Madre de Dios! Morning already?
The mud, still damp upon my pantalones--
how can I face another day?
My niña is so thin.
Two little oranges are not enough for her,
before she rides the bus to the escuela.
I must work harder, still--
hacer algunos dollars more
hacer su vida para el mejor,
si puedo.
I remember
when like my niña, I was young..
We did not work so hard,
y sobre las alturas
every breeze was cool...
not like this steaming
California campo
by the sea.
I remember, as we worked,
how we were singing,
'De la sierra morena, Cieli...'
Now there is no heart, no time to sing.
El jefe blanco will be angry
if I make him late.
The sun is high upon this field.
My back hurts me so much
from bending. Ay!
En muchas horas I can sleep again
and stop remembering.
Jesús amado, en mi sueño
solamente, take me home
............................................
to my brown mountain.
~
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Voices
Cautious spirits test the waters of my world
and call to me....then go away.
Perhaps they are perfecting inter-mind
devices, just like psychic Edisons,
Marconi's revenant in breakthrough just
for me, or else perhaps
celestial wallflowers, much too diffident
to follow up my name with headlines
from beyond the grave.
Am I their snuffling guinea pig?---
their crude receptor in this mass of flesh
that yearns for finely-tuned antennae
(please God, invisible,)
and color pictures if I may,
upon my mental screen?
No, I shall stay the course,
though I know not the hazards of its path,
the travelers,or the design,
nor may I fine
their metaphysical intent.
The reader knows, I speak with some regret,
for there are those who will decide that I
bear watching, lest my touch upon their world
begin to fade too much, that I be too
entranced of waves they cannot, will not see.
Though I may fear the world
beyond white doors, I still invite
my curtained friends to part the night
with energy no instrument
that science met may sense just yet,
I iterate...just yet
~
and call to me....then go away.
Perhaps they are perfecting inter-mind
devices, just like psychic Edisons,
Marconi's revenant in breakthrough just
for me, or else perhaps
celestial wallflowers, much too diffident
to follow up my name with headlines
from beyond the grave.
Am I their snuffling guinea pig?---
their crude receptor in this mass of flesh
that yearns for finely-tuned antennae
(please God, invisible,)
and color pictures if I may,
upon my mental screen?
No, I shall stay the course,
though I know not the hazards of its path,
the travelers,or the design,
nor may I fine
their metaphysical intent.
The reader knows, I speak with some regret,
for there are those who will decide that I
bear watching, lest my touch upon their world
begin to fade too much, that I be too
entranced of waves they cannot, will not see.
Though I may fear the world
beyond white doors, I still invite
my curtained friends to part the night
with energy no instrument
that science met may sense just yet,
I iterate...just yet
~
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Regime Change
How like a child to know that being free
to taste the wind, is the unbidden source
of art, of what life means, that joy is there.
How fair, a thousand wheels above the earth
that sing upon the hills, that gifted from
the air, relay its strength and redirect its power.
How much of truth that trees may breathe again,
that fish may frolic in the ripples that
the stones create in flashing mountain streams,
that caribou will graze upon a plain
though far away, still undefiled.
How deep the melancholy of the earth
to learn the incarnation went awry
and it was man who rose up from the sod,
a metamorph, a true sardonic sire,
an avaricious god.
~
to taste the wind, is the unbidden source
of art, of what life means, that joy is there.
How fair, a thousand wheels above the earth
that sing upon the hills, that gifted from
the air, relay its strength and redirect its power.
How much of truth that trees may breathe again,
that fish may frolic in the ripples that
the stones create in flashing mountain streams,
that caribou will graze upon a plain
though far away, still undefiled.
How deep the melancholy of the earth
to learn the incarnation went awry
and it was man who rose up from the sod,
a metamorph, a true sardonic sire,
an avaricious god.
~
Sunday, February 20, 2005
The Doll House (revised)
Behind the scaled-down images there lurk
the scaled down dreams of future lives-- perhaps
of incarnations silently recalled
by little girls with vision far less blind
than little boys, who would forsake the gate
and scarcely see the whitewashed picket fence
along Peace Lane.
We walked together, she and I, and gained
or lost a century without a care,
then pausing there untouched by age or time,
were suddenly at home, and though it was
too much inclined to the postiche and far
too lovely, she and I could then perform
a step into dimensions that
I only thought I knew.
Of course it was a given, she would lead
me to another view, though I protest
a movie-set facade so much a part
of someone else's dreams, for it spoke more
of me than comfort would allow. I saw
a book of life in which the pages mocked
my own somnambulistic journey home,
my own defense against reality.
And then we saw the open side, and there
the little rooms cut out.showed little beds
and chairs that may be moved about, but strange...
the tiny people always stayed away
as if the president would come to call,
and they are suddenly unworthy.
There the little souls might sleep
or sip at tea with giants watching, if
they dared, but no, the house is empty, much
too quiet, too pristine, and even presidents
would presidentially demur.
She took my hand, and asked me if
I like it. I, too, broke the silence, "Yes.
I think it's grand. Might it be one that you
would live in?" "No, it's beautiful
but never home enough,
for me."
~
the scaled down dreams of future lives-- perhaps
of incarnations silently recalled
by little girls with vision far less blind
than little boys, who would forsake the gate
and scarcely see the whitewashed picket fence
along Peace Lane.
We walked together, she and I, and gained
or lost a century without a care,
then pausing there untouched by age or time,
were suddenly at home, and though it was
too much inclined to the postiche and far
too lovely, she and I could then perform
a step into dimensions that
I only thought I knew.
Of course it was a given, she would lead
me to another view, though I protest
a movie-set facade so much a part
of someone else's dreams, for it spoke more
of me than comfort would allow. I saw
a book of life in which the pages mocked
my own somnambulistic journey home,
my own defense against reality.
And then we saw the open side, and there
the little rooms cut out.showed little beds
and chairs that may be moved about, but strange...
the tiny people always stayed away
as if the president would come to call,
and they are suddenly unworthy.
There the little souls might sleep
or sip at tea with giants watching, if
they dared, but no, the house is empty, much
too quiet, too pristine, and even presidents
would presidentially demur.
She took my hand, and asked me if
I like it. I, too, broke the silence, "Yes.
I think it's grand. Might it be one that you
would live in?" "No, it's beautiful
but never home enough,
for me."
~
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Meet.......and help, the Bendermans!
http://www.bendermandefense.org/
(if this link doesn't open for you when you click it, please
try copying it, and pasting it into your address bar. Then
it seems to work for sure)
(if this link doesn't open for you when you click it, please
try copying it, and pasting it into your address bar. Then
it seems to work for sure)
Monday, February 07, 2005
Sonnet to a Lifetime
They laughed at one another as they threw
their mortar boards aloft, and dared to kiss
the girl goodbye, though she had spurned them in
the dry years underneath the towers, high
above their academic rounds. Now boys
no more, and war much brighter than their lust
for adolescent loveliness, the bus
and train will take them to a new domain
where pleasure girls will lie for them, compressed
in six short weekends hence, until possessed
with skill to kill, men pack their gear to fly
across the globe and die in puzzlement,
identified, and boxed and neatly laid
to rest beneath a cool and restless shade.
~
their mortar boards aloft, and dared to kiss
the girl goodbye, though she had spurned them in
the dry years underneath the towers, high
above their academic rounds. Now boys
no more, and war much brighter than their lust
for adolescent loveliness, the bus
and train will take them to a new domain
where pleasure girls will lie for them, compressed
in six short weekends hence, until possessed
with skill to kill, men pack their gear to fly
across the globe and die in puzzlement,
identified, and boxed and neatly laid
to rest beneath a cool and restless shade.
~
Friday, February 04, 2005
Tribute to Gertrude Stein
Three in a tree agree
to visualize a life of strife,
to realize
the hour of power
within
The Foshay Tower*
at noon
on Sunday
noon on Sunday
noon.
*This building, modeled on an obelisk similar to the Washington Monument, is in Minneapolis, a city that claims to be situated on the northern tundra, in a state called Minnesota. While this territory is too isolated to be verified, the name is said to be of Indian origin, although some residents claim that their Viking ancestors who crossed the area several hundred years ago in a drunken stupor, probably first enunciated the word as an oath, when they kept running into lakes filled with bathing Moose and slippery fish called "pickerel." They boiled the fish in a solution of lye and stagnant lake water, and called the results "ludefisk" after a delicacy first obtained from cod. When no one could eat it without retching, they cried out "man-eh soda!" and were not heard from again until spring. Minnesotans are still perceived as curious creatures who have their parades in January, drink nothing but Hamm's beer, and get very angry when someone expresses the opinion that Sauk Center ought really to have been built down in Illinois with the rest of the Sauks. It is still little known that "Sauk sucks" emerged from this controversy.
to visualize a life of strife,
to realize
the hour of power
within
The Foshay Tower*
at noon
on Sunday
noon on Sunday
noon.
*This building, modeled on an obelisk similar to the Washington Monument, is in Minneapolis, a city that claims to be situated on the northern tundra, in a state called Minnesota. While this territory is too isolated to be verified, the name is said to be of Indian origin, although some residents claim that their Viking ancestors who crossed the area several hundred years ago in a drunken stupor, probably first enunciated the word as an oath, when they kept running into lakes filled with bathing Moose and slippery fish called "pickerel." They boiled the fish in a solution of lye and stagnant lake water, and called the results "ludefisk" after a delicacy first obtained from cod. When no one could eat it without retching, they cried out "man-eh soda!" and were not heard from again until spring. Minnesotans are still perceived as curious creatures who have their parades in January, drink nothing but Hamm's beer, and get very angry when someone expresses the opinion that Sauk Center ought really to have been built down in Illinois with the rest of the Sauks. It is still little known that "Sauk sucks" emerged from this controversy.
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