I'm moving to the city of the sun (Phoenix) next week. My work is done here. Onward and upward so it's been said. Baby it's cold up here and my old bones just rebel. Friday I go down and check all my resources/recourses. Wish me well. I will miss the poetry man,:+( but whats an hour and a half. And it's better than dope.
Dust in the wind
Children of faith
Principled in spite
Of the apparent chaos
My house is your house
They say with conviction
In the turbulent world
of evolution
when that dream is
Metamorphosis
that kiss that melted my heart
Like lampwax
Won’t even become
Dust in the wind
On my way back from Big Sur my brakes went out. I found out my Uncle had died and the wake would be held two days after I reunited with home. My friend rented me a car and back to CA I went to do the family thing (think eggshells). Got home and had the brakes fixed. Went to work that night. I decided to move into Sedona to a sweet little place on the river. I have a three week house sitting job starting tonight. A lump has appeared in my wrist - it's called a ganglion cyst. I dreamed I was stuck in sap and some day I would be found immortalized like a bug in amber.
I'm going to Big Sur for thanks giving. The ocean has been roaring in my ears at night when I sleep, even the I-Pod doesn't clear it. Oh maybe it is the leftovers from a round of sulfa drugs I took a few years ago, but i would rather it be the ocean beckoning me. either way i'm going. last year i went with polka dot pete theis year i am going with the poetry man. Lucy Blu will stay home with uncle Noel and the cat cuzuns, rollie and sweeker.
it will be mellow. Unlike what my friend Asha is going thru in central america. i'v sworn off other country's since i started getting sick a few years ago. but it hasn't stopped me from adventuring 4th in this one. Nothing like I was inclined 2 in the late 60's and early 70's. but certainly safer. no hitchhiking, no passing out under bridges, no panhandling... oh those where the days.
Seems like i haven't written a post in a coons age. how ever old that is. one of those euphemism's from my childhood that my mother always tossed about. I hated it when she did that. all that hokey shit she came up with. and now, here i am, sounding like my mother, looking like my grandmother, and feeling like I'm ready for my next incarnation.
I've been hangen' over at myspace. simple stuff. not to much thinking involved. just a flash in the pan and then I can stay on the boat for weeks and never write a thing. so has become my life right now. just don't wanna get off that warm boat.
My job went from 2 days a week to 4 days a week. one would think wtf??? 4 days a week should be cruzen' but.... it;s just a reminder that the hcv is alive and kicken ass on my liver. which in turn takes it;s toll on every other organ in my body. including my brain. brain fog. not so bad. But people that know me, it's really noticeable. i can look back on this blog... shit it's really disconcerting.
das ist abar shada. another one of those euph's
Poverty, it's just to big of a subject to write about. I'm poor but I do get by on a tiny little retirement. and I can still work a very part time. the bills get paid. somewhere in the not so distant future I won't be able to work and my tiny little retirement isn't gonna cut it. And who knows the way the economy is tanking right now if it will even matter. I don't own a home. I choice I made. I really feel bad for the people that invested in one with shaky balloon payments and a wish and a promise. The only ones coming out of that meltdown smelling pretty are the executive turds at Fannie May and Freddy Mack. Hope their golden parachutes land in the ocean.
But what about real poverty. The kind we don't even know in this country. The kind found in countries like Haiti, India, Afghanistan....I don't know what the answers are. I'm not even sure what the questions are. As I knock thru life trying to get by, I don't even know what the answers are for my self. but it certainly does put my life in perspective when I think beyond my nose. And to keep from slitting my throat I just stay in the here and now,and do the best i can to not cause pain and suffering to others.
I miss dog energy in my space. I've been looking at all the dogs that have crossed my path in this life time. Still miss my Girlfriend dog. I go visit Pete the stray and his sidekick Big Lu. They still love me. but its just not the same.
Life is good though, the most beautiful baby in the world is about to make her grand entrance soon. Although I am not a main player in that adventure, I get to watch from a great box seat. The X_bf (granpa) and I seem to have a good working relationship. As long as I don't have to SEE him to much.
And I have a current bo that is beyond anything I could have dreamed up. His job keeps him way to many hours and I'm still emotionally sketchy so it works out. No matter what, the interaction with this "silly boy" is what got me through one of the more funky times in my life. I say bravo to that.
so life, as usual, waxes and wanes. Dog's or no dogs. and Lucy Blu is her own little independent planet. She doesn't even need a sun to revolve. She spins out at warp cat. So I think I'm gonna make a tomato pie as found on Judy Bluesky's blog.
I'm really tired tonight. Just tired. I could make a list I could tell u all about it but I'm just to tired. like drib tired. So many things happened today - bland - joyless - my life flowing down the side streets hitting the storm drain lost forever. salton sea - wet. not being replaced fast enough. someday just the bottom left - cracked - won't be back. but tomorrow's coming in on the early train, i'm always amazed when it shows up on time with the flag of promise snapping in the breeze like a mad terrier.
I hiked high so I could see the wealthy veiw. poetry was read in the canyon to the melodious meandering of a native american flute. a bobcat had walked the trail below not so long ago. maybe he was still in the neighborhood.
Friends, compatriots, fellow lamenters,
We are writing to you because of the fury and dread we have felt since the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
We believe that this terrible decision has surpassed mere partisanship, and that it is a dangerous farce on the part of a pandering and rudderless Presidential candidate that has a real possibility of becoming fact.
Perhaps like us, as American women, you share the fear of what Ms. Palin and her professed beliefs and proven record could lead to for ourselves and for our present or future daughters.
To date, she is against sex education, birth control, the pro-choice platform, environmental protection, alternative energy development, freedom of speech (as Mayor she wanted to ban books and attempted to fire the librarian who stood against her), gun control, the separation of church and state, and polar bears.
She has no real preparation to become the second-most-powerful person on the planet.
We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent, and all together devastating choice for Vice President. Ms. Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers so fiercely fought for, and that we've so demonstrably benefited from.
First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She does not demonstrate or uphold our interests as American women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket could win over women voters. We want to disagree, publicly.
Therefore, we invite you to reply here with a short, succinct message about why you, as a woman living in this country, do not support this candidate as second-in-command for our nation.
Please include your name (last initial is fine), age, and place of residence.
We will post your responses on a blog called 'Women Against Sarah Palin,' which we intend to publicize as widely as possible. Please send us your reply at your earliest convenience*the greater the volume of responses we receive, the stronger our message will be.
Thank you for your time and action.
VIVA!
Sincerely,
Quinn Latimer and Lyra Kilston
New York, NY
mailto:womensaynopalin@gmail.com
**PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY! If you send this to 20 women in the next hour, you could be blessed with a country that takes your concerns seriously. Stranger things have happened.
American Life in Poetry: Column 181
Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem, lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.
Prayer for the Dead
The light snow started late last night and continued
all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally
enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother
was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware
that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson
of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything
that is born: we are here for a moment
of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us
remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace
we don't know, and each moment contains rhythms
within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece
of your own writing, or an old photograph,
you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,
it's not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire
and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture
of grief and remembrance.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Reprinted from "Prayers & Run-on Sentences," Deerbook Editions, 2007, by permission of Stuart Kestenbaum. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
joB WAS alot of this, that, and the other, dressed with owner idiosyncratic behavior tossed over the top like vinegar. hmmmm. I'm working the rest of the week. no POETRY. bummer. next week i work wednesday and saturday. better.
A month ago I first time ever entered a poem in a contest. I got my first rejection yesterday. Coolio. It was a rather nice rejection. One of those it just isn't right for our rag but do enter something else soon things. It was free so what the heck. Feedback is priceless. Then at an open mic this week that I read at, I won a $25.00 gift certificate to a sponsoring restaurant. "Who me?" I said.
.....I think hockey mom is great. it's all the rest of that crap she packs around with her in lieu of the experience she really needs that scares me. gun rights are good, Ok to kill each other or that moose in the back yard. I would really want to be armed if some sociopath decides to victimize me. Fat chance with my big mouth. And rape victims can bring children into the world with half the genetic makeup of the deviant that violated them. And she (our rape victim)will never forget that crime of violence every time she looks into her child's eyes. Right on.
These incredible photos of a White Bengal Tiger named Odin. Odin is six years old and 10 feet long from tail to nose. Odin lives at a Zoo in Vallejo, California, near San Francisco. Odin was hand-raised at the zoo. And after he was weaned, his British trainer Lee Munro discovered his remarkable skill. When a lump of meat was thrown into a pool of water, Odin would happily dive in after it. 'He makes a funny face - and it's actually to close his nostrils to stop the water from going into his nose.' Not all big cats enjoy the water but for Tigers from the hot climate of South-East Asia it's one way to cool down. 'Plus they hunt in and around water. They're an ambush predator so they wait for prey to come down to the water.' When you actually see him dive underwater he looks so graceful,' 'Odin loves the water and he loves food,' he said. 'Not all big cats will dive and swim underwater even for meat treats. 'Munro said tigers were the most powerful swimmers out of all land-dwelling animals. Tragically, within our lifetimes, zoos might be the only places left to see these magnificent animals. A century ago there were about 100,000 tigers in the wild. Now there are just 2,500 adults, with the Bengal variety almost extinct. None has been seen in the wild since the last white tiger was shot and killed in 1958. White tigers are the most rare. They get their white color from an unusual and extremely rare genetic combination.
the darker petroglyph's are Anasazi and the lighter ones Navajo. the hogan is also Navajo. I just love the cow. Unfortunatly, this picture doesn't really show the Anasazi 'glyph's very well. This is near White House ruins.
"People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged."--Noam Chomsky
There they go
you hear them
cruising down the alley
those shady young men
in their custom cars
boom boom boom
box
bigger than the back seat
baggy low rider pants
pockets full of felonies
waiten’ for a chance
lucky branded, tattooed
black sunglasses
you can almost smell
the south side summer
like a fire burning in their soul
a soul that got kicked to the curb
long before their birth
blue teardrops dripping down
stiletto sharp cheeks
watering
a heart of skin deep ink
on their iron chiseled chest
indelible Guadalupe no protection
for these midnight conquistadors
of unleashed passion
Don’t you see them?
aren’t they beautiful?
like jaguars
phantoms of the night
reading reading read
work, listening, writing, comments
=
grand finale show
at Cafe Zelo Cosi
Clock wise: (sort of)
Carl Weis
Burt Cisneros
Sondraya
Gary Every
Shotsie Gorman
...and there were many more poets but my camera skills were lacking that evening. I was trying hard to listen to the show, watch the crowd, and prepare for my reading. Would words really drop out of my mouth, would those words even resemble what was written on the paper? Would the alliteration snarl up in a ball and get stuck? Would those metaphors confound and shrink into just a pile of stupid words? Would the audience find my visions too shocking? And in the end only a tiny little voice spit those edgy parables out. Where in the world has that tiny little voice been all my big mouth life?
She's been on the lamb since July 5th. Found her this morning in the dry wash by my house were the coyotes live. She was happy to see me as the Monsoon has been hitting us hard the last few days.
The first thing we did when we got to Canyon de Chelly was to walk down 1 & 1/2 miles to the canyon bottom. And, of course back up. The next day we did a half day jeep tour with a Navajo guide. I was most informative and quite beautiful. Our guide had lived in the canyon all his life (probably 60 + years) and had been guiding the last 29 years. The one thing my friend Gary noticed was lack of chirping birds. At alot of the stops people would come out of their hogans with jewelry for sale. Well you know me. I also bought a sand carving. Most of the sandstone pieces were done in acrylic. They were of the petroglyph's mostly.
On our last day we decided to do a 2 hour horse ride. We had been over to the stables the night before and checked out the prices - reasonable. OMG what a treat. Our Navajo guide was female for one thing so she had a bit of a different slant on things, such as the importance of matrilineal clan for identity, marriage and sex prohibitions, hospitality, and cooperation. And the best thing, we could hear the sweet songs of the local birds without the roar of the truck engine. Next time I think the 8 hour horse ride is in order.
P.S. these 2 photos were taken by Gary Every.
I'm going to Canyon de Chelly Monday. I'm so excited I can't sit still. Not that that is any thing new, but my life has really taken a swing back into the uncharted waters of spontaneity. Single and spontaneousness. I'm going with a friend who is as into this as I am. I believe there lies the key.
