To the moderators and management of Newsvine, Inc.:

Forest

In the afternoons, just before the sun
   would touch the tops of the mountains,
I would see them coming down the narrow
   trail and to the brook's shallows.
Thin, stringy young men with ash-streaked faces
   worrying a burlap sack half their size
on their shoulders, shoe-less but sure-footed
   across the boulders lining the banks,
their loads high in the air to stay dry,
   charcoal briquettes from tropical wood
made by hands, cooked underneath red clay,
   the remains of a forest on their backs.

I should tell them that they take too much,
   that the flood that comes with the monsoon
is born in the forest and loosed by bare soil,
   I should tell them that.

But the hard and the rough on the soles
   of their feet, their hands, their knees,
keep me from telling, theirs is the day to day
   of charcoal and square meals.
The uncertainty of their children coughing
   and running fevers, the unsettled sway
of their huts in a stiff wind, a missed lunch, and
   they would say that the forest's forever,
that every sundown is a burden
   for as long as they can remember.

Half the load will go to the town market
   and the other to the city far away
where in backyards grills glow in the sunset
   light that bathes the forest vanishing.

p.m.

Pompeii

If I could be an artisan I would be happy
   with a pile of colored tiles the size of fingernails.
I would choose a floor in a villa overlooking
   the sea, atop a promontory jutting into the bay.
Chalk cliffs the color of the mortar that will be
   my glue, that which calls to the pile of tiles.
Bits of the faces of a mother and her children,
   pieces of emotion forming, the line of recline
the matriarch rests upon, an upholstered bench,
   as she watches the abandon of rose'd cheeks.
There would be an arched doorway open to the blue
   and settled sky with feathered clouds on wind.
I shall break stones into pebbles, still,
   to make toes and graceful fingers,
glass for the eyes, thick but translucent,
   from bottles of spirits waiting for light sparkling.
There shall be delicate orchids and a jasmine
   bush fond with bloom, as difficult to conjure
as the pensive, thoughtful gaze of the mother
   embraced by the light and breeze of the bay.
Her perfumed hair lifting with the rolling surf
   and the laughter of the children at her feet.
Fixing the center of her heart at a far away
   sail driven in the direction of her longing,
after all the journeys and landings to where
   her dancing, singing youth still trembles in his arms.

I would like to be an artisan of mosaics
   and gather the tiles of my life with mortar onto stone.

p.m.

Hah. @!$%# Arsenal.

It's good to be a boy today.

The POTUS is not below singing some Al Green to raise money for the campaign. This one at the Apollo in Harlem. Between you and me, he should just do concerts. He'd earn more money from the women than speeches ever will.

Since their rise in the late 1990s, the Taliban and like-minded groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region have launched an aggressive campaign against liberal ways of life, bombing music shops, destroying schools, and murdering musicians, singers, and female dan …

He's baaaaaack! My favorite curmudgeon/doomsday prophet. Newsvine won't let me seed the site (natch), but here's an article from there. 

Woody Guthrie. heh. OWS ain't that new, if you think about it.

Diamonds Beneath The Soles Of My Shoes

There was the time when the guy surprised me as I
relieved myself at the urinal, the knife point
firm against my back, yelling something
about someone, turning my face slowly
just in time to catch his blinded stare.
Said nothing. Nothing for me to say
about whoever he was angry with and looking for,
but he just bit his lip, closed the switch blade
as he stepped back, turning on his heels.

Maybe that bag lady at the stairs inside the Port Authority,
two coats, dirty mittens and a shawl
at ten on a winter night.
Frightened.
About everything, it seemed,
gathering the plastic about her, counting
how many, how long, what did she forget?
I stopped on the steps to give her
my coffee and Danish and she yelled, "No!"
and I yelled back, for her to take it all,
which she did, from fright or hunger I wouldn't know.

Back then there were glass chips
in the asphalt mix and in the night
they sparkled underneath the street lamps,
not gold but diamonds in the tar of the roads,
while here and there the falling apart of dreams
melting into the ocher moonlight.

The sad, the gentle, the forgiving
moonlight.

p.m.

Ah. Mass transit in the big city.

Nude

That curved line down your neck to your shoulder
is where I have chosen to wander.
Many times it has gone back on itself
as I follow it, down the spine of your back
with my cheek, listening to your breath
fold in and out, then turn gently onto
your tummy, the down about your navel
calling me up 'tween your breasts to your heart,
listening for the pauses to imagine
myself filling them, taking the scent
of you in where your collar bones meet.
I wait like dry earth for your sigh,
the rain of your hair loose on my face,
this arid essence pulled away from my body,
this curved line between your heart and mine.

p.m.

Conservative pundits moved quickly to discredit the decorated general.

"I don't care who you are—or if you cannot tell a lie—it's un-American to question the president in a time of war," Sean Hannity said on his radio program Monday. "Plus, I find it very interesting that a man who owned slaves and sold hemp thinks he's entitled to give our Commander in Chief lessons on how to run a war."

Absent You

Absent the falling of laughter from the ceiling
Our amber turning golden in the arms of time
When whatever had been recedes into mercy
How the easy came like honey whispered
I turn in my bed to look at the ceiling
Waiting for the phone to ring.

p.m.

Mantis

I would sway my green mantis hips
   if a green mantis were I
because my heavy emerald body scaled pauses
   and so appears to sway
my killer sway round every twig's bend,
   up and down this fruiting tree,
wisdom and knowledge in each jeweled cup,
   neither of which touch my brow's concern
though to every flower I wander,
   scent on the tips of my feelers trembling
as the images bent by my insect eyes;
   come closer butter flutter fly
to the petals blossomed, here my green body.
   Still.
Still as the stones,
   my gut full of bones, none dear.
In the flash of my greened claws,
   sweet, curious life comes to a close.

p.m.

I Do Not Dream Enough

I do not dream enough as I travel
Further away from the first morning
The pathological term is insomnia
But I dream though not fear
Dreaming as I did before
The thunder shaking you up on your bed
That the world not surprise as once it did
And that I do not want
Writing her name on fresh snowfall
The flight of a raptor on thermal fingertips
The running for running's sake
Instead I am awake and as tired
As a road well traveled
And trodden beneath the eternal stars
Wondering if sleep should alight on my eyes soon
What I will dream as mightily as I can
Dream morning again in the dead of night.

p.m.

And now, my favorite stuttering pig will render a ballad popularized by The King.

I watched a segment on Rock Center tonight about this group, and found it to be very fascinating...AND inspiring! "The Muslims Are Coming" are a group of Muslim American comedians who are touring the country in an effort to dispel myths many Americans have about Muslims, and to  …

Good St. Nick! First time I heard this was while I was driving to the family Xmas party after holiday shopping. I was grumpy. But it was Xmas.

Deck the hall with boughs of holly...

love this song.

The economic state of the middle class American family notwithstanding, I believe this issue is the gorilla in the room of people elbowing each other aside for a shot at next year's general elections.

I'd also like to shout out at the Newsvine community for any JD's who've worked on this field of practice. Or any who've worked with INS or NGO's on the same. Of course, testimonials would also be welcome.

Given the import, CoH will be ruthlessly enforced.

Know a couple of straight up beauties in Houston, Dallas and Austin. Damn. Those Texas boys best take care of 'em.

This is not an attempt to claim or assume any authority on Newsvine, and should not be construed as such. Rather, it is written with the goal of clarifying what I see everyday - misconceptions about the meaning and application of the First Article of the Newsvine Code of Honor.

This I like. A lot.

Inchoate

There has got to be some sort of explanation
   because there's still bitter on my tongue
but I want more, it's not what I thought
   it would be, so you or someone tell me
why. Is it that I still taste the sweat
   on your lips and the down on the nape
of your neck and the small of your back tense
   against my open hand, the deep night of you
that I've never really understood, that maddens
   me into silence, there is nothing there for me,
nothing that you would unclasp freely
   even in mornings of entangled limbs,
your hair on my face and smelling of me,
   I dreamed a dagger's point for me in you.

p.m.

Train

It was waking up in the morning
   with the sun behind the mountain and the locomotive
rumbling by afront, its deep horn sounding
   and car after car after the wake.
All kinds; wooden boxes, steel tanks,
   flatbeds with tarp draping who knows what.
Heading south, I thought, heavy with north goods,
   the rails moaning through the wooden ties.

Oh if my life were as true, the engineer,
   having calculated the journey, its grades,
the inertia of moments redirected round
   blind bends and how to correct for those,
the fuel burned in a distance, listening to the motor
   voice its labor, its animus on gauges,
always prepared for the unexpected when little
   is unexpected if you know the journey's end.

My calculations must span despair and elation
   and have little to do with the found or revisited
but mostly genuine surprise and sometimes
   unbearable familiarity dragging me to a stop.
Nothing as convincing as the engineer's watch
   keeping time, here now and later there, for sure.
Such symmetry, extending as far as he can see
   the track unfold in the sweep of hands.

Most of all, I envy the sureness of his burden,
   all of it taken from the beginning and accounted for,
about the worry of space, weight and time to give away
   as I worry of the same for my soul and heart.

p.m.

Needle Park

Used to be, you couldn't go there after dark
   unless you were on a mission or down and out.
And even in the middle of the day
   you had to know one corner from the other,
let them know that you know you've crossed
   because there would be hard stares
placing you, knowing you, the shape you're in,
   you could be lost but they would know from where.

It's full of baby carriages now, toddlers crowding
   the water fountains, dogs yelping at the run,
the bored and listless at the cafes across
   the street from the iron fence boundaries
peering through sunglasses, lips damp with
   Bloody Mary, shiny boots measuring cobblestones,
a double deck bus full of gawkers, the guide
   pointing here and there, heads nodding blankly.

Before this the bandshell held the occasional
   troupe of roughened performers. Hungry. Daring.
Costumes strung with scraps from thrift shops
   deep downtown, terribly earnest and determined.
The nervous awareness of an entire city
   arrived at dusk, rolling groups of abandon
suddenly swirling beneath a street lamp
   trying to make sense of signs on brick walls.

And in the tenements the young huddled
   in front of TV sets, away from windows,
the bold and hopeless among them in alleys
   running away under fire escapes,
the pop of gun-fire and toppling trash cans,
   the whoop of sirens drowning cries,
and in a hospital room I tended a bullet
   riddled teen, the angriest child I've ever seen.

p.m.

Northern Wind

It's a hard city, specially in winter.
There's that northern wind coming
straight down the avenues tight
by the rivers East and Hudson.

The flowers in pails outside the delis
are behind plastic wind screens, delicacy
blurred, their scents hidden from lovers.

The poor, of possessions, of comfort and mind
driven down to tunnels to lie on hard benches.
The music about open hats or guitar cases gone,
too cold for fingers, too chilly for lips.

And I miss the hair of women, even if
their boots are back, tall and sexy.
There is a glow to their hair lighted
by sun or moon or streetlamp. Impossible.

And when the powder of snow sighs down
in the early morning perhaps
it is mercy, for a day or so,
as the hurry on sidewalks and the steam
of industry turns it all into sodden soot
beneath the grey of the closing sky
as you tug your collars close to hide your face.

And every now and then I grab a crosstown cab,
travelling from east to west to your door,
and from the grime of industry and strangers
burst into the park, glacial, pure, still.

On my way to you.

p.m.

Ghost

He was old, heavy set.
Neatly parted grayed out hair.
Looking at his profile
I could see the anger of his years.
His forehead's furrows deepening
at some long ago pain,
the blame bitter as a hard morning
coming back like the faithful tide.
And it seemed to overwhelm him,
that he had to blink so many times
to make sure it was as it was
or perhaps that fate would turn,
that maybe he missed something
and by flashing the image
over and over he would see it,
a talisman from the past
to free him, an I told you so,
this monstrous regret gripping him,
turning like some viscous fluid
in his gut changing direction
and yet resisting purging.
It was all I could do
to keep from gritting my teeth,
as if the weight of his life,
his presence, his manic despair
glowed through his diaphanous skin.
There floating on the cabinet top
and chewing through his existence,
setting his gaze slowly to me
lying in bed, unexpectedly awake
and young and innocent, rage,
rage that forced my eyes tight shut.
Over me I could feel him demanding that
I look at all the fright within him.

p.m.

"Someone has to lose money," Guo Qigang, the plant's general manager, said in a recent interview. "We're a state-owned corporation, and it's our social responsibility."

Decade

There's a corner of the office that's behind
   the vintage video game machine
that's just for umbrellas left behind
   nights or afternoons when it poured.
And on the edges of the long mirrors
   are Polaroid squares, mostly faded,
along with shoulder patches of fire companies
   up and down the Atlantic coast
and deep into towns about the Great Lakes.
   Union decals. Iron Workers. Steamfitters.
The brawn of half a continent looking down
   on the oak bar top sagging and balding varnish.
A single flat screen just above the shelf
   crammed with hard plastic hats. Sweet.

Once I saw Josephine with a sailor cap on.
   Some pink-faced Iowa farm boy's gonna wake
up sorry in his bunk. It's like that
   at the Raccoon downtown, "Hasn't changed,"
said a tall woman astride her mountain bike
   outside, peeking in, camera in hand.
I caught her smile, a slow undressing
   of memory, it seemed to me, a gentle nod.
I wonder about that, what she re-ordered
   in her head, carefully, fondly I think.

When the towers fell and paper and dust
   were everywhere outside, they opened the doors,
lined glasses and bottles on the bar, free,
   for a day, as the brawn of half a continent
filed in and out, grimy and stoic, inured
   by catastrophe, boots soiled by ash.

So I look at the Polaroids. How impossibly young.
   How ephemerally beautiful, and slowly, I smile.

p.m.

Shadows and Light

He was wiry and dark and spoke in a low voice.
At the time, it was a dangerous world, still is,
I guess, the line between dark and light remains,
a way of seeing without looking, to not be seen
looking, that what is sold as truth, like shadows,
behaves as the light that falls upon puppets scatters.
Except that there is menace in the walls, in the line
of trees off to the side, and as he talked
of what had become of his world, the bare feet,
untended wounds and the loose change in open palms
and how dreams dreamed by babies shrink
along with their bodies, his voice tightened
and his eyes became clearer, and I thought,
the brighter the light, the darker the shadows.

p.m.

Modern World

In the modern world, my sky is blue and spotless
as fall stumbles into winter, and in the modern
world, a multitude of models run in computers
that tell me, somewhere in the south Atlantic
Medea shakes her tresses and the ocean breeze
tumbles as the down on her skin raises.
The models show it in their rain of numbers.
Where once I wondered at red skies and the day become,
Delphi in the silicon chips foretell a storm.
Goodbye Artemis.

p.m.

Talk

Its not enough, these little talks we have
   from miles apart,
even if I can hear the pause
   in your breath remembering
or maybe holding back, so much
   for being considerate, the politeness
that keeps us from frightening
   each other like strangers colliding
turning a sidewalk corner,
   sorry, sorry, without looking
at each other's eyes like we do,
   or did, the drive home after last
we were together, the stoplight
   at the intersection suddenly liquid
and real and final my hands
   and feet landing unthought
the turn signal louder
   than I had ever heard it ticking.
Its not enough, these little talks
   we have from far away.

p.m.

Vermilion...Aquamarine...

Before her I thought the fire tree
   announcing summer was bleeding
vermilion, basking in the punishing
   sunlight, not bothered at all, happy
and asking for more, as if the heat
   pulling water from the veins of her leaves
emboldened their hue, birds blinded
   to protect her fruit, a wise beauty.

I would walk by and be in danger
   of losing myself in her hair caught
in a breeze, what Mitch said about
   redheads and the way they can laugh
and I had to remind myself to not get lost
   searching for the rustle of her tresses,
quiet, she was mostly quiet and still
   but for the wind free, when she laughed.

It was so till I waded into aquamarine,
   salt and warmth on her lips,
washing over my calves, her eyes deep as the horizon
   and then in her chest high embrace
surrounded by her giggling amusements of
   flashing oranges, blues, yellows
alive, vital in their flexing and releasing and
   then standing in her oscillations,
swallowing me whole, turning me round
   and round, arms and legs flailing.

Telling me sweetly in the salt of her wisdom
that I had not met anyone like her till then.

p.m.

Pink

I've had days when suffering and death
   would wash so slowly off my hands
at the sinks by the beds cradling the sick,
   time dilated in the mud of burden.

The light from the tall windows illuminated
   dust in the air, from whom who's to say,
as easily shed as the muffled voices
   debating the minutiae of existence
in the numbers, in the shadows of silvered gelatin
   irradiated revealing silhouettes of flesh.

Those were armor, the teeth of technology
   crunching through the fragile histories,
when one knows, no further, no further,
   call the husband in, bring a chair
to the side of the bed and sit him down
   and say nothing, what is there to say
after all, his shoulders sagging with her every
   sigh, faces creased by memory and its
weight, to frame each revelation and etch it
   in your gaze, to present to the world.

Those were the days when my own face
   would grimace with recognition and doubt.
When down the hallway I would go, my hands
   fragrant and clean and my senses dulled,
to the bank of elevators up to the eighth floor
   where the walls were pink and the windows
wide, like Macy's, you know, and there row
   upon row, tiny feet, hands and faces creased.

p.m.

Amber

I could pick out your laughter
in a room full of yelling drunks,
and I did you know, when I first saw you
unfazed and in the moment, such
poise, I thought, a break, a beat for every
gesture, generous, generous,
and I'm a sucker for that, first of all
and secondly how eyes can open instead of
narrow, not that yours didn't narrow
when you caught me looking
and how you pursed your lips into half
a smile ( a smirk?) - little boy crush.

These halting dance steps, the quiet
acknowledgement of recognition between
strangers, these I never could explain
nor even wanted to after the first time.
The tumble of her hair engaging air
when she dipped her face down and spoke low.

In the faded yellow light from across the mirror
I wished forever in a moment.

In the amber of spirits sweet
the caramel of impermanence.

In the laughter stabbing through incoherent yelling
the brook of my sunny youth calling.

p.m.

Green

Let me tell you about my father's garden,
   and its important because your grandfather was there.
A man removed from the fields that had nurtured him
   and in the greying of his life began to build
from memory in the soil about our home
   happily, no, thankfully retired from paper, ink,
dirt marking his fingers again, considered judgement
   as sunlight fell upon greened rows of earth
in the dawn always arrived, measuring his toil
   in new shoots, a tendril, a bud reaching.
No roses, no orchids, no lilies nor daisies,
   food, only food, though food was already there
(my mother was constant), as if what would be
   gleaned from a patch of earth and quiet labor
might be as milk honeyed by one's memory,
   a tomato's hues, the gourd's furry in his grasp,
how the long stalk of beans would snap just so
   as the earth transmutes into leaves rising.
I would watch, waiting for his voice that told
   stories and advised, but he was alone in the alchemy,
and it must have been alchemy because my little boy hands
   did not dare the rows of jade,
something about his demeanor among the life tended,
   about the sweetness in the broth of vegetables,
as the earth, awoken by his longing and rested heart,
   had become his voice speaking stories.

p.m.

Watching the 9/11 memorial broadcast here in NYC. Still gets to me, after all these years. Here is one of the greatest living American poets reading his poem When The Towers Fell, about that horrible day.

I think it to be the best poem of that tragedy I've come across. Just click on the link to the mp3. For the writers out there, the recording is part of an NYU writing class, and the poet describes the poem's genesis.

Fascinating and moving all at once.

C/D:  Sadly, we must ask about the Onion story.

   Like most people who had lived in New York long enough to recognize the World Trade Center buildings as landmarks of the city's skyline, I did not really think of them as beautiful structures. From, say the south entrance to Washington Square Park, your back to the arch at the north end, you could make out their outlines on a clear fall sky but be impressed only by their size and boxy silhouettes. The image of the Chrysler building from the 59th Street bridge on the East River is far more beautiful and elegant, particularly at night when the stainless steel Art Deco tower is bathed in artificial light.

   The Twin Towers were bland architecturally, and the public plazas surrounding them sterile and often empty of people. The Chrysler, even the Beaux Arts City Hall, look upon spaces of bustling civilian traffic. The Chrysler has Grand Central Station across the street, the city buildings downtown stately turn of the century architecture and churches with their spires dating to the early nineteenth century.

   Arriving in the city from my sister-in-law's modest apartment in northern New Jersey, stepping off the PATH commuter train into the station three stories down in the basement of the North Tower, in search of my first job in the big city, I was struck by the sheer number of people riding or striding up a bank of half a dozen full-size escalators. Eight-thirty in the morning and everybody, at least it seemed to me, looked like they were running late. The lobby had the traffic of Grand Central's, but the ambiance of mega-mall anywhere USA.

   That view sticks with me. As uninteresting as the towers were aesthetically, that flow of humanity within its walls was pleasing. It was a world. My brothers had worked there at one time or another. Till I moved to the city from New Jersey, the lobby of the North Tower was the first I saw of the city. Thousands of faces, nearly all possessed of ambition.

   So on the eighteenth of September 2001, when I was able to at last travel as far as Union Square on 14th Street, where I first found the smallish, humble statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the southwest corner of the square, I came up from beneath the tunnels, and in a cool and soft fall breeze from the sea, a breeze so gentle it felt like it was seeping its way north, like the bed of scents a sidewalk flower stall sends out to its sidewalk, was the unmistakable odor of death, hundred of deaths, on the breeze.

   In my bedroom, I had watched on the newscasts live video of the attack. I tried to imagine the glass flooring at the edges of the observation deck I had visited, just once, because the height had slowed my heart, disintegrating while I stood on them. I thought, at the time, standing there seeing the wind sway the top of the mighty building ever so minutely, that something as dull and oppressive as the towers seen from the ground could not possibly be that alive.

   On the television screen, that was all I could do. Try to imagine it all as if I were on Chambers Street, on the sidewalk, bending my neck back as far as it would go, like the first time, so I could find the very top. These monstrous constructions splitting the downtown sky reduced into a flat plane of perception so alien I stuggled to find a foothold.

   Those flames look like they're coming from somewhere in the 90's.

   The broadcast antenna's still up. Why can't I get Channel 4 off the air?

   (on a long camera shot from a helicopter) What are those things falling off the sides of the building?

   (me screaming in my head) Implosion! Implosion! (the south tower collapsing)

   From then on, I stopped thinking, and just watched, all the way into dusk. The north tower collapsing. World Trade #7 following. The audio feeds with voices in tears, or trembling with anguish, my heart going more numb by the hour.

   But that late afternoon, on the sidewalk off Broadway, just outside of the southeast Union Square subway stop stairwell, I finally grasped the enormity of tragedy. The odor of thousands of bodies in the ammonia clinging to a breeze from the harbor, faintly.

   It was unbearable. I could not bring myself to walk to the makeshift, hastily constructed memorials along the 14th Street steps leading to the Union Square plaza. Compelled by grief, I turned back and left the same way I came.

Valerie

I know your mother only by her singing voice
   and I know you only because she sang of you,
or because of you, that voice arcing through
   her chest and throat and out to the world.
Sometimes I wished neither of you needed the other
   so much, because you took her from us
for a time, the length of your life, and I can hear
   her singing to you, just you, in that time.
That precious time when I wondered about where
   that arcing, aching, playful voice had gone.
But she said, in the time left allowed her,
   that she left because she loved you.
To sing to you in the time allowed you here,
   and before joining you again, sang for us, with joy.

p.m.

I thought I should highlight the next generation of poets. Ms. Williams has a clear and bell-like voice, and has chosen a poem that is topical, given the country's current economic straits. I do not in fact know if she has written a piece, but her reading of this one by the seated Poet Laureate of the US reveals a depth of appreciation and empathy that belies her youth.

Thunderstorm

Maybe I didn't see what I should have,
the fog of weariness settling in for the night
and into the next morning, waking asweat
from a dream, that I could remember a kindness.

There is that, caught in the grid of dawn light
through the blinds that need cleaning, to see.

And I have walked within tended gardens before,
the formal French and the contrived English,
but most enjoy a stand of trees after a thunderstorm
with broken sodden branches about, green leaved
with the air of the vital from the wounded trees
and knowing that even then they continue to reach.

Though the rot may course up their wood,
had I the root and eye for the sky
then I will stand among them, my bones darkening
and my soul, yet wounded, reaching.

p.m.

Joe was at it again. In China this time. The Chinese officials thought his 5 minutes was too long. Boy. Way till you give him a real bone.

Found this on my now more regular searches for video of poetry reading. It's in two parts, the first in Spanish, and the second a literate English translation. Both have the fire and flow of the inevitable. It's difficult not to be carried away. I don't know much Spanish, you folk that do are in for a treat I suppose, and the English speaking (too bad it's not really one of the Romantic languages) should, in my estimation, still be blown away by this poet's power.

I so miss the guy and his bots.

In Between

The boulevard by the bay where the sun sets
   behind the ships laden of cargo from far away,
where in the warm evening air lovers steal time
   because they cannot bear their time slip away,
is in between the closing doors, the blinking lashes,
   half open lips, muted phrases in drops of candle wax
piercing bare skin, and I want these, expect
   these as sea foam rolling in with the tide.

Like the weathered surfaces of furniture, leather,
   the scent of lives lived piled one on top
another, days of wind tousled hair and squinting
   into the sun or a star's pulsing halo,
asea, asea, afraid as I may be of the deep
   where yet I have not laid still and open,
a cold and rocky peak, at the end of a dive's bar
   standing up and knocking back the smoke of bourbon.

And I would breathe it all in again, Lucy Ann,
   the deep, the peak and the boulevard in between.

p.m.

Muse

I know that I have been diffident or
Headstrong and insistent in the worst of times
Intolerant of change which is the currency of life
But I have been faithful to you
In the time you have allowed me near
I can recall every evening of laughter and moon
The crushing blow of unbidden suffering visited
And I remember not out of want
But because I looked at you
And I listened to you
And somewhere in the air between us
I found myself yours.

p.m.

Well I told Nina Fox that I'd find an Irish poet reading his work, only this guy's Irish-American, but I promise that you wouldn't know from hearing him. If I remember correctly, he lives in New Jersey and plays guitar in a garage band.

He's lyric and cherishes the Irish lilt. I find his images arresting, and he writes like he talks.

Long live Poets!

The High Hill

At the bend of the high hill road
   lived the little one and her sisters twin.
I love them all as only a hungry boy
   can love, as incomplete as a starless sky.
As rough as a graveled country road
   and deeper still in those tall hills
where a clear water stream swayed its way
   along the corners, speaking.

The crossing done as a heavy invisible curtain
   parting, cool water between your toes.
The sweat of a day bright on your arms
   browning in the long sun of June.

I hear their voices. Feel their measuring gazes
   all around me. Wild flowers.
Berries sweet, cloyingly bursting in my mouth.
   Startled by a lizard leaping into the water.
Skipping a smooth river stone after it,
   yelling my imagined warrior cry to frighten
as it did me counting days dancing past
   even through the web of my dreams.

I wondered how and why that world transforms,
   how many times I would shed my skin
like the gauze of translucent scales snakes leave
   behind for me to find, ghosts in the tall grass.

And as the long lived sun stretched into the hills,
   I traveled down the high hill road
swaying corners on my bike to the house
   of the sisters twin and the little one.
Waiting for them to look out and see me again,
   a ghostly boy shedding my translucent skin.

p.m.

War and Want

All along the sidewalks and street corners
   the scent of candles and incense scattered.
I had without really trying become lost
   as in a bazaar in Persia or a market
in a high Inca town, a sure breeze behind me,
   an irresistible desire to dip into spices,
to take in the breath of hulled dark rice,
   the low slung garlic and ears of corn.
There must be a secret path, a corridor earthen,
   hidden from the oblivious who happen by
in the tumult of their lives, precious every one,
   no greater or less than grain scattered on ground.
In the time of war and want my grandmother
   did not think twice about sweeping those into her hand,
like each one had a name, the name of a child
   that once she had heard crying and calling out.
I had come to know this from my mother who went
   with her to that market, picking grace
one grain at a time, an angel's tears bringing tidings
    of mercy, the promise of salvation,
counting each till there is a handful, a bridge
   across a riverbed gone dry, cracked and caked.
That every drop of rain may be accounted for somehow
   in the nodding acknowledgement of supper.
It must have been that way in every time
   of want and war, the counting of tears,
the travel down bazaars and markets ablaze
   with scents, color, spices and grain on the ground.

p.m.

More than one person has come up to me and asked "Why Oslo?". Well you can Google every gun related, mindless massacre in the past, what, 20 years and you can bet your entire IRA account that the perp was certifiably insane. Why does that fact not comfort the friends and family of the victims?

It's obvious, isn't it? The insane perp had guns and ammo to burn. Not that this article would make any difference in a country where it's considered a right, not a privilege, to procure and maintain an arsenal for the sake of owning an arsenal. I mean, let's not pretend that that arsenal is to protect one's liberty. It's 2011 and there is a system to address your grievance or grievances against the government or any political front through public comment, debate or just plain tweets.

The knee jerk response is to arm yourself as well, but why does that sound like Dodge City and OK Corral? Because that would be Dodge City and OK Corral. I like horses, but the part about shooting down people you don't agree with I'd like to leave behind on the ash heap of history. It's simply not possible to not have disagreement nor insane people. Adding guns and ammo to that equation will result in something like Oslo. Having a gun to shoot down the perp, unless you are a law enforcement professional, will only perpetuate the culture of have a gun and you can have an opinion.

This opinion, of course, is of no real consequence given the antiseptic reading of the current SCOTUS regarding the right to bear arms, an interpretation so literal that you expect to see a horde of red coated English men marching up the hill road leading to your town along with an even larger horde of reporters from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and what have you streaming live HDTV a la Libya and prior Egypt, the latter having been forced by unarmed rebels.

Nor does one have to invoke Gandhi, nor Martin Luther King Jr., nor the open and willing sacrifice of those who advanced the cause of civil rights in the now historic 1960's. In the here and now, you can bring a movement, a political career, indeed, an idea, to its knees without firing a single round from a pistol.

Some will bring the notion of criminal activity as reason enough to arm yourself, but I have yet to find a society worthy of being called a civilization because every one of its citizens could kill absent, or in spite of, a Justice system. That particular society would be akin to the Stone Age.

The current conservative axis of the SCOTUS will have to reckon with this Nordic tragedy in order to rationalize their narrow interpretation of the US Constitution in the context of the second millennium, among other tragedies involving guns and their tendency to attract the criminally insane.