The Dawg House

Odds and ends and Alaska

2007-05-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my friend Thomas Fortenberry (without whom this blog would be dull), this story of pure stupidity. The reason religions should be banned.

Soccer game for priests, imams canceled

The Associated Press

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A soccer game between Muslim imams and Christian priests at the end of a conference to promote interfaith dialogue was canceled Saturday because the teams could not agree on whether women priests should take part.

Church of Norway spokesman Olav Fykse Tveit said the imams refused to play against a mixed-gender team of priests because it would have gone against their beliefs in avoiding close physical contact with strange women.

The church decided to drop its female players and the priests' team captain walked out in protest.

Hours before the game was to end the daylong "Shoulder to Shoulder" conference in Oslo, the church released a statement saying it had called off the match because it was sending the wrong signal.

"Because we thought it would be a nice conclusion of the conference we didn't want to call it off, so we decided to stage an all-mens team game instead," Tveit said. "We realize now that it will be wrong to have a priest team without women."

Stupid doesn’t cover it.

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If you love words and word play – and who doesn’t – check out http://www.visuwords.com/ As much fun as you will ever have and a good reference for words to boot.

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And to finish the fifty states, Alaska.

Poetic States L - Alaska

Flight

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.
--Peter Pan

He took me west of the Tanana
towards the Bering Sea, flying
at two hundred feet in a two seater.
A pair of swans glide below us
with the grace of Inuit dancers
to settle on a backwoods lake.
No albatross has touched down better.

Below where bogs cover the permafrost,
black spruce and highbush bilberry
attempt survival with ever-damp feet.
A bull moose lifted its head from a pond,
water and swamp weed draining
from its antlers like glacier ice
into Kenai Fjord under July’s sun.

Although, we could not hear him
bellow over the rumble of the engine,
we knew he was unhappy
we had invaded his territory.
As we climbed to return home,
Denali gave us a rare smile
before closing her cloak of clouds.

When my wife returned
from her flight, she exclaimed,
“Where can we buy one of these?”

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See you next week.

Smiles.

Gary

The 49th State and books to read

2007-05-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

This week I’m late, mostly to recovering from a brewery tour of Portland and environs. Twelve breweries in 3 days will do that to you. Our favorites – Alameda, New Old Lompac and Laurelwood on the east side, Old Market in the southwest, and Hood River, Karlsson and Main Street along H26. (We did our first tour last year with Racoon Lodge, Tug Boat, Bridgeport, Full Sail and Roots among the highlights.)

This summer, we will do two or three days in the Puget Sound area. Silverdale’s Silver City about five miles away is and will be a favorite.

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A couple of books to consider:

Roma by Steven Saylor, a fictional account of ancient Rome to Augustus. The volume is written in the style of Russka or Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd. I haven’t read that latter, but did enjoy the early chapters of the former.

Next, the Path between the Seas, David McCullough’s great book about building the Panama Canal although about half of the book is about not building the Canal. McCullough also wrote the brilliant The Great Bridge, the story of building the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the best “construction books written.

By the way, last week I mentioned John Grisham’s The Innocent Man. Sadly, we left it in a Portland hotel room, so I had to order another.

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I’ve finally made it through the Poetic States – Connecticut in this post and Alaska in workshop. I will also do three more for DC, the Caribbean territories and the Pacific.

On to the Nutmeg State.

Poetic States XLIX – Connecticut

Benedict

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
--Wallace Stevens,
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

We can only speculate what made him turn -
an alcoholic father
loss of opportunity
a family succumbed to yellow jack
his mother’s death

the slights of army regulars
and the congress

Betsy’s rebuff
court martial for malfeasance
marriage to Loyalist daughter

All the signs were there
for this Yankee son
to take the wrong path

as they were for Burr
Booth
Hiss
and many others
famous and more than ordinary

nothing left for Mr. Arnold
but an entry
in Mr. Webster’s dictionary

Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds. – WS

The states are indexed at http://garydawg.blogspot.com/2007/01/indexing-states-and-one-forgot-last.html

Until next week, when we will go to Alaska.

Smiles.

Gary

Odds and ends for the end of April

2007-04-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

Good news, I finally finished Connecticut in a poem starring Benedict Arnold, born in the Nutmeg State. We are left with Alaska as #50, DC and maybe something for the territories. (The index is at January 5.)

However, I’m not posting it. The poem is being workshopped this week. I will drop in a couple of light bits though just to keep you interested.

The book of the week is John Grisham’s nonfiction treatise, The Innocent Man. The volume is about several innocent men, all railroaded into prison in Ada, Oklahoma for murders they did not commit. I was surprised that the main innocent was basically a dirt bag, targeted because he was a druggie, alcoholic, troublemaker, indicted but not found guilty of two rapes…and a mental case.

The book will frighten you about how easy it is to be imprisoned for crimes you did not commit. One of the innocents is still in prison because there was no DNA evidence to exonerate him, even though the record is clear he was setup as much as the others.

Because of Grisham’s easy, almost conversational style, The Innocent Man would be a great beach read. In fact, it is best swallowed with some break in the read.

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Our governor Chris Gregoire has signed Substitute House Bill 1279, the long-awaited legislation that creates the position of Washington State Poet Laureate. The signing makes Washington the 41st state to have such a post.

Way to go, Gov.

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As frightening as The Innocent Man is this YouTube video of an UCLA student for “resisting arrest” in a school library and after he asked for their badge number…and at least four times.

Outrageous. You have to wonder what the cops would have done to the videotapper.

Even as sickening are the posts on YouTube.

And ever more disgusting is a proposal to allow school children to be handcuffed by school security guards AS YOUNG AS KINDERGARTEN.

What in the hell is this country coming to?

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And to really make your day:

Recently this week (of April 22), UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Moslem population which claims it never occurred. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

I don’t get it.

The next thing you know they will quit teaching about Henry VIII because it might offend the pope.

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This week’s poems are CBEs, Chinese Brush Experiments, essentially poems written in one sitting with only minor typo and grammar changes.

CBE for Spring

The first wine-rose color
breaks out of the Queen’s buds,
soon to be in her regal glory

The first ringneck call
heard in at least two years
echoes through the canyon

Whether my old friend,
his children or stranger,
I will never and need not know

A dandelion spreads its bounty
around the neighborhood

Enough breeze blows to keep
me cool as I pretend to work

A bumblebee searches
for buttercups and honey

The sun shines as if it never left
and I sit before the window
unable to add squirrels to these lines

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Untitled CBE

the writer trapped
beneath a pile of ideas
none logical enough
to even satisfy Dali

the doors opened wide
to let the fresh air
in a slight breeze
disturbs the stack

of disparate words
desperate for attention
a poem begins to appear

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Until next Friday, peace. (We are going Portland brewery hopping next week.)

Gary
who has a grandson in kindergarten

The State of Kentucky and a Sad State in Virginia

2007-04-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today, we grieve and are angry. Another school shooting, another alleged disenfranchised shooter takes his anger out on innocents. And within hours, we
see:

A rush to judgment – Why didn’t they shut down the campus, find the guy, have police in all the class rooms, notify everyone of the first shooting? I mean, after all, more would have survived if they had got on the squawk box. (Or he would have shot whoever was around him when the announcement was made.)

A rush to security – Metal detectors, badges, armed guards everyone, pack-backs approved, no sharp instruments in the lunch room. (Like airplanes, the end to bottled water.)

A rush to solutions – Give weapons to all the teachers; in fact, make them carry them. Let students carry weapons and train them how to use them.

A rush to rat – Is there someone around you acting strange, saying strange things? Is there someone who is a loner, doesn’t mix in? Can’t take a joke? (Really upset about wedgies.)

A rush to medicate – And if there is someone as described above, isn’t there a pill that will cure them? No more dementia, delusions, introversion. (And why did we open the asylums , and let all of the crazies out to wander the streets?)

A rush! – It must be the immigration policy, W’s fault, Hillary’s, someone’s – other than the fact we can’t learn to live together.

But remember, there is a solution to every problem, even if its wrong – which is will be.

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On one of the forums, we have been discussing the way we treat each other – the lack of civility and humanity. (Imus driven to some degree.) But especially, the way we treat children, which gave me an idea.

Let’s put a ticker on Broadway and the equivalent street in London, Paris, Peking, Tokyo, Rio and other major cities that will count the number of times we “sacrifice” a child – when they are murdered, raped, made to fit, driven out of their home, starved, bombed, enslaved, and on and on.

Now, I’m not talking about the ordinary everyday things – when the old man takes his belt to Johnny – but the bad. For instance, when a school bus is bombed, or a girl’s school set on fire with the girls in it, a father sells his daughter into prostitution, the baby lovers buy a kid.
I’m willing to bet that the number would climb fast to such a large number, most of us might be sickened enough to finally do something. To abolish slavery, child labor, genocide, religious terror – and find a way for all of us to live in some peace.

Not entirely. There will still be criminals, the insane, and hate-driven; but we would drive the number down.

Isn’t that the real way to save the planet?

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Today, I only have one state – Kentucky. I still need to finish Connecticut, Alaska, DC and something for the territories. I want to do so before I start the next series, one I am excited about – Ecclesiastics.

Poetic States XLVIII – Kentucky

She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Sister

Family legend has it that we are related
to both the Hatfields east of the Tug Fork
and McCoys from the west side in Kentuck
though like a lot of our family’s gossip
it probably bears little relation to truth.

If one of my uncles ever stole a hog,
Grandma would’ve pulled him up so short
he’d never even eat a pork chop after,
let alone get in a shooting feud with kin
living on the other side of the river.

Mary Ann Todd who married the lawyer
Lincoln, followed him into the White House,
brothers and brothers-in-law soldiers
dying for Jeff Davis throughout Dixie,
their house divided as all too many were.

When her step sister Emili’s husband,
a Reb general, was killed at Chickamauga,
the president brought the widow Helm
to the capital to take solace from Mary
still mourning the loss of her youngest son

until treated shabby by General Dan Sickles
in ways barely excused by the heat of civil war.
Mary Todd continuously vilified with lies
that would have caused even Devil Anse
to curse though he stood strong for rebel gray.

And if Grandma would have been there,
the liars would have felt the scorching heat
of the gentlest woman who ever walked the hills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Todd_Lincoln

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Sickles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Anderson_Hatfield

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Until next week, peace and may this one be better than the last.

Gary

Missouri, Nevada and a new book to look over

2007-04-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

Kurt is dead and the world is a bit colder. I hope him and Douglas Adams are cracking jokes though neither one being unbelievers will be there.

So it goes.

Speaking of unbelievers. I just finished Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which makes the case against God, gods, religion and religious faith. (See http://richarddawkins.net/godDelusion for publication details.)

Especially at the start, Dawkins is a bit full of himself; but once he gets into his main them which is centered around Darwinian principles and evolution, the book is very readable and he makes considerable sense. His examples are spot on and his take on Bob Newhart as part of a control group that doesn’t get prayed for is priceless.

Striking to me is the story of 500 year old mummy of a girl sacrificed to the Inca gods, and how Nova of PBS marveled at the spiritual commitment of the Inca priests and the girl’s pride and excitement. Can you imagine anyone marveling at the faith of a priest of Baal and the pride of the children sacrificed.

I wrote this bit about the Inca girl:

Sacrifice

Nova
(meaning illumination)
celebrated the sacrifice
of Juanita, the Inca Ice Maiden,
a girl, post-puberty,
murdered to appease
a relative of distant Baal.

A faithful nation
applauded the celebration
of the Inca priests’ commitment
unable to see the terror
in the child’s eyes.

Esquire did not like the book. I did and recommend it.

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This week a bombing in the Iraq parliament. We are winning? But what? At how to lose.

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Don Imus fired which doesn’t bother me, but with all that is happening of import in the world, do we really need his story 24/7 anymore than we needed Anna Nichol’s?

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Late this week due to allergies, care trouble and life. The week’s Poetic States are Missouri and Nevada.

Poetic States XLVI – Missouri

Show Me the Trails

They came from Spanish Territories
south in search of gold and empire;
they came from the Eastern coast
in search of a channel to sail west.

They started from St Louis outfitted
to empty mountain streams of beaver,
they started from Independence
in search of gold, a new Eden.

They left with their families
or found families among the tribes;
before they reached Oregon’s gardens,
they left half their truck trailside.

Many found a final rest along the trek;
some stayed, hope found at the terminus;
a few turned back, their dreams burst;
most continued despite the hardships

to build the nation
and assure its destiny.

The trails starting in Missouri included the Santa Fe, Lewis and Clark, California, Oregon, Pony Express, Butterfield Overland Mail, and several of the fur-trapping routes. St. Louis and Independence were the main terminus for most routes.

Poetic States XLVII – Nevada

Bonanza!

We chased lady luck, 'til we finally struck
--Bonanza lyrics recorded by Lorne Greene

I rode into the World’s Biggest Little City
in my Bronco certain lady luck would touch me;
certain with pockets full of folded green,
I would strike veins of silver so rich
I could return to the homestead in a Mustang.

My mistake was to mistake salt
for an untapped Comstock shaft –
shafted I could barely afford the gas
to crest the top of Donner Pass

We got a hold of a pot full of gold

You rode across the Washoe in a Tahoe
certain you could beat the odds
where so many others have failed;
with a plastic passport, you’d discover
riches to construct your own Versailles.

Your mistake was to mistake
Tahoe Lake’s bottomless blue
for your ability to hang into the game
long enough to return as royality.

Here in the west we're living in the best

We ride into town in a used Rabbit,
cash enough to barely stock the fridge,
when we notice the paper’s welcome news:
Local tribe to build a new casino…

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Until next week, keep the peace.

Gary

Poetry Books and New States

2007-04-03T18:57:00.000-07:00

April of to a beautiful start, except it snowed north of Seattle on the First, and felt like snow yesterday.

And speaking of yesterday, the 2nd, I attended a read at Elliot Bay Book Co. by Teresa White for her new book, Gardenias for a Beast (Two Steps Publishing, 2007). As of this date despite the fact she is endorsed by Billy Collins , it is not available on Amazon or any other on-line bookstore. Worse, Two Steps doesn’t have a web page. They do have email though –twosteppublishing@gmail.com – ordering recommended. Teresa is an outstanding poet, and you get 240 superior poems for only $10.99 plus tax.

Bill Collins said “Every morsel of her diction counts.” I agree and urge you to purchased the volume.

I also meet Miss Mary Jane Marshmallow (M to her friends and everyone else) and Steve Williams. Steve gave me a copy of his new chapbook, Skin Stretched around the Hollow (Rattlesnake Press, 2007), where I discovered the line, “Each kiss of the wasp stings the same,” as good as a line gets. The other lines in the book complement the wasps. You can order the book at http://www.rattlesnakepress.com/rattlesnake_reading_series.html

I will do a review of both and others for http://www.lochravenreview.net/ summer issue.

http://poetrysuperhighway.com/PoetLinks.html does an annual book exchange. This year mine came in a red fabric cover from Bengal. The author, CP Abookabacker, is a self-professed Communist, not exactly common in this country. His web site is http://www.thanalonline.com/ He says he doesn’t sell the book, Before the Journey, but if you talk nice. I will also review it.

The Poetry Super Highway is also doing an E-book Free-for-all, which I have prepared a chapbook for titled By George, Conversations with George Orwell and George W Bush. After PSH is through with their gig I will send it to anyone who emails me, probably in mid-May.

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Poetic States XLIV – Utah

Moab MOMA

The reflection of Clear Creek
off the canyon’s canvas worthy
of Pollock in his splattered prime.

Ancient shades crowd cliff walls
in a corner of a forgotten gorge,
painted by prehistoric Picassos.

Wind sandstone sculpted buttes
reveal primeval mountains
and the seas that inundated them.

In every bend of monuments
and parks we wisely preserve
only for their beauty and history,

art that except for its breadth
and depth would hang with honor
in the best museums and galleries,

art we would never witness
if not for the eye and camera
of a magazine’s photographer.

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0703/feature6/index.html

Poetic States XLV – Maryland

When Poets Meet in a Cloister by the Bay
(for Chris)

When you stand at the edge
of the unforgiving sea,
when you listen to winter’s wind break free
you will hear him call for Anabell Lee:
“Where is she,
where is Anabell Lee?”

When you heed the frustrated knock at your door,
when he disturbs your neighbors on the third floor,
will you forget the reasons your eyes are blurry,
the long trip by train, each mile dreary,
and understand he only wishes to claim his lost Lenore.

When the station’s brass bells chime,
when it seems you’ve run out of time,
when you notice the Capital layered with grime,
will your words still swell;
will your verse still tell?

I listen to poems of your commute,
of monuments and cherry blossoms,
people you meet on the street, squirrels and orioles,
Liverpool,.

And I puzzle why there seem to be none of Baltimore,
hoods, corners, row houses,
Ravens
by the bay, the ever blameless bay.

Tomorrow, I go down to Grandparent’s Day at Ben’s kindergarten and a day of Ben-sitting.

So, until next week.

Gary

Thoughts to Go with Two New States

2007-03-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

Despicable is the only word for those who state John Edwards is looking for a bounce or sympathy vote from the announcement Elizabeth’s cancer is back. And chiding him for keeping his campaign going. Tony Snow has announced he will come back to work. Are they treating him the same way?

They should not be.

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I call myself a mostly unbeliever, but I wonder. Last week I was interviewed by a believer for a church sponsored theology class. She was to interview a believer, skeptic or non-believer. She concluded I was an unbeliever with skeptic leanings.

But I’ve been thinking about whether I am. I think I’m more an unbeliever in religion, that I don’t see any reason for organized religion except control. And I’m don’t believe in creation, unless the creator was a small child with a chemistry set, who forgot the experiment as soon as it was started.

The Big Bang theory is good enough for me.

But…

I do believe in Evil as an entity – that it is alive and feds off of humans, some such as Bundy or Pot taken over completely, even whole groups as in Rwanda. And if Evil is real, then I suppose there is a counter-balancing force for Good. Whether it is God or a god is debatable, though of course, we do hope it is more powerful than Evil.

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This week’s states are New Hampshire and Oklahoma. But before they are provided, I would be remiss in telling you that three States have been published.

Colorado and New Mexico in Loch Raven Review’s Spring edition at http://www.lochravenreview.net/2007Spring/blankenship.html

Massachusetts in the first edition of Crush to Pulp at http://www.crushtopulp.co.uk/archive.php

There might be others but they are pending or were not accepted.

And in the interest of full disclosure, Jacket as a couple of River Transformed in the April issue, #32 at http://jacketmagazine.com/32/index.shtml

Bounded by Tony Barnstone and Forest Gander is like being in the company of Rock Stars.

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Poetic States XLII – New Hampshire

The Frosting, Not the Cake

I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.
--Robert Frost on free verse

His hands are work-rough, fingers bent;
his face weather-beaten, a crag,
lost in words that crowd his aged mind
though his energy never flags.

No longer a rock-and-roll star,
photo on the cover of Time,
he squints at the sun and recites
an old poem that does not rhyme.

America’s poet reads on the step
of Camelot’s new capitol –

This land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people…

as if its valleys were empty,
and Yankee blankets made it full.

http://www.bartleby.com/73/475.html

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gift.htm

In the link above, most critics see the hundred years as those before 1776 and our freedom from Britain. One, the last, does not and might agree with mine.

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Poetic States XLIII – Oklahoma

American Idol Auditions, Houston

I never met a man I didn’t like.
- Will Rogers

With nothing more than a rope,
grin and prickly pear wit, he starts
his act with a joke about a county judge
and jackass, “though that may be the same thing.”

The producer, sharp as a horned toad,
turned his back and mumbled,
“Where does this clown think he is,
at an audition for a new Hee-Haw?”

The bass player compared him
to Jimmy Dean, another sausage
who made a fortune talking his way
through one song that can’t be sung.

The singer looked at his costume
and tried to thing of something nice
to say settling for “Are we back
in Seattle or did we land in Dogpatch.”

He never set foot on a stage again,
though in Rogers County, he wowed
the boys at the VFW with rope, smile,
and “Well, there was this one time…”

*

Until next week, when I may show you my Bushies.

Peace,

Gary

BTW, it is my birthday.

The States of Colorado and Wisconsin

2007-03-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

One of the funniest videos you will ever see for Mad the tv show. I'm not a fan of YouTube and its kin, but this is priceless:

http://www.rezab.com/

Nearly as good is this opening for SNL by Chris Rock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RlVtsAvKfs

And of course there is the Hillary take on the Apple Big Brother commercial. I don't think it helps Obama all that much. For one thing, the speech she is making is not all that disturbing. In addition, the first primary is ages away; and do YouTubers really vote? The talking heads will cream over it for a couple of days, but the AG scandal is juicier and a lot more lasting.

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Erik Larson is his book, Thunderstruck, wrote the captain of a cross-Allantic ship had:

"...a new rsponsibility - whether the ship's Marconi set and aerial were in good repair and ready to receive the inevitable flurry of trivial messages that engulfed a liner upon departure. Although the jokes, bon voyages, and riddles were utterly predictable, they nonetheless reflected the wonder with which people still treated this new and almost supernatural means of communication. (Italics mine.)

Sound like anything else we now use to communicate with?

Larson is also author of Issac's Storm, the best hurricane book ever, and The Devil in the White City, an equally well-written study.

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You may not know it, but I have a book for sale - poems based on Wang Wei's River Wang poems: A River Transformed. You can purchase it at http://www.lulu.com/content/178110

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This week's Poetic States include another of my favorites, Colorado. The full index of States is at http://garydawg.blogspot.com/2007/01/indexing-states-and-one-forgot-last.html

Poetic States XL – Colorado

Litter and Lice

Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.
-- Colonel John Chivington, leader of the volunteers
who attacked the Cheyenne’s Sand Creek camp

the old women, neške'e,
toothless, barren, are dead

their gray hair lies in the campfires
like last year’s leaves lie beneath birch

the old women are dead

the young women, he'eo'o,
brides, mothers, are dead

their scarred bodies lie in the teepees
like soiled rags in a trader’s wagon

the young women are dead

the children, ka'êškoneho,
babies, grandbabies, are dead

their broken bodies trampled under hoofs
like America’s flag in the Colorado mud

the children are dead

the old men, ma'hahkêseho,
elders, grandfathers, are dead

their blood floats in the creek
like sand in the stream’s floods

the old men are dead

the nits, the lice, hestaemo, are dead,
the red willow downed,
the rabbit skinned

justice, humanity, is dead,
Black Kettle’s peace, nanomonestôtse, is dead

the young men, hetaneo'o, are alive,
their horses driven hard to battle,
their knives revenged with blood

the young men ride to die

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Creek_Massacre

http://www.manataka.org/page161.html

http://www.manataka.org/page633.html

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Poetic States XLI – Wisconsin

The Wonder of It All

…the Wonder Spot, a mysterious cabin where people can't stand up straight, water runs uphill and chairs balance on two legs, is no more. –AP News

The mysterious attraction closed for the same unrelenting
march of progress that demands cemeteries be moved
to construct reservoirs or an airport’s third runway.

“There were a lot of accidents.”

As if accident s are not expected in the vicinity
of an energy vortex no one can explain away –
as if an increase in mishaps could not be anticipated.

If the highway engineers have miscalculated,
watch for swimsuits at Noah’s Ark Water Park
to slide up the water tubes backwards.

“…it's hard to run water uphill when a car
is driving right by the fence…”

And it is hard to maintain the faith,
when all the world is an amusement park.

Quotes by the owner, Bill Carney.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070205/ap_on_fe_st/wonder_spot

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tnews/NewsItemDisplay.php?Tip_AttrId=14477

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Until next week.

Smiles.

Gary

Tennessee and Wyoming

2007-03-12T16:31:00.000-07:00

I finished Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box, and it is a good as I thought it would be. One of the best in the haunt genre you will read.

Today, I finally caught An Inconvenient Truth on cable. While it is largely a slide show (How many of those did I sit through while I was working), it is also excellant and well worth your time. The statistics and views of lost ice and snow (such as Soon-to-be No Glacier National Park) are impressive.

Maybe Al Gore should run for president.

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Allen Itz sent me this: I just heard on NPR today, something about Bush's intelligence "experts" taking CIA analysts reports on Iraq and turning all the question marks into exclamation marks.

Should we be surprised?

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This week, some blues in one of my favorite states, and having fun with Wyoming.

The index is at http://garydawg.blogspot.com/2007/01/indexing-states-and-one-forgot-last.html

Tennessee

The Yellow Jack Blues

I can’t purchase a ticket out of this mosquito summer,
I can’t find passage out of this mosquito summer -
no bottle passed in the park, checkers with a newcomer.

The wagons loaded on the way to Elmwood, hear the bells;
wagons empty on the way downtown, last toll of the bells.
When the death wagon comes, will there be room to ride to hell?

First time I saw the nuns they went house to house nursing,
last time I saw the nuns the houses empty, hands trembling…
No vespers rang last night, no call for confession, mass sung.

Quay wall bare of cotton; icehouses, fish markets closed.
No tinker calls for scrap tin, no ragman sings for old clothes.
Only dogs howl this yellow summer, city’s greed exposed.

Now my bones will rest below hot tarmac and taxi stands.
Yellow Jack lies with me for when skeeters cover the land.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fever/peopleevents/e_1878.html

The author of The American Plague (2006), Molly Caldwell Crosby, quoted the Lancet Infectious Disease (2001) that yellow fever is responsible for 1000-fold more illness and death than Ebola. In 1878, Memphis and the Mississippi River valley was the site of the worse outbreak in United States history – over 20,000 dead.

The form is the blues stanza.

*

Wyoming

Things You Never Learned in School

Pour a gallon of water west of Steamboat
and it will flow to Big Sandy and on down
the Green to where the Colorado disappears
beneath an immigrant crossing the Gran Desierto.

One hundred and forty miles, pour a gallon
down the opposite face of the Seminos,
and it will reach the Platte to eventually
flow down Big Muddy to a broken levee.

In between is a desert basin as empty
as the horse corrals behind house trailers
in Rawlins, as barren as the compassion
in Dick Cheney’s New Testament Rewritten.

Your water poured there will disappear
into oil fields, gas wells and uranium mines
as surely as the Tetons disappear in the fog
of exploration, exploitation and profit.

Bet you were never taught that in school.

*

Until next week, when hopefully my gout will be gone.

Gary

I'm Glad March Is Finally Here

2007-03-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

The sun is shining and you can smell spring arriving, but I am setting here preparing a new blog while I listen to Bill Maher’s Fishbowl on amazon.com. (a favorite of mine), when I should be doing outside stuff.

So it goes.

This week I will post a couple of new Poetic States. There are nine written and ready to post, and six more plus DC to write. Illinois and New Mexico, one of my favorites are below.

First, my good friend and partner, Thomas Fortenberry, sent me a couple of links worth your attention:

http://www.progressivedailybeacon.com/more.php?page=opinion&id=1463

That President Bush is still making public relations visits to the areas wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, conveys a powerful message. He is still forced to scrounge around in sheer desperation, searching for anything that resembles progress. The story that this persistent state of disrepair should clearly and loudly convey to the American people is that within the Bush administration and the Republican Party, common everyday citizens -- working and poor Americans -- really don't matter. (cont. at the web site)

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070228_beijing_anomoly.html

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.
The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle.

The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union. (cont.)

*

Before the poems, a book recommendation: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (William Morrow, 2007).

Now I have to be honest. I’ve only read the first chapter, but it is good as any fiction first chapter I’ve ever read, and that includes the very best, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
It’s a horror story about haunted suit the novel’s hero bought on E-bay. That’s all you need to know except you should read it.

By the way, Hill is Stephen King’s son; and as the old saw goes, the eyeball don’t fall far from the severed head.

*

Before the Poetic States, one Rain short song:

Granmum Knew
(for Arthur Seeley)

Windows rattle, lights flicker, a lid sails by,
the gusts arrive, a broom sweeping the streets.
No eggs over, no sausage this morning –
“Art, it's raining iggs and swuthers aht theear.”

Iggs, et al is Yorkshire, nonsense words with no other meaning than it is raining in gusts and sheets.

Arthur is one of Britain’s outstanding poets. He has been winning awards and honors lately.

*

Poetic State XXXVI – Illinois

A Breeze Dies in the City
(for Lisa J, murdered)

geese land on lake Michigan
never to fly again

did she notice the geese as they swooped by Sear’s tower?

paper blows along the El
never to land again

did she notice the papers as they lay in State Street’s gutters?

garlic no longer grows
along the river

the Fox and Sauk no longer trap and trade
along the river

we can no longer hear the Black Shirts preach
of the black man they placed on a cross

does she see the traps and let the beaver go free?

does she hear Harrison’s lies in traffic to the airport?

smoke rises from barrels
never to heat again

the city moves on
less one brick

the garden grows
less one flower

the words speak
less one voice

and we wish we could hear
could see what she does
as the hoop moves on

as a breeze dies in the city

(An admission, this is the one Poetic State I had already written – in 2002. Lisa was poet in a forum I moderated. Her boyfriend killed her, though at first he denied it. The poem was written before he confessed.)

*

Poetic States XXXVI – New Mexico

Trinity’s Hour

A new sun bloomed out of the desert
defying Sol to roast white powder
glazed like broken pottery in a kiln

The light separated from the dark
to illuminate playas turned to steam,
clouds the sudden color of hell,
gypsum dunes and salt flats

It shone on chaparral forest,
creatures that crawled,
burrowed and fell from the sky,
seeds and fish waiting spring,
beasts that hunted beasts
and those that hid from the hunters

It lit a sheepherder in his hogan,
Alamogorda, Carlsbad, old Santa Fe,
lovers eloping from Las Cruces,
jingle dancer waking in her pueblo,
truth and its consequences,
the blood of a Spanish Christ

Its flash found a vendor on Honshu,
pineapple farmer on Oahu,
ballet dancer in Stalingrad,
soldier dying in a Pacific jungle,
rabbinical student at the Wailing Wall,
man of independence

as time shifted to five minutes
before the last midnight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_site

(New Mexico and Colorado will be published in the spring Loch Raven Review at http://www.lochravenreview.net/.)

*

Until next week,

Gary

Respect

2007-02-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

This week, we have the story of a brilliant piece of public art which may be lost to progress: A mural at our local community college. First however, a couple of friends join us, one for a poem and one for music link.

Norman Ball, a very good poet and musician, sent me this video of American soldiers in Iraq set to his lyrics and music by Paul Millington, titled Spill My Wine (Fallujah):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri0s2mAFYRs

A Youtuber said it is a tribute to all who must negotiate the fog of war --without political intent.

There are additional protest videos at http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideospage.html

Norm also has tracks at http://www.jtmp.org/Songs/Norman_Ball_Track_3.mp3
and http://www.jtmp.org/Songs/Good%20Books.mp3 both on the
Music for Justice site at http://www.jtmp.org/index.htm

The first is with Tom Saputo and the second with Lonnie Glass.

*

Suzanne Griffith, one of my partners in The Garbage Collection, send me this poem for MindFire, now on hiatus. It needs publication even if it is just in a Dawg House:

broken rhythms,
just north of Artic (sic)

old fo
rest gone that
ashen wood co
lor gray brown
sheeps' wool
multi-story
driftwood bug mo
tel

*

And the story of the week is from our Bremerton Sun. http://www.kitsapsun.com

It inspired this poem as part of my One Hundred Days of Rain series:

He Giveth, We Taketh

When the Buddha’s dynamited
by barbarians from the mountains,
Venice’s light allowed to sink,

His arm, recycle bottles, snapped
by bursts of cemented progress,
God’s tears fall into rising seas.

By Andrew Binion

February 24, 2007

Bremerton: It shows the hand of God giving the power of the atom to man, among other things, and was an opus of Olympic College’s first art instructor.

It was made out of bits of brown beer bottle glass fished out of the Puget Sound by schoolchildren.

But the giant mosaic gracing the south side of the math and science building for the past 50 years, painstakingly designed and assembled by the late Hank Blass and his art students, has a date later this year with the wrecking ball.

An effort started by a college librarian and cheered by former students and a former Washington secretary of state has college administrators looking for a way to preserve the mosaic on the side of a building scheduled to be demolished.

"It’s possible to do anything. The question is at what cost," said Barbara Martin, vice president for administrative services. "We need to understand what this is going to take."

When architects visited the site of what is slated to become a brand-new, $19.4-million humanities and student services building, they "all kind of scratched their heads and looked at it," Martin said.

There was no plan to save the mosaic, which is essentially cemented to a concrete wall. And there’s no money set aside to do it.

But earlier this month, college librarian Dianne Moore took the issue of preserving the mosaic to the College Council.

"It’s not only a beautiful piece of art, it is an integral part of the history of the campus and of Bremerton," Moore said. "Hopefully the conversation has been started and information is getting out there."

Martin said the college has heard back from an art conservator who said saving the mosaic is possible. The next step is to take the results of the conservator’s work to contractors to determine how much it will cost and how much time it will take.

The building is scheduled for demolition in late summer early fall, she said.

Mel Wallis, Blass’ predecessor at the college, was doubtful the piece could be preserved.
"It’s probably just going to come apart," he said. "They tried to restore it once and almost destroyed it."

Artist Brad Kauzlaric of Seabeck, a former student of Blass’ who helped with the grunt work on the mosaic and remained friends with Blass until his death, said the artist made the mosaic to last.

"That’s what it was designed for," said the 71-year-old Kauzlaric.

No one contacted for the story could recall the name of the piece, but Kauzlaric noted that the wall the work of art is attached to is 12 inches thick. The mosaic is more than 10 feet tall and 37 feet wide.

"Build around it. That’s real easy," Kauzlaric said.

The mosaic took about five years to complete, said Harlan Mattheson, 75, of Bremerton, who served as Blass’ assistant during production of the artwork. It was finished in 1957, Kauzlaric said, but Mattheson said Blass continued to work on it after that.

The materials used to make the images, glass and tile, came from a variety of places, including the beaches of the Puget Sound. Children helped collect the material.

Former state Secretary of State Ralph Munro was one of them. The Bainbridge Island native combed the beaches around age 12.

"It was quite a community effort getting the materials," Kauzlaric said.

Most of the glass available was brown, from beer bottles, Munro said, and Blass wanted a variety of colors, so kids were especially on the hunt for red and blue.

"In those days there was no garbage service," Munro said. "Everybody threw their bottles into the bay."

It isn’t the only notable work Blass completed. One mural, done in oils, is located in Guadalajara, Mexico, his obituary said. Another is in the entrance hall of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.
He stayed in Bremerton with his wife, Maria, until he died of lung cancer in 1992 at the age of 82, according to his obituary. Maria Blass died on New Year’s Eve 2006.

Blass graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and attended the University of Washington, receiving a degree in fine arts. He received a master’s degree in fine arts from the Instituto Allende, an extension of the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, in San Miguel de Allende. He started teaching at the college in 1947 and retired in 1974. Wallis replaced him as art instructor and retired himself in 2001.

"He was there for quality," Wallis said. "You have people who were evasive and wishy-washy. He was the opposite of that."

Kauzlaric and Mattheson agreed that Blass was not one to mince words or coddle students more interested in being an artist than producing art.

Mattheson noted that Blass was the only person allowed to set the tesserae, or bits of tile and glass.

When Mattheson and Kauzlaric heard the college planned to demolish the mosaic along with the building, Mattheson worried how Blass’ ghost would take the news.

"If he hears they are going to take it down," Kauzlaric said wryly, "he’s going to come back with a vengeance."

*

Until next week, respect…

The Tale of Two Scrotums

2007-02-19T19:06:00.000-08:00

I’m going to forgo poems this week (except for a short one) for the dumbest story (outside of the administration) I’ve heard in ages. – The banning of an award winning children’s book because it contains the word scrotum. I love libraries, but the librarians who want to ban this book should find a new profession.

First, though lest me recommend a book: Path of Destruction- The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms by John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein (Little, Brown and Co, 2006). It might be a little early for a through history of Katrina, but the authors do an excellent job of laying out why New Orleans could not be protected, and why the protection (levees) built were so poorly engineered they might as well not been build. It will change the way you look at the Corp of Engineers forever.

*

And a short poem –

Noonday, Australia Winter
(with thanks to Frank Faust)

Fair dinkum hot, even for a barbie.
Bush burns, smoky; sheep on the long paddock.
Dry as a pom's beach towel, watching sheilas.
We need rain soon, mate. Send her down, Hughie.

Long paddock - Graze along the road in a drought
Pom - Englishman
Send her down, Hughie - A wish for rain to fall

*

And now the news article – I heard portions of this read on the radio today and can tell you, the s-word is used with care. Nine and ten year old boys might snigger, but they do about lots of things.

NY TImes Published: February 18, 2007

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and re-opened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

On electronic mailing lists like Librarian.net, dozens of literary blogs and pages on the social-networking site LiveJournal, teachers, authors and school librarians took sides over the book. Librarians from all over the country, including upstate New York; Missoula, Mont.; Portland, Ore.; and Central Pennsylvania weighed in, questioning the role of the librarian when selecting — or censoring, some argued — literature for children.

“This book included what I call a Howard Stern-type shock treatment just to see how far they could push the envelope, but they didn’t have the children in mind,” Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian in Durango, Colo., wrote on LM_Net, a mailing list that reaches more than 16,000 school librarians. “How very sad.”

The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast, and librarians in other schools have indicated in the online debate that they may well follow suit. Indeed, the topic has dominated the discussion among librarians since the book was shipped to schools .

Pat Scales, a former chairwoman of the Newbery Award committee, said that declining to stock the book in libraries was nothing short of censorship.

“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. “That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”
If it were any other novel, it probably would have gone unnoticed, unordered and unread. But in the world of children’s books, winning a Newbery is the rough equivalent of being selected as an Oprah’s Book Club title. Libraries and bookstores routinely order two or more copies of each year’s winners, with the books read aloud to children and taught in classrooms.

“The Higher Power of Lucky” was first published in November by Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, accompanied by a modest print run of 10,000. After the announcement of the Newbery on Jan. 22, the publisher quickly ordered another 100,000 copies, which arrived in bookstores, schools and libraries around Feb. 5.

Reached at her home in Los Angeles, Ms. Patron said she was stunned by the objections. The story of the rattlesnake bite, she said, was based on a true incident involving a friend’s dog.
And one of the themes of the book is that Lucky is preparing herself to be a grown-up, Ms. Patron said. Learning about language and body parts, then, is very important to her.

“The word is just so delicious,” Ms. Patron said. “The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It’s one of those words that’s so interesting because of the sound of the word.”

Ms. Patron, who is a public librarian in Los Angeles, said the book was written for children 9 to 12 years old. But some librarians countered that since the heroine of “The Higher Power of Lucky” is 10, children older than that would not be interested in reading it. “I think it’s a good case of an author not realizing her audience,” said Frederick Muller, a librarian at Halsted Middle School in Newton, N.J. “If I were a third- or fourth-grade teacher, I wouldn’t want to have to explain that.” Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase.

In the case of “Lucky,” some of them take no chances. Wendy Stoll, a librarian at Smyrna Elementary in Louisville, Ky., wrote on the LM_Net mailing list that she would not stock the book. Andrea Koch, the librarian at French Road Elementary School in Brighton, N.Y., said she anticipated angry calls from parents if she ordered it. “I don’t think our teachers, or myself, want to do that vocabulary lesson,” she said in an interview. One librarian who responded to Ms. Nilsson’s posting on LM_Net said only: “Sad to say, I didn’t order it for either of my schools, based on ‘the word.’ ”

Booksellers, too, are watchful for racy content in books they endorse to customers. Carol Chittenden, the owner of Eight Cousins, a bookstore in Falmouth, Mass., said she once horrified a customer with “The Adventures of Blue Avenger” by Norma Howe, a novel aimed at junior high school students. “I remember one time showing the book to a grandmother and enthusing about it,” she said. “There’s a chapter in there that’s very funny and the word ‘condom’ comes up. And of course, she opens the book right to the page that said ‘condom.’ ”

It is not the first time school librarians have squirmed at a book’s content, of course. Some school officials have tried to ban Harry Potter books from schools, saying that they implicitly endorse witchcraft and Satanism. Young adult books by Judy Blume, though decades old, are routinely kept out of school libraries.

Ms. Nilsson, reached at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colo., said she had heard from dozens of librarians who agreed with her stance. “I don’t want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

“At least not for children,” she added.

*

Until the next post.

New Jersey and Georgia

2007-02-12T09:18:00.000-08:00

Check out Tolu's blog. He, the MindFire African editor, won $1000 in a contest. Congrats, friend.

http://omoalagbede.blogspot.com/

*

New states, several written to be posted over the next few weeks. Eight plus DC to go and they are coming hard, which is ok.

The index at http://garydawg.blogspot.com/2007/01/indexing-states-and-one-forgot-last.html

*

Poetic States XXXI – New Jersey

An American Original
for William Carlos Williams

In Seventy-Six, we slowly drove
through the Garden State
in a yellow Rabbit
past oil tanks
and urban depression,
the auto soot-black
when we stopped at a HoJo’s
south of Trenton for lunch.

It was not until twenty-five years later

I saw the importance
of chickens in the rain

peered through a window
in need of soap and swab
at plum pits picked clean

trod wild carrot beneath my feet
in the warm mud of spring

to the clack-clack
of a Patterson doctor’s typewriter

upon which we all depend

*

Poetic States XXXII – Georgia

Shake the Dust from Your Boots

Some long time back,
a man walked from his grandfather’s
grandfather’s forest homeland
to a forbidding land
across the Big River

Much later, a man left his father’s
houses for a world away
and hesitant, commanded
the long, hostile war
on behalf of a tired people

Men left the red dirt and cotton
to build Caddies and Fords in Detroit,
jam in Chicago and New York,
rot in Viet Nam’s rice paddies,
bottle Coke in Atlanta

Women sometimes joined them later,
children too

Forever, they remembered –
the final days of summer
ripe peaches
pecans –
red dirt that never washes away
even when you dive headlong
into the Chattahochee River

New Traditions - Chinese Short Songs in English

2007-02-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

Modified on 2/19/2007 because I can't proofread. Thanks, Kathy.

Let's leave off traveling round the Poetic States for the moment. For about eighteen months, Kathy Paupore and I have been penning The Many Names of the Sun, using an English version of the Chinese Short Song or jueju as the form of choice. From time to time, I get asked for the "rules" for the short form. Because, Chinese forms must be modified to work in English, I wrote this essay to explain the requirements for English language short songs. This is a draft, so if you have any comments or recommendations, please mail me at garydawg@msn.com or post them here.

*

New Traditions:
Writing Chinese Short Songs in English

English is a rich language, taken from many diverse origins, strong in many ways, weak in others. One strength is how successfully English borrows not only words, but ideas and poetics. Another is how it seems to work for nearly any form devised for verse. That success depends on not simply parroting, but adapting to English’s assets. Chinese Short Songs are a primarily quatrain form (also called jueju) composed in Tang Dynasty regulated verse, written at the height of Chinese classical poetry. Arguably, the best poems were written in the form, and best poets practiced writing them.

In this paper, we examine the basic requirements for a Short Song, and how to use the strengths of English to write them.

*
There are four superior forms that come out of the East: Ghazal, with origins in Persia and Pakistan; tanka, the five line form that preceded haiku; sedoka and its Malay cousin, pantun; and the Short Song from High Tang China.

The basic rules for ghazals and tanka have been codified by short form poets; and although sedoka/pantun are seldom practiced, so have they. The same can not be said for the Short Song.

Chinese supports script and tonal rhyme, or rhyme on three levels. Chinese writing is composed of elemental pictographs, some of which (but not all) representing real world objects, such as sun, moon, tree, or man. Li Bai and others rhymed script through the repetition of basic pictographic elements. It is also tonal, with tone inflections of rising, level, and falling. Regulated verse had specific requirements for tone placement. English has neither, though on rare occasions, poets attempt to rhyme homonyms or homophones.

The best of High Tang poets painted pictures with the script. The most famous might be the first line of Wang Wei’s “Magnolia Basin”

On branch tips the hibiscus bloom.

(Add picture of script here. I can not find the poem in Chinese on the web. See the Introduction to Willis and Tony Barnstone’s Laughing in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei for a study of the poem as script.)

Chinese is a monosyllabic language with a high level of words that rhyme. English also has a rich heritage of rhyme, albeit it seems to be out of favor in the modern age. Regardless, the ability to play with meanings via pun, allusion, entendre and the like is as strong in English as in Chinese. Word games enhance poetry in both languages.

Are we at a disadvantage in attempting to fit Chinese Short Songs into English?
Perhaps, but no more than translation in general, or the author that attempts an epic work; poets often attempt fool’s errands.

*

Examine these rules for English-speaking poets to consider when penning the Short Song.

1. Length

Four lines of nearly even count from eight to twelve syllables, the average being ten, the latter count being the average English breath. Variation is permissible, but generally couplets should be the same count. For example, the first two lines might be eight, and the last twelve, or all lines might be ten count.

Mudslides block the high mountain roads
Storms flood the valley’s villages.
Tomorrow, rugs and clothes will be hung to dry;
next week, the market sells the last moldy bean.

As an alternative, write the couplets as two quatrains with each line five to seven syllable count. Some rewrites may be necessary to get the right rhythm to the poem.

Shouts from the trail below,
visitors arrive from afar;
Dust from ox and porters,
relatives at the East gate.

Every chicken prepared,
even the ancient rooster;
every child gathers pecans,
even the youngest bride.

2. Parallel construction

Perhaps the format that lifts the form above the average verse is the use of parallel construction. For example in the poems above, the first line in each couplet has an exact parallel in the next line. However, a single word might be the parallelism; and the construction may even be more subtle as in the poem below:

A flowered frock waves from the farm’s front porch;
each hand imagines smiles for him, one knows.
In the eaves, wasps paper their new queen’s nest;
her tea glass sweats, ice melts - flowers flooded.

The parallel lines may be any pair – one and four, one and three – and not simply the couplets.

Although the lines may relate, there should be a tension if the reader’s interest is to be held. It may be overt as in Li Bai’s “War South of the Great Wall”

my husband, my sons – you’ll find them all
there, out where war drums keep throbbing.

- David Hinton, trans.

or subtle, as in line two of Wang Wei’s “Deer Park”

Nobody in sight on the empty mountains
but human voices are heard far off.

- Tony Barnstone, trans

Parallelism is a difficult concept to understand and implement. Although, English poetry used the technique for most its life (consider Poe's “Annabel Lee” or Whitman's “I Sing, America”), it has fallen out of favor in most modern poetry. The connection is like an echo; sometimes it will be hard or solo, and at others, soft, muted and multiplied.

3. Alliteration

Short Songs are musical. While they typically do not rhyme, they lean heavily on sounds, either with alliteration or near rhyme for lyrics.

Soft and green stacked as if winter’s wood.
Notice posted on every door – Free!
Surplus fried with scallions, garlic, cornmeal;
in next year’s soil, discarded seeds live.

4. Economy

Chinese poetry differs from English in more than alphabet and script. The High Tang poets often eliminated pronouns, articles and numerical notation for poetry with extreme economy. Of the techniques we attempt when drafting Short Songs in English, this may be the most difficult for an English speaker. English poetry generally does not sound correct and is too choppy without the standard constructions and grammar. In the poem below, the speaker might be one of the bodies, or simply an observer; and the state of the bodies – alive, dead, sleeping – is also not known. In this case and most, I do not entirely eliminate articles, but keep enough to cut down the chopped feel.

Leaves sink, a brown feather rising on the wind;
Dust devils twist, sheets snapping in the breeze.
Bodies stain a bare mattress, no movement;
no memory of the last rain, only flies.

5. Silence

High Tang poetry excels in silence, a quiet seldom found in poetry from other eras or regions. Wang Wei, of River Wang fame, penned poems that often seem too simple, so light as to nearly not be. Yet, they might be the most peaceful poetry written, as in his “House Hidden in the Bamboo Groove.”

Sitting in the dark bamboo,
I play my lute and whistle song.
Deep in the wood no one knows
the bright moon shines on me.

- Barnstone trans.

Chinese poetry excels in silence, part of the Tao religious tradition. For example, these lines from Section 16 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (as translated by Ursula K. Le Guin)

16. Returning to the root

Be completely empty.
Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
in their arising is their return.
Now they flower
and flowering
sick homeward
returning to the root.

No matter how many I write, I doubt that I will ever approach the quietude of Wang Wei’s poems. I seem a locomotive to his feather.

I wake, the light demanding the day be joined,
morning so gentle I can’t resist the call.
By noon, shelter sought from the sky’s power;
twilight, to watch the day end in crimson blaze.

6. Nature and Myth

Chinese poetry takes many of its images direct from nature and uses myth, legends and history, often really legends, as common themes. A poem may be about the poet traveler, yet nothing but natural or historical images will be seen in the poem.

The sharp taste of dust and pollen greets us,
the trail a thin line across the meadow.
A flash of light breaks in the woods beyond:
Feather, horn, a reluctant traveler?

The day the planes came, heroes and their trucks lost;
nickels, dimes saved by bayou and city children.
Gulf coast homes drown, the heroes bring new rides South,
to give care with The Spirits of Louisiana.

7. Variation

Of course, no matter what the rules, interest demands we have sufficient variation to hold the reader. A strict adherence to rules is generally not successful. Or as a friend says, “The only rule is there are no rules.”

In the tall grass, a small boy sleeps
lulled by the grasshoppers’ sharp click;

he dreams of catching a brown trout
with dead flies he found on the road.

Supper waits - brown beans and fried spuds,
cold fresh milk and hot apple pie.

Explore the possibilities; your poem might be in couplets, quatrains or one unbroken stanza. You might find pronouns to your liking, but dump all the articles, and definitely find images in urban and suburban settings.

Practice composing in sets of Short Songs. Poems three to six above are part of a collaboration with another poet called “The Many Names for Sun,” and seven is from a set by this author titled “The Naming of the Seasons.” A group might take the shape of a sonnet or be a crown of five; but whether a single stanza or many, the form is a pleasure to pen.

A passing note about titles:

Chinese has a tradition for what we might see as boring titles – “A Poem Written for Commissioner Chang Lee on His Return to the Village.” I tend to use both this style and standard English title construction. The first two poems in this essay are a set titled “Stanzas Inspired by a Letter from a Friend,” while the last is from “Field and Fin.”

Is it possible to successfully draft Short Songs in English? I believe it is, but to be as successful as other forms, it will take a group of practitioners who work to develop the form beyond the few simple rules I have outlined above.

References:

(All works copyright the authors.)

Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, Anchor Books, 2005

Francois Cheng, Chinese Poetry Writing, Indiana University Press, 1982

David Hinton, Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China, Counterpoint Press, 2002

Ursula L Le Guin, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: A book about the way and the power of the way, Shambhala Publications, 1998

Stephen Owens, An Anthology of Chinese Literature, WW Norton, 1996

Redbuds for the Fallen

2007-01-30T13:31:00.000-08:00

My poem, Redbuds for the Fallen is posted at

http://www.afterthebridge.blogspot.com/

by my friend, sherry pasquarello.

Thanks, Sherry, for posting the poem and your kind words.

Smiles.

Gary

Another book recommended and two New England States

2007-01-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

This week, a book I should have read years ago - and that you should read as soon as possible. Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods come out in hardback in 1998 and in trade in 1999. For some reason it took 7 years for it to make it to mass market paperback, but it has and I have finally read it as a result.

Bryson's Walk is a very humorous account of his tackling the Appalachian Trail which runs from Georgia to Maine. Bill and his hiking partner, Katz, hike the lower portion of the trail into the Smoky Mountains National Park, then skip to Virginia and the Shenandoah. Later in the year, Bill "car-hikes" portions of the trail in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hamphire, finishing in the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine short of the AT's end.

Along the way, he meets characters, gets in a bit of trouble, and is frightened by deer he imagines is a bear. And you will learn something, actually a lot of things. For a couple of examples, the highest winds ever recorded were on Mt. Washington, NH and why they are no chestnuts left in the mountains.

A fun, entertaining read and highly recommended.

*

This week's states are Vermont and Massachusetts.

Poetic States XXXIV – Vermont

Gray Raiders and Green – St Albans

In ‘64 they slid across the border,
twenty-one cavalrymen on a mission
to attack the Union 600 miles
north of the Gray’s Northern border.

Raiders sweep down from Canada,
bandits after cash and horses
in a vain attempt to assist the South
the day Sheridan smacked down Early.

In ‘66, Fenian nationalists arrived
to rescue Canada for Irish freedom,
an effort as unsuccessful as secession,
as foolish as the bomb that took Mounty.

In ‘54 Hollywood Gray reinvaded
with Van Heflin and Ann Bancroft
as lovers and Lassie’s Timmy,
history as false as Birth of a Nation.

No Hollywood rewrite was made
for the green insurgents’ failure,
only an united Canadian and statues
and parades among the border states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Albans_Raid

http://www.virtualvermont.com/index.php?loc=http://www.virtualvermont.com/history/staraid.html

I love what Hollywood does to real events - little in the movies can be believed.

*

Poetic States XXXV – Massachusetts

From the Jetty

The sailboat slid into Bedford Harbor
as effortless as an albatross
soars over Nantucket Shoals
Behind me, sheets flapped
on the cottage clothesline,
pink and yellow strips
on a field of the bluest white.

At the bow, a girl of a woman,
undressed too light for the Nor ’east
shouted words I could not hear
in a language I could not understand,
although she appeared close enough
for me to smell what she had for lunch,
what wine she drank with it,
and what she did before and after.

She threw her words again;
her voice lost in the noise
of cries of children on the beach,
worried parents,
excited dogs,
nervous gulls.

I shrugged incomprehension.

She laughed, tossed hair
the color of wild strawberries
and slid into the cabin as easy
as a hermit crab into a new shell.

I turned and walked along the jetty,
one eye on the harbor, another
on the ground for stones
I could chuck at cans in the surf.

Tonight, when I go into town
for Friday’s chowder, I will listen
for a language I do not understand.

*

I have been chided in the forums for not including enough of what makes each state special in the poems. That's never been my goal. The States are a hook to explore - not for travelogues or state history.

Smiles.

Gary

Yellow Fever and Poems for Military Dead

2007-01-22T15:38:00.000-08:00

scores destroyed

the beginning of the end

according to Tony Snow

A snow job. The splurge more like a sewer backing up into our kitchen.

*

Let me add another book to my recommendations of books about disease and disaster: Molly Caldwell Crosby's The American Plague: The untold story of Yellow Fever, the epidemic that shaped our history (Berkley 2006).

Molly's well-researched volume relays the 1978 Memphis outbreak, the worse in US history and then moves to Cuba to examine how Walter Reed and his associates determined yellow fever's cause and ways to control it.

The bonus is that Molly is poetic in her descriptions as seen in this paragraphs from her epilogue:

Of course there are elms in Elmwood, though they were planted after the fact to complement the name. Their massive, gnarled trunks rise high above the earth, and their roots spread deep beneath the ground, branching out amid the bones. There are also oaks. And there are magnolias with hard-shell leaves curling along the limbs, raining the dead ones like petals. It is quiet in the way that only those vast, old cemetaries can be. The only sound is the wind gathering leaves and the train that runs along tracks that edge the property.

Her first book, Molly deserves to be read and win awards.

*

This week a respite from Poetic States - almost. Instead I offer three memorials to dead military who served in Iraq. A collection of other memorial poems by several authors is at http://operationpoem.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_operationpoem_archive.html

One of mine is as Poetic State also.

Poetic States XXXIII – Pennsylvania

Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert

They knew your infectious smile,
the notes you riffed on your saxophone,
your burst of speed in track
as your raced the Delaware River,
how you loved your wife and newborn.

I know you by your death
the day Sgt. Hasen Akbar
broke the band of brothers,**
a grenade tossed into sleeping troops –
eleven wounded,
Major “Linus” Stone murdered,
you shot in the back
in Camp Pennsylvania, Kuwait.

I will never know why Akbar slew
the men he served and trained with.
I don’t really care, his motives
do not justify your execution
or his whenever it occurs.

I can only hope the garden
your mother made at your grave
will bloom until there is peace,
and Benjamin will treasure
his father’s purple heart
as long as the city of Easton
cherishes the Bars and Stars she
flew for your country’s independence.

** Teresa Seifert at Maj. Stone’s funeral

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Easton%2C_Pennsylvania.svg

http://www.militarycity.com/valor/256523.html

*

PFC Devon James Gibbons, June 23, 2006
Port Orchard, Washington

I did not know you, at 19 young enough
to graduate the year before my granddaughter,
the year after my grandson. Old enough
to vote, but still a kid in many ways.

Ninety percent burned April 11th,
three limbs amputated, who did you hang
on for 10 weeks, through countless skin
grafts, pain enough for a regiment?

No more rooting for the Wolves,
fireworks over Sinclair Inlet on the 4th.
No more digging clams at Manchester,
bike rides along Beach Drive.

No more sand and heat in your Bradley,
suffering in a Texas hospital,
no more concern for your brothers
still in harm’s way.

Number 2506,
I did not know you.

*

Emily Jazmin Tatum Perez
Cadet Command Sergeant Major

with thanks to Larry Jaffe

the U.S. death toll in Iraq was "minute."
--Rupert Murdoch

As in trifling, of little importance,
inconsequential, a flash in the pan
not worthy of a moment’s notice…?

Perhaps a small number,
easily absorbed in the scheme of things
for the greater good – freedom and security
and the American way of life

until my attention is brought to one
who might hold the future in her palm
with her gentle way and caring

She wanted to be a soldier
and as in everything she did
excelled as a cadet, a leader

The death of one soldier may be trifling
to one who has only urged conflict
from the safety of a corner office
in a tower at the center of universe

but I cannot help but wonder
what the continued life of a soldier
who worked for Aids patients
might have meant to our hopes

I will never know, but do know
her life or death was not slight
as the fall of a wounded sparrow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Perez

*

This last weekend was one of the worse in the war's history. Each of the dead soldiers, sailors and airmen deserve a tribute. Poets, post your own at Operation Poem.

Until next week.

Be warm

and smile.

Gary

Catching up - Oregon, Indiana and Nebraska

2007-01-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

So W has a plan - a bad plan, but a plan - one that is no better than LBJ's in 65 or Nixon's but a plan - one that accomplishes nothing but more dead US soldiers but a plan.

How soon before the next president takes over?

*

The January and final FireWeed is ready to read at www.mindfirerenew.com. I have to give up the zines for health reasons, but others are considering how to keep them going.

Thanks to all our readers, contributors and editors. I hope we fired up your mind a time or two.

*

I know how I skipped Indiana and Nebraska, but Oregon last August...a mystery of sorts...but there are here now. The States index is in the post for January 5, 2007.

Until next week.

Gary

*

Poetic States XII – Oregon

How Green Was My Valley

The Great White Worm burrowed
beneath Willamette grasslands
where turf, wineries, hazelnut
and ranch houses are now harvested.
No one noticed or cared the white
became extinct while Rachel Carson
saved brown pelicans for tourists
in Southern California coastal towns.
There is not a lot of cute in worms,
white or any other color, even mauve.

When Ben and I saunter through
hay fields near his Jefferson home,
I imagine the earth trembles
as if the giant still lives below.
Perhaps it is just a earthquake tremor,
but I would not be surprised it survived.
The center of universe is near the source
of the Santiam’s northern branch,
and turf and grass seed farms
are similar to the its ancient habitat.

Patios and driveways though…

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/01/03/lc_61great30.frame

*

Poetic States XXVII – Nebraska

Heard on a Prairie Wind

Her voice out sings the morning meadowlark,
goldenrod curls glisten with afternoon sparks.
She strides grasslands sure as a bull bison.
A smile, I grin at my good fortune.

The daughter of immigrants, Viking stock,
she holds family together, a rock.
Beneath cottonwood by the Platte’s banks,
she loves me even when I’m sour, a crank.

Our idyllic dreams are not meant to last –
tornados rage, hail and dust’s fury blasts.
Children die, stillborn, the older sicken.
Our sod-built home is dreary, a sad den.

A sweet prairie life hard, she wastes away;
I carry her to where gulls sing, palms sway.

*

Poetic States XXVIII – Indiana

A Gary by Any Other Name
for Patricia

When I hear Opie sing “Gary, Indiana”
in his high-pitched childish voice,
my step becomes lighter
and smile wider –
even the harmonic tones
of the Jackson family do not
make me feel as carefree.
When I hear the roar of the Indy 500
rumble across the brickyard,
I reach for 4 on the floor,
push down on a reluctant gas pedal
and remember when 500 miles
seemed as far away as Mars moons.

When I read your poetry,
I am as enchanted as if you rose
from the Wabash and clasped me
to your bosom while we cannonballed
downstream to party at Mardi Gras.

Stem Cells, and the States of Florida and Virginia

2007-01-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

An article out of the Washington Post opines that amniotic fluid cells might be used to treat a variety of diseases. The possibilities are staggering if the research pans out. And as a SF reader, even more than staggering. Imagine storage of fluid for every newborn, so it would be avaibable for treatment at any stage of a person's life - the cells would not reject. Treatment of newborns for birth defects could be common. Of course, we will find a way to do less moral things with the cells - designing humans might be one.

*

I've updated the Poetic States index posted last week, except along the way, Georgia turned into Virginia and will probably be pushed back in favor of New Jersey.

Until next week.

Gary

*

Poetic States XXIX - Florida

A Mighty Wind

In Zero-six, no storms scoured our marches;
in Zero-seven, the experts predict a Zero-five.
If they are wrong, will you forget the past,
how you’ve been ravaged again and again?

Miami in Twenty-six, the land boom busted.

Okeechobee in Twenty-eight, three thousand dead.

Andrew in Ninety-two, most expensive in history.

Jeanne in Zero-four, the entire state blanketed.

Orlando now part of the Magic Kingdom,
Miami a major metropolis,
east coast crowded with condos
built on sand out of sand.

When Barry hits, Chantal or Erin,
folks will run to Home Depot, grab
plywood, nails, batteries and generators;
At the Pump & Go, there will be a run
on gas, water and chips
while oranges remain unpicked.

When Gabrielle churns the Glades and Humberto
flattens the Keys, Willie Gumm and Miz Hattie
will refuse to evacuate because they rode
out Betsy in Sixty-four and the government
ain’t never got it right and never will.

Condo construction will cease
until the season ends and bankers
rev up their loan offices, the boom
in full swing until Okeechobee Redux.

For the story of the horrors of 1928’s hurricane see Eliot Kleinberg (2003) Black Cloud: The Great Florida Storm of 1928. Like the 1927 Mississippi Flood , Rising Tide, Kleinberg's documented inhumane treatment of blacks in the worst of times, and raises the question if we are immune from the effects of several natural disasters in a row.

*

Poetic States XXX - Virginia

Arlington Ladies

Founded during our last long nightmare
to assure fallen soldiers received a sendoff
beyond officialdom and grave diggers -
no one buried alone

Dedicated to compassion,
women of all ages comfort
widows and mothers or simply
themselves several times a day

Each life important,
each death honored

I call it grace…and we need
more grace in our lives.*

A few soft words to mourners,
a note, a touch,
in private, after, tears…

*Past Air Force chairwoman of the Arlington Ladies

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/anc-lady.htm

Indexing the States and one forgot last year

2007-01-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

I started them in June 2006 and have posted all but IV Arkansas (which is posted below), some in every archived month except October. I’ve been asked in a couple of forums where they are posted, so I’m putting this index up to answer the question and help me archive them.

I -- Washington -- July 11 2006
II -- North Dakota -- July 11
III -- New York -- July 19
IV -- Arkansas -- January 5 2007
V -- North Carolina -- July 25 2006
VI -- Idaho -- July 19
VII -- Texas -- July 30
VIII -- Delaware -- July 30
IX -- South Dakota -- July 30
X -- Hawaii -- August 1
XI -- Michigan -- August 1
XII -- Oregon -- January 15 2007
XIII -- Montana -- August 3 2006
XIV -- Ohio -- August 3
XV -- Kansas -- September 5
XVI -- Iowa -- September 5
XVII -- Louisiana --September 5
XVIII -- Rhode Island -- November 28
XIX -- California -- November 28
XX -- Minnesota -- December 14
XXI -- Maine -- December 14
XXII -- South Carolina -- January 4 2007
XXIII -- Arizona -- January 4
XXIV -- Mississippi -- December 27 2006
XXV -- Alabama -- December 27
XXVI -- West Virginia -- January 4 2007
XXVII -- Nebraska -- January 15
XXVIII -- Indiana -- January 15
XXIX -- Florida -- January 9
XXX -- Virginia -- January 9
XXXI -- New Jersey -- February 12
XXXII -- Georgia -- February 12
XXXIII -- Pennsylvania - January 22
XXXIV -- Vermont -- January 29
XXXV -- Massachusetts -- January 29
XXXVI -- Illinois -- March 7
XXXVII -- New Mexico -- March 7
XXXVIII -- Tennessee -- March 12
XXXIX -- Wyoming -- March 12
XL -- Colorado -- March 21
XLI -- Wisconsin -- March 21
XLII -- New Hampshire -- March 27
XLIII -- Oklahoma -- March 27
XLIV -- Utah -- April 3
XLV -- Maryland -- April 3
XLVI -- Missouri -- April 13
XLVII -- Nevada -- April 13
XLVIII -- Kentucky -- April 17
XLIX -- Connecticut -- May 6
L -- Alaska -- May11

DC and territories to go, three poems

Poetic States IV – Arkansas

Over the River, through the Woods

When we arrived at Ben’s at the edge
of the Ozarks, his family left their meal
to prepare ours – ham, chicken, potatoes,
fresh strawberries – all grown on their farm –
as Ben told us about raising hogs
in the hills and dealing with government men.

In Jerusalem, we sat on the porch of Aunt Rose’s
unpainted house as gravel trucks rumbled by.
She told us stories of how the town changed
in the 75 years since she’d married
after the first war, and fed us strawberry
shortcake from the supermarket.

We tried to avoid turtles
on the road back from Ben’s,
but we could not.

*

Until next week when we add two or three more….

Smiles.

Gary

A New Year and New States

2007-01-04T09:47:00.000-08:00

We turn over a new year, the old ended on an execution of a villian, the new with the funeral of a hero.

Balance?

A bit of a cold today, so I simply leave you with two states I skipped and one new.

*

Poetic States XXII – South Carolina

Crab Cakes

When I was a working stiff,
I traveled east to shipyards
at Norfolk and Charleston,
conferences during the day,
food, drink and parties at night.

In the bays of the Ashley River,
we would find seafood
nearly as good as home –
red fish, prawns, soft-shell
crab, which I avoided.

I would sit in the middle
of a dozen crab cracking diners,
crustacean and lemon juice flying,
I normally got more on me
than the eaters had on them.

In addition to lobster,
I’ve found the delight of crab cakes
with or without hush-puppies.
though the smell of crab flesh
might defeat me if I tried them.

If I travel back to Charleston,
I will give them a whirl -
after all, I’ve had craw-dads –
but I would still eschew gator.

*

Poetic States XXIII – Arizona

Washout

On a straight stretch of Interstate 10
about halfway between Blythe and Phoenix,
as the driver can practice speeding,
you wonder if any land is more desolate
and if any cactus is uglier than a Saguaro
(exempting the Mojave Joshua tree).
Descending in the Harquahala Wash,
you read a road sign that says,

In the event of a flash flood,
drive to higher ground.

Western movie lore teaches flash
floods originate from rain storms
in the mountains and are upon
unsuspecting travelers before
they have a clue, which leaves
the question of why the I-10 warning.

Or maybe if is like the cries
of those who predict
global warming,
disaster in Iraq,
the housing bubble will burst,
the southwest will be annexed to Mexico,
there will be a shortage of Tickle-Me-Elmos…

We won’t credit the prophets
until it is too late or lack the ability
to tell which sign is bogus
and which we should heed.

*

Poetic States XXVI – West Virginia

It’s All Relative

A face as wrinkled as a dried apple,
a smile as bright as a week old baby,
she seems happy with the long life she’s led
in hills west of the Monongahela.

A centurion in a straight backed chair
on the lawn before an unpainted house -
her photo in a stained Geographic
rescued from an overloaded attic.

She might have been a great aunt or cousin
fond of homemade as those who moved out west.
I won’t know, my family wouldn’t discuss
family trees or mountain history.

Whether or not she and I related,
I am sure that her smile was meant for me.

*

I'll be back next week, hopefully without this cold...

Smiles.

Gary

The Poetic States of Mississippi and Alabama with notes.

2006-12-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

Strongly recommended the book, Rising Tide by John M Barry (1997), the story of the 1927 Mississippi flood, the worse in history. The book should be of interest to anyone who thought Katrina was fubar. There are several parallels in the way government and the power structure dealt with blacks that are worth noting. In addition, the beginning is a very good outline of how the Mississippi came to be a levy solution, the wrong one for the most powerful river in the world. The treatment of blacks after the flood will sicken you.

Barry is author of The Great Influenza, possibly the most frightening book I have ever read.

Also recommended is the movie, The Big White, starring Robin Williams, Holly Hunter, Woody Harrelson, Giovanni Ribisi, and Tim Blake Nelson; and released in 2005.

You are probably thinking I never heard of the film. I had not either, but got it off of Comcast On-demand.

It is a sleeper; and in my opinion, one of William’s best – maybe penance for RV.

*

We were told the 2005 hurricane season was the result of global warming. Now, according to Time magazine, the 2006 non-hurricane season, where none hit the US, is being blamed on global warming.

I happen to believe in global warming, but these kind of statements give rational thought a bad name. I also believe in two other things: One event does not make a trend. And every trend has moments which buck the trend – ups and downs.

Oh, and by the way, the Bush administration wants to make polar bears endangered – due to global warming, which they deny.

And so it goes…

*

I’ve been posting the Poetic States. In the spirit of the season, I’m skipping Arizona and South Carolina to give you numbers XXIV and XXV about Mississippi and Alabama for two events from civil rights history that should make your blood boil and that make it difficult for me to forgiven the citizens of these states.

XXIV – Mississippi

With Reluctance

I should skip the delta country,
home of the most racist folk
in this land of equality.

Consider a father,
advocate for black voting rights,
killed by Klan cowards
while five sons served with honor
in the defense of their country:

George, sergeant, US Army
Martinez, sergeant, US Air Force
Vernon Jr, master sergeant, US Air Force
Alvin, sergeant, US Army
Harold, sergeant, US Army

Vernon Dahmer shot protecting
his wife and minor children,
house and store firebombed,
daughter severely burned –
all after the Voting Rights Act passed…

I should have skipped Mississippi.

The story: Vernon Dahmer

XXV – Alabama

Herod’s Innocents

Four young girls, barely in their teens,
dressed in white frocks,
their faces scrubbed and hair ribbonned,
for a celebration of youth –

Carol Denise (Niecie) McNair, 11,
Brownie, dancer, fund raiser, baseball

Cynthia Wesley, 14, adopted
daughter of teachers, band

Carole Robertson, 14, marching band,
science club, Girl Scout, dancer

Addie Mae Collins, 15, softball pitcher,
apron and mitt salesman, choir

Four young maidens,
dressed in blood,
their faces destroyed,
their families’ world shattered,
dead within the sacred walls
of a devote church of God.

Four bomb victims
blamed for their own destruction
by the forces of bigotry looking for
“a few first-class funerals.*

Good night, sweet princesses.**

The story: Birmingham Bombing

*Governor George Wallace prior to the bombing.

**Dr. Martin Luther King

Until next week, have a Happy New Year and hope for more civilized behavior.

I’m probably have a few things to say about the Magic Kingdom…if something else doesn’t happen to bump it.

Poetic States of Minnesota and Maine

2006-12-14T13:12:00.000-08:00

Tis a crazy world: The folks that want to kill all the Jews do a holocaust denial conference. SeaTac airport takes down all the Christmas trees cause they talked to a lawyer who hinted suit, then put them back up. And the Senate may be GOP after all.

Oh, well. We go to Disneyland next week, almost all that is on my mind.

Until after Christmas, enjoy these poetic states.

Smiles.

Gary

*

XX – Minnesota

Loon Dreams

Winter’s early arrived in the Northwest,
a rare event for a Puget November –
snow and ice enough to cause havoc
on highways, roadways and byways.

Settled in with my morning coffee,
watching squirrels and stray cats,
I spy a moose rub against the RV.
A lake is forming in the backyard,

many more in the front and side lawns
as my cedars turn to Northern Pine.
Where the raccoon tribe scampered
to feed from the neighbor’s dog dish,

a pack of timber wolves pad silently by.
Their heads raised to watch me watch them,
they look as hungry as walleyes
eyeing a fishing house set on thin ice.

*

XXI – Maine

Bisque

Legend relays they once ran
twenty pounds, even thirty
with a record of over forty-four…
now we seldom see them over two
and those from Australia.

In hidden coves along rocky shores,
decks, piers and barges sell
fresh cooked crustaceans
served on paper with bent plastic,
watery slaw and overbaked beans.

Whether because I was too young
to know what I did not know
or was turned off by the smell,
my meal was greasy chicken
or cold dogs with the slaw and beans.

Then last year I discovered bisque
and wish I could take back the last 40…
crackers in one hand, pick in the other,
bib around my neck and plate empty
of dry beans and warm slaw…

Suns from Mexico and Kathy

2006-12-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Lots happening this week: Bolton resigns, the Iraq study group says it’s a bust – though they take to long to withdraw, Gates will be SecDef. But none of that matters; it tis nearly the holidays and we are going to Disneyland with Ben week after next – grandparents, mom and dad, Ben, his cousin Clay and Clay’s parents. It’s been about 20 years since I’ve been, so excited – like a grandkid.

This week, more suns; mine from Mexico. And three from my partner, Kathy Paupore, honoring several Eastern poets.

Kathy first, followed by three from me:

Gilded, At the Creek
after LiPo

I follow the sky, the rising sun wakes,
and love the cold creek's purple clarity;

eastern light reflects the water's way,
small currents lead a wanderer's heart.

a song, both sun and moon this morning,
snowflakes settle in the pines, soon white.

Radiant, Along The Path
after Wang Wei

Walking on aspen path near the creek
dappled with saffron leaves, birds fly up
scatter floating catkins caught in the light
a ponderous wave of joe-pye-weed sags.

Luminent, Last Flower
after Basho

One white chrysanthemum in the garden,
sickly, one bud droops in October's sun,
frozen, I am tempted to pick it,
it would melt in my hand--autumn frost.

*

Optimist, G-59

Wet volleys cheered from the palabla bar,
ready for the afternoon’s bingo game.
Two well-used cards to win, even blackout;
but first Cesar calls what players thinking:

“Somebody needs a drink.
Putta your hand in the air.”

One number left, the cry echoes, “Bingo.”

Effulgence, Indulgence

Down yet one more donkey path,
another agave tour;
even the Mexican air
broken on this old bus.

Home for the welcome party -
too many margaritas
proving the tired tourist adage,
“Tequila makes clothes fall off.”

Lustrous, Flight

Sunrise through my window on the way south,
as bright coming north, the shades closed both ways.
The silver waters below invisible,
green jungles that shine only in my mind.

*

Until next week.

Gary

Absences and Poetic States

2006-11-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

Five days after getting back from Mexico, I came down with a mean infection. I took me down for nine days - hard. Nearly better, but still a bit weak, so I will leave this week with a couple of new Poetic States:

Poetic States XVIII – Rhode Island

How in the World Did…
a state molded in miniature -
small enough to fit into Manhattan’s palm,
mostly water although not an island -
become one of these United States?

Granted she was the first
to declare independence from their King George
although she was the last to join the nation,
what does she offer us
that Iowa or Wyoming do not?

Back in Barnum’s day,
maybe even as late as fall, 2001,
she would have been the major set piece
in a flea circus along with a grain of rice
carved with most of the Bill of Rights.

Poetic States XIX - California

All the Gold in California

is really not in a bank vault
in Beverly Hills,
La Jolla, or Susanville

The vital color brightens
beaches along the Pacific,
oaks in hills above the Central Valley,

well-mined gravel beds
of the American River,
nuggets washed from hidden veins,

reflected towers of its cities,
waterfalls in the Sierra Nevada
a bridge across the Golden Gate

But most of all, in small town farms
raising oranges and grapefruit,
wheat, almonds and weed

to feed the nation
and keep it diverted

and so until next week when things will be better...

Smiles.

Gary