of a white pigeon.

Curtain, Western Window

LOTUS ROAD
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

On the long steep upgrade
a moving shadow. In stringer-shade of oak
across hot pavement
wild honkers, jaywalking east to west. I braked.
The truck behind me stopped
in time. A car coming fast at us downhill
didn’t see the birds, kept going, barely missing
bird-strike. First goose in line paused,
resumed its slow journey. I counted 21 geese
in stately procession. Is there
a Guinness record for Canadian Geese
crossing a two-lane?
We waited, cars headed down the grade
and a lengthening line of vehicles
behind me. No one honked.
What possessed these geese to travel on foot
when they might be flying? It seemed
an emigration of the dispossessed
by drought. Had they used their last strength
to reach a rancher’s pond and found it
dry? A playing-field that once was irrigated
grass, no longer green?
At last, bringing up the rear, three fuzzy
goslings achieved the far shoulder.
We humans safely wrapped in steel
resumed our journey.

_____________________

CENTER OF THE DREAM
—Taylor Graham

A speckled stone, sweet red slab of incense
cedar; yellow blossom that he sniffed for news;
black and white barred feather, hawk or owl;
scrimshaw of his teeth on bone. Color
and texture, scent and sound, what he thought,
far beyond your knowing. Separate this out,
pull it to the center, the fire, till everything
churns and melds and is consumed. Turn him
into smoke and memory rising above
lamentation. The wind sweeps him away,
disperses him airborne; dresses him in cloud
impermanent and endless.
Whatever stays unburned at the edges,
untransformed, release it, let it return to life.
*
The angels, you said, carry jet planes
through clouds, or let them fall. Pure energy,
lightning gathered to flip the switch,
incandescent on or off.
Mystery of how the heart works.

Sunflower, Capitol Park, Sacramento

“AND MANY MORE….”
—Loch Henson, Diamond Springs, CA

Atop the sweet confection of a
birthday cake, there perches
a waxy reminder of the passing
years.

Narrow tapers or incessant sparklers,
sculpted numerals or just a solitary
little soldier with his hat aflame,
the element of fire is at play.

Inhale as deep as you need (some
years are more challenging than others)
and blow them out for luck.

Mid-year you may still recollect
the flavor of buttercream frosting
mingling with wax.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

6/4/49
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

Depending
On how I look
At it, I’m
Either a defunct
Highway, or two-
Thirds of the way
To being The Beast.

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors, including Pijush Kanti Deb from clear across the sea!

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

Here we are, born of light

How we shimmer and
reflect to each other.

We become
love.

We touch
and we shatter.

We are broken into
many segments.

We mend ourselves
with dark seams.

How could we have known
it would be like this.

BIRTHDAY

Oh, look, Lady.
You are old.

Are you ready…
are you surprised?

Do you celebrate
or pour deep lamentations
everywhere?

_________________________

WEEKENDS

It is August
and they are its birthday people.
In the heat of the day they drink,
but they should not drink;
and then they talk, which turns to quarrel;
but they are merciless,
intense as lawyers.

The house they try to save
lies ruined between them.
They kick at the pieces.
Two lions, pacing their life,
hating captivity,
but afraid to nudge against the bars
which are loose.

BIRTHDAYS (in verse)

It is just such a night as this that throws wind-shadows
at my winter house—those forms imagined
out of the texture of childhood fears—those gatherers
of some old debt that time declares is payable . . .
it is just such a night as this.

My gleeful ancestors swarm outside my window,
looking in where I am sleeping,
their shadows looming on the walls.
They celebrate my sleep
where I escape
into the dream
of my existence.
They’re drunk and lonely.
I think they want to know me.
They call my name in tones I half remember.

My mother is among them, telling them about me,
saying, See? See? There is my daughter. She is old
like me. Look, look, look at her sleeping. And they
crowd in, the way they did when I was born—pressing
and peering over each other’s shoulders into my cradle.

(first pub. in Sakano, 2005)

BIRTHDAYS (as prose poem)

It is just such a night as this that throws wind-shadows at
my winter house—those forms imagined out of the texture
of childhood fears—gatherers of some old debt that time
declares is payable—my gleeful ancestors.

They writhe outside my window. They are drunk and lonely,
looking in, where I am lightly sleeping. Their shadows loom
against the walls. I think they want to know me. They call my
name in tones I half remember.

They celebrate my sleep where I escape into the dream of my
existence. My mother is among them—telling them about me,
saying, See? See? There is my daughter. She is old like me.
Look, look, look at her sleeping.

And they crowd in—the way they did when I was born—
pressing and peering over each other’s shoulders into my
dreamless cradle.

THE RAIN POEM

I have written the rain poem
and I send it to you in the summer
to surprise you.
I have put tall weeping ladies in it
whose hair smells like roses.
You are not to wonder about this.
They are not unhappy or lost
or looking for you.
I will let you name them
since you have
many names for what you know
and that is your part of the poem.
    .    .    .
I have written the rain poem
and I have made the day blue,
the color of evening.
The ladies are no longer there.
I was among them.
Did you see me? Did you know me?
I had the face that would not look at you,
the one that was bent to my hands
when you would not touch my hair.
    .    .    .
Did you like the rain?
It was my gift for summer,
a birthday rain,
the one I saved for so long.
I have so much of it
I keep a whole roomful of rain
and I write it into poems
and fill it with ladies
whose hair smells like roses
and each time I am the one of them
you do not name.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

BIRTHDAY POEM

I wanted to
write you a poem,
but all I could say
was love.
I celebrate you.

I wanted to say
happy birthday
in a special way,
but all I could
think of was
you are
a happiness to me.
And I celebrate you.

_______________________

—Medusa, thanks Joyce Odam for today's hearty breakfast, and noting that our new Seed of the Week is The Troll Who Lives Under My Desk. Send your poetic or artistic or photographic thoughts about same to kathykieth@hotmail.com; no deadline on SOWs.

Rusted Archer

—Poems and Photos by Katy Brown, Davis, CA

All in the way you look at it:

I sometimes envy the country life,
the life I think is
more authentic, closer to the bone.

To wake with the sunrise,
pull on a pair of worn boots,
greet the morning
with a cup of coffee in the yard.

Nothing keeps me
from early rising in the city.
No one locks me in my house
while birds stir
in the olive tree out front.

Nothing keeps me
from the olive tree out front,
from early rising in the city
while birds stir.
No one locks me in my house.

Ah, to wake with sunrise,
take a cup of coffee in the yard,
greet the morning
in a worn pair of boots.

More authentic? Closer to the bone?
No need for envy.
I have the life I want right here.

Contours

I’ve startled them again,

those lovely boys
who come to my door—
hopeful, cheerful, smiling—
talking of death and salvation.

It has been a while since
one of the God-teams has knocked.
I’ve missed them, frankly.
We have such lovely talks.

One of them asked me
how I pray. A rather personal
question I thought. How do you
begin your prayers, he probed.

Loving Father Mother God,
I said. He blanched and glanced
at his companion and wondered why
I chose those words. Why Mother?

Does the Bible not say that we are—
that I am—made in God’s image?

Well, yes? He senses some unpleasant
line of thought in my reply.

And I am female—therefore God
must be female, too. And if God is the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—
God must also be Mother, Daughter, and
Holy Spirit, as well.

The Christian symbol is the fish.
These boys had it just right:
with mouths that opened soundlessly
like divided carp on the shores of Galilee.
I’ve missed our little chats.

Hill

From The Book Of Quantum Genesis*

1. And on the Eighth Day
Man trapped the Light and kept it still.

             German researchers have frozen
             the fastest thing in the universe: light.
             And they did so for a record-breaking one minute.

2. At last, Man held power over the First Creation.
Light hissed in unknown confinement and cried out
to the Lord of All to free it once again.

            The reason for wanting to hold light in its place is
            to ensure that it (light) retains
            its quantum coherence properties.

3. Man stepped into the shadow of God
and asserted his power over the serpent,
which was also made of light, as all things are.
Behold, said Man, I have frozen Light.

            Over the course of a one-minute span,
            it can travel about 11 million miles (18 million km),
            or 20 round trips to the moon.
            So it’s a rather wily and slippery medium, to say the least.

4. From the shadows, Man stood beside God,
as God had put woman beside man,
and Man said, I have total understanding
of making and unmaking. I will speak for you,
oh, God for I have power to stop your Light. I understand
the science of miracles, the trickery of constants.

          Researcher Georg Heinze and his team converted
          light coherence into atomic coherences.

5. Man took up The Book and reinterpreted all scripture
to support his dominion over the First Creation and
all things created since.

*in5d.com/scientists-freeze-light-for-an-entire-minute

Field on Hill

Dust of Flowers

Ring the bell. Close the book.
Sweep away the dust of flowers.
Blow out the candles before we leave.

Glaciers melt and rocks erode
in time so slow we cannot see it.
Ring a bell. Close our books.

Pay attention to the clues:
canyons carved by rushing water,
fires quenched before we came—

bones of monsters clawing upward,
murmuring of lessons past.
Close the book and ring the bell—

our time for study ends right now.
We are dust in animation;
candles snuffed by time’s dark breath.

Cosmic dust and ash surround us;
the even-dying stars look on.
Ring the bell and close the book;
before we fade to candle-smoke.

Archer from Back

Today's LittleNip:

little master
(for Scout)

small force in a boundless world
exuberant chaser of dragonflies
joyful tracker of lizards

canine child of Buddha
lost in the infinite now
no past no future

so utterly
alive and present
then gone

______________________

Our thanks to Katy Brown for today's fine poems and pix from the Capay Valley! We also have a new photo album by Katy on Medusa's Facebook page—check it out!

And note that (1) Ginosko Literary Journal has a new issue available online at GinoskoLiteraryJournal.com, and (2) tonight will be the next-to-the-last reading at Red Alice's Poetry Emporium, and a fine line-up it is! Scroll down to the blue box (under the green box at the right of this) for details.

—Medusa

Reader

Monarchs on Zephyrs

A Loan from the Morning

The Joy of the Dance

In Every Whisper

That Carnival of Days and Nights

Tenderness Steeped in Derangement

How Light the Day

All the Words for Wonder

A Morning Filled With Old Clocks

The Fabric of Forgiveness

Lovers of Sun and Stars

Trees Made of Light

The Wild Unknown

Rainbows in the Waters

Becoming the Lyric

In the Realm of Angels

Good Ol' Blaze

How the Heart Works

My Dreamless Cradle

Close the Book