Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Will Someone Stop This Train

This train never runs on time - lucky for me, or I would have missed
it. I almost flew. Thought two days in a chair, part of it through
the desert, was not the way for me to go. But, no. I needed to bring
my desktop computer, too big for carry on, too fragile for baggage
claim. So, here I am; with a fraction of my stuff packed, most left
on the floor of my kitchen - dishes, foodstuff, my copper pots (sigh)
and too many clothes in the living room. It's cheaper to carry stuff
on the train: 3 checked bags, two big carry ons plus personal items,
then $10 each for three more bags and boxes. Suits me. Mostly
clothes, my beaded Huichol masks, my sons dvds and games. I'll need
to come back. I'll take the train.

Outside: boulders that look like petrified giant poop, heavenly green
meadows the color of a crayon, guys mooning me from their rafts on
the Colorado, ellos me dan saludos con las nalgas - sin verguenzas -
takes cold balls, two of them. The sun shaves light from the
mountains as the canyons shut down for the day. Fat geeze graze
beside the river y yo sin el horno. Lots of fish in the crystalline
river, their bubble heads and finned fannies flash and bob. I love
the islands in the stream. Yes, there are, although not even close to
Hemingway's. Just outside of Kremmling, at Dotsero, my favorite 356
miles begins, as I play and replay John Mayer's "Stop This Train."
"Although I know I'm color blind/ I know the world is black and
white" as are these canyons, and green and red where the rain and sun
play off the cliffs. I spotted my first eagle from this train, so
many far years ago, a bald one. "I'm so afraid of growing old/ I'm
only good at being young." A fork in the river appears, a side
confluence. And a small hole in the cliff with a rivulet running
through it. We thread in and out of tunnels like the times in our
lives when the brightest light is when we emerge from the dark, from
the scent of coal and creosote.

I love this travel, this always going somewhere while ever going
nowhere, this state of being in no state but the mind's flight of
fancy and muse. I love the muddy patches of the river as much as the
clear whorls. I love the rapids as much as the muddy shoals. I love
the layering of these trips, maybe at least twenty, one for every
year I first ventured this way, thinking and dreaming and smelling
Grandma's string-tied shoe boxes of fried chicken and cornmeal
cupcakes. How she would love this leg; she, one of California's first
back-packers, mountain girl, like me, riding her silver spurred horse
through the Montecito granite. She always approved of my nifty
equipment, way back when I was fueled and funded by nothing but
desire, a desire to leave, to be alone in my aloneness, for the
mountains where I could spew my heart in peace, and sing. This train
is late, almost too dark for pictures as the brilliant meadows unfurl
and the sun does a final reel on the river. It warms my cheeks and
heart. My heart, so full an apparatus. "...one generation's length
away/ .... Stop this train/ I want to get off/ and go home again."

Now entering the painted books and sarcarphagi, the cut boulders that
look like coffins for the giants who pooped their lives away. A huge
water wheel beside the river, my favorite, lodged between the
confluence looking like an abandoned ferris wheel without a child.
Won't someone hold me here? Snag me like the biggest fish and keep me
in the net? Land my red shirt here, in the greenest freshest meadow
of calm, and set the flame? "Won't someone stop this train?" I note
every for sale sign I see, and dream, and play the numbers in my
head, my ticket to life in that gazebo on the bank. I love how the
canyons peel, the huge flakes and the little shards like arrowheads
in the rubble. My mother used to say that the boulder figurines on
the top of the ridge back home were "wild Indians" who had come to
take me home. And even though I was old enough to know better, I
still always squinted into the distance, seeing their feathered
headdresses, and worried. Here, this train I'm on, I'm the wildest
Indian I see. By far.

I pick apart the memories: this train here, that travel there, and it
all unravels, the poem I started and never finished on those many
trips back and forth between my future and my past - now lived in
reverse order, like a real life negative, where my future is my past
and the recent time, my future unfurling past me in the left behind.
There are those places in the river where it all stops, like a
stunned fish stoned on the excess oxygen. Here, where the big fish
live, where they stop and read the red stone books in this canyon,
the black and the white, the wear and the sustenance. The river
threads its needle in and out the man-made bridges, it jumps track
again and again, switches sides at will. I play at willing it back to
me, asking it to speak to me, gurgle its rich secrets into my ear
along with this tune I'm listening to, the twinkling rapids, the
tinkling guitar.

"Don't stop this train
Don't even think for a minute
that you can."

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Study This Summer W/ Lorna Dee Cervantes! Poetry Workshops in Berkeley

Study this summer w/ Lorna Dee Cervantes! CU Boulder CWP Program Associate Professor (18 years), former publisher, editor, multi-award winning poet (Pushcart -x2, NEA-x2, Amer. Book Award, Latino Literature Award, Balcones Book Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry published in 2006, Latino Book Award - 2nd. Place, CA and CO fellowship grants, Colorado Book Award Finalist, Colorado Poet Laureate Finalist, Pulitzer nominee, etc.) and Bay Area native who has just moved back "home" to Berkeley is offering weekend intensive poetry workshops in Berkeley (Dana St.): July 21, 22, 28, 29 from 10am - 4pm, including vegetarian meal: $95 each ($85 advance payment); manuscript consultation $50 w/ workshop. Discounts offered for multiple workshops (encouraged w/ ms. consultation). All levels invited. Private consultations, manuscript reading, editing (including fiction & literary nonfiction), online mentoring also available. Aug. workshop considered. Also interested in forming advanced poetry workshop. Other genres invited to attend workshops. Learn how to go from no poems to a book in 1 day. Send sample. For information, e-mail: PoetDee[AT]mac.com.

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Some Words of Nikola Tesla & Radio Camp, June 29

This, via Rudy. Tesla is one of my heroes. Practice your own creative twist in a practical way: Come to Radio Camp! Learn how to build your own low-watt radio transmitter at Free Radio Berkeley. Go from 0 to 40 watts in four days. Next Radio Camp (in Oakland) starting June 29th. I'll be there. Come and solder a hello.
------------------------------------
The Words of Dr. Nikola Tesla


On Invention: It is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Of all the frictional resistance, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called "the greatest evil in the world." The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.

Universal peace as a result of cumulative effort through centuries past might come into existence quickly -- not unlike a crystal that suddenly forms in a solution which has been slowly prepared.

The last 29 days of the month [are] the hardest.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of a planter -- for the future. His duty is to lay foundation of those who are to come and point the way.

Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within. Everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside.

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.

We are confronted with portentous problems which can not be solved just by providing for our material existence, however abundantly. On the contrary, progress in this direction is fraught with hazards and perils not less menacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of the atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind... The greatest good will come from the technical improvements tending to unification and harmony, and my wireless transmitter is preeminently such. By its means the human voice and likeness will be reproduced everywhere and factories driven thousands of miles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerial machines will be propelled around the earth without a stop and the sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land... (Nikola Tesla, "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter magazine in 1919.)

War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment... (Nikola Tesla, "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter magazine in 1919.)

On Edison: If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ...

I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. (New York Times, October 19, 1931.)

On Mark Twain: I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears. (Nikola Tesla, "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919.)

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Southern Sun - Table Mesa

Moving, packing -- drank a glass of "Illusion Dweller IPA." And here I am, una India Pale Ail. I scrub the residue of my cooked meals from the walls, the residue of our residence, our dwelling, our res-i-due. Dare I say, "Love?" I guess not. I crank up the tunes, my bummer love songs: "The Way Away" recorded just for this occasion. Loud.

The dark-haired woman next to me says to her lover: "I feel like my heart's going to explode and spray paint all over your face," and laughs. What a line. I am a hair away from laughter. A pelt away from love. "Fair enough," the happily dressed woman says. I wonder if I'm still funny. I wonder if I'm still smart. I wonder. I wish I were wooing. I wish I were -- in that sappy love song sense. The woman next to me is bright. The man is entranced. She's doing well. She is not beautiful. She's overweight and charming. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm an Illusion Dweller, a peak near Anapurna. I am a follicle away from love. And, maybe, miles.

This place goes from Celtic music to jazz. There's no one here even vaguely interesting. I wonder if I'm still interesting. I wonder if I'll ever be interesting to someone else. This pale ale tastes metallic and hoppy (just drank one, glad for the settled stomach.) The woman next to me has dramatic cleavage and her curly hair up. She's doing well.

My friends say I'm the "Queen of Positive Thinking." I like that. Least I'm the Queen of something. The blond woman on the other side of me with the Jessica Simpson figure is drunk. She apologizes often for being a drama queen. She slurs her words often. They hardy speak. The man next to me with the entrancing date raises a toast to her future. He has to go to the bathroom to blow his nose from the too spicy burrito. My food is getting cold, and the hoppy beer is getting drunk. And this gets written, my day in Boulder, my next to last evening being married.

"Well, you can make good money doing what you love to do," says the guy next to me. Indeed. I'm doing what I love to do, and not making good money. The guy next to me tries to pay with a credit card, "I'll cover it," he says. "Nah, put it away." I like her. She pays her own. The waiter says, "No credit cards. We go by the hippy green." The dark-haired woman says, "That's okay, I've got it." The guy has only eight dollars and some change. "Gee, I went from paying for it all to having you pay for me." "No problem." She invites him back to her apartment. "Unless it's all too much for you, what with the hippy food and the redneck booze." I like her. In another life I would have been her. I wouldn't have married. I wouldn't have a reputation for choosing the wrong men. Or, something.

I'm ready to go home now, the one without the quotation marks. And scrub myself from the walls, wrap my dishes in dish towels and brightly colored napkins. Succumb to the division of property. While the couple next to me holds hands for the first time. I hand my waiter the check and my book-earned bills. And, leave. Next stop, next life, Berkeley, California, lost land of the Illusion Dwellers. I drain my glass and think I'm celebrating something, my not wanting to live anymore with a cheat and a liar. Salud!

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Solstice - Communion

My second morning in Berkeley I awaken to the sounds of laughter - loud laughter, peals of giggling and what sounds like tickling or the results of funny faces. It goes on for a long long time. I can't tell if it's coming from the walls or floorboards. I can't tell which apartment it's coming from. But someone is having a good time, early in the morning. I almost don't mind being woken up this way. Almost. There's something about the joke and aping that doesn't feel the same from the silence of the other wall.

Later I see a Moslem family, I'm not sure of the country, but 3 generations of women with their heads and hair wrapped up in dark shawls. They are laughing. Loudly. The girl reminds me of me at that age, gangly but sure of herself. She laughs the most. Throws her head behind her and stamps her foot. "Oh, it must be them." The apartment behind me holds the laughter. That comforts me.

The next morning I wake again to the laughter. LOUD. It lasts a long time. I can't go back to sleep, just listen. It's coming from the floor beneath me. The couple. It sounds like he's burying his head in her belly and blowing imaginary bubbles, like to an infant - I imagine. He is making goofy faces. Walking around the room like an ape. He's making some kind of apelike sounds, but they are not making love. They are making love to each other with their laughter. I have never felt so alone as at that moment. What do they have to laugh? Why does it last so long. A good hour. A good hour. How does one sustain that? What must it be like to have someone so kissed with good humor? With my humor. Why can't I laugh like that? Wake to that healing mirth? Be touched by that? Touch another? Give in to that divine inspiration, that holy communion?

What will it take to win your laughter?

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Lorna Dee Cervantes Performing in Lakewood, CO June 23rd, 6:30 pm - El Laboratorio



EL LABORATORIO

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Saturday, June 23, 2007
Cost $10 ($5 members)


Lorna Dee Cervantes, an acclaimed poet, professor, printer, publisher and author will read from her Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, DRIVE: The First Quartet followed by a conversation with John-Michael Rivera, the Creative Director of El Laboratorio. She will be accompanied by upright bass and accordian.


The Lab at Belmar
404 S. Upham Street
Lakewood, CO 80226
(303) 934-1777

DIRECTIONS

Access Wadsworth Blvd South via Sixth Avenue
Take a left (east) on Alameda Ave.
Turn right (south) on Vance Street
Turn left (east) on Alaska Street.
We're at Upham and Alaska, across the street from Dick's Sporting Goods (we're not Dick's). [I'll say! LDC]

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Help$$ Ayuda Radio Gratis en Chiapas! Project TUPA: Transmitters Uniting the Peoples of the Americas Needs Help Helping to Give Voice to the Voiceless

[UPDATE: Correction: The people needing help getting to the workshop are from Chiapas where last year transmitters were built under the guidance of Project TUPA]

Project TUPA: Transmitters Uniting the People's of the Americas desperately needs to raise a minimum of $250-300 to help bring impoverished budding radio technicians in rural indigenous Oaxaca (and maybe Chiapas and elsewhere) to Mexico City for advanced training in maintaining 25 new radio stations and transmitters built there last spring. Their funding for the project in Mexico fell through and these people attending free workshops at the new Center for Free Radio in Mexico City on July 9th have no way to get there. Help fight poverty by helping to fight exploitation in Mexico. Give whatever you've got, and help give voice to the voiceless. Any amount will help. Tax deduction available by signing checks to Project Tupa/Global Exchange. Otherwise, just make it out to "Project TUPA"

Send $$ to:

Free Radio Berkeley
Project TUPA
1442A Walnut St.
Berkeley, CA 94709

You can help free the airwaves. And help feed the Truth.

Go to www.radiotupa.org for more information. And go to www.freeradio.org for information. And, you, too, can build your own dang radio station. Attend their Radio Camp end of June in Oakland. Go from 0 to 40 watts in four days. Be your own voice and help free the airwaves. They're the pirates! Radio belongs to all, not just to those who are rich enough to afford one. No technical skills needed. Don't want to build your own radio transmitter and antenna? Learn to build one (FUN!) and donate it to an impoverished indigenous community.

Free Radio Berkeley, headed by radio wizard, Stephen Dunifer, which helps fund the nonprofit Project TUPA "on a half a shoestring budget" recently suffered a loss in the theft of a 40 watt transmitter destined to be shipped to Oaxaca yesterday. Help build 25 more!

Join me this summer in Oakland - Let's build an alternative to lies posing as news.

Gracias! Let me know if you do, and I'll send you my award winning book, DRIVE: The First Quartet and a valuable 220 page, soon to be published, manuscript of love poems.

Love the world. Turn it on. Build your own dang transmitter!


Lorna Dee Cervantes

"Oh honey, you turn me on, I'm a radio" - Joni Mitchell

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California Dreamin'

I awoke on my first day in Berkeley with the sun blazing like those California dreaming days of my youth. Oh, that hot sun by the Bay, sweeter for the rarity. I woke with a song. I thought it was the radio - no, live! "YOU ARE MY DESTINY..." It sounded like the original. Wow, right outside my window, "he was singing real good for free" as Joni Mitchell sings it. And LOUD. Sweet, rich, superb. He was walking through the parking lot right outside the apartment, sustaining his notes as he walked. Wow, fantastic and so Berkeley. I got up and went to the window in the beautiful empty wood floor office room with the sliding glass door right outside my bedroom, and I could see him: "YOU ARE MY DESTINY" as he began his song all over again. So professional sounding - and LOUD. Hard to do and still hit the notes. Man, is this town talented, or what? I watched him and listened, enjoying this living alarm clock. An elegant looking older black man with a fedora or some kind of hat cocked at an angle. There's a hospital in the back, maybe he was a doctor or orderly on his way to the shift, and getting in the mood: "YOU ARE MY DESTINY..." When he finished the second round, I burst into applause. LOUD! He held his final note (still LOUD) while he looked around to see where it was coming from. He couldn't tell, but took off his hat anyway and bowed in my general direction with his leg crossed over the other like Shirley Temple. Man, what a country! What a town.

Food's good and good for you. I live right across from the Whole Foods where my step-mother, Susan, painted a mural. It's an easy town to go vegetarian. It's an easy town to furnish a whole apartment from the free listings on Craig's list. It's amazing what people give away here. How it appeals to this poor kid little former dumpster diver. We went to the library and checked out the summer class offerings for my son. I played house and scrubbed I don't how many semester's off the walls. YUCK! And I'm not known for being the tidiest person. The apartment has no smoke detector and smells faintly of boys. I felt a series of tiny earthquakes beneath my feet. The sky was BLUE and I can almost see the Bay from the balcony.

I had to just rest today from so much moving furniture. I'm in full Lucy Ricardo mode here - YOU ARE MY DESTINY. I'm addicted to the free listings: I want two free renovated mobile homes ("You Haul") and I actually found a guy with a 23' truck and pallet lift to pick up pallets of free brand new furniture for forty bucks cash for gas ("50 pieces at time, please"). I think I'm going to go into the furniture business and fund my summer. By the time I get there there's only ottomans and futon drawers (I had to google them to figure what the heck they were) left - "50 identical pieces at a time, please" "You gotta lotta esplaining to do, Lucy." We share a birthday, Lucy and I. I go home and to a clean geranium smelling apartment, and think, my guardian angels are with me. I want flowers and barbequed tofu. I want to eat at the Brazilian shack restauarant on the corner. I want to hear jigs and reels. I crank up John Mayer's "Waiting On the World to Change" and tell my son, "Don't bother me, I'm dancing." He acts like this is normal. It is. The new me.

Berkeley, YOU ARE MY DESTINY! Sing it loud. Aho!

I write an ad for Craig's list for the brand new luxury tapestry comforter set I just bought in Colorado for $24 and ask for $250. Marked down from $389. I throw in my silk pillowcases ($100 original/$25 markdown at Tuesday Morning) and think, heck with shlepping a king bed up these stairs. I get 5 inquiries. Cash only. I need it, I'm getting down to my last $20 - the poet's life of waiting for the check for last year's reading to arrive, and it's a long way to payday. I dance well. I can see my reflection in the far window. The front blinds are open and I can be seen through the sheer floral curtains I bought along with the bedding that's too big and bulky for my queen futon I bought on Craig's list for $20. Good, I think, I'm the new neighbor who dances by herself in her livingroom. "She was dancing real good and free," they'll say. "I was getting good stuff for free..." I change Joni's words and sing. LOUD. As the shimmer of the earth rises to the surface from the little quakes, and I think of the monumental task ahead of clearing my 3,000 square foot house of furniture so we can fix it up for sale. I feel tremors. And, I dance, as the cold air from the Bay comes in on little panther feet. And, I close the window. Comforted.

"YOU ARE my destiny...".

Wanna buy a book? Poetry and poet for sale. Free.

As Dougie Maclean comes through the Bose headphones now: "FAlaLAlalala, standing on solid ground/on solid ground...". And Billy Bragg follows: "I don't think shopping's a metaphor for life."

Sing it LOUD.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Well, It's Official ...

I'm moving to Berkeley tomorrow and moving on - changing my status. Cha-cha-cha-chanGES ... Where's my Stevie Nicks "Landslide" video? Send me an email at PoetDee AT mac DOT com if you'd like my new address and phone in Berkeley. Tomorrow's the day ....

Monday, June 11, 2007

Lorna Dee Cervantes - June's Featured Poet at Kate Evan's Poetry Monday - Moving to Cal! June 23 Reading in Denver (Lakewood)

Lorna Dee Cervantes is this month's featured poet at Kate Evans's blog on her Poetry Monday featureposted today. Check it out. I post and talk about two brand new poems, process, moving (to Berkeley!), "home" and "ouija board" poetry. And, check out Kate's fine poetry while you're there. It was a real pleasure to read with her at the SJSU Poets Then and Now event last April.

Yes, that's right, I'm moving to Berkeley! I'll be all moved in wednesday night. Yee haw! Catch me there, or catch me back in Denver (Lakewood Belmar Center) on June 23 at 6:30 pm for a big and free reading kicking off a new Latina/o writers center, El Laboratorio. It will start off with a discussion with other members which will be broadcast on PBS, and end with a reception, book-signing and open bar (free!) Hope to see you there!

And, check out my MySpace blog where I post new poems constantly and check out the new tune on my profile page by Beltaine's Fire, a new Celtic Hip Hop Rebel Music band from Oakland featuring my ex, John, on Scottish Irish style banjo. Killer. POETRY ON!

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Sunday, June 10, 2007

Okay, it's Official ...

I'm moving to Berkeley! Check Kate Evan's blog, where I'm the featured poet for the month, I discuss my two new poems and talk about place and doing. Link soon -- I've got to pack.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Okay, it's Official ... I'm Proud to Be ...

A preparer of tofu veggie enchiladas for Xicana poets
And gazer (gawker) at rare phenomena in the June sky
And crop circles in the UK:



my my

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Meme: 10 Favorite Quotes On Poetry

I'll tag myself on this meme that's been going around for a while. Now I'll tag you.


10 Favorite Poetry Quotes:

Poetry is the Soul inaugurating a form. ~ Gaston Bachelard

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. ~ Carl Sandburg

Poetry is only half language. ~ Stanley ("The Cucumber") Kunitz

If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

What is poetry which does not save/ Nations or people? ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ Plato (Ion)

A poem begins with a lump in the throat. ~ Robert Frost

Poetry, that being good at doing nothing. ~ Cesare Pavese

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~ John Keats

Love the words. ~ Dylan Thomas


Bonus quote:

You don't have to suffer to create art; you will suffer, period. ~ Rikki Lee Jones

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Five Haiku On "Cats"

I couldn't resist, I had to enter this Denver Post haiku contest for a $25 Amazon books certificate. This week's topic is "Cats":


CATS



Cats know things. Sleek sense,
Sinewy sentiments, sun.
Save one. Learn love. Shine.


~~~

RIP June 5, 1968


Sweet almonds on air
My poisoned cat swarming ants
Robert Kennedy


~~~

AUTO CAT


Little cat's feet, paws
Of fog over Pulgas lake
My cat lap purring


~~~

CAT MAN


Looking for a mate,
Wanting a one-cat woman.
Five cats too many!

~~~

HIGH DEFINITION


Stinky cat. Fatty
Food waist. Fluffy fumes in place.
All that purring! Love.


Lorna Dee Cervantes
6/6/07

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Saturday, June 02, 2007

DRIVE: The First Quartet - 2nd Place Int. Latino Book Awards!

Hey, I just found out that DRIVE: The First Quartet was awarded second place in the International Latino Books Awards for Best Book of Poetry in English. The wonderful fantastic Pat Mora won for her new book - which is all the way okay in my book. Go to La Bloga for the complete listings. Tres cool! Great company. My press, Wings Press also won 1st place in Spanish for poetry with Marjorie Agosin's book. AND, Olmos was even there (in video) to announce the awards in LA. Now, I'd take a kiss from him as my prize...

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2007/05/book-expo-america-and-latino-book.html

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Untitled (Pfeiffer Beach)

Untitled (Pfeiffer Beach)



Lavender clings to the cliff.
I left this long ago. Yellow
lupine slings her slipper, small moss
hands shiver in the stilled wind. Hello
past. Goodbye fading future into
now. The eternity of the sea waves
her saludos. Sometimes something slips
and the cracked pawl skips, the sawing
away at my face slows for an instant
and I see. Summer sludges up the hill
as the sun burns through until
frost. And here I am. Not hurrying.
Breathing in the medicine breath of eucalyptus
as the hillsides burst into the many erections
of horse chestnuts, their flagrant white
penises trumping the bees. We called them
Coyote Trees, Trickster bushes, always changing
shape. The shape-shifters along this path I'm on
beckon. The whole world beckons. And I'm traveling
on.




6/1/07

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