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

Back from Mexico with Suns and Silvia

2006-11-16T16:03:00.000-08:00

Hi, back Monday after 15 days in Puerto Vallarta – missing the last political ads, most of the talking heads dissecting the election, and a pineapple express. So relaxed, I needed a Jello mold to get me to the airport. I caught up on my mail, checked the property for downed trees and leaks, finding none, did some driveway and porch cleaning (which I will need to do again).

There is considerable contrast between the way they live in the Vallarta resort town, where ninety percent of employment is tourist related and here in the states. I wonder if we do not need a resort for them here with Anglos as the servants.

And there Election Day and pleasantly surprised at the results in Congress. We could get no Washington State news, so we had to wait until we got home. The Dems in Washington continued their wins in our state house and in Kitsap County and ballot measures aimed at maker the wealthy wealthier were defeated, leaving me pleased that common sense sometimes win.

Next, out with W. Out of Iraq.

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Before we get to our content, a couple of short brags.

Issue 29 of the Tanka Journal for the Japan Tanka Poets Society contains a review of The River Wang by David Anthony (the book available from Lulu for a few coins.

And I’m in A Chaos of Angels. Chaos is concerned about “a world addicted to chemically driven happiness. In a culture where biochemistry has become its own religion, spirituality is being replaced by serotonin manipulation and mood enhancers.”

The week’s article comes from Silvia Brandon-Perez, and deals with the troubles in Oaxaca state and the death of Brad Will. She writes in both English and Spanish:

Brad Will was a young IndyMedia reporter documenting the violence in Oaxaca; he was shot to death by government killers... I just translated one of his last journal entries... he could almost have written it for himself.

Que alguien me explique el porqué de esta muerte...
que alguien, aquél que se atreva,
me explique el porqué de esta muerte
y de aquel Alejandro, padre, esposo,
y los otros, cualquiera, les pido me expliquen
el porqué de estas muertes...
las balas que vuelan a acortar tantas vidas
las balas que tiran los matones vestidos
con la ropa del pueblo
que alguien me explique, exijo ahora mismo
que alguien me explique el porqué de estas muertes...

un chico valiente, un brad florecido
que alguien me explique
que lo explique alguien ahora y mañana
hedor de los cuerpos mal depositados
hedor de las carnes, los ojos, las moscas
¡qué alguien lo explique!
________________________________________

Let someone explain the wherefore of this dying...
let someone, let anyone who dares,
explain the why of this death
and of Alejandro, a father and husband,
and others, oh anyone, please, explain
why all these must die...
the bullets that fly out to strike down so many
from killers who dress
in the clothes of the people
let someone explain it, right now, I demand it
let someone explain just the why of these deaths...

a valiant young man, a flowering brad
let someone explain it
explain it now someone right now and tomorrow
the stench of the bodies reposing in morgues
the stench of the flesh, of the eyes, and the flies
LET SOMEONE EXPLAIN IT!

*

Death in Oaxaca by Brad Will early dawn, oct16

yesterday i went for a walk with the good people of oaxaca -- was walking all day really -- in the afternoon they showed me where the bullets hit the wall -- they numbered the ones they could reach -- it reminded me of the doorway of amadou diallos home -- but here the grafitti was there before the shooting began -- one bullet they didnt number was still in his head -- he was 41 years old -- alejandro garcia hernandez -- at the neighborhood barricade every night -- that night he came out to join his wife and sons to let an ambulance through -- then a pickup tried to follow -- he took their bullet when he told them they could not pass -- they never did -- these military men in civilian dress shot their way out of there

a young man who wanted to only be called marco was with them when the shooting happened -- a bullet passed through his shoulder -- he was clearly in shock when we met -- 19 years old -- said he hadnt told his parents yet -- said he had been at the barricade every night -- said he was going back as soon as the wound closed – absolutely

just days before there was a delegation of senators visiting to determine the ungovernability of the state -- they got a taste -- the call went out to shut down the rest of the government -- dozens went walking out of the zocalo city center with big sticks and a box full of spray paint -- they took control of 3 city buses and went around the city all morning visiting local government buildings and informing them that that they were closed -- and we appreciate your voluntary cooperation -- and they filed out preturbed but still getting paid -- shut -- as they pulled away from the last stop 3 gunmen came out and started shooting -- 2 buses had already pulled away -- mayhem -- 10 minute battle with stones and slingshots and screaming -- one headwound -- another through the leg -- made their way to the hospital while the fighting continued -- shout out on the radio and people came from all parts -- the gunmen were around the side of the building -- they got away -- they were inside -- no one sure -- watchful -- undercover police were reported lurking around the hospital and folks went running to stand watch over the wounded
what can you say about this movement -- this revolutionary moment -- you know it is building, growing, shaping -- you can feel it -- trying desperately for a direct democracy -- in november appo will have a state wide conference for the formation of a state wide assemblea estatal del pueblo de oaxaca (aepo) -- now there are 11 of 33 states in mexico that have declared formation of assemblea populares like appo -- and on la otra lado in the usa a few -- the marines have returned to sea even though the federal police who ravaged atenco remain close by -- the new encampment in mexico has begun a hunger strike -- the senate can expell URO -- whats next nobodies sure -- it is a point of light pressed through glass -- ready to burn or show the way -- it is clear that this is more than a strike, more than expulsion of a governor, more than a blockade, more than a coalition of fragments -- it is a genuine peoples revolt -- and after decades of pri rule by bribe, fraud, and bullet the people are tired -- they call him the tyrant -- they talk of destroying this authoritarianism -- you cannot mistake the whisper of the lancandon jungle in the streets -- in every street corner deciding together to hold -- you see it their faces -- indigenous, women, children -- so brave -- watchful at night -- proud and resolute

went walking back from alejandros barricade with a group of supporters who came from an outlying district a half hour away -- went walking with angry folk on their way to the morgue -- went inside and saw him -- havent seen too many bodies in my life -- eats you up -- a stack of nameless corpes in the corner -- about the number who had died -- no refrigeration -- the smell -- they had to open his skull to pull the bullet out -- walked back with him and his people
and now alejandro waits in the zocalo -- like the others at their plantones -- hes waiting for an impasse, a change, an exit, a way forward, a way out, a solution -- waiting for the earth to shift and open -- waiting for november when he can sit with his loved ones on the day of the dead and share food and drink and a song -- waiting for the plaza to turn itself over to him and burst -- he will only wait until morning but tonight he is waiting for the governor and his lot to never come back -- one more death -- one more martyr in a dirty war -- one more time to cry and hurt -- one more time to know power and its ugly head -- one more bullet cracks the night -- one more night at the barricades -- some keep the fires -- others curl up and sleep -- but all of them are with him as he rests one last night at his watch

uro= Ulises Ruiz Ortiz "governor" of the state of oaxaca planton= sit in, vigil, encampment zocalo= central plaza

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Muerte en Oaxaca por Brad Will temprano en la madrugada, oct16
ayer salí a caminar con la buena gente de oaxaca -- en realidad estuve caminando el día entero --por la tarde me enseñaron el lugar donde las balas le habían dado a la pared -- contaban las que podían alcanzar -- me recordó la puerta de la casa de amadou diallo -- pero aquí el grafiti ya estaba antes de que empezara el tiroteo -- una bala que no contaron fue la que estaba en su cabeza todavía -- tenía 41 años -- alejandro garcía hernández -- en las barricadas del barrio todas las noches -- esa noche vino a unirse a su mujer y sus hijos para dejar que pasara una ambulancia -- luego un camión pickup trató de seguirla -- él tomó la bala de ellos cuando les dijo que no podían pasar -- nunca lo hicieron -- estos militares en ropa de civil formaron una balacera para poder salir de allí

un joven que solamente quería que lo conocieran como marco estaba con ellos cuando empezaron los tiros -- le metieron un tiro por el hombro -- claramente estaba en estado de choque cuando nos conocimos -- 19 años -- me dijo que todavía no le había dicho nada a sus padres -- que había estado en las barricadas todas las noches -- que regresaría en cuanto se le cerrara la herida – absolutamente

días antes una delegación de senadores había estado de visita para determinar el grado de no-gobernabilidad del estado -- se dieron un gustito -- dijeron que había que cerrar el resto del gobierno -- docenas de personas saliendo del centro municipal del zócalo con palos enormes y una caja llena de pintura en aerosol -- se apoderaron de 3 ómnibus de la ciudad y estuvieron recorriendo la ciudad toda la mañana visitando edificios de gobierno locales e informándoles que estaban cerrados -- y que apreciamos su cooperación voluntaria -- y la gente salió, preocupada pero por lo menos les seguirían pagando -- cerrado -- mientras salían de la última parada 3 pistoleros vinieron y empezaron a disparar -- 2 ómnibus ya habían salido -- tumulto -- una batalla que duró 10 minutos con piedras y tirapiedras y gritos -- una herida en la cabeza -- otra a través de la pierna -- de algún modo llegaron al hospital mientras la pelea continuaba -- gritaban en el radio y la gente saliendo de todas partes -- los pistoleros estaban por el lado del edificio -- pudieron escaparse -- estaban adentro -- nadie está seguro -- vigilando -- reportajes de policía disfrazada merodeando el hospital y la gente corriendo para poder cuidar a los heridos -- qué se puede decir acerca del movimiento -- este momento revolucionario -- está creciendo, claramente, formándose, construyéndose -- se puede sentir -- intentando desesperadamente lograr una democracia directa -- en noviembre appo celebrará una conferencia a nivel estatal para la formación de una asamblea estatal del pueblo de oaxaca (aepo) -- ahora hay 11 de 33 estados en méxico que han declarado la formación de asambleas populares como appo -- y por el otro lado en los eeuu unos cuantos -- los marinos han vuelto al mar aunque la policía federal que hizo estragos en atenco anda cerca -- el nuevo campamento en méxico ha empezado una huelga de hambre -- el senado puede botar a URO -- nadie sabe qué vendrá luego -- es un punto de luz que se oprime a través de un cristal -- listo a saltar en llamas o a mostrar el camino -- es muy claro que esto es algo más que una huelga, más que la expulsión de un gobernador, más que un bloqueo, más que una coalición de fragmentos -- es una revolución del pueblo genuina -- y después de décadas de gobierno privado por medio de sobornos, fraude, y balas la gente está harta -- lo llaman el tirano -- hablan de acabar con este regimen autoritario -- no se puede equivocar el suspiro de la jungla lancandon en las calles -- en cada esquina decidiendo seguir juntos -- se les ve en las caras -- indígenas, mujeres, niños -- tan valientes -- vigilantes por la noche -- orgullosos y decididos
regresé caminando de la barricada de alejandro con un grupo de partidarios que vinieron de un distrito en las afueras a media hora - salí a caminar con gente enojada camino al depósito de cadáveres -- entré y lo vi -- no he visto muchos cadáveres en mi vida -- lo destruye a uno -- una pila de cadáveres sin nombre en una esquina -- sobre la cantidad de muertos -- no había refrigeración -- el olor -- tuvieron que abrirle el cráneo para poder sacarle la bala -- regresé a pie con él y su gente

y ahora alejandro espera en el zócalo -- como los otros en sus plantones -- está esperando un punto muerto, un cambio, una salida, alguna manera de ir hacia adelante, o de salir de este lío, una solución -- esperando que la tierra se mueva y se abra -- esperando el mes de noviembre cuando pueda sentarse con sus seres amados el día de los muertos y compartir comida y bebida y una canción -- esperando que la plaza se le entregue y explote -- solamente esperará hasta la mañan pero esta noche espera que el gobernador y su lote nunca regrese -- una muerte más -- un mártir más en una guerra cochina -- una vez más para llorar y sentir el dolor -- una vez más para conocer al poder y su horrible cabeza -- una bala más que raja la noche -- una noche más en las barricadas -- algunos mantienen los fuegos encendidos -- otros se enroscan y duermen --pero todos están con él mientras descansa una última noche en su puesto de vigilancia

uro= Ulises Ruiz Ortiz "governor" of the state of oaxaca planton= sit in, vigil, encampment zocalo= central plaza

*

A personal note: Will in Vallarta, a tour guide dismissed the troubles In Oaxaca as minor, of no importance. A week later, another, a local from one of the Jalisco tribes, was honest about the reasons for it, importance, and details about why they were in the University.

News get managed everywhere, albeit some more than others.

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Suns from Vallarta:

Grandson, Absence

Laughter of the brown boy in a shallow pool,
smile of the pale girl at play on a beach –
a relaxed grandfather wishes to hear,
“Papa, play with me, read me a story.”

Sunwear, Two Piece

Where pelicans struggle against a wind
carelessly drifting from the open sea,
I lean against the pool wall, watch new guests
unsure they should expose too much pale skin.

There might be more next week.

Until then, peace.

Gary

Suns and Notes

2006-10-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

Sign found in a rest room:

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
--The Bayou, Baton Rouge

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If I read the news right, the administration and GOP is considering a change of course in Iraq. (By the way, W says they never said “stay the course.) Remember there is an election three weeks away, so it is time to wag the dog, even if only a little bit. Do you want to bet the talk will end after the election?

And whether we will have an orange alert around Halloween?

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Check out Portland Horses

The poem is by MJM, one of the owners of Wild Poetry, a good friend and great poet.

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More Suns

Bright Star, Artist

The long green season fades into scarlet,
gold, orange – colors brightened by noon’s light –
an artist’s genius charms our senses
before the canvas brushed with frosted white.

Match, Generations

Like Grandma sliding into base,
like Dad stuffing the quarterback -
he shines, goal blocked to win the game
in which no one is keeping score.

Candle, Wickless

Faded words cross the page, a verse incomplete –
difficult to read in the taper’s last smoke.
In the light of day, do we know the poet’s
intent among empty bottles, torn paper?

Sun Song, Last Note

Ten thousand sparks, ten thousand suns brighten
the way to ten thousand resurrections –
each meant to lead me to the Golden Land,
ten thousand times ten thousand necessary.

*

We are about to head to Mexico for a long vacation. (Can a retiree really have vacations?) Therefore, my next blog will not be until after the 14th. Maybe then, we will see a MindFire War and Peace Supplement.

Under next month, be cool and

Smiles.

Gary

Another Sun and A poem by Thomas

2006-10-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Thomas Fortenberry agreed to let me give you this poem about one of our too many holidays:

Columbus Day

anchored expectations
line the rails of their arrival

burned sailors bend oars for shore
bringing two continents together

pale priests hold their skirts above the surf
not wishing to dirty themselves
on these native shores

silently they scan the surrounding savages
minds full of crucifixion and anxious to begin
their lessons, spreading the Word

Apocalypse

It will also be published by Silvia in her El Nuevo Malcriado, a print magazine.

Silvia also sent me this brilliant work by Chris Hedges:

Bush's Nuclear Apocalypse
by Chris Hedges

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran‹a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as "the Axis of Evil." They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky's doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.

But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.

The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran¹s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel. These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word "Dimona," the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims' existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?

Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making "preemptive"
and unprovoked strikes.

Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.

"As a people we are enormously forgetful," Dr. Polk, one of the country¹s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. "We should have learned from history that foreign powers can¹t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can't always succeed against the poor and less powerful."

An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the
widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program "the Samson option." The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.

Chris Hedges is the author of the bestselling and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and What Every Person Should Know about War. His newest book, Losing Moses on the Freeway will be published in June 2005 by Free Press.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C.

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And from Thomas this important link about the film, Quiet Revolution, which is a must see:
Quiet Revolution

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Finally, my last Sun:

Sundowner, Night’s Day

He waits hidden behind dusty curtains
for the last light to fade, the sun to sleep.
He waits for an evening when ghosts walk
and his kind can hide among the costumed.

Until next week.

Smiles.

Gary

Still more Suns and misc stuff

2006-10-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

I went to Corvallis to see the Oregon State/Washington State game on the 7th. While I don't have much interest in the game, my money went to Oregon State. Odd place - the fans stand nearly the whole game. BTW, Oregon State lost.

*

Thomas Fortenberry sent this

Two Thousand Six Hundred Souls

a song by Paul Hipp. Every one should listen to it.

He also wrote "Someone Please Save the World" which you can listen to on his MySpace.

I see trees of green
Burn in the west
Storms in the south
While the icecaps are a mess
And I think to myself
Someone please save the world

I see skies of grey
Ink marks of black
Left on scientific texts
By White House hacks
And I say to myself
Someone please save the world

The colors of pollution are so nasty in the sky
They're also in the cancer cells of people walking by
I see folks in high places saying global warming¹s crap
They may as well be saying
Earth is flat

I hear babies cry
As well they should
The planet they're inheriting
Might just be screwed for good
And I think to myself
Someone please save the world
Yes I say top myself
Someone please save the world
Yes I think to myself
Someone please save the world.

Email: decider.koo.koo.ka.choo@gmail.com

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The Suns as promised:

Sun Blind, Highways

Headed east on the early morning run,
glare on the windshield speaks as if from God;
returning west in the late afternoon,
sharp glints map the way to my place in Hell.

Sun-up, To the Farm

Café invasion - a large family
on their way to the best jack-o-lantern –
french toast, biscuits and gravy, eggs over –
daughter’s trauma of whites not fully cooked.

*

Until next week. Please cool and remember you can make a difference if you help throw the villians out this November.

Smiles.

Gary

More Suns and a Letter to W

2006-10-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Lamp, All Saint’s Eve

Spider webs glisten
in the candle’s glow,
piercing the orange dusk
through carved pumpkin shells.

Jack-o-lanterns line
the leaf-blown sidewalk,
beacons for witches, ghosts –
children in search of treats.

Orient, Poet

The eastern sun warms his morning coffee;
afternoons, an eastern view shades his nap
interrupted when she walks up his steps,
new jueju lost when he hears her voice smile.

*

Provided by my friend, Silvia Antonia

A letter to President George Bush

The Olympian's Editorial Board, September 11

Mr. President, aren't you tired yet?

How often can you mouth the same meaningless platitudes, the half-truths, the thinly veiled linkage between Iraq and 9/11, the ever-shifting excuses for failure?

You and your administrations' bully boys are on the third national tour to drum up support for your war of choice in Iraq and nothing has changed.

You and your administration say: stay the course; fight them there so we don't have to fight them here; don't cut and run; critics are unpatriotic or worse, appeasers to Islamic fascism; we'll stand down when they stand up; Iraq is the central front on the war on terrorism.

We're tired, Mr. President. We're tired of the rhetoric.

Remember: Iraq is a growing and immediate threat; Mission Accomplished; we'll be greeted as liberators; I can't imaging the war taking more than six months (Donald Rumsfeld); it's pretty well confirmed that the head of the 9/11 attack met with Iraqi secret service in Prague (Dick Cheney); it won't take hundreds of thousands of soldiers to subdue Iraq; Iraqi oil will pay for the war; we've found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (Bush); a democratically elected government will spread democracy around the Middle East; the insurgency is in its last throes . . .?

Mr. President, aren't you tired of your administration calling the more than 2,600 dead soldiers, the 19,000 wounded in combat and the more than 40,000 dead Iraqis "just a number?"

We're tired, Mr. President. We're tired of the incompetence, the death, the destruction.

Soldiers are doing a spectacular job on the ground, but even the best general has no hope when operating under a flawed strategy.

Mr. President, it's time to hold people accountable and regain the sense of unity that enveloped this nation in the wake of the 9/11 attack.

With all due respect, Mr. President, it's time to develop a bipartisan strategy for extricating this country from the misguided war in Iraq and focus on real solutions to the war on terror.

You may not be tired, Mr. President, but we are tired. We are sick and tired of the rhetoric, the incompetence and your politicization of this sacred day.

(The Olympian is from Olympia, WA.)

Colored Suns and Published

2006-09-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

I have started doing my Suns with some repeated color, probably forcing them a bit but they are fun:

Sun Room, Treasured

Yellow walls reflect fresh chrysanthemums;
a yellow bowl holds lemons and sliced pears;
The Yellow Book abandoned on a striped couch,
its worn, yellowed pages, well read, waiting.

Blush, Leaf Fall

Scarlet leaves and gold fill our pockets, boots,
crimson sweater and wool plaid cast aside
to frolic among newly raked foliage -
red leaves tinged with orange all the dress you need.

Scintillation, Senior Moment

A sliver of light brightens her silver hair,
grey dawn promises to be a dazzling day.
A dollop of light cream, whites fully cooked,
breakfast in bed celebrates our sterling years.

Fulgor, Greening

Among hardwoods, midyear green slowly fades;
evergreens continue a thousand shades -
forests emerald through second summer
until frost dulls needles and fresh green grass.

Aurora, Last Camas

A lake of blue flowers floods oaken woods,
afternoon skies reflect the azure pond –
your sapphire eyes return the sun’s soft rays,
my navy shirt lost in your tie-died wrap.

Kathy Paupore, my partner, and I are considering a chapbook with several of the Suns. We have 250 names identified and can always use more.

*

The publication news: Allen Itz is going to publish my Commandment poems in his extensive and entertaining blog. Acees his blog by the first link on your left.

I am in a book edited by Alice Pero and Lois Jones: A Chaos of Angels at www.lulu.com or www.wordwalkerpress.com.html According to Lois, the volume is "“The poems demonstrate the driving force of the individual – the power and passion of a being whose magnitude and potential are limitless."

I will be reading my work from the book and a couplee of others at the Juice Goddess in Wallingford, Seattle, Friday, September 30 at 7. See the Word Walker link for directions.

Finally, for the second year in a row, I am included in The Tanka Society of Japan's Gendai Manyoshu 2006 with:

The Names for Rain in a Northwest Sky

mist drifts
onto a lily’s blooms
its color weakened
as the gray droplets
of morning settle

purple cotton
cloudbursts fill the sky
with heat
sheets of jagged lightning
and a sense of futility

the patter
on our old tin roof
magnified
by emptied rooms
and the lack of laughter

*

And if you are looking for another good author, check out Robert Littel. His Legends is a thriller reader's dream.

Until next week.

Gary

It's Nuts on Both Sides of the Divide

2006-09-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

Two news stories which tell me that we are all a bit of the edge - East or West - some of us are just a bit further -

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under

United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

"We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," said Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer. "We've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure."

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide - 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.

In Hussein's case, the military has not provided any concrete evidence to back up the vague allegations they have raised about him, Curley and other AP executives said.

The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces," according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.

"The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities," Gardner wrote to AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

Hussein proclaims his innocence, according to his Iraqi lawyer, Badie Arief Izzat, and believes he has been unfairly targeted because his photos from Ramadi and Fallujah were deemed unwelcome by the coalition forces.

That Hussein was captured at the same time as insurgents doesn't make him one of them, said Kathleen Carroll, AP's executive editor.

"Journalists have always had relationships with people that others might find unsavory," she said. "We're not in this to choose sides, we're to report what's going on from all sides."

AP executives in New York and Baghdad have sought to persuade U.S. officials to provide additional information about allegations against Hussein and to have his case transferred to the Iraqi criminal justice system. The AP contacted military leaders in Iraq and the

Pentagon, and later the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach. But with the U.S. military giving no indication it would change its stance, the news cooperative has decided to make public Hussein's imprisonment, hoping the spotlight will bring attention to his case and that of thousands of others now held in Iraq, Curley said.

One of Hussein's photos was part of a package of 20 photographs that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last year. His contribution was an image of four insurgents in Fallujah firing a mortar and small arms during the U.S.-led offensive in the city in November 2004.

In what several AP editors described as a typical path for locally hired staff in the midst of a conflict, Hussein, a shopkeeper who sold cell phones and computers in Fallujah, was hired in the city as a general helper because of his local knowledge.

As the situation in Fallujah eroded in 2004, he expressed a desire to become a photographer. Hussein was given training and camera equipment and hired in September of that year as a freelancer, paid on a per-picture basis, according to Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography. A month later, he was put on a monthly retainer.

During the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah in November 2004, he stayed on after his family fled. "He had good access. He was able to photograph not only the results of the attacks on Fallujah, he was also able to photograph members of the insurgency on occasion," Lyon said. "That was very difficult to achieve at that time."

After fleeing later in the offensive, leaving his camera behind in the rush to escape, Hussein arrived in Baghdad, where the AP gave him a new camera. He then went to work in Ramadi which, like Fallujah, has been a center of insurgent violence.

In its own effort to determine whether Hussein had gotten too close the insurgency, the AP has reviewed his work record, interviewed senior photo editors who worked on his images and examined all 420 photographs in the news cooperative's archives that were taken by Hussein, Lyon said.

The military in Iraq has frequently detained journalists who arrive quickly at scenes of violence, accusing them of getting advance notice from insurgents, Lyon said. But "that's just good journalism. Getting to the event quickly is something that characterizes good journalism anywhere in the world. It does not indicate prior knowledge," he said.

Out of Hussein's body of work, only 37 photos show insurgents or people who could be insurgents, Lyon said. "The vast majority of the 420 images show the aftermath or the results of the conflict - blown up houses, wounded people, dead people, street scenes," he said.

Only four photos show the wreckage of still-burning U.S. military vehicles.

"Do we know absolutely everything about him, and what he did before he joined us? No. Are we satisfied that what he did since he joined us was appropriate for the level of work we expected from him? Yes," Lyon said. "When we reviewed the work he submitted to us, we found it appropriate to what we'd asked him to do."

The AP does not knowingly hire combatants or anyone who is part of a story, company executives said. But hiring competent local staff in combat areas is vital to the news service, because often only local people can pick their way around the streets with a reasonable degree of safety.

"We want people who are not part of a story. Sometimes it is a judgment call. If someone seems to be thuggish, or like a fighter, you certainly wouldn't hire them," Daniszewski said. After they are hired, their work is checked carefully for signs of bias.

Lyon said every image from local photographers is always "thoroughly checked and vetted" by experienced editors. "In every case where there have been images of insurgents, questions have been asked about circumstances under which the image was taken, and what the image shows," he said.

Executives said it's not uncommon for AP news people to be picked up by coalition forces and detained for hours, days or occasionally weeks, but never this long. Several hundred journalists in Iraq have been detained, some briefly and some for several weeks, according to Scott Horton, a New York-based lawyer hired by the AP to work on Hussein's case.

Horton also worked on behalf of an Iraqi cameraman employed by CBS, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, who was detained for one year before his case was sent to an Iraqi court on charges of insurgent activity. He was acquitted for lack of evidence.

AP officials emphasized the military has not provided the company concrete evidence of its claims against Bilal Hussein, or provided him a chance to offer a defense.

"He's a Sunni Arab from a tribe in that area. I'm sure he does know some nasty people. But is he a participant in the insurgency? I don't think that's been proven," Daniszewski said.

Information provided to the AP by the military to support the continued detention hasn't withstood scrutiny, when it could be checked, Daniszewski said.

For example, he said, the AP had been told that Hussein was involved with the kidnapping of two Arab journalists in Ramadi.

But those journalists, tracked down by the AP, said Hussein had helped them after they were released by their captors without money or a vehicle in a dangerous part of Ramadi. After a journalist acquaintance put them in touch with Hussein, the photographer picked them up, gave them shelter and helped get them out of town, they said.

The journalists said they had never been contacted by multinational forces for their account.

Horton said the military has provided contradictory accounts of whether Hussein himself was a U.S. target last April or if he was caught up in a broader sweep.

The military said bomb-making materials were found in the apartment where Hussein was captured but it never detailed what those materials were. The military said he tested positive for traces of explosives. Horton said that was virtually guaranteed for anyone on the streets of Ramadi at that time.

Hussein has been a frequent target of conservative critics on the Internet, who raised questions about his images months before the military detained him. One blogger and author, Michelle Malkin, wrote about Hussein's detention on the day of his arrest, saying she'd been tipped by a military source.

Carroll said the role of journalists can be misconstrued and make them a target of critics. But that criticism is misplaced, she said.

"How can you know what a conflict is like if you're only with one side of the combatants?" she said. "Journalism doesn't work if we don't report and photograph all sides."

And from the other side -

IRAN: MAGAZINE CLOSED BECAUSE OF POEM

Tehran, 19 Sept. (AKI) - Iranian authorities closed the magazine Nameh (letter) because it published an anti-war poem by one of the country's most famous poets, Simin Behbahani, the editor in chief Keyvan Samimi said on Tuesday. One week after the intelligence ministry withdrew the magazine's publication license, the editor told Adnkronos International (AKI) authorities had informed him "that I published a poem offending the leader of the revolution." "The poem was published a few years ago in a poetry book which was never withdrawn from sale," added the journalist.

In the poem Simin Behbahani criticises war in general as well as the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq.

(Rah/Aki)

I hope I am forgiven for including one of her poems, but they are important and should be read by all of us. Do Google her for more:

Banu, Our Lady

Banu, Our Lady,
this is my gift to you. Accept it.
This said, he raised his offering
and threw it down the stairs.
On the ground, the sacrificial victim
twisted with pain.
A stream of blood followed his fall.
Silence followed his screams.
A demon had made an offering,
and a person had ceased to exist.
Oh... for the child lost so young!
A hundred times Oh... for the old mother.

Banu, Our Lady, I dreamt I saw you
in the halo of the moon,
your face pale, your eyes red with sorrow.
In your arms you held two sons,
one perfect like the full moon,
the other radiant like the sun.
You sat beside the corpse,
with the road-dust still on your face,
your soul scalded by sorrow,
your heart tired of arrows.
You complained: O Justice! O Faith!
O, the shamelessness of the brute -
offering me a corpse
and asking me to accept it!

Banu, Our Lady, you shed a deluge of tears
over the man murdered by such ignorance.
You turned your silken coat to a shroud
to cover his body.

O, Banu, our guide! O, Banu, our savior,
O, Banu, unblemished! O, Banu, full of light!

What the poem is about: On Thursday evening, July 8, 1999, soldiers and vigilantes invaded a dormitory at the University of Tehran. This had been the first day of student protests against the new censorship laws and the forced closing of the newspaper Salam. The invaders attacked the students, beating many and throwing some out of the windows. The poem "Banu, Our Lady" is an expression of outrage by Simin Behbahani, author of over a dozen books of poetry in Persian and recipient of the Human Rights Watch/Hellman-Hammet grant, for her struggle for freedom of expression in Iran. It focuses on a scene of this rampage: an attacker invoking the name of Fatemeh Zahra, the beloved daughter of the Prophet, while pushing a student to his death.

(poem and explanation from http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2006/03/simin_behbahani.html)

*

A small amount about me: I should have posted this week a couple of days ago, but we are moving my mother-in-law to a new house with long tiring days. If I had though the above would not have been posted.

Until next week.

Gary

Bluegrass and

2006-09-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

We spend last weekend at a Bluegrass festival in Tumwater, WA with the RV club - great music, fun and compainship - this wee beat resulted...

Drought, Picking

Friday, the banjo lights the grass on fire,
the night’s shower barely dampens the park’s dust.
Saturday, guitars ignite audience;
morning, a hush for fiery gospel pickers.

This week moving mom-in-law into her new house, leaving no time for anything poetic or related...

But some good publication news re Lois P. Jones, known as Emusing on the boards:

Well if anyone has wondered where I’ve been I’m here to unveil the reason: a chaos of angels (Word Walker Press). It’s a project co-editor Alice Pero and I have been working on for nearly two years and it’s finally finished. While we are using lulu at the moment as our print on demand facility, we have created our own organization, http://www.wordwalkerpress.com to facilitate the book’s exposure and to publish future works on the subject of artists motivating change. Some of our very own Wilders have contributed to chaos

Just to give you an example I haven’t washed my hair in four days (yuck) and have been promoting the hell out of the site and the book. We already have an article in Los Angeles Citybeat (circ. 100,000) that just came out yesterday announcing the anthology and the reading on Monday, September 11th at Moonday. There is already some good buzz happening on the book, actress Catherine Bell is promising to promote the book to all her friends and place a link on her website.

As to a note to any of my friends who are on prescriptive meds, this is not a book bashing their use, it is rather a hopeful and inspired look at alternatives to medication for anyone who is interested in that. The book contains a list of resources at the back for more information on alternative therapies.

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I'm in the book.

And btw, I have written with Alice in one dialogue or another for years.

And to close, a couple of authors I recommend, mystery and thriller writers: Loise Lippman out of Baltimore - Try her Sugar House or To the Power of Three - and Mike Lawson of Seattle - his second Second Perimeter just out with the right level of thriller and humor.

Until next week.

Smiles.

Gary

Poetic States: KS, IA, LA

2006-09-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

The August/September Fireweed is ready to read. See the link in the upper left.

Three more poetic states, though Kansas tried to do me in --

Kansas: The Bloody Center

In the middle of the nation,
astride the route buffalo roamed
between Canada and Spanish territories,
Bleeding Kansas from Lawrence to Dodge -
Quantrill, John Brown and Earp -
the center of American mythos.

Trails that left scars on the grasslands;
took us to Oregon, Utah, and Santa Fe,
to points in every direction south and west
for gold, freedom without neighbors
crowding against the back section,
to escape dust and starvation;
brought news, mail, rawboned cattle
and the men who drove them north.

Trails that led hard men to murder
that captured our attention in books
and film, and someday song and dance –
“In Cold Blood: The Musical.”

*

Iowa: Long Live the King: First Caucus

They descend like maggots scenting red meat,
a plague of politicians strive to render
their fellow travelers so impotent even drugs sold
on television could not help them rise again.

Through complications worthy of Byzantium,
farmers and fundamentalists will select
a party’s candidate for president of these States,
though mostly the weak starve
and the strong move on to even stranger
processes designed to prove Darwin.

They arrive like cancer to a smoke-filled lung,
an illness we cannot seem to correct,
and may not want to if indeed it is the best
of all the bad systems used to select a king.

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Louisiana: Second City

The odor of the city is in the air
as if roadkill was left too long
on asphalt before being added to roux.
The resonance of the city fills
the air as if the helicopters became
lost on their way to home base.

The city is in the air to fill the dead
space before the anniversary
of a disaster that did not kill a city.

The heroic received everything a city
in need might desire, the swamped
receives nervous glances -
the third world brought to our shores
as if the city was at fault a storm blew.

The city permeates the air
and we wish its uncomfortable dirge
would float back across the Atlantic.

Back between trips

2006-08-29T12:54:00.000-07:00

Back from our travels to Toppenish and Albany. In the former, Yakama reservation, where they raise gaint vegtables, and those much more tasty than anything found in a modern supermarket. Hot house tomatoes taste like cardboard compared to sun and vine ripened.

In Albany, we stayed at the Blue Ox RV Park, which next to TimberLinn city park. It was the weekend of the Air and Art Show. For three mornings I had the pleasure of seeing between 30 and 40 hot air balloons ascend and travel south. Surprisingly, they did not travel far, only between 5 and 10 miles, which would take about an hour. The cost to ride - $300 to $500 - ouch pricy. Needless to say, I did not ride, but I did get some poems for the Names of the Sun series I am writing with Kathy Papoure. Even numbered poems are hers, odd numbered mine.

By the way, we got rain last night, a trace at best; so it is a good day to wash the RV.

Have a good end of August and see you next month.

Smiles.

Gary

*

112. Glare, Parched

Days dry waiting for rain
the sun awake all night,
small bites in zucchini
red strawberries stolen.

The thirsty thief unseen
sneaks under leaf edges,
chatters at passerby
steals the garden's bounty.

113. Morning, First Light

A feathered chorus greets awakening,
morning light spills shadows upon the sheets.
You move close as the first rays strike your eyes,
I move closer when your covers fall away.

114. Never Setting Sun

Blue sky burdened with the bulk of clouds;
along the creek, golden rod, joe-pye weed --
sunset blooming near the water's edge,
dusk will arrive soon, your heart calls me home.

115. Sheen, Drought

Blue skies brushed with wisps of colorless clouds,
too thin to stop the sun’s relentless glare;
clear horizons spackled with tufts of white,
too minute to hold a single dry drop .

116. Sun Flight, Change

This old path, hardwoods once shaded the way,
the scent of saw-felled pine dry on the breeze;
aspen thickets gather in the barrens,
perhaps more tiger swallowtails in spring.

117. Illuminate, Air Show

The damselfly brightens the morning sky
as it flits among balloons descending
unbidden on newly harvested fields,
smell wrong for blossoms so full of color.

118. Bowl Of Light

I see your damselfly, smell ripe pumpkins;
my sunflowers tower, maroon faces.
Tomatoes galore, jars of dill pickles,
petals and wings pressed, color for cold days.

119. Flambeau, Farm

Displayed, tomatoes as large as grapefruit;
summer squash in need of a truck to haul.
A watermelon nursed by desert sun,
perfect for a grandson’s birthday present.

120. Rain Light, Jubilation

Ruby hummingbirds sit on pine branches,
open wings to catch blue beads, splash and bathe;
sun dry they hover feeder to flower,
rays of light chase each other across sky.

121. Rainbow, Along the River

A plume of smoke rises from blackened fields,
hawks hover over once golden stubble.
Hot air balloons ascend at day’s first light,
every rainbow shade tints the stream’s flow.

A Letter from Silvia Brandon Perez

2006-08-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

But first - I was gone all last week entertaining the grandson with enough to make a kid's entire summer - the beach, fairs, swimming, parks, playgrounds and more.

The spammers are now pretending to be the IRS, looking for the truly greedy. They send mail indicating you are due a small refund, and if you bit...! Probably illegal, so maybe this time they have went too far.

Silvia is an old friend who devotes her life to peace and immigration law. The following letter was sent to her local paper, but was not published. I will include another in the next issue of FireWeed due out soon (if I quit traveling modumless).

Gentlemen:

As someone with over thirty years of experience in the immigration field, I dispute, refute, and am appalled by the newest spate of racist scapegoating of our immigrants.

In study after study, it has been shown that immigrants do not have a negative effect on the economy, nor are they the cause of more crimes than the general 'native' population. For example, in 1998, a 32-page report incorporating the findings of more than two dozen national studies, published by Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute and entitled, "A Fiscal Portrait of the Newest Americans," ended with the comment:

"Overall, the research findings cited in this report suggest, first, that the American economy is greatly enriched by immigrants of all educational levels and ethnicities and, second, that immigrants are a fiscal bargain for American taxpayers."

In the August 2005, Vol 95, No. 8 of the American Journal of Public Health 1431-1438 © 2005 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.044602, a report on health care entitled: Health Care Expenditures of Immigrants in the United States: A Nationally Representative Analysis, found that

"Health care expenditures are substantially lower for immigrants than for US-born persons. Our study refutes the assumption that immigrants represent a disproportionate financial burden on the US health care system. "

Concerning Latino immigration in particular, a study released in 2003 by Walter A. Ewing, Ph.D. and Benjamin Johnson* of the American Immigration Law Foundation indicates that "Latinos experience substantial socioeconomic progress across generations compared to both their immigrant forefathers and native Anglos. But this fact is lost in statistical portraits of the Latino population which don’t distinguish between the large number of newcomers and those who have been in the United States for generations. Advocates of restrictive immigration policies often use such aggregate statistics to make the dubious claim that Latinos are unable or unwilling to advance like the European immigrants of a century ago."

The study cites the then campaign by immigration restrictionists concerning European immigration; Henry Cabot Lodge's comments are cited below. Sound familiar?

Representative Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA), spoke about the worries concerning the wave of immigration (1891) by warning that “that immigration to this country is increasing and…is making its greatest relative increase from races most alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races.” He was speaking principally of the Italians, but also the Russians, Poles and Hungarians. He observed that these immigrants, “half of whom have no occupation and most of whom represent the rudest form of labor,” are “people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.” Lodge complained that many of them “have no money at all. They land in this country without a cent in their pockets.” Of the Italians in particular he objected that many “stay but a short time in the United States” in order to “then return to their native country with such money as they have been able to save here.” He warned that these sorts of immigrants, “who come to the United States, reduce the rate of wages by ruinous competition, and then take their savings out of the country, are not desirable. They are mere birds of passage. They form an element in the population which regards home as a foreign country, instead of that in which they live and earn money. They have no interest or stake in the country, and they never become American citizens.”

In fact, a recent study by professors at Babson College reported in Inc. Magazine, July 19th of this year, shows that immigrants are an essential component of the nation's entrepreneurial culture.

"Immigrants tend to be younger and have more children to help build new businesses," said Maria Minniti, a Babson College professor who co-wrote the study and directs research at the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an international research group that gauges entrepreneurial activity in 39 countries worldwide.

Concerning crime among immigrant populations, that is another fallacy not supported by the facts. The Migration Policy Institute in Washington has completed a study about immigrants and the justice system, based on a micro sample from the 2000 National Census.

"Contrary to a lot of erroneous public perceptions, immigrants actually have the lowest rate of incarceration for criminal offenses of any population group in the country," according to director Kathleen Newland. Those most likely to be incarcerated are males with low education, usually high school dropouts; for the immigrant population, however:

“Some of the lowest educated immigrant groups on average like Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, have an incarceration rate of about half of one percent," she said. "They are lower even than the general immigrant population."

This is business as usual. We are living in an imperial, colonialistic society, which attempts to blame its problems on outsiders, rather than looking closely at how the society's own racism and colonial practices actually creates the conditions complained of, so that 'immigrants' become the scapegoats for all the social ills. The scapegoat is an old social animal... the newest ones are the Latino immigrants.

*Benjamin Johnson is the Director of the Immigration Policy Center and Walter Ewing is a Research Associate with the Center

Respectfully submitted,

Silvia A. Brandon Pérez, J.D.

*

I read a lot about immegration in the editorial pages and am convinced most of what is said is disquised racism.

Closing with a Chinese Brush Limerick

The Beat Goes On...

Beware of when the Browns immigrate,
they want us to be a third world state
with their gangish ways
and saint holidays.
Fence our borders before it's too late.

Read a little American history, not the kind found in UStates' schools and tell me when official policy did not warn of a red, brown, black or yellow peril.

Gone next week again, so see you in two.

Smiles.

Gary

Poetic States - Montana and Ohio

2006-08-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

Montana

The Shining Mountains

The explorers entered near the mouth
of the Yellowstone and left east
of Lolo Pass, the Missouri’s length
explored past the convergence to the source.
They returned and left at the same points
on the way to report to Mr Jefferson,
the Marias and Yellowstone surveyed.

They never found the Northwest Passage,
but no one else has either, at least
until the Years of the Earth’s Warming
and the green grass they discovered growing
high as a horse’s mane disappeared
as bison and free men of the plains
did before the Constitution a century old.

*

Ohio

The Way to a Poet’s Heart

Ohio will always be special to me.
The only person I ever found who knew
what leather britches are besides my family,
I found in a fake Indian village in Dayton,
trapped on the weekend during a business trip

She sat in a lath and daub house to teach
visitors how to grind corn, make succotash,
what was safe to eat and how to fix it
(which doesn’t include skunk cabbage),
and she knew what leather britches are.

The only person outside of my family
unless you do.

We talked about mountain food,
comfort food,
homespun,
real food,
and she made Ohio special…

*

SunWatch, Ohio

Along the Miami, near ancient mounds,
a thatch covered house, no more than a shack –
a place to remember how things were done
when the people roamed the river valley.

http://www.sunwatch.org/index.html

Linking and more states

2006-08-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

A friend reminded me that if someone links to you, you should to them. So I've added several links to blogs and other pages on the left. I'll do more as time goes on. Maybe yours?

In the meanwhile, I'm adding too more states: Hawaii and Michigan. It will be a few days before I add others, we are going to Oregon and take Ben, the grandson, camping. I will probably be modumless.

Enjoy the sun.

Smiles.

Gary

*

Hawaii

Malihini

I have often heard a lava rock
removed from Pele’s home
will bring pilikia to the thief. -

even if you have rung a temple bell
for long life and the best of luck,
ridden a nui North Shore wave,

tendered care to Molokai’s lepers,
planted taro and learned to like poi,
or simply spent your island days

on the beach as the green spot
appears at sunset, a bikini-clad
wahini cuddled in your arms

One small pahoehoe stone,
and my new rock wall keeps falling over.

Malihini – tourist, one unfamiliar with a place or custom
Nui – big
Pahoehoe – smooth lava
Pilikia – trouble of any kind

*

Michigan

Above the Bridge
(for Kathy)

Dozens of suns illuminate its shores,
light the lamps that mark its rocks,
raise the midges who raise the trout,
waken Paul’s crew for their day’s work

Scores of suns to stir deer and grouse,
to wing snow geese west,
turn white pine and paper birch,
redden sugar maple, vine and oak

Hundreds of suns to ripen strawberries,
warm the lakes for troll vacations,
mature the pumpkins for fall’s harvest,
melt ice and frost for spring planting

Thousands of suns to bring us home,
to exalt the land between the lakes.

Try this contest...

2006-07-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

What inspires you? Tell me in a poem of thirty lines or less, any form. Send your entries to me at editorctrip@yahoo.com by midnight on Thursday, August 31, Eastern time. Winners will be published on my blog and first prize winner also receives a copy of the CD of the Charlotte production of highlights from the musical by composer Erik Sitbon and myself, "Jack The Musical: The Ripper Pursued." Good luck!

Chris George
http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/ http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/index.htm

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I have the album and you will enjoy it. We did a portion of the play in MindFire.

And some day, when Chris wins a Tony...

Smiles.

Gary

Catching up on the Poetic States TX, DEL, SD

2006-07-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Eleven done, so at this time I will post 3 more and 3 more Wednesday or so: Texas, Delaware and South Dakota

Smiles.

Gary

*

Texas

Larger than a Breadbox

You are too huge to be captured
in verse written by a minor poet
who knows that it takes two days
to cross you no matter where the start.

and you raised two modern presidents –
one mostly good, the other a bit less,
though they both seemed all too fond
of guerilla wars that couldn’t be won.

Nothing more needs to be mentioned
in a short poem but Dick’s Riverwalk,
the perfect place for tequila shots
and buckets of boiled crawdads

as we forget which war explodes now
and the humidity blowing from the Gulf.

*

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

rode through the July night, thunder
and storm his sole companions,
to cast a vote to break a deadlock
that allowed Jefferson’s Declaration.

“The oddest looking man in the world,”*
his face marred with painful cancer,
he did not live to see the Constitution
his home state was first to ratify.

Flip a Delaware quarter on its back
and see sick Caesar’s heroic ride.
Paul Revere may have warned the farms
the British were on the march,

but Delaware’s Rodney rode his black horse
as hard for the colony’s independence
against his friend’s and neighbor’s wishes.

*John Adams

*

South Dakota

Crazy Horse Died for Your Sins

On the southern border of South Dakota,
the border to Pine Ridge Reservation,
is a town where booze flows as free
as blood flowed on the Little Big Horn.

A short walk across the border,
along a road lined with aluminum
no one bothers to collect for recycle,
liquor sold legal under Nebraska law.

Sold to the nation’s poorest population,
sold to the most alcoholic citizens,
sold only in the interest of money,
and not for the reason Frank Baum

editorialized after Wounded Knee:
Having wronged them for centuries,
we had better, in order to protect
our civilization, follow it up
by one more wrong and wipe
these untamed and untamable
creatures from the face of the earth.*

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

North Carolina

2006-07-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

We have been in a heat wave. Records ties and broken for the last week. It's finally broke with temps expected in the 80's, still almost 10 deprees over normal. If there is global warming what bodes for the rhodies and other plants that need less heat.

#5 in Poetic States is about North Carolina, where my MindFire partner, Thomas Fortenberry lives.

http://thomasfortenberry.net/

Until next week, keep cool.

Smiles.

Gary

North Carolina

Hidden behind the Piedmont

I consider North Carolina less
often than I consider Delaware
which is only when I consider
“What did Delaware?”

If it were not for basketball,
hog farms, BBQ, and poetic friends,
I might think of North Carolina less
than I think of American Samoa.

Because Hatteras and Nags Head push
their noses out into the Atlantic to snatch
hurricanes, we all might mull over
North Carolina less except in March.

Wedged between Virginia and South Carolina,
at least North Carolina can say it is not Iowa.

Poetic States: New York

2006-07-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Mohawks on Broadway

Remember your big fight scene
in Last of the Mohicans,
where Hawkeye and Chingachgook
fight the Huron enemy atop palisades
actually filmed in North Carolina.

The beauty of Saratoga needed
a stand-in to satisfy Hollywood.

Regardless, you have everything,
besides natural beauty: wealth,
power, history, art and the Yankees,
Erie Canal, finger lakes and Hudson;
and you have The City.

And The City has enemies.

Boise City, Idaho

2006-07-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

I spend the last weekend in Boise, and fell in love with the city with its Greenbelt (25 miles of paths along the Boise River), Warm Spring’s mansions, Anne Frank memorial, Log Cabin Literacy Center, parks, public art and trees. Like most lovers, Boise is not perfect. It was near or at 100 for the five days we were there. Regardless, the city may be the loveliest I’ve seen, even more than Portland; though Portland may win because it has less heat and more brewpubs.

We also went ice blocking on Simplot Hill, which should lead to another poem.

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

*

Boise City

He said when the French explorer looked
down upon the river from the bluffs,
and exclaimed “Bois, la bois.”
there were only types in the valley:
Cottonwood and willow.

“And now there are over 350
varieties in the City of Trees.”

Trees to climb, swing on,
hid behind, admire.
Trees to feed birds, squirrels
and the occasional human..

Trees to sketch, for nests, Christmas.
Trees to lie under, to nap,
or admire Anne Frank’s words,
listen to Ray Bradbury,

to consider whether trees
are indeed more lovely than poems.

I have a home, you have a home, but...

2006-07-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

Homelessness a Threat for Iraq Vets

By VERENA DOBNIK (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press

July 04, 2006 12:13 PM EDT

NEW YORK - Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after returning from military service in Iraq. He slept in his Jeep, taking care to find a parking space where he wouldn't get a ticket.

"Then the nightmares would start," says the 26-year-old former Army private first class, who drove a fuel truck in Iraq. "I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a truck - I relived that every night."

Across America on any given evening, hundreds of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan like Noel are homeless, according to government estimates.

The reasons for their plight are many. For some, residual stress from daily insurgent attacks and roadside bombs makes it tough to adjust to civilian life; some can't navigate government assistance programs; others simply can't afford a house or apartment.

They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small, from Washington state to California and Florida. Some of the hardest hit are in New York City, where housing costs "can be very tough," says Peter Dougherty, head of the federal government's Homeless Veterans Program. Studio apartments routinely exceed $1,000 a month - no small sum for veterans trying to land on their feet.

As a member of the National Guard, Nadine Beckford patrolled New York train stations after the Sept. 11 attacks, then served a treacherous year in the Gulf region.

But when she returned home from Iraq, she found her storage locker had been emptied of all of her belongings and her bank account had been depleted. She believes her boyfriend took everything and "just vanished."

Six months after her return to America, she lives in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn, sharing a room with eight other women and attending a job training program. Her parents live in Jamaica and are barely making ends meet, she says.

"I'm just an ordinary person who served. I'm not embarrassed about my homelessness, because the circumstances that created it were not my fault," says Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at a U.S. base in Iraq - a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks "where hell was your home."

It was a "hell" familiar to Noel during his eight months in Iraq. But it didn't stop when he returned home to New York last year and couldn't find a job to support his wife and three children. Without enough money to rent an apartment, he turned to the housing programs for vets, "but they were overbooked," Noel says.

While he was in Iraq, his family had lived in military housing in Georgia.

In New York, they ended up in a Bronx shelter "with people who were just out of prison, and with roaches," Noel says. "I'm a young black man from the ghetto, but this was culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I almost died for. This is not what I was supposed to come home to."

There are about 200,000 homeless vets in the United States, according to government figures. About 10 percent are from either the 1991 Gulf War or the current one, about 40 percent are Vietnam veterans, and most of the others served when the country was not officially at war.

"In recent years, we've tried to reach out sooner to new veterans who are having problems with post-traumatic stress, depression or substance abuse, after seeing combat," says Dougherty. "These are the veterans who most often end up homeless."

About 350 nonprofit service organizations are working with the Department of Veterans Affairs to help veterans.

But the veterans still land on a hard bottom line: Almost half of America's 2.7 million disabled veterans receive $337 or less a month in benefits, according to the government. Fewer than one-tenth are rated 100 percent disabled, meaning they get $2,393 a month, tax free.
"And only those who receive that 100 percent benefit rating can survive in New York," says J.B. White, a 36-year-old former Marine who served with a National Guard unit in Iraq. His colon was removed after he was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis, which civilian medical experts believe started in Iraq under the stress of war.

"I'd be homeless if it weren't for the support of my family," says White, who is trying to win benefits from the VA. He also helps others, like Beckford, as head of a Manhattan-based social service agency that finds non-government housing for vets.

Noel now attends a program to get work in studio sound production. He was the protagonist of the documentary film "When I Came Home," which was named best New York-made documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.

Just after the news reports about his plight, he learned the government was granting him the 100 percent disability compensation he sought - after being turned down.

Noel doesn't blame the Army, which "helped make my dreams come true," he says, recalling the military base life in Georgia and in Korea that his family enjoyed before his deployment to Iraq.

"I had a house, a car - they gave me everything they promised me," he says. "Now it's up to the government and the people we're defending to take care of their soldiers."

Has This Country Gone Completely Insane?

2006-07-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

During the the very early days of this republic, when J ohn Adams was president, the crazies in control of Congress passed the Sedition Acts., making it against the law to publish or say anything bad about the government, and by extension their policies and party, the Federalists.

During the long life of this nation, others have officially or unofficially continued that fine tradition, sometimes with court approval, often not caring a whit one way or the other what the courts, law or Constitution said.

Today, the madness continues, unabated and out of control.

This example is courtesy of CounterPunch, an online newszine, and was sent to me by a friend in the peace movement.

Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt
By MIKE FERNER

Yesterday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "OK, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go."

"Huh?", I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about.

"You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt.

"Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists.

Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go."

Beginning to get his drift, I said firmly, "Not before I finish my coffee."

He insisted that I leave, but still not quite believing my ears, I tried one more approach to reason.

"Hey, listen. I'm a veteran. This is a V.A. facility. I'm sitting here not talking to anybody, having a cup of coffee. I'm not protesting and you can't kick me out."

"You'll either go or we'll arrest you," Adkins threatened.

"Well, you'll just have to arrest me," I said, wondering what strange land I was now living in.

You know the rest. Handcuffed, led away to the facility's security office past people with surprised looks on their faces, read my rights, searched, and written up.

The officer who did the formalities, Eric Ousley, was professional in his duties. When I asked him if he was a vet, it turned out he had been a hospital corpsman in the Navy. We exchanged a couple sea stories. He uncuffed me early. And he allowed as to how he would only charge me with disorderly conduct, letting me go on charges of criminal trespass and weapons possession -- a pocket knife -- which he said would have to be destroyed (something I rather doubt since it was a nifty Swiss Army knife with not only a bottle opener, but a tweezers and a toothpick).

After informing me I could either pay the $275 fine on the citation or appear in court, Ousley escorted me off the premises, warning me if I returned with "that shirt" on, I'd be arrested and booked into jail.

I'm sure I could go back to officers Adkins' and Ousleys' fiefdom with a shirt that said, "Nuke all the hajis," or "Show us your tits," or any number of truly obscene things and no one would care. Just so it's not "that shirt" again.

And just for the record? I'm not paying the fine. I'll see Adkins and Ousley and Dubya's Director of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, if he wants to show up, in United States District Court on the appointed date. And if there's a Chicago area attorney who'd like to take the case, I'd really like to sue them -- from Dubya on down. I have to believe that this whole country has not yet gone insane, just the government. This kind of behavior can't be tolerated. It must be challenged.

Mike Ferner served as a Navy corpsman during Vietnam and is obviously a member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at: mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net

Poetic States - WA, ND

2006-07-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

I do a lot of series: The Many Names for Rain

sprinkle -minute multi-colored particlescolor the donuts of our illusions

Sprinkle
sugar on the cake,
a slice for everyone,
two if it don’t rain and melt the
ice cream.
shower -hi-tech Water Pik set on low sprayempties a stunted water heater

To save
water, shower
together – however,
be careful when picking up your
dropped soap.

When, if, finished, there will be over 100.

The Many Names for Sun

Sunrise, First Shine

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.
Sunny, Meadow

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?

These are written with Kathy Paupore from Wild. I have the odd numbers, her the even. When finished, there will be over 200.

Days of the month and week, colors, based up parts of books such as the start to Tale of Two Cities, inspired by others such as Wang Wei's River Wang, the alphabet. The current series is Poetic states, short poems for each state, DC and maybe the territories. The first two:

Washington

Red Delicious and Yellow

When you handed him the apple,
did you expect you would leave the shelter of the garden
to live in a rain forest
among beetles and banana slugs?
That you would need to purchase
umbrellas and rain bonnets
in the colors of orchards on the west lawn?

When you bit into the apple,
did you expect she would be your master?
That you would need to relearn
the names of all the bugs
and creatures that crawled along the earth
and in and out of bitter fruit?

North Dakota

Everyone I know was born
between Grand Forks and Williston.
Everyone I know moved away
from North Dakota to stand
on the shore and stare at China
when the fog lifts.

There might still be people in North Dakota –
the air force flies planes out of Minot
and they once made a movie there
about people who lived in Minnesota.
during a winter so white
Fargo looked as empty as Manitoba.

New York is next, but is kicking my keister.

Until next week.

Smiles.

Gary

Know nothing update

2006-07-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Miami know-nothings not only wish to ban the Cuban book, but all 24 in the series. On the theory, I quess if one has errors, they all do. Or maybe too many of them are from South of the border and they worry illegals might sneak in with them.

Have a safe and tasty 4th.

I'll be digging weeds from my flower beds.

Smiles.

Gary

Back with a promise

2006-07-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

Why have a blog if it is not going to be kept up to date? So for my Mid-year resolution, I promise I will.

First on the agenda, please read www.mindfirerenew.com spring issue for works on war, peace and everything in between. A (very) special issue.

And the June/July issue of FireWeed is up with new work selected by Terrie Relf, Houdini and a war/peace supplemental.

2. go to http://operationpoem.blogspot.com/. The blog owner’s (Michelle Buchanan) goal is to post a memorial poem to each of the military killed during the Iraq war – 2615 as of the end of June. Please add yours.

3. The know nothings are at again.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14941455.htm

Is Coulter in the library,
Limbaugh,
Mein Kampf?

Have they reviewed all the books in the series for accuracy. Egypt, Canada?

Sigh...

4. A poem

Journey with Rimbaud VIII – Benediction

the predatory power of the intestinal apparatus

Beware of medication that results
from a physician’s examination
-the cure may be worse than the bite.

Popping pills for a groin infection
(though unconfirmed) may have led
to acute, stressed hyper-defecation.

While on vacation at the beach,
twice I was in an extreme condition,
toilet needed to avoid unwanted warmth.

Then on the way to a southern destination,
I twice failed to ask we stop at a rest area
and let go before we reached a gas station.

There was a trucker’s shower at the Shell
which I used without any hesitation,
for the duration I prayed no one would notice.

You might think this severe situation
mostly the product of too much imagination,
but I assure you every word is the utmost truth.

Even my grandson picked up
that “Papa went in his pants.”

Mortification.

5. See you in a week.

Smiles.

Gary

The Winter MindFire ready to read

2006-03-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

(Check the end for a note on submissions for the next issue.)

Welcome to the winter issue of http://www.mindfirerenew.com, our first for 2006. The issue is large, so be prepared to spend some time in our literary/language journal to read:

A memorial to Nadia Anjuman, Afghan poet and martyr

Poetry Features for Kathleen Chaffin,

Dave Ruslander and Marc Lowe

Outstanding poetry, essays and fiction from every region of the world

Experimental poetry

The American Taliban (to be continued in the next FireWeed)

Works in over a dozen languages and more. Please take the time to read them.

We guarantee you will be entertained and surprised at the content MindFire provides for you.

If I were to pick highlights, they would include Dave’s Black Dog poems; Timons Esaias’s short story, “Curse;” Alex Stolis’s “Playing Cards With Houdini,” a novella in poetic form, which will continue in future issues; Susan Brassfield Congan – “Intelligent Design: The Love Child of a Publicist and an Advertising Agent” in nonfiction; Laryalee Fraser’s art and poetry; and in the regions - Carole Barley’s "Incantation for Owl," Michaela A. Gabriel’s "Behind Cupped Hands: Hann"; Molara Wood’s "Tropic Woman;" Néstor de Luca’s poetry and art, and Carole Nelson Phillips’s "Blood, Ink and Long Grass."

And last but far from least, don’t forget the Fibonacci lesson in the workshop, From the Pyre.

We have also opened a store for books by the editors and other goodies. We will be adding books by Friends of MindFire as the months progress.

And if all that was not enough, there are new staff poems. Silvia is still running her contest in español (linked on the table of contents).

This quarter, we add a new editor, Lisa MeGraw. She will select for Great Britian, Ireland and the surrounding isles. Additional editors will be added during the year. We are especially interested in mainland China, Japan, Hebrew and Arabic.

The next issue will highlight several long poems and include our first play, portions of a musical about Jack the Ripper. We are also planning a pro-peace/anti-war issue, centered around photos of Derry, Ireland, taken by our official photographer, Ellen Blankenship. By “war” we mean assault not only between countries and peoples, but against individuals, our earth and the free exchange of ideas. Your submissions are desired.

Go to here for samples of Ellen’s pictures. http://www.mindfirerenew.com/issue5winter2006/0106-derry.html

There you have it; if I do say so myself, another fine issue Enjoy and do come back monthly for FireWeed and in May for Spring 2006. Thank you.

Gary Blankenship

The best ever said to me...

2006-01-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

Including when a rejection said I wa sfunny, but not funny enough...

The review below written by my good friend and MindFire partner, Thomas Fortenberry. He overstates, but that is okay.

Sales on the book are slow, so if you were thinking of buying... You will get a corrected copy.

Smiles.

Gary

*

A Poet Transformed: This records a journey. I have known Gary Blankenship for many years now and our friendship continues to deepen and grow richer. It is one of mutual respect, because we’ve created together for years. His mind and spirit never cease to impress me. Our relationship has been one of dawning amazement on my part, because it took me a while to realize it was a full-fledged dawn. A creative dawn I was lucky enough to share in and witness.

I realized early on there was a unique spark here, but now see that at first I was merely watching a slight predawn glow diffuse the night. I had no idea how brilliant the blaze would become until the sun erupted over the horizon. Morning via Gary is dazzling indeed.

As H. G. Wells phrased it, “The past is but the beginning of a beginning.”

For more than a decade, Mindfire has brought me many wonderful treasures. But I can say unequivocally that the most important and rewarding of them all has been Gary Blankenship. Mindfire is both a literary e-journal and a literary community. Early on I wanted it to be far more than a standard zine, more than the usual few pages of collected works. I wanted it to be a living body of works, a group for spawning creativity. I did everything in my power to break open forms, blend genres, cross boundaries, cultures, languages, and to fuse new and old, foreign and domestic, strange with familiar.

Therefore, outside the journal I created a real time Mindfire writing forum that moved among several early online systems that eventually were superseded by and absorbed into Yahoogroups after it formed, where it has remained ever since. I met a wide range of wonderful writers over the years, very creative and diverse in the international milieu that is Mindfire. The journal itself also went through many formats and web site incarnations throughout the 1990s.

During one of the later (to me) incarnations of Mindfire, in wandered Gary Blankenship. He was a self-professed newbie but had an innate spark that instantly caught my eye. We started out with the usual student-master b.s. of poetry critiquing but quickly moved beyond. He was old spirit, regardless of his claims. We had mutual interests in study, exploration, and experimentation, so these became the guiding principles of our collaboration. I also shared my love and admiration of Oriental culture and literature with Gary, who promptly taught me a lesson as a good Zen student should. It soon became evident to me -- there on mountain high in the great temple sitting serenely in my pristine rock garden -- that the student was the master and the master was mu. Bark, dog, bark.

To put it very mildly -- compressing years worth of friendship, work, and growth -- we began a multilayered dialogue that continues to this day. This book is a part of that dialogue. Gary is now so integral to everything I do that I eventually turned Mindfire journal over to his editorship a few years ago.

It is strange how mutually beneficial good friendships are. I’ve grown alongside Gary as a writer. I also have the pleasure of reading his great writing. Someone once mentioned great things arising from a simple mustard seed, if you have enough faith to believe in its potential. Here in this book we have ample proof of realized potential. Gary’s work has obviously blossomed for all to see and enjoy.

I have been very blessed by this friendship on all levels. He is a friend, but we also share a kindred spirit and work well together. We have collaborated for many years -- in fact this is my longest running collaboration with any writer -- and it has been a thorough joy. Similar to studying Zen, we’ve been meditating on the nature of poetry and life while extracting lessons by working on our creative goals. Gary is a very gifted person, naturally.

The thing I like best, though, is that he is a deeply flowing river that is ever in change. His works are in flux and there is no stagnation where nothing sits still and everything is eternally refreshed and invigorating. This river is being constantly infused by rare minerals and rich soils from the surrounding mountains and forests, and can be very exciting to watch as it spills down rapids and plunges over high falls with a crashing roar of creativity. However, I often find myself staring for hours into the quiet, small, clear pools gathered in meandered nooks and crannies which dart and glitter with half-hidden, almost-dreamed of wild life.

Gary and I began a journey some time ago that continues to this day. A River Transformed is all about that journey. Wang Wei’s original works were all about this same journey. Here it merely continues. This is a poetic transformation, a journey of thoughts, emotions, and works from the past to the future, from the East to the West, from classical forms to experimental modernity. Most of all, this records the journey of a creator. I once asked Gary how many songs were held within his garden, but he transposed the koan, broke open those pathetic walls, and has answered here:

“In a world without walls, there are no windows / to hold the moon, my songs.”

I am so proud to be a part of this glorious world. I find myself returning full circle to Wang Wei’s words to explain what this book means to me. In the closing of “On Returning to Sung Mountain” Wang Wei states, “I’ve come home, and close the gate.” I have.

Of course, anything written and printed has already moved into the past, so.... Gary, come on. I see something on the horizon. Let loose the dog.

-- Thomas Fortenberry

Counting Down to the big day

2005-12-22T06:13:00.000-08:00

One gift already received - the ANWAR vote went the right way.

Sunday, I attended a concert in Tillamook, OR, my daughter second soprano on the left.

Wonderful music and the dynamics of watching orchestra and chior get ready was most interesting and resulted in this little ditty:

The Orchestra Tunes Its Instruments

The sounds of forest, field and garden
fill the blue sanctuary –

dragonflies and damsel
bubble bees and sand fleas
wee green frogs and a great toad
ducklings lost among herons

a hippo out of Africa

crickets escaped from a hearth
geese and starlings’ song
bright as bells and chimes

and a very human trumpet

*

Ben arrives this afternoon - the house full of a 4 year old.

Smiles.

Gary

December News IV: Politics

2005-12-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

Will it get any stranger?

This day (12/16/2005), the president accused of authorizing spying on citizens. Earlier in the week, Novak says W knows who the CIA leak is - and does nothing against his promise.

We torture but don't.

The House pushes the Patriot Act - with further errosion of our rights.

The big preachers refuse to object that Congress is cutting programs for the needy, more interested in politics than charity. They want every baby born, even if they starve afterward.

The reasons for being in Iraq based on faulty intell (says W), but that is okay.

It's ok if Tom the Hammer steals but not that Bill lies about sex.

Tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Can anyone say Rome?

My current view: Don't vote the man, vote the party. We need at least one house to become Democrat, if not both. As long as the GOP is the majority, the craziness with continue.

And don't forget it has been 1000 days since victory declared with over 2000 military killed. How many years will it be before we reach the number who perished during 911?

To end, read the Newsweek piece on Bush in a bubble, and Esquire's January back page.

Be cool and vote often.

Smiles.

Gary

December News III - the book published, A River Transformed

2005-12-16T06:47:00.000-08:00

And now the biggie. I finally published the first of four planned books: A River Transformed - Wang Wei’s River Wang Poems as Inspiration which can be purchased at http://www.lulu.com/content/178110.

The book is a collection of verse libre sonnets inspired by Wang Wei's River Wang poems; my translations of Wang's work; a cinquain and tanka for each; and a collection of other Eastern style poetry, many Chinese short songs. An example:

The Question Answered (I)

When asked why I retire among pine mountains,
I laugh silently. Why answer, my mind at rest?
Peach petals float away the last of my ambition.
There's quiet tranquility beyond the fields of men.

Questions, Answers (II)

Why live so far beyond clear cuts,
pastures, orchards?
I would chuckle at the answer,
if I understood the question.

Salmonberries drift along rapids
towards canyons alive with fireflies.
Under stars, above dew-soaked ground
there'll be peace enough, left alone.

(responses to Li Po's "Question and Answer in the Mountains")

Come over and give it a look. If you are into Eastern poetry, it will be a nice addition to your collection; and a good present for a friend.

My store will be at http://people.lulu.com/users/index.php?fHomepage=108254

*

I said 4 books. The second will be a collection of song parodies (the first posted below), the poems from MindFire's "Eye of the Coming Storm" (my volume will be A Mote in the Eye of the Storm) and other unpublished work.

Proceeds from Mote will be donated to Habitat for Humanity; and if both River and Mote purchased together, the profit from both will be donated.

Expect in in the store in January.

The third will be a collection I wrote with two other poets titled The Garbage Collection. It will be expanded to be a good length and make it worth your pennies. An example:

dog in garbage can

saran wrap and ziploc
transparent blossoms on roses

screw top wine bottles
lawn ornaments

morning paper
and enquirer dance out of step

o and rosie
wallflowers

chili
spinach salad
tuna helper
splattered art

discarded for pepperoni sausage
olives cold cheese strings
anchovies spit into ditch
pineapple saved for dessert

thanks given for plastic cans

(A true story and the event that started the collection.)

The fourth and final volume will be a reissue of my chapbook, Reflections, also expanded to a good length. If all goes well, the last will be out by June.

*

Does self-publishing work? Maybe, maybe not; but it beats the alternative -nothing.

More ahead?

Smiles.

Gary

December News II - the new FireWeed

2005-12-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

The monthly companion to MindFire is FireWeed, much, much smaller. The December issue is ready to read at www.mindfirerenew.com - 7 poems selected by the editor and I, experimental, workshop, book reviews, contest winners, politics and more.

BTW, FireWeed is not published in the months we do MindFire.

Next.

Smiles.

Gary

December news I - Health

2005-12-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

Is there any reason to have a blog if we are not going to keep it up?

Answering my own question, of course not; but then shit happens.

For most of the year, I've been feeling under the weather, tired. With good reason. Just before Thanksgiving, I ended up in the ER - felt like a 1000 pound rock on my torso. The diagnosis is anemia. My body not absorbing B-12 which is needed to make blood, so I was a quart or so low and trying to operate without enough oxygen.

The cure - transfusions, then B-12 shots all my life.

The good news is I have more energy than in a long time; but still not up there. I need more shots (weekly for the month) to raise the red blood cell level.

BTW, our HMO posts the lab test; so we know where we stand in comparison to a range. B-12 above the low limit barely. Red cells are also, but furthur towards the middle.

My literaty mag has been a struggle due to computer problems and health. I almost gave it up, but now I feel good enough to keep going. In 2004, we did 2 issues, in 05 3, in o6 we hope for 4.

I'm doing this in stages, so on to part II.

Smiles.

Gary

A poem from 2002 published

2005-10-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

in the Seattle PI, both Friday October 14 print and their blog.

Check it out at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifeinthecity/

Smiles.

Gary

The Fall MindFire is Complete

2005-10-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

www.mindfirerenew.com Eye of the Coming Storm delayed the regular contributions from round the world, but they are there now and wait only you to read them. East Asia and Central are of special interest to me. Smiles and thanks. Gary

When the Levee Floods the City

2005-09-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

When the Levee Floods the City

(out of Louie Armstrong )

We are traveling roads we do not know
seeking shelter and the higher ground
not knowing if we will be reunited
if our children will ever be found.

Oh, when the levee floods the City
when the levee floods the City
Oh lord, I’ll be homeless in that number,
when the levee floods the City.

And when storm clouds hide the sun
and when storm clouds hide the sun
Oh lord, I’ll be homeless in that number,
when the levee floods the City.

When the water turns green with stench
When the water turns green with stench
Oh lord, I’ll be lost in that number,
when the levee floods the City.

On that hellish dayOn that hellish day
Oh lord, I’ll be on my way to glory,
when the levee floods the City.
Oh, when evacuation is called
Oh, when evacuation is called

Oh lord, I’ll be thirsty on the road,
when the levee floods the City.
Some say this City is all trouble, never to be rebuilt
Oh lord, I want a hammer in my hand
when the new Orleans rises from the flood.

When the government finally comes
When the government finally comes
Oh lord, I’ll believe it when I see it
if the government finally comes.

When the man returns to rebuild
When the man returns to rebuild
Oh lord, I want to be dancing in the streets,
when the man returns to see his loss.

When the water returns to the lake
when the water returns to the river
Oh lord, I want to be in the City,
when the water returns to the lake.

When we all have a home and family
When we all have a home and family
Oh lord, I want to be in that number,
when we all join our family in the City.

When our leaders learn humility
When our leaders learn honesty
Oh lord, I want to be in that number
When the truth comes marching in.

Copyright 2005 Gary Blankenship

Gary Blankenship is offering the above poem gratis to any artist who records it with the proceeds going to disaster relief.

The first band to sign up is http://www.plenitud.us/HomePage.html

Fall MindFire: The Eye of the Coming Storm

2005-09-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Fall MindFire: The Eye of the Coming Storm www.mindfirerenew.com

The current issue of MindFire is devoted to the disaster in the Gulf Coast with a special section – The Eye of the Coming Storm. We are publishing reports from the field – the stories of friends who live in the Gulf and were devastated, some on the edges, living in fear of what might come or where their family was, an explanation of hurricanes by a wind engineer, poetry from the ground, and a plea to donate. In addition, the issue contains a reprint of Jack Myer’s line break essay, Sharon Old’s letter to Laura Bush, reviews, poetry, experimental and otherwise, great art and photos from the Gulf and elsewhere.

We regret the issue is not finished and some of the regional sections are missing. We wanted to get Eye of the Coming Storm to you in a timely manner. We will roll out the remainder of the pages over the next three weeks. This is our Dust Bowl, and we need to listen to the victims and understand what it means in Fargo, Bellingham, Palm Springs, Chicago, Russell, and all the small towns, cities, and spaces between.

It might be us next, though with the hurricane season not over, it might be them again.

We are all in this together.

Thank you.

Gary Blankenship

Three tanka published in Japan

2005-09-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Finally something worthy of blogging

I have been honored with 3 tanka in the Tanka Society of Japan's 2005 anthology - in Japanese. The poems are from the River Wang Tanka.

In a world
without walls,
there are no windows
to hold the moon,
my songs, your voice.

Summer's
pack ice far, far
from shore;
beluga calves
pass by unnoticed.

At play
in wet red clay
children laugh
at how their pies taste
without almonds.

Smiles, huge smiles.

Gary

September 8, after Katrina

2005-09-08T10:55:00.000-07:00

I need to stop listening to the news, nothing there to put me in a better mood...

Everyone except the victims can be blamed for the aftermath, no one for the wind's punishment of the gulf coast.

For a very good account of the 1900 Galveston hurricane read Issac's Storm by Erik Lawson. The official count about 6000 dead may be as high as 20000, many buried in mass graves, uncounted.

And for an account of how minorities used to be treated in a hurricane read Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928 by Eliot Kleinberg

A chilling story of true racism.

katrina
stirs my heart
as I channel surf

Gary

September 7, 2005 My first post

2005-09-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

I've resisted, but have decided to see whether a blog will work for the Dawg. Especially one in a lousy mood.

To blog
or not to blog,
why ask cause the answer
as obvious as the nose on
your face

Okay, a cliche. I said my mood was lousy.

Later.

Gary B