30.11.08

A Sigh in the Fire

This idea of his to live as, a philosopher lives
to go to the bathroom and consider
every act, an act of will,
to wash and to utter the proper
invocations. To live the life of contemplation
not waste bread, bis-mallah the jinn
when turning on the tap, to question
question question every single deed
an act of will. Wake up each day
to this creed stumbled upon
in an actual bookshelf
in a book. Study, study, study
every last line:

"These are the verses that make things manifest."

Alif Lam Ra

Every leaf that falls had a destiny
born, die, born, die, born, die
like that. The work of the becoming.

To wake up and consider every sign
and utter the appropriate invocation
I cannot number the things
I cannot number them, cannot keep
up with the praise
Shukr'allah for the blink, breath, the Byzantine
Shukr'allah for the bread, for Pat Sajak, the second kidney
Shukr'allah for the Apache, for my new shoes
Shukr'allah for turkeys and teamwork
Shukr'allah for clowns and special liasons
Shukr'allah for coffee beans and water
for goats, the A plus, for Mister Rogers,
for diesel fuel and penicillin,
for the wheel, jumbo jets, ink,
the heavier weight and equal measure.

Mighty is this treatise, more than
all the alphabet prizes, more than
how many angels could stand on a pin.
Seashells. A special thanks for sea shells.

If only I woke up with charming
philosophy on my mind.
Putting it between new pecans and the need
to buy an eighteen foot ladder to get up there,
to touch them one by one, to hear
the whisper of the bee as it flies by
saying, bis mallah to the Obviator, follow me.

22.11.08

The Resurrection

We don't know what we are doing
anymore, lazy, silent, perplexed-
a long list of temptation awaits us.
Special envoy says:
better luck next time!

Dream the better dream
is still, the crux of it, a dream.
Wash, wash, wash,
leaves come in at all hours,
steam on the ceiling, lint.

This morning will be different,
Saturday. Oh Saturday.
Oh Saturnine. The true color
of lead, smelter and slag-happy
purple mountain of mine.

In the mirror the image
is yesterday, last minute
surprise, forgot to replenish
the cells one at a time,
or rub the dirt off for Easter.



Ah now...that one brings you in doesn't it? It is alot like compost you know...depends on what you put into it..the fertility and all. Nickels and dimes don't do much for the soil which as a matter of fact is quite close to the word soul. Just an i-u difference in there. It is locked up with the way the past is always passing and as she says so often, "time doesn't wait for you".

Burning leaves is a great Saturday past time if you ask me...takes two people..one to throw and one to stir the pot or otherwise...you get too much smoke and not enough fire. This in turn is placed into the compost bin with the manure picked up out on High Lonesome. A real God-forsaken place...not even any idols to be found out there except maybe, if you are lucky, an old corral. Up at the Divide where water runs in two directions, a nudie magazine is laying atop a carpet of green and brown beer glass and some whiskey bottles. Up rooting the dead manzanita (praise is due to that old poem of his) isn't very hard. O the cosmetic industry needs a plug doesn't it? What would Darwin say about the damage caused by UV rays and our own fitness?

You know, I paid a visit (paid a visit ha!) to old Silliman's blog today and he led me to a few sites that usually I wouldn't bother about. One of them was all about Ashbury. A very long sentence and it made me feel so empty inside and then, it made me want to write something better than that. Didn't take long you know because my compost pile is most certainly unusual, very hand and man made. We have a blower, a Pedi-paws and now, even a FREEZER. This is absolutely crazy I think. I never thought I'd own a FREEZER.

I guess it was at that gig down at the County Fair this year. I had to sit there and hand out stuff for the Health Department. Next to me was the Bio-Terrorism lady. Nice woman...really nice. So quiet and always wears the most fantastic dresses. Didn't know she was Mormon at all. Just nice.

So this other woman who looked like a granola bar expert comes up to her...she's got five or six flax headed children...and the two of them start talking about "readiness". Oh, I'm all ears about readiness you know. And lo! they are both Mormons. They are used to packing up lunches for Armageddon or something like that...not sure really and I'm not commenting here on the Mormon religion...what do I know about that!

It turns out that in order to be "ready" you have to keep rotating your big bottles of water every few months. Then you have to stock food that doesn't spoil too quickly. If I were them, I'd put some dates in there and honey too. Can't beat dates and honey on a spoiled day.

So it goes. We're all waiting for something it seems. Stock market up, stock market down. I'll be happy when I throw my compost into the slag. See what comes up.







19.11.08

A Poem of Somalian Piracy

I. The Chastisement

Thou shalt not read this
furthermore without the slim slap
of the mother waiting for her sons
at the doors of the ancient cathedrals,
down by the polished stones,
reverent river rocks of the Apache
in the oldest canyons of purgatory.

There is a wine-red glow in the shallows,
a tin flash in the sun dazzle.

A grim voice, no comparison.

On the deck we watched Bayruth
until the night churned a path
away into the foam. The sea
already spread into an oily wound
of war. There were no choices
but to watch and wonder, pray
for the steadfast. A telemachas-vision in the mess
bright with simple animations; children and women
held tight to the cots and cribs
of the Navy whose cargo was labeled:

The hypocrisy of mighty charities,
dry forms in the ether
the pirates of democracy contained
in the hold of great ships made
of steel and already sold to India
to outflank the archaics
in the next war, pirates
who pimp ships to battle, the
slaves in the caves of byzantium:
someone's children, someone's baby
no one knows how hard they've tried.
And few, if any, know the seeds
that are planted on distant shores,
no one knows this Obleo.

II The Reckoning

One vessel after another was boarded,
time zones failed the miserable ticking,
sleep impossible and tears plenty.
Some had been herded three times before
and others returned to the docks of Bayruth
unwilling to flee and able to bear witness
if only for one more day in the longest history
of the utopias, proud and prejudiced, as if to say:

we are not your playthings and your pathology
isn't what it used to be, a kind of show business.

O pathologie of the ancient
twisted mind rage, a cornered
battered animal with false teeth
shriven to the core, cavity stricken.
Blind, belligerent, cursed and chosen
for a confessio of popularity,
a pharoah's shadowy throne?
The several refusals and rebukes
are all out there, the big stone
idol witnessed the smaller ones
being beaten into gravel
and was silent, like so many poets.
Pardon and unpardon the pastors,
reveal and unreveal the pleasantries,
make and unmake everything into barter.

III The gray steps lead up to the Cedars

The creek Zacatecas meanders downhill,
swells and shrinks, borrows rocks
bones, marbles and screws.
Older stories are told in the silt beds,
grass returns as green
as the day grass was born.
No one knows the ancients
when time speeds up.
An ant carries the dead body
of an ant, drops it
then walks in a circle
around the corpse, nudges
his comrade once more and moves on.
War is the basic story of all things
pleasant and otherwise, empires
fall in the anthills eternal.
Forests plead with the fires and wind,
the ever returning floods.
Nothing lasts forever except the creation
and even that, is a trick of light
a toast to the cedars!
Mighty cedars in rain, cedars in mine
and bible, perpetually holding still.
Continually growing old for Gilgamesh
and the return of the ancient teacher,
the boat slayer, the little green man Kadr
with his problematic conundrums.

IV. To The Immortals

A great throng, generations of nostalgia
and those who believe they will remain









a thousand years more to discuss
the outcomes of Armageddon

your masks are made of stone,
metal hip bones and gravity defied
by the priests who guarantee
a kind monasticism, pedantic really.
Monk, Priest, Idolatress
are the foods of the iconoclasts
and the sand you leave behind
is the same sand to build more.
This awakening is only a taste,
there is no recovery room in hell,
no narcan and certainly few surprises.
Spring is for the resurrected
and goblets are full of rain.
The descriptives escape most,
the heat waves closer and the constant
night in the outline of shadows,
the gap free echo of the ether
is the chalk outline walking sideways
towards the joining hour, the eden time.
Do you not visit the graves of the ancients?

V. Mankind

In the days of distant myth
local stories drew close and closer
the parables of the future lay
dying in grassy fields full of markers,
where flocks used to go, herds
there, where seeds are planted
one by one, the now burnt
forests. Men like the sea
gathering the fog to themselves
in the dreamy coats of dawn
in tents of stone, breakfast gardens,
where graves full of saints stay sweetly buried.
How the mule used to bray
when one of them died but now

there are too many

and the herds run amok - invasion weary,
people rebuilding for the 100th
time, plaster gives up to the rain
before it starts and rust is soon.

VI. Troy

A summer it was
the city full of hot dreams
Standard and Quaker
the sea just full of it,
unquenchable, out of reach
near the boat wrecks there.
The head of Augustus, El Cid Pimpus
Aquarius, maybe two-hundred
thousand bronze cast idols lay
over it in the churning
deeps under ossified
strata, girder strata,
the strata of the quiet
years foreign between layers
Corinthian to the modern treasuries
cast into the deeps, strata
of sewage and sinew,
the lightweight strata of letters
fixed in juxta
bracelets of ruby, garnets
for eardrums, her eyes
were sapphire in the sweet wood
of the mines. Nothing but teeth
and guesswork in a blanket of fuel.

That summer the voices brought flags
to the indigenes, herded them into trans-
ports, gave 'em a bit of water,
some bread and cheese maybe
and told them to cry

A stalwart muslim's ha been killed
now cry, an easy compliant crowd
of schoolchildren and house-help.

I know it is true cuz I wuz there
minding my own business, plying
my trade quietly not asking
for forgiveness or barter, few
friends had I save for the tricks
of the fathers, doting diligent men.
Schoolmasters 'til ten then after
lunch the brazen begin
in offices and backstrips.
They'd see a Russian bargirl or Romanian
or an Asian, no funds ever changed hands
until day break in a distant room.
Sometimes up in this very same edifice.
She'd come in as if to clean up a bit
for the tenant 'out of the country'
who'd left his keys with a friend.

So I know it's true, all of it and no
one can pay a woman
like me to lie, I won't do it
although the tenant did try -
gave mepickled batinjaen
and clocks. Oh he'd do it alright
but I never turned by back
on him, a daring
thief from the Be'aaah Valley.

What a dear valley for potatoes!
Potatoes like human heads, pearly
white with thin skin and guns.
So what I relate is true, belligerent
with the good intentions to advise
the innocent. I once was that too
disbelieving, minding my own business
plying my trade, not asking
for barder nor accepting any bribe.
In other words, I was trying
hard to please myself sometimes
but not more than that.

Late at night -early
in the morning sounds in the stair
well, he'd be carrying a crate
of tomatoes, his pockets full
of cash -he worked as a newspaper
salesman, so he said, so the hours
were quite odd, deliquent even.
There'd be the sound of a bag
placed near my door,
then he'd go up the last flight
of stairs, the lock would groan
and his keys would be finally
silent as he made something
in the kitchen, cold food
for a bachelor somewhat
of a criminal but a passionate one
who'd touch any woman he could:
wife, sister, baby - he didn't care,
just wanted something feminine
to take care of. I'd pull away
and complain to mi esposo
pero no mucho entonces
I pitied him and he pitied me -
a tenuous love and honesty
is the issue when they pay
poor people to cry.

Beirut is mostly tent and the buildings
are sometimes stone and sometimes
sticks. It is a mobile edifice
for treason and statuary, shifting
shadows of the markets, a newspaper-
man is a convenient neighbor
when a Valentine arrives -
Bloody Big Hole in the Heart
of the city, the blood ran
for two whole years in the aquaducts.

All the while he'd bring his
cash and tomatoes in the early
hours and I'd wait morning,
then afternoon, then eveing
plying my trade of watching
then writing the treaties.
I never wore shoes and contracted
the hookworm's cough
so I could reach his door
unnoticed as if a sleeping baby
was inside, the big door would open
and his eyes were large, they'd open
more, he was twice my size
and kept a toy gun in the foyer.
He'd grab me and pull me close
to catch my old thrills
if only tangentially, his hands
were very large.
Then he'd hury back to bring
some chocolates. He loved
chocolates, really really loved
chocolates, German ones.
Near the settee where once
we drank tall glasses of apple
juice and the Philistine for hire
thought we were drunk on whiskey.
He was a cheat and I caught
his eyes in a glance at my breasts -
didn't like it and the philistine
thought I'd not notice nor would I
notice he'd started stealing
my properties, one and the same.

18.11.08

The Last Mystery

What misery it is to not know
something perfectly known,
the last curtain call did grow
from ignorance into a lie full blown.

They asked for a spread
some juice and some bread.
Next thing you know we're eating
someone's liver and treating

cannibalism like good old usury
something special in the chalice
someone else's misery
a token for our own malice.

This is the parable of eat and drink
take no helpers, don't even blink.
Before you know it they'll want to say
it's always been this carnivorous way.

Not so the book said, just not so
and if you don't believe Allah
then you'll just have to go
ask someone else or guess.

And that ends up in a long term mess.

From the Last Revealed Sura in the Glorious Quran known as The Dinner Table or Table Spread. This Sura was revealed at Ghadr Khum and the prophet was aware of his impending death (sound familiar?). It is said that at the place known as Ghadr Khum, over 100,000 muslims gathered to hear the prophet's final sermon. During that sermon, it is well known that he named his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Taleb to be the executor of his "estate" i.e. Islam. It is the basis of all sectarianism in Islam with the "Shia" becoming known as those who followed the last order i.e. Last Will and Testament of the prophet Mohamed, SA. Sunnis are those who followed those who violated the Will of Allah. It is and was, a very serious concern. Perhaps some in the world can begin to see exactly why it is a concern in the modern world i.e. the violation of the Will of Allah. Or maybe not!

It (the two LAST acts of the two last prophets, Mohamed and Isa, SA) can be compared (as I believe it was meant to be and therefore, within this Sura you find the real account of the Last Supper which has become a real issue of controversy amongst theologians because of the mysteries of the painting by Leonardo Da Vinci (who wasn't a witness to the event afterall)). It's right there in black and white, English and Tegalog, Portuguese and French, Swahili and Urdu. Just pick up a Quran at your local bookseller. You won't be disappointed.

Aya (proof) 112-120, The Dinner Table

[5.112] When the disciples said: O Isa son of Marium! will your Lord consent to send down to us food from heaven? He said: Be careful of (your duty to) Allah if you are believers.
[5.113] They said: We desire that we should eat of it and that our hearts should be at rest, and that we may know that you have indeed spoken the truth to us and that we may be of the witnesses to it.
[5.114] Isa the son of Marium said: O Allah, our Lord! send i down to us food from heaven which should be to us an ever-recurring happiness, to the first of us and to the last of us, and a sign from Thee, and grant us means of subsistence, and Thou art the best of the Providers.
[5.115] Allah said: Surely I will send it down to you, but whoever shall disbelieve afterwards from among you, surely I will chastise him with a chastisement with which I will not chastise, anyone among the nations.
[5.116] And when Allah will say: O Isa son of Marium! did you say to men, Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah he will say: Glory be to Thee, it did not befit me that I should say what I had no right to (say); if I had said it, Thou wouldst indeed have known it; Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I do not know what is in Thy mind, surely Thou art the great Knower of the unseen things.
[5.117] 1 did not say to them aught save what Thou didst enjoin me with: That serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord, and I was a witness of them so long as I was among them, but when Thou didst cause me to die, Thou wert the watcher over them, and Thou art witness of all things.
[5.118] If Thou shouldst chastise them, then surely they are Thy servants; and if Thou shouldst forgive them, then surely Thou art the Mighty, the Wise.
[5.119] Allah will say: This is the day when their truth shall benefit the truthful ones; they shall have gardens beneath which rivers flow to abide in them for ever: Allah is well pleased with them and they are well pleased with Allah; this is the mighty achievement.
[5.120] Allah's is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and what is in them; and He has power over all things.

17.11.08

Mowgli's Lament

It wasn't the apple afterall
nor knowledge that led to the fall.
Man was created and told to listen
with this he and Eve were christen'd.
Original means only one simple thing
follow me and find the fruit and bling.
Twelve were given a cup and then
one was stolen and returned to the king.
This was Yusef of the murdering well,
who told all Egypt to save for a spell,
for seven years fallow, seven years gain
wait for fertillizer and a bit of rain.
Then all of a sudden a voice did call,
I'm creating this prophet who isn't named Paul.
He's just like the first one only this time I'm mad
at the darlings who called me Dear Old Dad,
then turned around and tried to kill my envoy,
fooled yet again with a special decoy.

Those who named what cannot be named
will someday certainly be hated and blamed.
No sperm and especially no man
no rightful heir or comparisons to Pan.
Some of them were cheap skates, all of them dumb
and in this kingdom they won't eat a crumb.
Get out your swords and fill up your vault
this war's just beginning and it's all your fault,
for not listening to the simple advice
follow me baby or no dice.
What to Expect

An interesting thing he saw,
I say an interesting thing.
He saw this thing was interesting
so he told me he saw something.
If I were to see that thing
and it might be interesting
to host so bland a ghost
in the habit of groan and boast,
it would be a real right fling
to host this charming changeling.
The streets would be swept,
by old men quite adept
with young girls on their arms
straight off their father's farms.
On a windy wintry day,
the snowman comes to play
inside the empty halls and rooms
and chats with all the dusty brooms
about himself again and again
just like all the tired old men.
An interesting thing he said he saw
I say all the interesting things have been.


16.11.08

The Night Journey (Mi'raj)


15.11.08

Potato Cakes

1-2 cups leftover fresh/instant mashed potatoes
1-1/2 c flour
1 TBSP baking powder
2 eggs
salt
oil

Mix the eggs into the mashed potatoes. Stir it up real good. Add dry ingredients and stir into a thick, sticky paste. Heat a couple spoons vegetable oil in a fry pan. Drop batter by spoonfuls into nice sized cakes. Cook 4-5 minutes until brown, flip and brown the other side.

Butter and syrup if you like. Or else...saute some onions and garlic in olive oil and drizzle over hot potato cakes. Or gravy or whatever else you want to top them off with. Potato cakes make great baby food for infants to toddlers. Awesome instead of hash browns. Mind bogglingly simple food.

Scrumptious. Old style. Well liked by Republicans and Democrats.

14.11.08

Refinancing Primer

The parable of those who take guardians besides Allah is as the parable of the spider that makes for itself a house; and most surely the frailest of the houses is the spider's house did they but know.-The Spider, The Glorious Quran

I dream of Rube Goldberg houses. I have three of them you know so it isn't that unusual to dream of houses. Not counting the one I grew up in or the several I've rented or the one I've sold.

In the last episode, I dreamt of two Maronite Christian couples who had blended into one and the wife had very skinny legs. She was still childless and cooking different epicurian delights in one of two ovens. The house they were in was simply magnificent. Located up in Eden somewhere I believe yet the developers had taken the time to name it something else. The house had vaulted ceilings made of stucco, of course.

The dog, if you could call it that, was white. Astonishing animal, quite large and our hosts had rigged up a pulley system in the gables upon which the dog was tethered and could roam about unencumbered. He went round and round on that thing of theirs.

As is the usual in my recurring dream (or is it a nightmare?) I went to the other house. My house or rather, I visited several properties I might intend to buy. The owners had left certain things about this time. All sorts of kid contraptions and wild exercise machines. Everything was broken as it always is in these dreams of my houses. Water doesn't run right, walls resemble caves and sometimes there is a man reclining on a chair waiting for me to discover his identity.

Rube Goldberg, I know you, quit messing around.

I own a house on land transversed at one time by the prophets. This one is visited by havelina at dusk. Up on Mayer Avenue, they've razed Scott Ham's place to the ground but ours is still standing. I wonder how long this Eden ought to last and how I'll get back into it next time around.
Five and Dime Eulogy

The books were dispatched in cardboard boxes.
At the thrift store a man who smelled horrible
browsed them, homeless yet again, like the books
which had been sold by an aging group of siblings.
You could tell where the couple had spent most
of their time, up in Napa, on the road looking
for something. Will Durant had signed his last
major work, "Best Wishes. Will and Ariel."
Says alot. The Rand McNally most likely
meant for fifth grade students taking on
the West was a frivolous purchase I'll admit,
not the price but the size.
A French medical encyclopedia is terrible
and terribly grand. Reminded me of the science
lab (at Saint Patrick's) which was chock
full of pickled baby pigs and tapeworms
and of the Museum of Natural History in Paris
except...it is all right here, easily cartable.
Revolt in the Desert is worth about three hundred
and some of the best reading on the planet.
I am forever grateful to those two old codgers.
First rate folks.
May 2007


(from The Book Called I Remember)

I remember laying down
with you above me
the first time we made love.
I remember the shirt you wore
and told you they look like epaulettes
i.e. those strips of fabric
sewn onto the shoulders
of your shirt
as you held yourself
over me and for the tenth
or eleventh time, died
your martyr's death into me.
How I wish I could have
been the innocent you were.
As I looked up at you
propped on your two arms
I knew I loved something
so I said it was you.
I hardly knew you
we hardly knew each other
but you agreed.
How far away from home
we were and unlettered
and no matter where
our country is now,
we are always there.

For the Babysitter

Jerry Falwell dead.
It seems to be important
and every day a curious signal
goes out, it meanders over
the graves to find a way in there -
to bother the good dead Christians
and bother the unwanted children.
It tenders a response from
the recluse and the maimed.
What matters is when a good woman
like Lupe goes down. She knew
all about the graves and told me so
even though the church never
said a thing about it.
May her time there be silent
and Allah willing, short.

The Crush

On the back pages of the moon
men's voices come and go
before wars and after
card games until dawn
combines the silences.
The power is on again,
off again. Here
there is trust and there
is no place to hide
the occasional laughter
of the nervous but under
the quiet shelves
in a hundred pieces,
another hundred wires;
those bricks and windows
where there are homes of wonder
and assault - the places
that give up shade
to cover the brave
and coward alike
in ruins and prayers now
crowned with the ragged
families, the what's-left-over
who whisper: repair and brace.

The Honey Moon

Beirut:

Tell me this
is the last adventure
and I'll go home, stop
bothering God for information
about you. I'll stop spying
through your candles and dirty
mists. I married not a man
but the whole country, wedded
rivers while marching
across stones, my innocence
lost on a flight from which
I stepped into a sea
of armies and posters.
My teeth got ground into paste,
a dowry wasted on one hiding
place after another looking
for the auction of the future
where the last bidder is death.
I gave birth to mementos and distress
near bodies of chalk
sucked naked by gravity.
Our children dragged
baggage and dread
through the streets
as the news catered
our bitterest meals.
We never leave and never arrive,
airport to airport with a cold bravado
saying the strangest things.

13.11.08

Neb'keneezer, the old Geezer

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies.
-Old Men, Ogden Nash

What ever happened to old Gunga Din,
to Theodor Herzl and Rin Tin Tin?
In the old days we used to play
hide and seek until the end of the day,
upstairs and downstairs, under the car,
Rumpelstilzchen there you are!

This year is dreadful, awfully thin,
war keeps pullin' the peaceful bodies in.
Vietnam, Congo and Nogales too,
makes you wander if you live in a zoo.

Next year promises more of the same,
the sky won't fall, the stockmarket lame.
Some hope for disaster,
not for us but them, and faster.











11.11.08

The best birthday gift ever:

a paper shredder, foot warmer, yard cleaner, composter, ashtray and exercise machine all in one!



The Fire Pit, everyone should own one.
The Best Birthday Poem Ever

Do you feel when the Angel of Death enters a house, or do you see him when he takes out life of anyone? How does he take out the life of an embryo in the womb of his mother? Does he reach it through any part of her body or the spirit responded to his call with the permission of Allah? Or does he stay with him in the mother's interior? How can he who is unable to describe a creature like this, describe Allah?" -Ali ibn Abi Taleb, Lion of Allah, Commander of the Faithful and Chief of all Believers, May Allah be pleased with all of his servants.

The message sent was well received,
the girl content and most relieved.
Twas a great day and a better night,
when the moon lit up the sky with light.
To call the faithful to the cause
is better than the dreadful pause
found in societies big and small
who will all crumble, burn and fall.
This life is seriously long and short,
you wake up in your own cohort.
Devils and angels and our very own jinn,
singers and poets and too many men.
Those who were given free will will say
to those who hoped their caution would sway,
how on earth did you end up this way!
I prayed five prayers a day,
enjoined charity for the orphans,
the wayfarer and the stray.
I took to the inherent laws of my leader
instead of posts in the Weekly Reader.
You see, there's no negotiation with truth
and knowledge depends on this little sleuth.
If it were the other way around
and truth depended on knowledge,
or two years in the community college,
I'd have ended up in special ed.

10.11.08

I thought this was a nice thing to say to the author of Hurley Gurley:

“…O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity…”

“Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats

_____________________

Ms Jones,

The fact we share a passion for Yeat's mystic poem
speaks very well of you in my book.

And, the origins of your brilliant poem:
"San Pantaleone Sees Anne Sexton On The Corniche" - prompted by
a Professor So-and-Sos' esoterically ridiculous lecture of 1990
- and your Health Professional admonitions to randy Arne - confirm my
suspicions that you grew up in the shadow of the Boomer Generation -
and you saw the contradictions between our actions and our deeds.
We insisted upon our Rights - and we generally overlooked the realm of
Responsibility to society that you're trying to emphasize to him.

Now, you remind me of a young woman from Stanford University whom
I met at an outdoor cafe in Mill Valley circa 1990. She abruptly
sat down opposite me and when I looked up from my book, she gladly
announced "this is one of the happiest days of my life" - as if we
were destined to meet that day and I'd know what to do with this news!

Well, anyway, I couldn't help but feel happy for her and raised my
glass of Iced Tea in a spontaneous toast - and then asked how all of
this auspiciousness came about. She said that she was a filmmaker and
that she'd just received a letter of acceptance for her film project
concept. Okay, now this remembrance may also pertain to you.

This woman whom I want to call "Amelia" because that was either her
name - or she reminded me of 'Amelia Earhart' flying out of the clear
blue sky and dived into my life for a Summer or so. Amelia said that
she'd written a contemporary story of "Persephone, the Greek daughter
of the Earth Mother, Demeter. She proceeded to tell me a story about
her mother and father who had met at a concert in Golden Gate Park in
1967 during the "Summer Of Love." Amelia said that she'd been raised
by her Hippie parents in Mill Valley, which had become 'yuppified' in
the '80s and was now in the hands of greedy Real Estate developers.

Like "Persephone," who had been kidnapped from the endless Summerland
that her mother Demeter had conjured up on Earth by "Hades" and taken
to live in his Hell, Amelia had met the son of a wealthy housing
contractor who had plied her with cocaine and a life of hedonism.
Amelia's parents had had to intercede for her and more or less rescue
her from the rich kid's pleasure pad - and had her hospitalized.

So, I was seeing her a year after all of the foregoing calamities -
and she was returning to Stanford on scholarship to make this
allegorical film imaginatively based on incidents in her life.

And, it occurred to me how much my generation had grown up in the
Summer of our society's cultural cycle - and that we weren't prepared
for the Fall and now the Winter of our society's discontent - and that
my contemporaries didn't really prepare their children like Amelia -
or possibly Randall (Layla) here for the Hades lurking underneath -
which Randall wonderfully invokes in her 1990 image
[of a Hurled Girl whirling upon a ferris wheel in Lunatic Park]

“Oh that divine itch!

The fuel of the fire, man
-the fractional distillation
-the rising to the top
-the sparkling rumination.

Oh that jet fuel!
How it makes us fly!

>

“Our Hurly Gurly of Lunatic Park…”