PUTAH CREEK
This blog is for poets in the Putah Creek Watershed area, and bio-regionally beyond;a non-publishing way of sharing our work with each other.
Email: clan_of_the_dog@yahoo.com All Good Things -James Lee Jobe
Posted in conjunction with poetscornerpress.com
The street deserted. Nobody,
only you and one poor
dirt colored robin,
fastened to its branch
against the wind. It seems
you have arrived
late, the city unfamiliar,
the address lost.
And you made such a serious effort —
pondered the obstacles deeply,
tried to be your own critic.
Yet no one came to listen.
Maybe they came, and then left.
After you traveled so far,
just to be there.
It was a failure, that is what they will say.
Franz Wright
Clarification
Someone once told me about a Buddhist
monk who on awakening
each morning said, "Master!"
Then he would answer
"Yes, master?" And then
in a loud voice demand
"Become sober!"
Listen to what I am saying,
but listen especially
to what I am not saying--
Of all the powers of love,
this: it is possible
to die; which means
it's possible to live.
Now it is possible to die
without being mad or afraid.
Franz Wright
Someone once told me about a Buddhist
monk who on awakening
each morning said, "Master!"
Then he would answer
"Yes, master?" And then
in a loud voice demand
"Become sober!"
Listen to what I am saying,
but listen especially
to what I am not saying--
Of all the powers of love,
this: it is possible
to die; which means
it's possible to live.
Now it is possible to die
without being mad or afraid.
Franz Wright
Franz Wright, is the son of the poet James Wright. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and was the winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Franz and James are the only Father/Son combo to both win the Pulitzer. Putah Creek returns on Monday, send any poems to clan_of_the_dog@yahoo.com -
All Good Things - Jobe posted by Putah Creek Poetry Blog at 3/18/2006 10:30:00 AM 0 comments
REJECTS
These useless poems.
She scissors
them into scraps
and stuffs
them into her pockets.
She closes the door
behind her
and descends to the street.
With each step
she lets a word slip
onto sidewalk.
The breeze takes some,
they gather
in the gutter and the edge
of buildings.
They jostle and cling
to each other,
making new
metaphors.
By the time she reaches
the corner diner,
that neon
homeless place,
her pockets
are almost empty.
She has just enough
for a cup of coffee
and a tip.
A coin, a word,
an image to make
the waitress smile.
Taylor Graham
---
So Little
I said so little.
Days were short.
Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.
I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.
My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.
The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.
Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.
The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.
And now I don't know
What in all that was real.
Czeslaw Milosz
These useless poems.
She scissors
them into scraps
and stuffs
them into her pockets.
She closes the door
behind her
and descends to the street.
With each step
she lets a word slip
onto sidewalk.
The breeze takes some,
they gather
in the gutter and the edge
of buildings.
They jostle and cling
to each other,
making new
metaphors.
By the time she reaches
the corner diner,
that neon
homeless place,
her pockets
are almost empty.
She has just enough
for a cup of coffee
and a tip.
A coin, a word,
an image to make
the waitress smile.
Taylor Graham
---
So Little
I said so little.
Days were short.
Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.
I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.
My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.
The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.
Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.
The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.
And now I don't know
What in all that was real.
Czeslaw Milosz
---
WHICH ONE IS GENUINE?
"I once knew a woman named Benedicta, who infused everything with the ideal.
When one looked into her eyes one wanted nobility, glory, beauty, all those qualities
that make us love immortality.
"But this exquisite woman was too beautiful to live long; she died in fact shortly after
I met her, and it was I who buried her one day when spring was waving his encensoir
even through the cemetery gates. It was I who buried her, well encased in a coffin made
of a wood scented and eternal as the treasure boxes of India.
"And while my eyes remained fixed on that spot where my jewel lay entombed, I saw all
at once a tiny human being much like the dead woman, doing a bizarre dance, violent
and hysterical, on the loose earth. She howled with laughter as she spoke: 'This is me!
Benedicta, as she is! I'm trash, everyone knows it! And the punishment for your stupidity
and your blind head is this: You'll have to love what I am!'
"I went into a rage and said, 'No! No! No! No!' And in order to give strength to my no,
I stomped the earth so fiercely with my foot that my leg sank into the freshly turned earth
up to my knee, and like a wolf caught in a trap, I am now tied, perhaps for the rest of my
life, to the grave of the ideal."
Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Robert Bly
14 December 2005
---The Sequoia Shape
Calaveras Big Trees State Park
Cold groves of sequoias. Your hand in mine, ensuring
our icily spiral climb turns by slow footfalls.
Upended, the odd giant victim-tree, whose rootball's
all snowburst spike: can blasts freeze into enduring?
Truer, more secret endurance instills the live trunk.
A narwhal strength-of-tusk stability,
"unicorn" hornswirl torsion, nulls fragility.
Sequoias in skyward spiral designs can link
sunbeam to soil by long thoughtlike chains.
Intrinsic twists drink in a great dark that dispenses light.
O'Keeffe with her vulviform flowers, mystics, eccentrics...
Such sequoialike seekers envelop our quest for insight:
My whirling-out, restrained by your deepening-down
--the transparent aspiring kind of dark suction down.
Tom Goff
25 November 2005
---i thank you God for most this amazing...
e. e. cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
---
Our
Prayer of Thanks
Carl Sandburg
For the gladness here where the sun is shining
at evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted
and bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the sunset and the stars, the women
and the white arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.
God, if you are deaf and blind,
if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver
handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead
of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead
are forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.
God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals
and the system; and so for the break of the game
and the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.
Carl Sandburg
For the gladness here where the sun is shining
at evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted
and bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the sunset and the stars, the women
and the white arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.
God, if you are deaf and blind,
if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver
handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead
of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead
are forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.
God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals
and the system; and so for the break of the game
and the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.
08 November 2005
-Pablo Neruda-
Your Feet
When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
---
Many
years ago, way before I ever meet my wife, I dated a nurse. When those
white shoes came off after a night of trudging up and down hospital
corridors - Good Lord! - well, perhaps Pablo never dated a nurse. Any
body-part poems? An ode to your lover's testes?
clan_of_the_dog@yahoo.com, send 'em in! Below is an old one of mine,
actually about that same nurse! It was published by Poetry Now back in
'97.-JLJ-
31 October 2005
-Rumi-
Close the Language-Door
There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild Darling!
At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door,
and open the love-window
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.
----
Tilt Up -David
Humphreys- posted October
25 2005
(A
construction technique by which steel
reinforced
Snail's
Trail
Brother Richard
concrete walls are poured flat on the ground and then
lifted into their vertical positions by a crane.)
This must be the Valley of the Kings
with dimensions so immense.
I strike my sledge against the concrete wall
and it reverberates in this dark empty room
like a bottomless cavern.
We must be building a space port in a sky without stars
with machines that whine like huge recorded whales
as our little workers are lifted high above the floor.
Pharaoh may ride his chariot forever now
that his desolate tomb
can refrigerate frozen cherries jubilee.
I feel like submerging in the tank
where they search for neutrinos,
air bubbles shivering to the surface
like quicksilver jellyfish.
I am looking for the place where space bends back upon itself,
turning inside out before it disappears.
Bats congregate here when the tank is empty,
wrapped in leathery umbrella wings.
Now though, I am distracted by
a little square bodied brown fish with white spots
that is swimming excitedly
Brother Richard
concrete walls are poured flat on the ground and then
lifted into their vertical positions by a crane.)
This must be the Valley of the Kings
with dimensions so immense.
I strike my sledge against the concrete wall
and it reverberates in this dark empty room
like a bottomless cavern.
We must be building a space port in a sky without stars
with machines that whine like huge recorded whales
as our little workers are lifted high above the floor.
Pharaoh may ride his chariot forever now
that his desolate tomb
can refrigerate frozen cherries jubilee.
I feel like submerging in the tank
where they search for neutrinos,
air bubbles shivering to the surface
like quicksilver jellyfish.
I am looking for the place where space bends back upon itself,
turning inside out before it disappears.
Bats congregate here when the tank is empty,
wrapped in leathery umbrella wings.
Now though, I am distracted by
a little square bodied brown fish with white spots
that is swimming excitedly
back
and forth in front of my mask.
---
Snail's Trail
On yesterday's morning walk April
was filled to the brim, partly overcast
with wind chimes and the sound of traffic
on streets, daffodils and iris gone now,
roses having taken their place. I noticed
it about four fifths through the circuit
coming back on the eastern leg just to the
south, a shiny winding erratic track on
gray tarmac, evidence of some terrible
injuring trauma, perhaps an unconscious
nonfatal accident of a striding shoe catching
part of the shell to set the suffering wheel
reeling, careening in the darkness, time when
all snails go into the world. At the end of
its amazed path its crushed shell rested.
Today is windless and clear, all the trees
like glass in early light and shadow, ten
different kinds of birds calling in the hollow
quiet, doves, blue jays, ravens, finches,
a mockingbird, something that sounds like an
owl, robins, woodpeckers. I started looking
for yesterday’s snail halfway through the walk,
having thought about its final tipsy struggle
but it was nowhere to be found. Some bird had
cleaned it from the street and the moisture of
the night had erased its trail of saliva
without leaving the slightest trace.
---
Brother Richard
You were the one who fought for world
domination as if continents of upheaval
stubbornly sand-boxed a slide or tire
swing, teeter-totters standing as idle
as the backstop in the open field behind
the old house, tarweed smelling as strong
as horse sweat, alfalfa and straw before
we started smoking and ruined our sense
of smell. Kingsley was the big green frog
stuffed animal that watched us fight it out
for the very last time. It must have been
the ski pole stuck in the door or the way
you just wouldn’t quit while everything
rolled in like thick fog down the dark
forgetful mountain. If Mom’s horse hadn’t
been stung by that angry hive and she hadn’t
broken her back every other detail might
also have been just as different as indelible
tattoos and a long ponytail, burly motorcycle
arms muscled up with a medical degree,
"if only things would just last a little longer,"
you said, your memory still as good as 381 Park
Avenue South, your opals internally radioactive
ring fingered treasures. You always had a special
gift for the unexpected crashing out of a forest
of moonlit miracles, wings spread wide like some
delivering angel.
---
David's website is poetscornerpress.com,
and features MANY fine regional poets.-JLJ-
On yesterday's morning walk April
was filled to the brim, partly overcast
with wind chimes and the sound of traffic
on streets, daffodils and iris gone now,
roses having taken their place. I noticed
it about four fifths through the circuit
coming back on the eastern leg just to the
south, a shiny winding erratic track on
gray tarmac, evidence of some terrible
injuring trauma, perhaps an unconscious
nonfatal accident of a striding shoe catching
part of the shell to set the suffering wheel
reeling, careening in the darkness, time when
all snails go into the world. At the end of
its amazed path its crushed shell rested.
Today is windless and clear, all the trees
like glass in early light and shadow, ten
different kinds of birds calling in the hollow
quiet, doves, blue jays, ravens, finches,
a mockingbird, something that sounds like an
owl, robins, woodpeckers. I started looking
for yesterday’s snail halfway through the walk,
having thought about its final tipsy struggle
but it was nowhere to be found. Some bird had
cleaned it from the street and the moisture of
the night had erased its trail of saliva
without leaving the slightest trace.
---
Brother Richard
You were the one who fought for world
domination as if continents of upheaval
stubbornly sand-boxed a slide or tire
swing, teeter-totters standing as idle
as the backstop in the open field behind
the old house, tarweed smelling as strong
as horse sweat, alfalfa and straw before
we started smoking and ruined our sense
of smell. Kingsley was the big green frog
stuffed animal that watched us fight it out
for the very last time. It must have been
the ski pole stuck in the door or the way
you just wouldn’t quit while everything
rolled in like thick fog down the dark
forgetful mountain. If Mom’s horse hadn’t
been stung by that angry hive and she hadn’t
broken her back every other detail might
also have been just as different as indelible
tattoos and a long ponytail, burly motorcycle
arms muscled up with a medical degree,
"if only things would just last a little longer,"
you said, your memory still as good as 381 Park
Avenue South, your opals internally radioactive
ring fingered treasures. You always had a special
gift for the unexpected crashing out of a forest
of moonlit miracles, wings spread wide like some
delivering angel.
---
David's website is poetscornerpress.com,
and features MANY fine regional poets.-JLJ-
---
2 poems
-Susan Kelly-DeWitt-
-Susan Kelly-DeWitt-
---
Summer of the Grandmothers
Abandoned
House
wisteria tangles
a trellis of rotting
curlicues
the kind of house a child
passes, quick-step
sorrow could live here
or loneliness wearing its sack
of old dresses
..........something or someone
sucked the night in
..........and held that breath
..........and held that breath
inside a woman butters toast
the slices float
between her fingers
then the moon snaps her
up, up
through the roof beams
through a crack in the shingles
ha!
where’s home now?
her ribs lift
over her face
her breasts
turn inside out like
pillowcases
---
They come back in their white
shifts, their ruffled shawls of salt
white, the way the dead always return
when you need them the most—
when it’s too hot to do anything
but picture the worst—the Bomb
finally fallen, the world burned-up,
the entire planet radioactive—
when you are too weak to do anything
but lie in a stupor and call them back
to drift at your side, in eyelet dresses
of old starlight, fresh-faced and cold.
---
Susan Kelly-DeWitt reads her poems at the Art Foundry in Sacramento on Oct. 28th. For details, scroll down to the 'events' post. Don't miss this wonderful poet reading from her new book, The Land! Both poems here are from the book. -JLJ-
How to Be 50
-Melanie Sievers-
-Melanie Sievers-
Become who you are.
Bicycle 8 ½ miles around Xi’an
on the Ming dynasty wall.
Be free as yellow silk banners, swallows
flying over beds on rooftops and back alleys,
over vegetable markets and Buddhist temples.
Listen intently to the prayers rising
from prayer wheels spinning like us,
the earth, spinning like the spokes
of your bike, spinning like dervishes,
dancing girls, spinning in the sunshine
like tops on nursery school floors.
Pedal around the wall as if today
is the only day and you are the only one.
Then go home.
Stand in front of a wall covered in photos,
faces of children - goofy, cute, sweet, sullen
faces of children you have had the joy of knowing.
Keep riding with the wind, looking over all
the beautiful sights of your life.
Keep riding.
9-24-05
---
If her name seems unfamiliar, you might have known this poet as Melanie Bishop before she married. Mel was on the board of the Sac Poetry Center back in the 90s, when I was also on the board. Today she is teaching English in the Stockton school district, and, as you can tell from the poem, recently traveled to China.-JLJ-
17 October 2005
4 poems
-Mary Zeppa-
The-Blood-is-Thicker-than-Vodka-Brother-Mary Zeppa-
Building the Clan
October Light
Let beauty change us
forever. Let our spines straighten, our eyes
fasten upon God's big, beautiful face,
on the pearl it is in His broad hands.
God leans lightly on both sturdy elbows,
letting our day's light drift in
through the open top half
of His favorite Dutch door.
Van Gogh painted it
Japanese red. Van Gogh
leaned on it
100 mornings: Would
this light give him
its grace? God's untroubled
this morning and smiling: His
countenance radiates.
---
Some blame the thank-God-it's-Saturday
shindigs where the grownups sipped
martinis, Manhattans, scotch.
Where the kids made the rounds
of the near-empty glasses, danced
the small-body-hits-me-quick reel.
The women said men
went on sprees, got polluted
on the booze or the sauce
or the hooch. Some (rummies,
thirsty souls) just couldn't
stop. Those pint-in-pocket,
hair-of-dog drunks just like
the brother who spilled his own
secret, danced the swillbelly
two-step, the old blotto
shuffle, the drunk-as-a-lord
hits-the-ground.
---
for
Jordan and Jean
We,
the Lutheran, the Jew and the fallen-away, bring to this church vestibule,
our 4th generation for blessing: our
Jordan, cafe au lait girl whose beauty fills
the white family gown, who lets fall
from her six-month-old mouth
this cascade of drool, this bright waterfall,
this shining, singular tide, spilling out
on the red-carpet floor and
our feet. Hallelujah!
The whole clan's
baptized.
---
This afternoon, a valley
parenthesis
of light.
Exact, hard likenesses:
each curl
each ragged, dying leaf.
2
One day in girlhood-Illinois
I raked the whole sideyard
with Frankie, Frank Cresenzi.
We outcasts of 6th grade,
in car coats, in red mittens
wrapped up in fleecy scarves,
we raked and mounded
elm leaves
a dozen chest-high piles.
Then he, his dark hair curling
above his bright red ears,
sat down hard on the last mound
and pulled me in his lap.
His arm squeezed tight around my waist.
The leaves
were dry and warm.
We watched the sky
lose color
that whole, long afternoon.
---
“October Light” first appeared in Telescope;
it’s also in Mary Zeppa's Rattlesnake Press chapbook
The Battered Bride Overture
Send in your poems:
clan_of_the_dog@yahoo.com
---
15 October 2005
What
Happened
on Highway 34 in 1969
-James Lee Jobe-
on Highway 34 in 1969
-James Lee Jobe-
The man was dying, thrown from his truck like a projectile, an accident
in the driving spring rain, a dark country highway. My father, 48, lifted
the man's broken upper body, and held him, asking, "Who are you?"
"Ron Seibert," he gasped, choking, coughing up too much blood
on my father's shirt. Dad looked up at me, ashen, his eyes full,
where Ron couldn't see the horror on his face,
and shook his head at me; no. I was a boy of 12,
and I knew this battered man we'd found would die.
I only then noticed the lake of fresh blood
he had been laying in. Ron, coughing, wheezing, tried to tell us
he had been moving across country, his wife and child
were following in their car, they'd been separated
in the hard storm. He was 26. He wanted to tell us more,
about how he loved his family, but Dad hushed him, saying,
"I know. They know, too. Just let go, son," he told
this young stranger he was holding, "It's just a doorway,
don't be afraid. Let go. This is your time." Ron breathed out
one long last breath, relaxed, and was gone. He'd walked
through death's door just as the headlights from his wife's car
topped the rise. My father, the war veteran who I'd thought
was so hard, cried as he sat there in the mud and the rain.
Later, driving home wet, he asked me, "Did I do wrong?"
---
2
poems
-Taylor Graham-
-Taylor Graham-
---
THE NEW SOLAR-POWERED GATE
Black iron bars give claim
to these acres where we live
safe, closed in on land
that a deed proves is ours.
Our neighbors have thinned
their pines and cedars,
extending their view
to the sunrise; and still
they can’t see the depths
of canyon, too steep
for logging, too dense
to walk. But sometimes,
out of sight of the gate’s
solar eye, I thread a damp
way down, and marvel how
we’ll never own this place.
---
HAIRPINS
Urging my old Toyota
in second gear up the Bucks Bar curve
where there’s no guardrail,
I see her walking, wild dark hair
caught back in a horsetail, long swing
to her stride; bare arms;
sweater knotted at the waist;
so far from any house. What errand,
what need
to walk to the edge of drop-off
while the rest of us rush to our
appointments, our dates on the calendar,
our futures locked up
safe at home?
| Taylor Graham does search and rescue work in the Sierra, lives in the foothills, and is one mighty fine poet. She has been lending me the use of her poems through One Dog Press, my old monthly, to Clan of the Dog, my old quarterly, to now; that covers about 11 years! Many thanks! It's also easy to find her in publications all over the country. Do a 'search' on her name sometime.-JLJ- poems |
26 October 2005
3 poems
-Ann Menebroker-
-Ann Menebroker-
---
Dancing
It's early autumn
and time for galleries
to start their fall shows.
One I went to Saturday
night had a full band
playing out in front.
Everyone was in-
side looking at
landscapes, drinking
wine, eating food.
I was leaving and
outside, saw
one of the artists
dancing up 20th
Street. Miles took my
hand, and swept me
around the concrete.
Now that's my
kind of impressionism.
---
The Bottom House
On the corner of 17th Street
a blue Victorian
sits on her foundation
like a robin on her eggs;
109 years of trying to hatch
something more than dry rot.
The cart people push by
early mornings and early
evenings. Someone tried to
break in, but they were too
drunk to break the glass
on the screen door. They
tore off the seahorse
door knocker and
trampled some ferns.
The only protection here is
luck and 6 extension cords
with a flood light at the end
and someone inside who
still falls in love with what
was, and with ghosts who
tell her to write it down.
---
Soul Mountain
"The
common smile of unthinking happiness"
--Gao Xingjian
--Gao Xingjian
In Marin County there
was a sleepy Hollow Road.
I was too young
to know about the headless
horseman, the wild tale
of darkness and fear.
That was to come later.
I dared myself to jump
off the high dive board
at the community pool.
I kissed a boy named
Tommy Preston that everyone
said came from a bad
family. Then I moved away
but took Tommy with me
where he remains some
fifty years later, judged
because he was poor-
but not by me.
---
| I
first became aware of Ann Menebroker some twenty-odd years ago when I
was still living in San Francisco. I would buy the WORMWOOD REVIEW in
City Lights bookstore, and there she'd be. I always loved her poems.
Annie has a collection of her poems that were published in the
wonderful old WORMWOOD called TINY TEETH, for R. L. Crow Publications.
To link to the (very excellent) R. L. Crow website on Annie's page, click here. -JLJ- |