"Hard Drive" (for T.V.)

HARD DRIVE



It was a hard drive
through the New Mexican
landscape of our relation
ship out to sea: the shape up
or shit out. It sucked
like the desert sucks
sometimes—the scaggy
sagebrush fainting before
the mirror of the broadening
sun. No shade in sight.
Just you and Dougie
and a rainbow in our past;
the distant future, a mirage
of one to one. You wouldn't say it
and an absence absolved
the air of any difficulties.
Left us, a prison, the plastered
prisoners puking in their minds. I
followed the train of a shadow's
destiny. On my right,
an impenetrable sea
of mountains. I couldn't face
the range this face inspired.
You, unblessed. And me, a widow
of the heart. I realized then,
this profession of emoting
is an evening out. Your profile
never looked at me, my riven mask
all these solstices, all the unlit
velas.
.............Now,
.......................a Virgin

hails. The cab of desire
ticking expectation like a red
engine in the driveway. Touch me
to death.



12/22/04

Lorna Dee Cervantes's New Limited Edition Chapbook Available Now!

LDC_Chapbook
Originally uploaded by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Blog Exclusive: I have a limited number of a very limited edition of my new chapbook, And the Earth Did Not Forget Them/Y la tierra no los olvidó for $25 dollars each. Hand-sewn & published by Wings Press as a limited edition of 100 for 10th Annual Latina Letters Conference, the chapbook contains recently revised versions of two long poems, "Coffee" and "Bananas." Or, what I like to call "highly unpublishable political poems about ubiquitous comestibles."

Special Summer Offer for all my blog buds:

$50 for chapbook now and new hardbound copy of DRIVE: The First Quartet which includes all 5 books in this new literary pentych in time for the holidays—all signed & personalized by me & shipped free of charge to you. How's that for having poets in blog places? You can also advance order & advance pay for our (LD & Wings Press) deluxe artbooks edition of the individually bound books in a hand-crafted wooden box, which may include additional goodies in the MANGO tradition for $250.

(Note: All prices set by my publisher.)

Just click on my Amazon.com secure pay system, pay $25 or $50 and fill out info to be sent to me regarding your payment (otherwise it is anonymous) & send me an email with amount sent, shipping address & info for personalization in case you'd like to send a book as a gift.

(If you have ever been a "lifetime" subscriber to MANGO I will hunt you down and send you a book. We are still alive, esas y eses! Send me an email with new address, to make you easier to find.)

EAT POETRY.

I do.

Po' Church

Po' Church
Originally uploaded by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

"Write it!" Sister, Write it!
Ah, Brother, Shout it out!
More Guerrilla Poetry
at Walmart's!

Homeland Security

Homeland Security
Originally uploaded by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Save A Good Dog From Isla Mujeres

brucie
Originally uploaded by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Heeeeere's Brucie! Our new dog.

"A Birth Poem for Rebecca Loudon & Teresa Ballard"

There's a present
in the package.
All of it riding
a killing wind and
flare, there, a raw
verve, an ignition
of flight, a dream
of ten minutes ago
frozen into the zen
of a face, the face-
off of summer's dune.

Here's a present
for the package,
the two in a square,
the obstacle of age
dimished in the shade,
in the good book, good
look, the luck of a dog,
grazing past the paw; the
animal swallow and the way
past hissing; all the bees, all
the sheep asleep and
missing.

............... Bless this day,
.......................................... and the next,
with flowers and the wine
of a lover's tongue. Be
love's tongue, this birth,

this day
in poetry.



Lorna Dee Cervantes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Happy birthday R & T!

Blogoview Question of the Week: 7/29

from Charles Jensen, A Therapist With A Dream Inside hot in AZ, who this week asks:

"When do you have time to write?"

La Duende tells the time
submitting to a higher
ripening, there above the forest,
a saving of buckets
and splash, the grace
of treasoned moments,
the despots of ticking
meters and flint, all
that carving into
the heart of things: Davids,
loins, the whole cracked
pot of seed, the flowing
of mouth gowns, far
away nursery rhymes
in another language—
What isn't a dream.

"Do you maintain a strict schedule, write when you can, or write when the mood strikes you?"

I maintain a strict mood
when the writing strikes

Time. Time is Art.
Art is Time.

Mood::Indigo

Mood is for the ring
of an insolent child
to say.

Ask It.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(thanks Charles!)

Immigrant Cats Not Wearing Sombreros. . .

. . . beat a Poetcat Swearing Sombreros

anytime.

Po-Cats of the New Sincerity: Drive/ct sd.

(Not responsible for anything that makes me laugh.) All links courtesy of my astrologer, Kramer Wetzel, original astrofisherman of the stars, and beyond.

Pay (cheap!) to get the scope scoop on this Saturn thang that started full-force July 16th & how it affects you from a funny Shakespearean scholar (well, by reincarnation) who bugs fish habitually at Town Lake, which is neither. There's more to life than Mercury. I know my payday's tomorrow. . . "The check is in the mail, Kramer."

A Well-Crafted Poem From An Awefully Awesome Writer

. . . aka An Awefully Serious Girl with a "Fable" of sisters.

I suggest reading the blog via archives in the order they were written — stunning stuff. Good writing all around. Reminds me why I go here, these "worlds/ islanded in other times" (~R. Hass), the in/spiritation. Good way to spend a too-hot-for-nothing afternoon.

(oops, I'm supposed to be working on galleys: busted!)

Oh, To Be "Equally In Love With. . . The Romance of the Difficult"

". . . the other, equally in love with beauty and the romance of the difficult" says Silliman this morning. Ah! Now I know why I've always loved Jack Gilbert, the poetry, that is. That affinity. To be equally in love with "truth" as Silliman says of Laura (Riding) Jackson, and the "romance of the difficult"—mea culpa. ("And I'll be guilty for the rest of my life" as Bonnie sings it.)

Is that what that is, now? This rising? A romance of the difficult?

Perhaps not a good thing to ponder when confronted with new galleys for five books woven together, 25 years of lifework processed as poetry: the vital quest for Truth and the romance of the difficult. Or, is that the romance WITH the Difficult — thinking of breakfast dishes whizzing past quietude & into the split lip of the silent poet, the trial ending of passive resistence. (Not my story, by the way, but one told to me by the flinger: "He would never say a word to me.") Sufferage to the listening (loving) poet.

I guess.

I read Jack now, "A Brief for the Defense":

"To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come."

And I'm not convinced.

Not as much as I am in love with the idea of the very difficult poet seeking the air-conditioned refuge of the ubiquitous, and finding poetry, nonetheless, the very serendipity. And, the purchase.

While this poet beats the heat in a new bikini under the sprinkers, tending her garden of sage & vegetables unknown to her for the Chinese characters on the packages, reading — herself: a long & difficult romance.

¡Adelante, La Poesia!

simón que sí y bon voyage

y'all

Galleys!! New Cover & 320 pages of DRIVE. . .

. . . have arrived. YEAH!!



new cover foto:

Poems Are Wings - What Remains

Thoreau's Journal: 26-July-1852


Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day. Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds. Once, as he was crossing the College Yard, he saw the wings of one coming down, which reached the ground just at his feet. What a tragedy! The wings came down as the only evidence that such a creature had soared,—wings large and splendid, which were designed to bear a precious burthen through the upper air. So most poems, even epics, are like the wings come down to earth, while the poet whose adventurous flight they evidence has been snapped up [by] the ravenous vultures of this world.


posted by Greg at 12:03 AM

(Thanks, Greg)

"Unconscious Mutterings #127 On 7/25/05"

1. Do-it-yourself:: you thief, you
   
2. Pickpocket:: of the heart's denial,
   
3. Ballet:: dancer of the fifth dimension,
   
4. Resumé:: on file in the institutes of gone,
   
5. Phenom::  obligator, wretched
   
6. Love/Hate:: of the disengaged,
   
7. Unusual:: man, wayfarer
   
8. Intense:: to the ten-nth degree
   
9. Interruption:: reinstated.
   
10. Not enough:: to be a date
    
11. ((/ol)):: ole stand-bye
    olé
    

"Unconscious Mutterings #128 On 7/25/05"

1. Tolerate:: my
   
2. Release:: you,
   
3. My soul:: my
   
4. Sax;:: my xylophone of the spine &
   
5. HP::  high definition explorer
   
6. Worth:: my soul in a tank of gas.
   
7. Rockstar:: subliminal soul survivor, you
   
8. Terrify:: You
   
9. Knock me off my feet:: You rant and
   
10. Taunt:: me, lift me
    
11. off my s/ol>ul
    

"Unconscious Mutterings On 7/25/05"

1. Believing:: That God is existent, that
   
2. Invasion:: is a matter of words and the foreplay of
   
3. Boys:: bans, and the bands playing on, an
   
4. Island:: retreat, a re-treat of the dog,
   
5. Repeatedly::  stunned into existence—
   
6. Normal:: but for the gun and the
   
7. Hex:: You, too? Suspended; a
   
8. Tuxedo:: in a penguin, the sublime
   
9. Virgin:: and the issuance of soup and
   
10. Cereal:: the living brand:
    

(unseen) (/ol):: Ol' standard

from a Luna Niña

New Portrait & Notecards from Didi!

Too cool! I just received this, too flattering, portrait from Didi Menéndez. You can order notecards with the poem I wrote in response to A.D. Thomas & after Rilke called "Summer Day" posted at the Café Café. Wow, instant poetry. I so, so much enjoy this aspect of independent publishing. Long Love Little Presses. Long Love Artists!

Didi, I'll have to type up or scan some of my favorite poetry postcards, ones you don't send because they are so perfect for the one you would send them to that you want to hang onto the artifact of that missing. Thanks!

"My Blog Is My Home"

where I take my spelling shoes off
I take a book off the shelf
entertain guests
without having to address
my dress
we pour a drink or two
of vintage imaginaire
whatever we got
hidden in the cabinets
we sprout a few wings
on a laugh & a prayer
for humanity
for a cleaner air

Some of the Best Poets Are Sincere. . .Or, Why I Don't Often Write Prose,

Almost Never—About As Often as I Anger

But, some things you just gotta say; I wrote this this morning:

"Please recognize that my comments are in response to numerous comments Tony made on *my blog* and in his in response to my blog, and most offensely & defamatorily, all culturally & ethnically loaded comments: assumptions & presumptions about me & my work based upon what I represent to him as a Chicana poet. Beginning with this in a post from early June

"There is a period style (or maybe it’s a sub-style of the Wonder Bread style) that I’ll call the “Tortilla style.” This style takes one’s ethnic, racial, sexual, economic, or political identity and fetishizes or ghettoizes it. There are several MFA programs that specialize in this sort of writing. One, which I will not name, even calls itself “The MFA of Color.” Is there any innovative or even interesting writing coming out of programs like this? Not much. What good there is flies extremely low to the ground, and leaves the airspace as soon as the two years are up. Features of this style include obligatory poems about grandparents (and how they’re different from white people), foods ( and how “exotic” the foods that the poet ate growing up are), living oppressed and poor (most of these poems are written by rich kids who got a SUV for graduation and who have never seen the ghetto in their life). This period style holds hands with the “working class style” that serves the same function as the Tortilla style—to fetishize, exoticize, romanticize, the lives of poor white folks. These poets long to publish in the “Best” magazines—the ones run by upper middle class white folks, i.e. the oppressors. Hm."

Some of us can't help what we are or how we grew up or the languages we speak or, most fixedly, the socio-economic class to which we are born. Some of us don't have the luxury of having a name, a face, a hue, a gender, the punctuation which allows us to pass from being a mere shadow on the dime of the field. In other words, I am constantly reminded of the forefather of "New Sincerity" movement, Chicano poet Orlando Ramírez: "Being a Chicano bores me" and "the pressures are just the same/ when it's your raza who are/ screaming at you to miss."

Tortilla style???!!! Bro', we don't have blogs enough to discuss that one. And, how you get the Cultural Revolution out of my offer to look at your manuscript (for free) is an offensive mystery to me. If Li Young-Li offered would you scream "fortune cookie" poetry! And accuse him of trying to turn you into the Red Guard? Do we screen, as well, all bagel eaters who do not reside in Manhattan? The original post and these comments came following the death of, and before the public memorial for, my father, which is why I didn't comment right away.

I NEVER leave negative remarks about anyone's poetry, anywhere. Nor do I ever write prose. Period. This 4-month old blog is my foray into that frontier. And, along with my former colleague, Ed Dorn, I am vehemently against all forms of criticism of one's own age, and even language. Let the poem stand for the poem. Nor do I ever link to blog poets I wouldn't invite to my home or hearth, my library. You indicated that you had no idea who I was or that I was a regular reader. Since yours was the first visitor to my own home, my blog, begun in early march, and one the first links I put up on my site & the first to link to mine, I assumed your attack on writers of color, and Chicano writers, specifically, an attack upon me, personally.

"Why waste your time?" My husband asks me. And I have to stutter in the reply. "Because, there IS something there." I have dedicated my entire life to knowing, seeking out, nurturing and promoting developing *poets* who are *good*. (The humble fact is, now stepping well out of my Emo self, none of you would have ever heard of Sandra Cisneros, Alberto Rios, Jimmy Santiago Baca or Ray Gonzalez had it not been for me, and the MANGO aesthetic stamp of approval. And the schools be dammed; schools are for fish, and I prefer mine on the platter. You accused me of trying to gather students. Huh? That's why I point out to you that if I wanted students I'd hang up my shingle, that I do receive good money for helping people with their first books & early poetry. I've never self-promoted (but my academic situation in the current economic climate demands that I do) and am used to being ignored by the dominant classes. But, dang it, it's like growing up hearing "Beaners stink" all your life, and you devote your adult life to scrubbing everyone around you, and *yourself*, only to get way-laid from within by the voice in the corner, with a megaphone for a personality, chanting, "She stinks, she stinks, Beaners stink, I'm one, I stink, I know. I've been to their houses. They all stink. Here's a whole barrio MFA of them, and they definitely stink." I have been holding on to these last five books for just this reason, that I am one of the only poets held to what I've written at age 18--and not because I am Baudelaire. It's living with insult my entire literary career. I'm tired of being pegged, especially when so much of the pegging, for this bird, goes on in a shooting gallery. (btw, it will be an interesting surprize to Univ. of Pitt. & Arte Publico/Univ. of Houston to know that they are defunct presses. Me, I don't care, as long as I get the royalties from 2 books still in print.)

Fíjate, there's a buried battle in that abuelita. There may be your definitive poem in that hand stirring the wooden spoon in a pot of beans.

The only reason I care is that I am Xicana, the helper class. I want to be of service to the suffering. Listen, I have read *all* your pages, and frankly, I was worried. "Classic shell-shock" is what I thought, what I saw in Provincetown WC, the walking wounded from Iowa who, if they never saw a poem in their lives again it would be too soon. Poets who live among the taxidermy of their own damaged muses. I share your shudders. But, don't assume that that's where I'm coming from. You talk, in the blog, as if you hate your own poetry, you say, over & over, that you think it's bad. That's okay. We all write 100 bad to one good. So what. Long as you write. that's why manifestos & self-proclamed movements are bad. (I never said I didn't like the poetry--show me the poems. I'll show you eclectic.) You shoot your own muse for the sake of the stuffing. Get a few eggs first. I was offended, again, that you assume that "crit" from me means turning you into, oh, any number of things you accuse me of saying in the single word "crit" so it seemed easier to demonstrate on a poem that was, finally, a poem and a good one at that what I mean by crit (yes, anon, close reading: paying attention to the words on the page & the order in which they appear; something I wholeheartedly welcome on any poems I post to my blog or the Cafe. That's why I post. And, it's a safe assumption that when a poet posts an unpublished new poem on a bog that allows comments & anon comments like my own or this one that s/he wants them. Because no poet can work in a vacumn. Language artists, all, we deal in matter which is both personal & private at the same time it is social & communal--the latter the dominant classes have the luxury to ignore.

I was attempting to compliment you and to acknowledge how you have chosen to define yourself on your blog. (a latent tortilla eater) Then, you went ethnically ballistic. Like a "homophobe" being approached by a gay urologist. Cálmate, carnal, nobody's trying to turn you into anything not white, or transparent. As I voiced to Diana Delgado & Rigoberto Gonzalez, as many times as I could, "It's not what you write about that makes you what you are" and "don't ever censor yourself."

Nor, by the way, did I call you a red butt baboon, but that's my point. Pay attention to the words on the page, particularly your own. "Love the words" as Dylan Thomas said, when it comes to your own work. And what you display here is a ton of self-loathing. My question is what good is sincerity at the expense of authenticity?

Just trying to help. I would hate to lose a potentially good poet to depression. Needlessly."


10:28 AM

lucky error
 
"cashing in on (my) ethnicity"??? show me the line
(thanks for the 'in-coming', Poetzie)

And, Speaking of Shermans, Happy Birthday,

STANLEY KUNITZ!!
Thanking you for
bringing me to a life
of poetry
--a life--
Love, always,
~Lorna Dee

My Secret Crush Is Not Sherman. . .

Alexie
but Sherman

True Confessions of A Young Dog Genius
Searching For Her Pet Boy

for while po-po mo-mos were identifying
with hero-solvers of the New Millenia
some of us, brown dogs, were reconciling
having all the attributes of a "Mexican Spitfire"
Lolita while sounding like Mr. Peabody
((sigh))

What Every Young Dog Genius Needs

For more "dorky intellectual hootchiness" go here and here.
I'm having WAY too much fun with this. Let's see: rc shirtless in short jean cut-offs digging a fence hole ala Robert Frost.

AND, Eduardo Corral can play now, too. Once Asleep Inside An Old Guitar now just another LorcaLoca. I suggested the completed manuscript strategically placed. . . (whee!)

And, come to think of it, why was Sherman always in shorts? One sure way to warp astute feminine minds, if you ask me - y sí lornadice!

P.S. Posers for a good cause (for a change) if you have glasses, please, wear them. Please. ((sigh))

Why Does My Dream Self

always have to be so much more interesting than my Real Self? "Real" being a certified registered trademark for fake cheese.

hey, I did practice yoga daily for 24 years from the time I was 11
which has everything to do with not boring my Muse
or so I would hope

"Shine shoes, shine shoes. . ." all ya gotta do is shine shoes.

"You Kant
always get what you want. . ."

A Century of Trenza/Against Manifesto

Another great article on Stanley Kunitz who turns 100 tomorrow. This is where I'd be if I had money. Carry on!

“The Wild Braid” concludes with Kunitz speaking of poetry, and artwork generally, as a gift, freely given “in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is life itself. … That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life.”

Thanks, Anne, for this link: at Land Mammal & check out Anne's poem, Race Point while you're there.

This Blog Is Making Up For all the Letters I Never Wrote the Dead

Sincerely,

Sin Manifest/Toes

another dumb test

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

What's Your Blogging Personality?

but true

Feliz Cumpleanos, Carlos. . .

Santana & JD, wherever you are

legal advice for bloggers

I meant to post this link I found at Dialogic
EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers before I left for Texas. See section on *defamation* as well as on posting your own and other people's creative works. Very useful. Print it out.

Rick Barot's "Magnolia"

nice poem at Asian American Poetry by Rick Barot called Magnolia

Lorna Dee On Po-Boyz In Underwear. . .

oh my!

What was I thinking?

Come see who I'd like to see with his underwear showing at Chanticleer's chateau, definitely A Spiritual Porthole. Not. . .

And support Jenni Russell & Pris by raising funds for CFIDS. And take a peak at Richard Blanco, just for the obvious rise.

Good poetry & cheer all around.

Adelante. Mexica tiahui.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
here's a snippet from that comment:

"All bun. Flarf fluff. But if you're strickly speaking brute aesthetics: sincere

But, I'm with loveandsalt, Cynthia Huntington, High Goddess of the Suzy Cream Cheese School of Poetry of which I am a proud tri-decade member but that's none of your business: au natural. Good poetry is; in any form, in any voice, in any subject: tortillas to lumpia, piroshkis to brocolli, raw oysters & a black & tan (me) to some fine sumpthin that I can't pronounce. sobeit. (which also makes a good drink, too)

As long as it's good. If you're going to be taking up other people's valuable time with it, we, at least, have the responsibility to make it interesting: phanopoeticly, melopoeticly or logopoetically. Or all at once (Under Albany)."

BACK! (y volver volver volVER. . .)

Hi all,

Back from San Anto where I had the most incredible time with all of my longtime pals & stranger-friends, and new real good friends. It was great. I performed Saturday night with pianist/composer Gabrielle Lena Frank. I hope the recording came out. It was awesome—and fun, most important. I'm hoping to take her to Washington with me in October to perform at the National Museum of Women in the Arts where she has already performed and says they have the most beautiful piano. She lives in the Bay Area so I'll be able to see her when I visit my brother. More hopes for the cd. I met with my publisher, and was working on the finishing touches on the books & printing up a draft to show Bryce long into wednesday night and morning of the 14th when I last commented (waste of time?) on this blog while waiting for the pages to fall from my printer. Madness. I had a 10:30 flight that morning. Which I missed. I took a taxi to the airport & had the most amazing conversation with one of my favorite sort of human being: Philosopher Taxista. (Thanks, Navine.) I went off without sleeping all night, and very little these past few weeks finishing these books. I finally figured it out when I turned to my friend & interviewer (conversations: "It's a community art project" ~A.S.) Alex Stein, waiting at a later flight gate where I flew stand-by. I said, "It's like I got this Lear jet, and it takes so long to fuel up and taxi, and it takes so much runway that once I get it into the air why would I just want to drive it to Longmont?" "Why not take it to Paris?" I later tell La Sandra. Before I got sick, really sick again—on the way to sushi which always seems to be the only solid food I can eat when I'm sick. Miso soup.. A perfect solution, Sandra's suggestion. I don't know what it is about sushi. Who was it who said, "It's your chumash ancestors." 'ho They built the world's first plank boats. I was afraid I'd miss my reading, I was so sick. (Sandra had to stop her car in the middle of the road while I piled out to fertilize someone's lawn.) When I got back to the hotel I was afraid to nap for fear of being too groggy. Then I realized I had subconscious ritual. I made it conscious. I realized I did a certain thing, or series of things to relax me before a reading (to forget about "me" and allow a persona in the Aristotilian sense). It's a secret, so all I'll say is what I told friends when they asked how I was feeling. "There's nothing that a little dancing to classic motown won't cure."

I missed delivering my paper (performative theory) for the Balancing Creative and Academic Life (or something like that, we all know what it is along that oblongata) on 2pm Saturday for the wretched wretching. So I'll post it, next, on the blog.

I haven't had the opportunity to publicize or otherwise inform my friends & readers that I have this blog which I started in March. Now that the books are done, I'll be able to do that. And, return emails. That's why I like the blog, it suits a procrastinator like me. It's all right here & right away. I like how it helps me, a shy guy*, connect. So, Saturday night at the Latina Letters Conference was a great way to reach a lot of friends & fellow literati at once. I announced the blog and my publisher had cards for the new book made up with the url on them. Cool. So, I'm being visited by about hundred of the artists, Latina lit-crits & fellow Xicanerati who were in attendance.

so more soon, just got in the door a few hours ago, time to order sushi & miso soup

before the second set of galleys arrive. No wonder nobody does major artbooks anymore!

This trip was intense and all a lesson in the power of intent.

Xiao


P.S. Buy a copy or two of the Michigan Literary Quarterly Review.

P.P.S. Don't anybody else go and die, I have too much to do.


*don't be so literal, ese"

The Body of SONS

THE BODY OF THE NEW SINCERITY

The Wheel

Home-Schooled By a Cackling Jackal: Toonces the Driving Cat

("drive, he sd" ~R. Creeley)

thanks reb for great pic (so bright!)

Comment on Ro(ve "CIA Leak")

My comment today on Rosie O'Donnell's blog:

"Podcast! Ro, great idea! Easy, simple, affordable, you could interview people—at home, anywhere—even do it while wearing your haddit (U r SO FUNNY—audio! to catch you mid-quip). Maybe include songs, Joni! (loving & living Joni). I’d love to hear her in the background while you read your blog or give us a slideshow. (Your movie tribute (Losing Luther) was moving, effective for it’s simple elegance—the color of the day still being laid through grief, the smiles & the hands of a child: continuing, creating something.)

See trailer to Bush’s Brain, a new doc on Rove. (http://www.bushsbrain) See also pic of Rove pulling up the President’s zipper; also, here’s a better pic of the prez holding hands with Saudi juxtaposed with day’s headline on “gay marriage” law repeal. (http://rantfromboulder.com)

Peace On"

on CIA Leak - July 13th, 2005 at 5:10 am
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
more links at my previous post: "What is Poetry? Paw-Pow; Or, On Peddling Peace - 'I'm Sam, I Am'" & in honor of Pablo Neruda's birthday yesterday, a virtual cornocopia of links to Poetas Antiimperialistas de América (www.poetas.com), most in Spanish.

"Sleeping Around (On Dead Pablo's Birthday)"

Sleeping Around



It seems I am tired
of being a woman. I walk
the gray plastic streets, my
umbrella in hand, unharmed,
brewing my serpents and ash.
I take apart glass, rear it up,
spend another day ironing
imaginary tigers to a base
of unpretentions. I filter the water,
the water like glass, the glass
fallen apart at the axle: my
ovaries can, my ovaries can,
like a stalled engine gasping
for a break. I break apart
bread that smells like my vulva, that
flashes me signals of desire, acres
of leavened wheat in the earth
colored blend of my muscular
thighs. Would I lie
to you? Soft-spoken and de-
lyred, a veil over my mouth
imagined, too, but an obstacle.

It seems I am tired
of playing at dying at the sink
of another ides of my livid month,
my body, a breakwater, there in the
foaming sex surf. Great elephants
of men chain and lumber through
a dream of running—my caked
feet upended in the game of mud,
not quite dirt, and not quite
crystal. I walk the waking
streets, awake and clicking
my heels at the great escape.
Were I not prey I would not
pray to the idols of Paris,
to the fine hairs of Helen.
I wear my shoes down
to the holes in the soles
of this cardboard city—all
the loaves halving and cleaving, all
the ovens bursting with ribbons
of children: the winsome ones,
the winnowed whiney—all captured
in the gas, in the living
will of Autumn chased by Summer:
chaste, but for age; chased,
but for an age.

It seems I am tired of putting on
shoes that hurt me, of a
sorrowing street, a dress
where I no longer live, the hide
of something once sleek
wrenched inside-out, a vagina;
but for beauty's sake—a long
division of snake in the rattle,
a hand bag of poppies, the bright
teeth of a girl. It seems I am tired
but the sleep of queens
grips the baseboards of
poverty, opens her skirt
there to the pulsing, presses
her finger in, frightening day
lillies flouncing in a florid orange,
bounding over the fences of a range
of possibility: the heaving, the shy
one, the forgotten bitch, the
aloe ally—all these
in a civilized stroll and beaten down
to taro root, a nurturing fog
that is not me. While he
exists.


7/12/05
c 2005 by Lorrna Dee Cervantes

Too Much of Language Poetry Is A Disguise

. . .for bad writing

My Idea of A 'New Sincerist'

Eliot_Carignan
Originally uploaded by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

http://analepsis.blogspot.com/2005/06/visual-representation-of-my-poetics.html
by a "Real New Poet," Mackenzie Carignan

Yo Soy El Emo Kid

What? No "Haughty Intellectual?" "hippie?"

Emo Kid. You are 28% Rational, 14% Extroverted, 14% Brutal, and 28% Arrogant.

You are the Emo Kid, best described as a quiet pussy! You tend to be an intuitive rather than a logical thinker, meaning you rely more on your feelings than your thoughts. Not only that, but you are introverted, gentle, and rather humble. You embody all the traits of the perfect emo kid. You are a push-over, an emotional thinker, gentle to the extent of absurdity, and so humble that it even makes Jesus puke. If you write poetry, you no doubt write angsty, syrupy lines about depression, sadness, and other such redundant states of emo-being. Your personality is defective because you are too gentle, rather underconfident in yourself, decidely lacking in any rational thought, and also a bit too inhibited.

I probably made you cry, didn't I? Fucking Emo Kid.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more INTUITIVE than rational (25%).
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted (15%).
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal (5%).
4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant (20%).

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Smartass.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hippie, the Televangelist, and the Starving Artist

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on Ok Cupid

¿Quien es? Myers-Briggs & Other Lemons

here's to limonada:
Your Type is INFJ - "Counselor Idealist" (rare, -2%)

Introverted - 22%
Intuitive - 38%
Feeling - 62%
Judging - 11%

take the test: here (from Laurel's blog via Peter Pereira's Virtual World

INFJ type description by D.Keirsey
INFJ type description by J. Butt:
"Beneath the quiet exterior, INFJs hold deep convictions about the weightier matters of life. Those who are activists -- INFJs gravitate toward such a role -- are there for the cause, not for personal glory or political power.

INFJs are champions of the oppressed and downtrodden. They often are found in the wake of an emergency, rescuing those who are in acute distress. INFJs may fantasize about getting revenge on those who victimize the defenseless. The concept of 'poetic justice' is appealing to the INFJ.

"There's something rotten in Denmark." Accurately suspicious about others' motives, INFJs are not easily led. These are the people that you can rarely fool any of the time. Though affable and sympathetic to most, INFJs are selective about their friends. Such a friendship is a symbiotic bond that transcends mere words.

INFJs have a knack for fluency in language and facility in communication. In addition, nonverbal sensitivity enables the INFJ to know and be known by others intimately.

Writing, counseling, public service and even politics are areas where INFJs frequently find their niche."

Ha! ("other INFJs include Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall (my hero!), Gandhi & Goethe")

cool, Elective Affinities. thanks Laurel for the real thing ("What, me Jung?")

I Won An iPod!

. . .at the perpetual bridal shower for the marriage of the Muse at Café Café with Didi Menéndez hosting the celebration and suggesting that we celebrate "The Making of Eve," with some muse-ich. "Why Knot? Why not?" I said. And then I did. Read my acceptance speech here: sheesh, as a poet you'd think I'd practice brevity. "Learn something everyday," gramma said. And follow the link at the Café to my poem, "The Making of Eve." (Didi, you can do it with or without the last line. I kinda like it closing the poem. I've been really inspired these past years by Eileen Miles's new work. I told her that I loved the endings on all the poems, that so much of writing a poem is like executing an Olympic gymnastics routine—all the leaps don't matter if you can't stick the landing, and that most poets/gymnists go with the usual variations of the fancy roll & a hands in the air "tah DAH!" at the end; whereas Eileen's go a completely different way in the end—the reader/listener is often left wondering "is that the end of the poem?" before realizing the final elegant "y ya" and the pause/'p-awes—before the pow/wow of the wonder & de-light at a really good poem with a really good ending, something real-ly original; what I call "the unexpected inevitable.")

ciao & chow at the Café (Reyes Cardenas cooks & eats there, too!)

and tune into MiPo Radio
where the real world goes to po'


Feliz Cumpleaños, Pablo Neruda!
go write a poem for creation

Weird Day

Yesterday, spent the whole day & night taking my son to the Dew Action Sports somethin': extreme skateboard stunts, bmx, freestyle motocross which amounts to men-boys figuring out new ways to land on their heads—which they did. My son had been bugging me for at least a month about it, every day through the completion of the books, and I vaguely remembered saying somethin' like, "I'll think about it." I had to ask up until the day, friday, when I bought tickets. "What is it you want to go to?" And only after swearing he wouldn't be trying any stunts—period, I decided to fork out the dough to the corporate dupes & take him.

I am not very indigenous as a mother. I know that. The native way would be to laugh and make light of a fall—teach her or him to pay attention. My father always let his sons go up the mountain first. Tomasa, Guatemalteca, would let her babies fall off the couch when they were crawling. I couldn't look at my son learning to ride a bicycle. I wouldn't teach him. He owns a skateboard but I won't let him ride it. Not that he wants to; he has assumed my paranoia—he is overly cautious, and could be more athletic, he has a natural grace & talent for it.

So I took him.

I say, when we get there, and are herded through plywood channels into the arena, "This is no place for a poet." He laughs. It's funny to us both. I have just given birth to 5 books, written numerous new poems for it and I don't know how many versions of revisions, I am still in a major state of shock and awe—a numbness, I think it won't set-in (& I'll feel like going dancing, or talking to folk) until San Antonio with my "ole time pals." "A sensitive one." I add, and it adds to our hilarity. Earlier I had told him, as we got off the lightrail in front of the (I won't say it) Center: "OK, I'm going to be a Buddhist about this: I'm here, I'm going to get into it."

He had a "great day". And there was punk rock in the end. 2 bands, somethin'. "Chicanos invented punk rock," I say. "No way!" he says. "Research," I say. "Question Mark & the Mysterians. Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs. 96 Tears, that single organ key, annoying, anti-music. Punk rock." He thinks about it. England lapped it up in the same way blues slithered into Liverpool. It's a class act. "But I thought punk rockers came from England." "Yes," I say, "They listened to Chicano bands in England the way The Beatles listened to Blues." "You don't know punk rock!" He suddenly thinks this can't be true—all the corny music I listen to (sometimes the shmaltzier the better). "Oh yes I do!" I say. "My favorite punk rock song is 'I Want to be Sedated'" and I sing, raunchily as no one can hear me above the din anyway, "I WANna be seDATED!" Later, in the extreme freestyle mx the song comes on, the original Sex Pistols version: "I wanna be sedated...". "See," I said. "Mami knows punk rock."

And how often does anyone get to use that sentence?

It's a class thing. Class lesson for me. too. Not to snub, be above the cake of the masses, settled into my icing bower. All that tatooed flesh. Tight buds in chain-link fashions, golden and dewy mouthed; caked, risen flesh, yeasty in the barrel of jeans. OK. This is me, too. The Chicano family looking too familiar: he, too, looking over at me seated next to them, "Do I know her?" Do they know I'm a Chicana poet. I think I've seen them before, some rally, some funtion. Pretty couple; he, in a burnt, snug, vato loco way; she, just pretty, glasses, could be a teacher, some public service worker; definitely Denver core y corazon; a little girl, cute in twirly pigtails out the side of her face which at 5-6 resembles her mother's. My son shouts out: "Do another flip! Woo HOOO!" and the motocross guys hears, smiles and gives him a fist up salute. The man next to me, the vato loco in jeans & some kind of fine black boot, smiles at me approvingly—for my motherhood, my child, my self there on that bleacher bench in the sun, the daring rider, the undeniable brilliance at the act, that art of defiance of death.

Or brain damge. "$7,000 just isn't worth it." I tell my son as we walk from the public bus to our house a wee ways up the mesa at midnight, knowing he is wary of lions. I think of all the ways those guys, those vato locos de mi barrio dared defy, the brilliance in their actions, the audience-less-ness of it. The lack of audience to their art and life. And today, I think of something I read on a poet's blog, a Dialogics of race (the rider/atheletes were all white), class, gender, sexuality & able-bodiedness as to a defintion of "Feminism," that it is all a matter of "Equal opportunity, value and respect."

We had a good day, sharing something that ordinarily I would not value nor would I have ever given it the respect of my attention—to an undeniable art.

Ok.

I try to remember the rest of the lyrics. I sing all the way, rushing home through the beautiful night made a little scary for the lions I know are there (although few have ever seen, or noticed them like they scarsely notice the lions of viscious remnants of extreme actions of hatred against what somebody thinks you represent (feel, know, are, do, say, think, write, act. . .). "Hurry, hurry, hurry!/ Again we're late for school!/ I wanna be sedated!//"Come on, come on, come on!/ You'll catch some teacher's rule!/ I wanna be sedated!" I make it up. My son is delirious with pleasure. He wants more, MORE! I can't remember the lyrics (who listens to lyrics when punk rocking? Save by Patti Smith, one of my favorite poets, and currently doing awesome work.) "Make it up, mami! More!" as he tries to sing along, "I WANna be seDATEd!"

And, I wake up this morning, too late to attend a beloved colleague's memorial, Ofelia Miramontes, and I find I have been presented with an IPOD (something I really wanted & could really use & just couldn't afford right now) for my poem, "The Making of Eve" at the poets party at Didi Menéndez's Café Café. Come check it out. I would never have written it, given the subject matter the attention, were it not for the suggestion of the title. My friend calls, too late, too, for the memorial. "Let's organize something for the beginning of the semester," I say. "A Latina memorial and tribute to her life & work with music (she's a musician, composer & ethnomusicologist) and poetry (I had planned to spend yesterday writing a poem for her, for the memorial this morning instead of going to the Action Sports somethin')." So we are. Maybe I'll pod-cast it.

Cheers (somethin')

. . .and dusting off my bike (zoom!)

Lorna Dee's New Chapbook - Latina Letters Conference Exclusive

My new chapbook, Y la tierra no se los olvidó/ And the Earth Did Not Forget Them, from Wings Press will be available next week exclusively to attendees of the Latina Letters Conference (as there will only be 100 copies available). It includes the first 2 poems in a pentych of 5 long poems, "Bananas" and "Coffee" in new & revised forms.

These poems will also be included in my pentych of 5 books bound into one hard-bound collection: DRIVE: The First Quartet, currently in-press at Wings Press and debuting at a presentation at the National Museum of Women In the Arts, Oct. 14, in Washington, D.C.

I'd love to see some of you there next week — along with Sandra Cisneros, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Pat Mora, Ana Menéndez, Lourdes Portillo, Carolina Montsaváis & a young poet I'm really looking forward to hearing, Ariel Rebolledo (a mujer I selected as one of the "scholarship gals" to attend my workshop retreat in Mexico, Taller Ixchel, free of charge w/ housing, but she couldn't make it; I can't wait to hear her new work & buy the new book.)

So, here's to a hot time in a hot town, celebrating 30 years of Latina Literature and 10 Years of the Latina Letters Conference/ Daughters of the Fifth Sun—sigue!

Eduardo Corral - Awake & Strumming (& showing some leg)

Yea! An Eduardo fix!
Eduardo Corral chapbook from Web del Sol
Great poems from a new poet
(pero, sabes qué? no me chingas—no hombre! Qué Euro-peon forms? If so, blame it on Neruda, Lorca, and that bloody Mistral—and shoot the messenger, Señorito Whitman. 'Sides, I had nothing to do with that. I kissed them off at the bio, figured I wouldn't get into that: it was meaningless. 100 percent of it is, for Xicanerati, who your publisher is: if it ain't Nick, it ain't in—and that's the 'Peon's English; although, nowadays, it may be el reverso—and rightly so, for as we well know, one nick off the old block doesn't make it poetry).
~Just Another India From the 16th Century

p.s. por qué los images? lo más y más de lo mismo
(but beautiful)

Radio Free Poesia: MiPo Radio

very cool
for a relaxing interlude from the news:
MiPo(esia) Radio
now, if I can only get my 10-year old to teach me how to record on my 'puter. . .

Never Neutral

"The world is unhappy. There is deep pain and profound hatred. The West has to learn to respect the East. No human pain is alike, yet injustice and suffering are universal. Vengeance, hate, retaliation will take us nowhere. "
~Ernesto Priego on his blog, Never Neutral (click on blog name for more)
7/7/05

and as to the question, I can only offer Oz's answer:
because

"Unconscious Mutterings On 7/7/05"

1. Statistics:: grin through the wreckage.
   
2. Grin:: and bear it, bare another branch on the human tree.
   
3. Saturn:: was stunning in a ray of shock & awe.
   
4. Fulfilled:: and desired—that's the American Way.
   
5. Life plan::  understand? A way past an alien invasion.
   
6. Cult:: figured up the yin/yang, Generals in command.
   
7. Lily:: tubers, opium poppies in a far-off land, hypocrites'
   
8. Stalemate:: there in the stolid air.
   
9. Celebration:: and explosions in an allied engineering.
   
10. Underwear:: and satin sheets of flesh draped on a flag.
    

(unseen characters including slash "o 'l. . ."):: ¡Olé!

(I get these from a Radical Druid via una Luna Niña)

Lorenzo Thomas (1944-July 4, 2005)

"In fact, they couldn't even stop the music playing
It was so much sadness in the world."


~Lorenzo Thomas
article in Houston Chronicle
obituary in Houston Chronicle

London Calling

we are all burning in this bus



hoping for peace & truth
in an Age of Grief

"The Making of Eve"

see my poem, "The Making of Eve," written as my RSVP to the party at the Café Café today
inviting me to write a poem with the title: The Making of Eve
winner gets an Ipod
Y not?
would be worth risking the wrath of G-d?

"The Making of Eve

'Unlike things yoke together'
~Coleridge


Summer was frying an egg
on the head of God. . . ."

"Lorn Lorna Loves Deer"

lorn Lorna loves deer


Compiled 7/6/2005  5:01:17 PM GMT by Get A Google Poem


... DR, DOA, den, Dee, deed, deer, Dean, Dan, Dane, Dad, Dade, date, dated, DAR,
... loner, loned, loan, lore, lorn, lorna, lora, lori, lorie, loren, loree, ...

of sheep swinging with their skins on, others had deer, and one had a child flung
across his ... look upon our faces which Lorna
Doone had naturally, as ...

However, I saw only sheep and small red cattle, and the common deer
of the forest,
... I will give you all my fish Lorna, and catch some more for mother; ...

Lorna Doone A Romance of Exmoor by etexts & ebooks. ... 'Nay, I will take it but
once,' I said; 'if His Majesty loves
to be robbed, he need not lack of his ...

However, I saw only sheep and small red cattle, and the common deer
of the forest,
... At once I thought of Lorna
Doone, the little maid of six years back, ...

LIFE AND LORNA
COME AGAIN CHAPTER I ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION If anybody cares ...
or a shy glimpse now and then of the love-lorn primrose. ...

... DEEMS DEEP DEEPBLUESEA DEEPENED DEEPER DEEPLY DEEPPURPLE DEER
DEF DEFEAT ...
LORETTAYOUNG LORGNETTE LORI LORIKEET LORIKEETS LORINNA LORN
LORN LORNA ...

It shows a deer, a capital "R" surrounded by a ring with the inscription ...
Lorn. Uyt Cambdenus. Lorna
cum insulis vicinis et provinciis eidem conterminis. ...

... LIFE AND LORNA
COME AGAIN CHAPTER I ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION ... with their skins on, others
had deer, and one ... Although they were my dearest loves, I could not bear ...

The writing is "Lite"; think of this as Lorna
Landvik even further north in Alaska.
... She, loved, love-lorn, drawing the Astrologic man from the Farmer's ...


More poetry in English/Finnish:
www.leevilehto.net

DRIVE - It's Done!

"Hey ho
the book is done
the book is done
the book is done
the hefty book is dead

hi ho
get out of bed
get out of bed
and get it read
the hefty book is done. . .!"


YEA!

Message to the New World Order On Independence Day: FAWC Off

What does freedom mean? Save for a six mile walk along the dunes, by the shore, forever more beholden to the waves & spray, the scent of living, the lived decay of it. All of it—to share alone. No witnesses to a secret hiding place in the soul as the ocean explodes in the sounding of whales leaping for their lives joy, the frolic of mammoth proportions, there, just off the shore where a derrick would go: blood-sucking earthsuckers like giant grashoppers pecking away at the order of things; the behemoths splash, court the Courtneys of their breed, make their particular style of music.

Free from particular and general hunger. General Hunger drives the ships in to Boston Harbor. Tea goes in. Tea goes out. While the swilling continues. Particular, and that of the Generals. Pop.

29 years ago today I declared my independence from the printed word and vowed to print my own: MANGO Publications. More than a lived generation ago, older than my Ethnic Literatures of America students last spring. I realize that and it doesn't make me feel old, it makes me feel lived.

I celebrate by holding off. I celebrate by birthing another. Birthing another; both the particular and the general.

Today, I have another mouth to feed—this book, the multiple mouths like hungry birds waiting to be read. Not yet. There's another placenta to bury. Strange, these multiple orgasms. Now I feel the challenge of the Sultan or the religious zealot in Utah with his multiple brides—good sex all around with the young, the learnéd, the subtle, the athletic nymph—now another, waiting in the chamber. I feel for Sisyphus Walking; I just want to sleep. Or marinate chicken. Or water my garden, my expiring seed, Make love 'til the kids come home. Make love 'til the comet explodes upon impact. Celebrate this.

"I'm off to join another. . ." I'm stalling. I'm watching the Wizard of Oz and wondering what would a faceless, legless kid in Afghanistan think of the monkeys, those flying dupes dressed as Michael Jackson & looking like Bush? Would they still be afraid? What would it mean for the wizard? To have so much immigration along the Yellow Brick road toting so many questions to ask.

I ask the wizard: ask the dead, and hear a voice, "there's something in this drawer" and I open it; it opens on the past. A tattered file, way, way back where I no longer go, past the files of old mortgages and paid-off loans, something from Letters to David, to the particular: "To Be Salvaged. . .?" And I find the poem to my mother that isn't to my mother, that isn't a poem at all, but something I once wrote in the dark, feeling the page, the edges where I might go off. I wrote it after my mother's murder, when I couldn't (wouldn't) write anything ever again—I thought, I vowed. The world became a place where poetry wasn't possible. In any form. And, I found, the only poem I could stomach was Galway's poem about flying from the hospital and then back home to the funeral of his mother—a poem about the everything unsaid, a long poem in Body Rags. I would read it watching the creeping Charlies die of thirst, her fragile chain of hearts. I had just come back from Provincetown, Fine Arts Work Center; the book was out. I was on tour, my first real "tour", traveling in a bus through Amish country with Wendy Rose & Maurice Kenny. I was in St. Louis, before the big reading at the River Styx. I dreamed it. Called home, uncannily, at 6am that morning, four hours after the dream, four hours after her estimated time of death.

All that woven together in a remembrance of a place. A path that leads to freedom. Or, leads us to the memory of a mother's murder by a random force, some mistake of nature like an unlived 19 year old kicking in the door—and he's armed with the latest technology, permission, and an excuse. A free pass to freedomize the world.

I decide, yesterday, to include it as a given chapter in my next book. A Hard Drive to independence. That.

"All this grief and pancakes after" ~Chekhov

A hard book to finish. I already know how it ends. Now I have a beginning. An entrance. A beaten path (horribly ironic from this end) just a nice walk from another.

How much I owe to that hole in the fence. As much as I owe to Stanley Kunitz for suggesting a way not often taken. To give one's life a part of it taken away, that seven-month fellowship to write as much or as little as I wanted, that bounty of fellows of visual and written artists I could sup with or sip from—or not, that richness of soil from the selected teachers which I could use to enrich or transplant my roots if I desired, and live—the life of the writer. That monastary of the heart's content and the mind's *heart*.

I *heart* the Fine Arts Work Center. I *heart* what it stands for. It stands for freedom. It stands for independence. It stands for the American Way and the pursuit of happiness. It stands for real good writing. It stands for "Art is Time/Time is Art" And anyone who doesn't know it should just go FAWC YOU.

Happy to celebrate, as I commented on in a previous blog entry, another peony opening—Anne Haines at FAWC. One of the small joys of blogging. The voyeurism of it. The cinch of catching a new poem, a new poet in first bud. Like an apple among the avocados, it sets us all to ripening.

Well, back to it. Back to the books. Back to the last one this season. The "Now's the Time" of the harvest.

Back to the freedom. "A kind of Order/A kind of Folly" ~S. Kunitz

And, back to the killing fields of America & the mourning of another mother, particular and general.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
to T Sunday morning as the news catches up with Terry McMillan:
"Yup. Best to be poor but anonymous."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's to finishing before the fireworks. Here's to having time to marinate. Here's to Jack Daniels & the Rhythm Kings I have yet to dance to. Here's to having enough time/art to catch up with old friends on the fields of Disembodied Poetics—where I once saw Ferlinghetti kissing—and he kissed real good—and I wrote his elegy on the spot & stored it in a drawer.

Here's to more freedom. More. More living. For all.

Happy explosions,

Lorna Dune

Books I Bought Yesterday & the Ones I Finished Writing

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan - "This world-historical consensus about the beauty of flowers, which seems so right and uncontroversial to us, is remarkable when you consider that there are relatively few things in nature whose beauty people haven't had to invent."

Molecules of Emotion by Candace B. Pert, Ph.D. - "What we had seen in our research is that the brain, the glands, the immune system, indeed the entire organism, were joined together in a wonderful system coordinated by the actions of discrete and specific messenger molecules."

Rooms Are Never Finished by Agha Shahid Ali -
"3. There Is A Sky Beyond the Sky For Me"
"There is a sky beyond the sky for my return, but
I am still burnishing the metal of this place, living in
an hour that foresees the unseen. I know that time
cannot twice be on my side, and I know that I will leave—
I'll emerge, with wings, from the banner I am, bird
that never alights on trees in my garden—
I will shed my skin and my language.
Some of my words of love will fall into
Lorca's poems; he'll live in my bedroom. . . ."

Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry by Alan Dugan -
"Takeoff On Armageddon, for Ronald Reagan"
"As we tour the field in the pause
before the final battle, you can see
the flowers growing upside down
among the opposing troops. The roses
look like hairy turds in the dirt. . . ."

Selected Verse by García Federico Lorca (bilingual edition) -
"Omega (Poema para muertos)"
"Las hierbas.

Yo me cortaré la mano derecha.
Espera.

Las hierbas

Tengo un guante de mercurio y otro de seda
Espera.

¡Las hierbas!

No solloces. Silencio. Que no nos sientan.
Espera.

¡Las hierbas!
Se cayeron las estatuas
al abrirse la gran puerta.

¡¡Las hierbas!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Dead men hate the number two,
but the number two lulls women to sleep
and since women fear light,
and light trembles before roosters,
and roosters only fly above the snow—
we'll have to graze on graveyard weeds."
~Trs. by Greg Simon & Stephen F. White

Danger On Peaks by Gary Snyder - "She Knew All About Art"
"She knew all about art—she was fragrant, soft. . . ".

That's the random stack, bought like picking flowers as they come to you on the path, opened to a first look—random. Spooky. What does it say about desire on this day, particular molecules of emotion in rooms I never seem to finish, these books, seven now as I'm working on the last? Seven now as I've finished and sent to the publisher four & a new chapbook (And the Earth Did Not Forget Them/ Y no se los olvidó la tierra) comes in the mail these dog day beginnings & finishings, thinking of Lorca's Sonetas del amor obscuro: "Love of my flesh, living death/ In vain. . ." I arise before the danger of peaks, stiff-lipped in the biting wind of Frost.

Random. Except for the last, bought for T's birthday which was the day before yesterday, June 30, and I tell him, "Well, you'll be able to say, in answer to 'What did you do on your birthday?': My wife was in labor. "36 hours," I tell him, "going on 48." He laughs. "I'll forever associate your X birthday with the birth of my book." "How cool is that?" It's only taken me 25 years for this pentych. He understands. Says, "Last year I went to the dentist." True. Who goes to the dentist for their birthday? What biology of desire is that? Good day, that. Tender. I finish everything except the last, long Hard Drive, the poems for him. For hymn. Not exactly praise. But, heart.

Lighthearted today. On the verge of dancing. "How do you know you've written a good poem?" I cry. A good wash. A recognition. "She left a light." Then, I want to go dancing.

My son got us tickets (scored comp) for Garage Mahal tonight, a band I actually really like. And like to dance to. Ran out of ink last night, new printer but ms. is over 300 pages (64x5, you do it) and T found me an old, but excellent, "Quality Standards" manual/manuscript box. It says "International Learning" embossed on the front and spine. Cool. Will keep the stray paper, receipts for taxes I never send, grocery lists, out from between the pages of the files when I go off to read.

I read it all night, a complicated knitting project, colored popcorn stitch—if I drop one I have to start over or the wrong color will show. Love how it looks on the page (love having a publisher/editor that will let me play at my own page). Love that this techno-mensa has finally figured out the new printer do-all. Ah, print at last! Print at last! Thank God, Almighty, there's print at last!

Ever try to write 5 books on a computer screen?

Off to the bank machine, off to buy b-b-que stuff for T (forgot to marinate chicken last night), off to buy mangos, off to look for Epson DuraBrite Magenta, as much as they got, and black, black, black. . .I see a white page and I want it printed black.
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To T, on his birthday: "Another day. Another elegy." Ofelia passed away Wednesday. I read it in the news thursday. Breast cancer. I think of Ro's controversial painting, "Lies Cause Cancer." Not for the liar, the lied to. That bending of reality that sickles the cells.
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my Sweet Tea ("Sweet Tea, Sweet Tea" ~GS)

because everything on this blog is for me, in line of sight, my vision, c/o The Dead and, with love, from the living.

"Punctuation is the Crook of Fate"

1 Reason to Like Stephen Vincent

"The Towers - how we watched them
The calendar in the garbage can
The selves I no longer am
The shadow in an index"

Stephen Vincent
from "When the Tall Bucket"
plus, it's got birds enit

"Again, April called
The going was rough
All along they brought us porcupine quills"
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book note: 2 Sweetest Words in The English Language are IN PRESS
4 down
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current favorite blog quote from Anne Haines:
"a good workshop is like good (and slightly kinky) sex"
uh-yup
big ass mola mola

Thanks, Anne, for putting me back on Race Point, and out from beneath the shadow of the point of Race. Nice poem. I like the open, airy, space & spray of it. Heck, it's there. And, *there*. No draft, it captures the wind in mid-blow. Nice to see this peony open. There couldn't be a better place for it than Provincetown. And who says there's no place for poetry? Do me a favor Anne, try my breakfast of champions (well, lunch or early supper actually, since this would follow 6 miles of dune walking & critter gawking: "Seal!"): a dozen raw Wellfleet oysters and a Black & Tan (Harp over Guiness) at the Foc'sle (sp) which is probably no longer there, and probably just as well as these years, I'd skip the Black & Tan anyway and go early in the morning and eat them straight out of the bucket . Flounder & eggs, I think, is the perfect poet's breakfast—confounded with connotations for the early riser. Thanks, too, for the pic. Gawd, I love that place. Were I flush I'd fly over there just for the Kunitz.

"You, too, have inhabited a blue sentence
Night in patches, black, more black
Hold on to your voice. . ."