Saturday, June 30, 2018
stillwater home forts
Go back to the forts, hideouts, stomping grounds of childhood, before they totally vanish,
before they self demolish and are used to build new flimsy dreams. Before the shed is
just used to house the riding lawnmower, and not be a lair for desperados or jedi or spies.
Brother and I built our cook-fire in the bowl shaped lid of a steel milk cannister, got a fry
pan and an egg from the kitchen, and had our second breakfast in the pines. The treehouse
was our real home, in the front yard, in the big sycamore.
I could jump to the first branch five feet up, swing my leg over it, and climb another bunch
of feet into the walled fort my dad built for us out of new lumber. Open wind0ws, and no
roof for the first couple years, until we added a second story. We spent hours every day in
the tree, at the top, jumping off it, clamboring around it summer or winter, leafed or
bald. Tin can phones and string, blanket roofs, koolaide and squirt guns. Having friends
over to play. Throwing the balsa wood planes out of the tree, or little plastic men with
parachutes. Very oily plastic figurines.
Who else in America had their own bi-plane? Dad built ours out of plywood and two by
fours; doubled wings, like Snoopy, box shaped and twelve feet long. Big enough to get
into, three feet wide, with tail fins, and a closing cockpit, gauges and a propellor that
we could spin from inside, manually. The top wing was 5 feet from the ground, the lower
wing 2 feet off the grass. It was painted with a shark's mouth, a pair of dice, checkerboard
patterns. It was a remarkable asset, and solid enticement for visiting friends. Who else
had their own plane?
Parked underneath the treehouse, or nearby, we could adventure all over the world and
not miss the city life most of our school friends took for granted. I wish I had that passport.
Our rabbit hutch was under the treehouse, for as long as we had our rabbit Foo Foo. We
f0und him on Easter hopping around our yard, white with a several moustaches and eye
rings, a baby coincidence, or escapee. Hard to remember the end of the rabbit, or the
final days of the plane. It must have rotted to an extent beyond repair, as I spent more
time after school in sports, or at the library, and been a good soggy day burn project that
I missed.
We never had a dog house, because we only had cats, and litters of cats. Grant and I would
put them in boxes lined with cloth, and drag them around the house, to tinker-toy and
building block ghettoes, often hastily constructed with a fort of couch pillows. There was
Mickey, and Boogie, and Quimby. They had the run of the house and the land. Boogie would
be gone for days or weeks, come back with is Maine Coon fur full of beggars lice, or withwi
torn up ears. They stayed away from the highway. There was all kinds of road kill to
poke at down there; possums, armadillo, tortoises, coyote, deer, all kind of birds.
The forts on wheels, our cars, were always station wagons: a Datsun, a Mazda, and
way back when a VW station wagon the size of a candy bar. The Apache pickup was the
coolest, as we got to ride in it on top of loads of firewood, or to our land with the pond,
or to the drive-in theater.
Nearby the drive-in, on our east side of town, was also the roller skating rink. I loved
skating, the chance to flirt with girls and couple-skate hand in hand, and play arcade
games, foosball and air hockey. Doing the limbo, on skates. In the winter, we ice skated
our pond and played real hockey, with a crushed can and tree limbs, all around the
beaver lodge. Forts, nests with wings, shoes with fins, homes on wheels. And then the
inner realms of books, of study, or the rooftop to cloud watch. Coming in with shoe
laces full of stickers, a jar with fireflies, and chigger bites. Or home right at dark, a
stringer of gasping fish that gott be cleaned as they say, out on the slab with moths
and junebugs and the cats watching, the innards of the fish on some paper sack, and
Monty Python on the TV and then it was bedtime, again, and creep mouse.
get good and goet
the beautiful naked page so adamantly patient
for ink, her song thru broken sails
slung tardy hissing near the reef.
a merman of the sky doled out the rainbow kisses
only a vocabulary can taste.
easy mind goes freely trapping,
all the quarry has blametags and alternate diodes
to flash utter sense, senseless. run a
green light
hop a bounty, the screen and screed and scrawl
want to take care of you, in the dim hours
and drip feed moonlight, but he is
clad in clammy wool knickers and full of moths.
sylvia's sylvan slippers skip dope,
on the play ground, all the mary cunts go merrily
cunting their bunbuns to finnegan's fingal cave,
with the bad givers and their manners made of dust.
slammed doors and open atoms
make mushtomb pizzas, how sweet!
the birdies taunt death's halo, fluttering like
parmesan over angel hair demons. my mother,
dressed in jeweled basalt in the habit of a nun,
volcanic. my father, poor as a sharecropper
up to his nose in Oil and pussy. kitsch
lines the avenue, its all not for sale, no matter
the size of the sheep, or her billy
goat gruff said the die, landing on their sides
full of whining asphalt. rather than vulgar marbles,
our needs encompass time like filo dough.
you're lucky to get periods,
and commas, dude, otherwise the fig leafed page
would behead the knight with a comet,
their bland automaton in a helmet made of maids.
if you can't have fun, why
spend the splendor on ferris wheel gerbils says the
ratchety young spring, going squirt squirt
out the fake flower of his eye, weepy and yellowed
with autumn. earl grey and mister mustard in the dining
room with a candlestick, or the sorry parch easy
queasy doomish dildos of growing grass
under the scythe's fourth eye, that's the rub.
dumb but not deaf, the plain
all pain deludes into desert nomad donkeys
packed with alpha bets
and beta fish set on one another like fireants.
don't try to "get it"
get got.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
on the bus toward home, west more
-land river bluff
built by floods, long hence
routed animal motions,
geese honk passing o'er head
drip their logs
over the golf course,
scat made of fish bone puree
hole in one.
on the bus, weaving its way
thru the toney wood
-stock/reed college neighborhood,
from a painting gig
my black dungarees palomino speckled
the bus halts as a pickup truck
parked impedes our bumpy hustle.
i walk to the driver
to ask directions,
return to seat, and a girl
pops into the seat next to me
"hi dad!"
her hair has changed since last week,
my punker teenaged daughter,
she's older. we chat,
she tells me about mom,
sister starting school this week and
sister's friending which is sweet.
i have to stop to pay
my phone bill, my spoonbill, dip deep
in the wallet, fish out me
-saw, a corner of my identity,
one chip off my blot
-good block.
Mt Tabor, Oregon
4-5-18
POETRY bloggod
Hola, Ciao, Aloha, friends!
There is lots more of my poetry at my other blog site, bloggod!
Enjoy!
Sunday, March 18, 2018
seize this this (1999)
seize this this poem as evidence
of the worlds inside which collide
with clashing scimitars resounding
muffled by a buffalo hide
seize this this home as evidence
of the love of the air and the tree
breathe the fragrance of your own doings
exemplify the peace of one, free
seize this his body as evidence
limb by limb fold me into thy cell
only then could i awaken
from relentless consumer spell
seize this this entire universe
stick a barcode on the moon
buy grafted simu-cool reality
with microscopic digital spoons
seize this this flagrant evidence
a pile of consumer's bones
shred the passive neuroses to smithereens
burn quaint Timorese in their homes
seize this this wrapper by providence
left on the smudge of the hook
them heathen needs be crucified
but spare 'em if they can cook
seize this this moment as medicine
for the soul of the earth is food
acorn, creekmint, broccoli
feed flesh as well as its mood
1999 Swale Canyon, Wa
Friday, March 16, 2018
Tattoo Tears and the Ladder Not Taken or Offered
http://www.calibanonline.com/store.html
#9 includes an art portfolio by Kisoon Griffith, interviews with zydeco musicians Wayne Toups and Nathan Williams, and work by Gerald Vizenor, Wanda Coleman, Dionisio Martinez, Diane Wakoski, Antonio Porta, Spencer Selby, Forest Bloodgood, Dieter Weslowski, Christopher Davis, John M. Bennett, Melissa Monroe, Ronnie Burk, Ray DiPalma, Edouard Roditi, Simon Perchick, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris, John Bradley, Sonya Hess, Joel Lewis, Amanda Yskamp, Edward Smallfield, Sheila E. Murphy, Stephen Ratcliffe, Kevin Walker, John Lindgren, Silvia Curbelo, Greg Mulcahy, George Kalamaras, Raymond Federman, David Huerta, Jeanne M. Beaumont, Edward Mycue, Nico Vassilakis, Jay Passer, Christina-Marie, John Bell, Jose Quiroga, Judith Roitman, Gaspar Aguilera Diaz, Lisa Cooper, B.Z. Niditch, Tyrone Williams, and Guy R. Beining.
___________
#9 Issue of Caliban has my poem "hairbrain," about my friend Ann, who underwent
emergency brain surgery for an aneurysm. I had been publishing poetry by sending small
manuscripts to magazines, and got a tip from that Caliban wanted a submission. It was
particularly rewarding to be published alongside established "names."
I hadn't looked up Caliban online in awhile, not knowing it continued in some form. Yesterday,
I was thinking of Sherman Alexie, who at present is in the news from multiple women
accusing him of bad behavior (in a nutshell.)
"Writer Sherman Alexie last week issued a statement admitting he "has harmed" others, after rumors and allegations began to circulate about sexual harassment. Without providing details, Alexie said "there are women telling the truth," and he apologized to the people he has hurt. "
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/589909379/it-just-felt-very-wrong-sherman-alexies-accusers-go-on-the-record
Issue #10 of Caliban has several Alexie poems; the first is "Tattoo Tears," which is
dedicated "for Joy Harjo." It begins with "1. No one will believe the story I'm telling, so it must
be true." The poem explains that the tattooed tears for the woman exist as the "real ones
failed to convince."
Caliban print issues featured a Free Speech Corner, wherein contributors are given an
additional chance for publishing unedited comments. Sherman Alexie wrote,
"I'm a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian
from the Spokane Indian Reservation.
Nearly full-blood, which means I can play
in the all-Indian basketball tournaments,
but still not sure which parts of me
are federally recognized as white."
NOW we know which parts are recognized as white: the shamed part.
""It's a story about power, and abuse of power," says Jeanine Walker, one of three women who came forward on the record, and whose stories NPR has corroborated with several sources. In all, 10 women spoke to NPR about Alexie, who is a married man. Most of the women wanted to remain anonymous, but a clear pattern emerged:
The women reported behavior ranging from inappropriate comments both in private and in public, to flirting that veered suddenly into sexual territory, unwanted sexual advances and consensual sexual relations that ended abruptly.
The women said Alexie had traded on his literary celebrity to lure them into uncomfortable sexual situations."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)