Snapshots January 12th, 2005

Only today did the morning papers not lead with tsunami stories as eight
dead in South Australian bushfires took page one. But several pages after
that cover many aspects ...
Our neighbours are Sri Lankan (the Tamil north) and have been out on
relief-collecting work constantly. I am about to coach their 13-year-old boy
in English and the first essay he is bringing me is headed Tsunami. (January
is meant to be holidays but, typical migrant family, education is always on
for their children.) Shops everywhere state 'this month's profits for
Tsunami relief'.

Excuse escapist nature of my Wed snap...Max

Long Lost Mike

Of all the fresh-faced youths in Auckland then,
Mike was the freshest after me.
Celtic blood? He was a Grogan,
my mother¹s dad a Donegal Guthrie.
Dreamers both of us, and he so shy,
the dreams he dreamed he kept from me.
He knew I was the great (white) hope
of New Zealand poetry.
Forty-five years on I hear from him:
far-north Auckland, Œrural delivery¹
address, just saying he¹d been given
my Melbourne details, good-day.

What story shall I send back? That I¹m still
a proud under-achiever? That would betray
my stubborn belief in my genius.
And you, Mike? What dream never went away?
Let me guess: you grow subtropical
fruit and vegetables and things hempen?
your friends up there are (many) Maori;
you hate the way the world has tended;
the Maori way has much to teach us;
we whites needn¹t have spoiled things,
but living down one¹s Celtic blood
can lead to splendid comminglings Š?
There¹s my guess and now I¹ll write:
send details of your story, Mike.


5 pm, Wednesday January 12, 2005

Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne



***


MENTIONED

when she
mentioned
about her
fairy godfather
and his great
magic wand
it generated
quite a lot
of interest.


pmcmanus



***


Wild, Wind, Rain.
Last night still recovering
from Friday's Force 11 gales,
only Force 10 but
three square yards of tiles missing
from roof and daylight still shows
through my ceiling.
Today I remove the plastic sheets
that have been covering my books
and computer. Old lady next door
finally has power in her house after
four days of cold and darkness.
Now the clear-up starts.

Roger Collett
Seascale Cumbria
10:00hrs 12-1-05



***


A takeaway wish on a takeaway star
----------------------------------

Either way, let it be quick and let it be gentle.
And let there be someone to touch
and someone to listen.

In every timezone birthing, unbirthing.
At every moment prayer, for
you, etching silent thought or wailing,
or speaking quietly or strongly or chanting,
or being written or being read
on emails, blogs and forums, calling
to Jesus or Allah or us or quantum physics
or old photographs
or makeshift beds
or tired eyes
or art.

Now this exists.

If the Internet is a poet the poem is written in a layer above us
If the Earth is a poet the poem is written in a layer below and around us
If the sea is a poet and the sky is a poet and you are a poet and I am a
poet
take one for medicine and two for magic and three for hope
and all the rest for love


Janet Jackson


***


Mudslide

        we're looking for
any movement
                    trapped perhaps
in a void
    a part of an
                        arm
a finger
            tapping
a cough
                        someone
crying
        any indication
someone is alive
                        in there

Gerald Schwartz
West Irondequoit, New York, United States
9:23 AM



***


My father, now almost 93, had a stroke recently that has meant his
mental-to-language function is impaired. Looking up, "birds" become "buses,"
etc. It's painful to witness. A community leader, he liked so much to think,
articulate and work to solve things.
On Sunday I take him out to Point Richmond and Ferry Point on the San
Francisco Bay; it is the place where he grew up and devoted much of his life
as a boat builder, sailor, activist for Bay Parks, trails, etc. We walk out
in into the middle of the grassy park. Looking across the waters is an
extraordinary 240 degree panoramic view - around from the north we see the
San Rafael-Richmond Bridge, Mt. Tamalpias, the Marin Country shore, Angel
Island, Racoon Straights, the San Francisco port & skyline, the Bay Bridge,
Treasure Island, and the Port of Oakland.
The day's high clouds are broken by winter sunlight. My father keeps
slightly opening and spreading his arms and hands out from his the sides of
his hips, repeating, telling me, "It's all here. It's all here."

It was quite amazing and a gift. This embrace of a place and a life.

Stephen Vincent


***


wednesday again winter
storm warning raccoon
in the pond broken ice
snow all a trample fish
still sleeping insomnia
squires me long
lit nights short
dim days pressed
warm against me
the dog's paws twitch
garden busy with barking
sparrows squirrels pine-
siskins black-capped
chickadees nuthatches
even the pileated wood-
pecker raven boasting
from the tallest tree ice
on the tree limbs ice
on mine sleep
a clumsy skate on thick
rippled surfaces and now
the snow comes


Sharon Brogan


***


PASTRY

At the center of the tart
atop the cream
a leaf of chocolate
and a walnut.

Imagine the colors:
it's a pumpkin tart
skin of aspic
on a disk
of gilded cardboard.

Once upon a time two kings met on a cloth of gold.
One of them would ravage a countryside to secure his son
a bride and a kingdom. But it didn't work: It was the other king's grandson
married her, and then another, and their son
inherited the throne
in place of his own.

The commoners must have thought them all
characters from an unusually vicious fairy-tale.

What's the connection? That she proved to be a French tart?
That none of these kings and queens could for all their wealth have found
nor pumpkin nor chocolate, nor anything else
of a continent yet to be taken and destroyed?

But good on the tongue, with a tart brew
of berries from the land of frankincense.



Mark Weiss


***


LE LIVRE DE MARIE

  [via Anne-Marie Mieville and Jean-Luc Godard]


Long as we stay together,
eyes hurt,


listening, Marie, exasperated.
I demand
voir dire.



Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 1-12-05 (9:03 PM)


Written during my first viewing of a 25 minute film directed by Mieville
and produced by Godard in 1984, which is regularly screened before a
feature directed by Godard (and edited by Mieville) that same year, "Je
vous salue, Marie". Anne-Marie Mieville casts herself in a major acting
role in the shorter film, and the "voice" of my text is drawn from
her "performance" and that of her fictional daughter, Marie.



***


an absolute
        clarity of air

pastel sky pale
        blue falls toward
                an almost unseen green
        orange gauze darkling pink
the black crouch of low hill beyond the river

above god
s pared fingernail
        hangs there
        tossed aside

indifferent

to all tidal twists
& turns below

Edmonton Wednesday January 12 2005


Douglas Barbour


***


Snap Blues





Skin blotches don't sing the whole song,

skin blotches don't sing the whole song -

don't ask me 'bout nothin', I dunno what's wrong.

 

Anudder one married, anudder one gone;

Anudder one married, 'nudder one gone.

Mixing with bananas, apples don't last long.

 

I say, what happens in your head .

Yes, what happens in your fat head

don't mean what happens in the bed.

 

Like line breaks, it's flow and strife -

where de line breaks is flow and strife,

Just like livin' this contrapuntal life.

 

They say, you gotta hang on to let go,

you know, you gotta hang on to let go -

If you hang on too long, it's a no-show.





Blind Boy Andrew Burke

(Damn, I broke a string ...)



***

we don't see smoke
but we let it in
a little, like night
realised at a window
its caterwauls and breaks
in the breeze flaps

so land burns
and here's the aftertaste
mixed in coast salt
as sweat trickles breasts
and I'm lost for change
in the morning


Jill Jones
Marrickville, 13 Jan 2005



***


POWER

Grant this: the love of animals turns us into the audience for Old Yeller
or So Dear To My Heart,
and there are no apologies here save to the insulted and the injured.

Chain your intellect to the fencepost and let it bare its teeth at
sentimentalism. Know you are wearing a neck chain and your teeth will not
reach.

This is a dog story, but the dog is not shaggy, he combines Rottweiler,
Shepherd, and jerk,
which makes him no more or less a mutt than most human beings.

He is the woman's dog, but I have lately adopted him to the heart.
He is not an Ours because when it comes to this dog there is no Us.
In the presence of this canine there is no human love because humans can
use their brains.
Apologies to Saint Paul, but love is best experienced by the mentally
disabled,
by animals, and by their caretakers.

The dog is not community property but two dogs: he is hers and mine in
different ways.

The core: to start a weekend, an evening, facing three days of only me and
him, I struck him across the shoulders with his own leash.

I can justify all day: he did not want to take his needed walk with me, he
slipped his collar when I tried
to put it back on him, then clamped those jaws onto my hand.

Although he drew no blood, for he had offered me his version of a warning,
it hurt like hell, and in a flash I envisioned a weekend of him
shitting on the living room floor, pissing in the corner, reverting to the
level of
an Alzheimer's patient in a nursing home.

No: I envisioned myself as I was, control freak defied by an animal, and I
had to
establish my topmost place in a food chain I descended in half a second
when I hit him, then violated another taboo of human and dog by staring
into his eyes and telling him in a soft voice not to do that, ever.

I who philosophize disgrace: I can say "you have to show the hound who's
boss,"
"it was only his shoulders" (solid muscle), "I didn't hit him that hard,"
and
"the look on his face was shock and not anger."

Perhaps all true, but at that second I knew we'd both lost, and that is when
I put my arms around his thick Rottie neck, kissed the thick skull
beneath which are the invisible portals where the human power of amend
can penetrate--words, the vocabulary and syntax of sweetness beyond all
else--
to tell him I love him, pet his back where the leash struck--and he
reassumes
the collar and goes out with me not because I hit him but because I stopped
and embraced him.

What is wrong with him, I sometimes wonder? He does not thrive on
anger. He is forgiving. He is not human.
Love does that.



Kenneth Wolman


***


Snapshot 12 January 02005

wednesday again
    winter storm
        warning

raccoon tracks
    around
        the frozen pond

fish deeply
    sleeping still
        insomnia

squires me
    long lit
        nights & short

dim days
    pressed warm
        against me

this dog's
    paws twitch
        & busy

in the garden
    one tailless
        squirrel

sparrows
    pine siskins
        black-capped

chickadees
    piliated
        woodpecker

raven boasting
    from atop
        the tallest

spruce ice
    on tree
        limbs ice

on mine
    sleep
        a clumsy

skate
    on thick
        rippled

surfaces
    and now
        the snow


Sharon Brogan