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Snapshots March 9 2005
Desert, an hour out of San Diego (California)
A man looses his way on the path. He imagines a Palm Grove is up one ravine
rather than the other. He leads his friend up the ravine, this wrong one.
Skirting up and around enormous rocks. He stops to point out and relish the
vermilion boulders on the near horizon. He also points to a fishhook Barrel
Cactus. The hooked thorns bear a crimson cast. The Ocotillo plant in bloom:
crimson pink blossoms. The young Century Plant. Its whorl of potential
leaves spiral up the major stalk. The artichoke green, the lavender edges.
The trail, this wrong trail leads to lunch. Salami and goat cheese on bread
atop bright aluminum foil. The intense gold mica specs in the ground;
granite trail grit. Ten minutes further up to arrive at the ridge, the top
of the pass. To look down at the wash, a waste of rock in the next valley.
³I am so happy,² he says. ³Now you have seen two of the different kinds of
landscape.²
He who is also lost: A divorce. The death of close friends. An isolation.
³We are in a place,² he says, ³where it¹s practically impossible to get
lost.²
I don¹t quite believe him.
Stephen Vincent
***
My Skin's Tint
One summer, I read the poems
of alabaster hands
So smooth the words -
white whispers in the night
I took in the fragrant, gentle breeze
of sonnets bursting with romance
and tastes, promises no one keeps
My thirsty eyes became moist
with moonlight, my lips pearled
with critical opalescence -
My skin's tint, pale - green
and saffron yellow
I beaded and glossed
myself with dawn
oh, but silence breaks the night
and pierces deep the ear
Poetry and wine turns like dreams
to dust - fills the cup
with speckled air
I dream with a deadline, tho'
the moment of wounded joy
has left and yet, to sleep ...
I must wrap inside myself
and keep hold to anything
that remains
of sweet scent and beauty
Empty arms cradle knees to rock
and I will hum, write, sing - sweet words
until I feel the distant warmth
closer to the coming day
Deborah Russell,
12:24
03-09-05
Fort Collins, Co (don't ask why)
***
There are dreams
but I sleep past them. I wake
in sun and pain. Joe
is dying and I ignore it. I bury
myself in books and
other distractions; in television
and other detachments.
My head is encased in foam. It floats
through air, cushioned,
enclosed, severed, cut from this sad
and heavy body.
My head cannot tell my heart to feel.
The connection is
broken. A broken connection can be
mended. A broken
heart is irreparable. It flies in pieces
through unforgiving
air. This head feels only the sensation
of floating, a slight
anxiety that cushioning might be
insufficient for a hard
landing. Hard-headed, hard-hearted,
I wait for the phone
to ring, but it is disconnected. They
can call and call
but I will not hear. Joe is dying far
away and later
than he wanted. He is sad because
he is going
to heaven and I won't. He is happy
because he knows
his other daughter awaits him there.
Another bright morning,
another warm day. A ribboned sky
at sunset.
Sharon Brogan
***
NO WITCHES
there are
no witches
in dear old
poetryetc
woke up this morning
feeling like a clay figure
full of excruciating pins
a compulsion to write
there are
no witches
in dear old
poetryetc
pmcmanus 7am
raynes park london
***
He is on a train.
He is eating from a paper bag wrapped inside a plastic bag. The outer bag
appears to bear the stylised image of a fish, though what one sees is
distorted by his crushing grip.
A book, bent backwards to stay open, jumps and flaps on the empty seat
beside him.
He sweats.
Several people have turned towards him with facial expressions of
disapproval.
His mouth is half-open. He is masticating many chips.
He is trying to pick up the book by one corner. Undevoured chips spill
towards the edges of the inner bag.
Lawrence Upton
***
E. A. POE OF BALTIMORE
On Sundays, the churchyard is locked.
The padlock seems fragile
forcible with a paper clip.
Yet people respect symbolism.
Still, the grave is visible.
A zoo--who looks out at whom?
Poe, his mother-in-law,
that fabled tragic bride,
all three married in an instant,
an occasion for mother-in-law jokes
that quell the passion of eternity.
The grave is unmarred,
the carving crisp.
Someone at least remembers.
It is not Morrison's grave
in Pere Lachaise.
No Krylon, smack, wine,
or weed.
No raven perched either--
that is always the
ha-ha question.
Poe's house is on Amity Street
but amity is in short supply.
The ghetto is desperate,
windowless bars and bodegas
with unrefrigerated meat.
People look at you without welcome
until you've overstayed it.
Why would you come here
white boy
unless you're here to cop,
change your luck,
serve someone a summons?
His house too is closed.
There is a number to call
for information.
"Edgar and Virginia are at home
to guests only by appointment.
If you hear Mrs. Poe moaning upstairs
kindly take your hat, cane, and leave."
He bought the house in 1832.
It was not quaint,
it was his home for three years.
Now it is the only house on Amity
that is not an illustration
from one of his horror fictions.
Every year someone comes
on his January birthday,
leaves roses and cognac
on the grave.
The roses are there
much worse for wear.
The missing bottle is the setup
for an unfunny joke: go read it
in someone else's poem.
Poe deserves a better fate.
His death, like the life that
dragged him behind it,
holds dignity through mystery.
Ken Wolman
***
Solomon's Uniform Centre
is opposite
the Captain Cook Convenience Store
where one Tuesday back in 01
a blue September spring day
the guys at the till looked pale
their Arabic chat soft anxious
and we were all nice to them
and still - more than politesse, who knows
when there's no enemy you decided
at a table last night to make one up
I stopped your hand
but then
who is my enemy
today the sign above Telstra's workings
makes me feel 'pedestrian'
but yesterday
let me tell you
I felt like kicking ass
as the Americans say
well, donkeys have hauled
christs, quixotes and anzacs
it's all work
the sign points to the path between
the Uniform Centre, the Convenience store
and someone's covered up
fresh dog shit outside Freestyle Records
with a free paper
Jill Jones
Elizabeth Street, 9 March 11am
***
Up early this morning before I get my daughter
up for school -- reading Emerson's "Hamatreya":
"Ah! the hot owner sees not death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more." and
wondering -- almost aloud-- if this poem, a variation
of "Maitreya," from the sacred Hindu text Vishnu
Purana, How Long It Will take the Alyssa A. Lappens
of Campus Watch To Reach Back Into Our History,
Asking ( no doubt pointedly): "Is this the kind of poetry
that will be of any interest even a year from now, much
less for the ages?" And-- as I wake my daughter
for school I say -- almost aloud -- Let Emerson
"and his type draw together leftist sharks and
deliberately encourage misunderstanding."
Gerald Schwartz
West Irondequoit, New York 14617,
United States (of misunderstanding)
6:55 am
***
cries to heaven:
question. mark.
cries to heaven:
questions. marked.
sighs unleavened yet
unquestioning. marketed
lies to sever
questions. mark.
Douglas Barbour
***
Summer Camps
The St. Patrick's day
parade winds its way
through town
Somewhere a murderer
is officially escorted,
chained and bound...
We encourage our children
to get rest, eat well
and study hard for tests
We promote fun,
family activities
to release their stress...
We are unknown soldiers,
waving white flags
in a stream of red...
We are color blind
and blind to the numbers
of children, dead
Today's paper advertises
summer camps beside attacks
and subsequent wars
Deborah Russell
03-14-05 9:24 am
Fort Collins, Co
***
Down Right Catholic
It is late
in the evening
or early in the morning…
the traffic is scarce
and starlight is audible
above the one o’clock train
Sister Jackie Hudson is asleep
in Bangor, Washington
(I am pretty sure of that)
Between the porch light
and white, barked boughs
I read her words in the daily
…”this morally bereft
government…
using most of our money
for warmongering and killing
innocent people”…
In reading her words
I somehow feel religious
and maybe, for a moment,
I was down right Catholic.
Deborah Russell, © 2005
1:41 am, Fort Collins, Co
03-10-05
***
The ŒCollected Verse¹ of Clive James has been remaindered,
or if not remaindered severely marked down.
Not for me to rejoice, he is not my enemy,
my rival nor even my lost leader,
hero nor imaginary mentor,
though some of his prose I wish I had written.
So here I am at home with a cheap book,
turning over the pages rather faster than I can read.
Not much faster perhaps than they were written -
or dictated, could it be? One thinks of Byron,
jotting down a few stanzas while dressing for dinner -
only Byron¹s lightness is truly debonair,
and Clive¹s is burdened with the fruits and nuts
and bolts of his omnicompetent curiosity.
Still, the shop it was in wisely cares nothing
either for poets or for their readers.
My Clive was lucky to be stocked there in the first place.
The Rolf Harris whom among others he serenades
provides a clue- Clive, the Rolf Harris of modern verse?
Moi? my book is not even printed, but -
the book of Clive James is severely marked down.
Peter Porter, his old friend, likes to say how Clive
in his Thames-side apartment has installed an upper floor
sprung for tango-dancing, Clive¹s private passion.
Nimble, light-footed, lithe, rapid, sensuous,
O to enact such manoeuvres in verse.
The book of his poems, half-witty, half-tedious,
spins away from me now wearily into oblivion.
10am, Wednesday 9 March 2005
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
***
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of the tree-welds to the stone. There is no hole visible.
First idea was that I should look at the sculpture garden
also looking around the perimeter of the gallery.
Not necessarily
drawn to sunlight,
you can feel in the stone in the place . . .
Go to its origin.
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of the building—-there was a Japanese garden that had become inappropriate.
Find the pool
again & fill it with clay.
Near to the cracks’
difference, the glass.
You look down there & you see the earth
gallery. So I built a hole & lifted it off the ground.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 3-9-05 (4:38 PM)
Perhaps I should briefly sketch the history of the site just external to
the East Building of the National Gallery of Art along Pennsylvania Avenue,
starting with I.M. Pei's initial conception of a reflecting pool surrounded
by enough room to allow for the installation of sculpture. Then in the
eighties the area was landscaped and specific gardens were constructed in
support of certain exhibitions. Despite the seemingly permanent presence
of Goldsworthy's site-specific sculpture ROOF, the two points where the
sculpture extends through the museum's glass will generate continuing
discussion about interactivity, security, & maintenance.
Here's how I would now present the full text of OF ANDY G, initially
written while viewing a videotape of the artist talking and then posted as
three separate snaps:
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of looking, of using, trying . . .
fallen into the stream.
And sometimes in counterpoint
not to see that change as something negative, but as
dead trees creased along the fold to catch,
you know, that feeling—-at least for me it's
got . . . I felt I should work with it.
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of days to make it's quite high
of pressure—-the challenge was to make that ring of branches withstand
anticipation
and this lasted—-I made this
understood by staying in one place.
Very dark earth that is found in the mountains and
gets on your shoes when you walk in the city.
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Occupy space on the beach [feeling a complete commitment to their success]:
failure is very very important.
Aesthetically awful works—-I hate looking at them.
Never fell down . . . at least when I was
drain up. I need that like I need food.
You may have seen
growing . . . They think they were the devil's seeds.
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
On one hand, rise to the scale of the place.
Of the night, left them on the streets of London.
A terrible press (a lot of snowball fights that evening):
"Andy Goldsworthy said the project was pointless."
And when I was asked to make work,
"Very violent thing to do to a stone."
Garden looks . . . It took me a lot of explanation to say . . .
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of the tree-welds to the stone. There is no hole visible.
First idea was that I should look at the sculpture garden
also looking around the perimeter of the gallery.
Not necessarily
drawn to sunlight,
you can feel in the stone in the place . . .
Go to its origin.
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of the building - there was a Japanese garden that had become
inappropriate.
Find the pool
again & fill it with clay.
Near to the cracks’
difference, the glass.
You look down there & you see the earth
gallery. So I built a hole & lifted it off the ground.
Barry Alpert
***
Snap (partly for Alison)
It seems my students' poems
are winning prizes.
Perhaps the fruits of poetry
could be shared like pyramid marketing:
my work inspired you,
your poem won a prize,
so I get a slice.
That'd be nice.
Cash would accumulate as
a poet's stream of influencees
added layer on layer.
Then the home for geriatric poets
could fill its fridge,
could see a movie,
could go to tango-lessons ...
Oh, the outings we could have
instead of just outing each other.
If I got a slice,
that'd be nice.
Andrew Burke
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