mercredi 27 juillet 2011

Richard's song


Why in the world
Why in the world 
your eyes
Why in the world
those eyes that cut like knives
and bring me back to another time

I slept with you long ago
in ancient dreams
You've appeared to me every night since
We waded through deep mire until
we discovered the jewel of our wills

Why in the world
that crossbow and arrow
Why in the world
can't you see with those eyes
Where is the sweet sleep I once knew
when I lay safe in your flower arms
my muscles tight with fatigue

Why did you leave me standing here
knee deep in dreams
with no hope of awakening

(1990)
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mardi 26 juillet 2011

legacy




secrets are not meant for keeping
children run wild at the lakeside
sunlight upon water
warms the frozen soul

i give you my eyes for seeing
i light a candle to your name
the sweet parade of daybreak
prompts a bird to sing

in excelsis deo adonai
three quarter moon
in a patch of blue sky
ascendre descendre disparaître

(1990)
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dimanche 24 juillet 2011

"All I've got to say is that they really don't care about us." ~MJ

word. (copied from my Facebook page)

Michael Jackson - They Don't Really Care About Us (Banned Prison Version HQ)
www.youtube.com
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jeudi 21 juillet 2011

What's all the fuss about mouse leukemia viruses... in layman terms


xmrv attached to a cell wall


Kent Heckenlively, writing for "The Age of Autism" website, does an excellent job of explaining Zhang, et al's new published paper, Frequent Detection of Infectious Xenotropic Leukemia Virus (XMLV) in Human Cultures Established from Mouse Xenografts. 

Here's just a little extract:


This (the authors' research) means that every surgical patient receiving any biological product which used mouse tissue in any way has a one in four chance of being exposed to an XMLV.  And that also means that any biological sample which is maintained in a facility containing xenograft cultures has a 17% chance of becoming infected.

On the question of vaccines, let's just say that only 10% of the nearly 40 vaccines children are expected to receive prior to the age of five contain mouse biological products.  This translates into roughly a 100% chance that our current generation of children will be exposed to an XMLV through a vaccination.

Are you scared yet?

It gets worse.


The world is in trouble. Read more at the Age of Autism website.

When Science Journals Are Scarier Than Science Fiction
by Kent Heckenlively, Esq.


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red drum


for Laura Ann Brooks

red drum
pom pom
red redder reddest
bloodshot red
through and through
like pomegranite juice
dripping from your
ripe red lips
red like passion fruit
and blood oranges
red with a 1000 warriors 
on horseback
entering the valley
speckled with houses
red red red red red red red
red like a fresh wound
trimmed with plastic wire
red like steak or carrion
red red like the pain that's
dancing on my head
red red red
red with grief and anger
carving myself to reveal
bone gristle
red as the tail of
the sparrowhawk in winter
gliding into the ribs
of a white rabbit
hawk eye red
red like urgence
red like corpuscles
red red red red drum
pom pom
my sacred heart
overflowing with
love and disgust
my sad long life
finished in red earth


Footnote:
This poem developed out of a writing exercise at the weekly Astoria Poetry Workshop with Laura Ann Brooks:  "I am a color." Red flashed immediately into my brain and took hold of me; the initial draft was done on autopilot, as most of them are for me. The exercises really help me break through to new ideas and metaphors. I am eternally grateful to Laura for every Wednesday night, especially now that I am well enough to leave the house once in a while: it's been a year since I last attended. And no matter how sick I am or how much pain I am in, I am able to lose mysef and forget about it somewhere in the first hour. xoxoxoxoxo 

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mardi 19 juillet 2011

illumination


Hope, G F Watts, 1888


just once i'd like to see 
the sun at 3 am 
break through my window
light up my sallow face
grace me with music
unlike the fickle moon
with its dysrhythmic phases
but a hot glaring sun
burning up the paper
under my aerial fingers

jasmine blooms through the night
i can still smell its perfume
flooding through the car window
as I drove from florida to california
i never made it: I was stranded
in the texas panhandle
shivering in a pup tent
and when i woke up in the middle
of that barren frozen universe
i turned around and headed home

memories may linger
but our best laid plans
turn to ashes on the earth
poets are made from this
deep dark tenebrous
anxious for illumination
whether in rhyme or reasoning
but it is the loss of hope
that heaviest of burdens
that oft unveils it to them

thrice have i seen the seine
wend through the city of paris
for three months i roamed
midnight alleys and quays
penning poems to goddesses
i spoke in a tongue that brought
vagabonds running
i was drunk with love
but what is sad to me today
is that i could not sustain it

The Funeral of Shelley, Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889
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Le Déserteur/ The Deserter (Boris Vian) w/ translation

for all resisters and for those to come in these senseless wars...


Boris Vian - Le Déserteur 

Monsieur le président
Mr. President
Je vous fais une lettre
I'm making you this letter
Que vous lirez peut-être
Perhaps you will read it
Si vous avez le temps
If you have the time
Je viens de recevoir
I have just received
Mes papiers militaires
My military papers
Pour partir à la guerre
To leave for war
Avant mercredi soir
Before Wednesday night

Monsieur le président
Mr. President
Je ne veux pas la faire
I don't want to do it
Je ne suis pas sur terre
I'm not on this earth
Pour tuer des pauvres gens.
To kill poor people
C'est pas pour vous fâcher
It's not to make you mad
Il faut que je vous dise
I just have to tell you
Ma décision est prise
My mind is made up
Je m'en vais déserter
I'm going to desert

Depuis que je suis né
Since I was born
J'ai vu mourir mon père
I've seen my father die
J'ai vu partir mes frères
I've seen my brothers leave
Et pleurer mes enfants
And my children cry
Ma mère a tant souffert
My mother suffered so much
Qu'elle est dedans sa tombe
That's she's in her grave
Et se moque des bombes
And is mocking the bombs
Et se moque des vers
And is mocking the worms  

Quand j'étais prisonnier
When I was a prisoner
On m'a volé ma femme
Someone stole my wife
On m'a volé mon âme
Someone stole my soul
Et tout mon cher passé
And all my cherished past
Demain de bon matin
Tomorrow early morning
Je fermerai ma porte
I will shut my door
Au nez des années mortes
In the face of those dead years
J'irai sur les chemins.
I will go upon the paths

Je mendierai ma vie
I will beg for my living
Sur les routes de France
On the roads of France
De Bretagne en Provence
From Brittany to Provence
Et je crierai aux gens:
And I will cry out to the people:
Refusez d'obéir
Refuse to obey
Refusez de la faire
Refuse to do it
N'allez pas à la guerre
Don't go to the war
Refusez de partir
Refuse to leave

S'il faut donner son sang
If someone has to give his blood
Allez donner le vôtre
Go on and give your own
Vous êtes bon apôtre
You are a good apostle
Monsieur le président
Mr. President
Si vous me poursuivez
If you pursue me
Prevenez vos gendarmes
Warn your policemen
Que je n'aurai pas d'armes
That I will not have arms
Et qu'ils pourront tirer
And they will have to shoot

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Double Negative




I've done my best to love you
for 50 odd years
Been there, done that
over and over 
with no hope but one: 
That you might become
a loving mother

But no matter what I do 
it's never enough
as you play your hand
staying one step ahead
of your game to get
what's coming to you

And what's come to you
riding on a bitter wave
is that you've driven me away
with your endless demands
and your pompous façade of
perpetual independence

They say madness is doing
the same thing over and over
and expecting a different
result: the truth is
I pity you but cannot take
any more of your abuse

Fifty odd years of it
and the last straw comes
on the back of one more
slap of your jealous anger
I cannot save you from yourself
From now on, mommy dearest
you'll have to do that alone

I'm not enough, never will be 
"Obviously my children don't care about me"
Tell what little world is left
that I'm a lousy daughter
I don't give a shit no more
And that, dear mother, is
a double negative

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dimanche 17 juillet 2011

matinale

 
la fleur de ton visage
quand tu descends le matin
de la chaleur de ta chambre
les joues encore rosés
où elles pressaient l'oreiller
les cheveux blonds et froissés
les yeux tendres et mouillés
je t'adore comme ça
mon amour, mon enfant
coquet et somnolent
comme le coquelicot

et les frissons que je ressens
hier aujourd'hui demain
me remplient de la joie
et rappellent la première fois
où tu entres et je vois
ta figure fort et adorable
et après plusieurs paroles
dans ta langue de l'ange
j'attends chaque entrée
ton visage à perpétuité
comme j'attends le soleil
après une saison de mousson





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samedi 16 juillet 2011

gingembre




ginger candy
melting incense and amber
the long slow burn perfuming
tongue, throat, esophagus
all the way to your tripes

chicken soup
with ginger slices and pepper
salty and hot
opens the sinuses
chases colds and influenza
natural antiseptic


cake with candied ginger
can make you speak in tongues
the mouth dancing ecstatic
whirling like dervishes
in love with the name of god

rice paper wrapped
crystalized ginger
first the thin covering dissolves
like a communion wafer in your mouth
then warm caramel sugar melts
like the chimes of a family clock

raw ginger sliced
crisp and wet
shredded with carrots

ginger flowers
ginger rodgers
ginger red hair
ginger and maryann
ginger snaps
gingerbread

unlimited inimitable ginger





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mercredi 13 juillet 2011

At the Station


653 moons have shone
through my windows
since the day I was born:
How many more will there be
before my soul takes flight
and touches its crusty surface?

I long for death the way
some people long for happiness,
yet I am not depressed:
I only seek the end of this body
that enthralls me in a dying shell
and forges its bogus signature.

What shall be revealed
is the greatest secret,
and I taste it every time
the moon rises over the trees
and whispers sweet nothings
in my inner ear.

Have no fear, sister soul,
of that spinning top
moving o'er the mountains:
It is only Liberation Train
coming to pick you up
at Blessèd Station.


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samedi 9 juillet 2011

bastille day


roses by august renoir

don't you love it
when a new birdsong appears
in the neighborhood
or when the crows act
all high and mighty
once the osprey have left
taking back their territory

don't you feel then
that you could brave anything
life might throw at you

i'm going out into that
blazing sun of noontide
joining with a throng
who love a francophonic world

if i can't walk
there will be a wheelchair
and if i can't talk
there will be music and food

there truly is nothing to fear
because i am not this body
i cannot be subjugated
by pain and loss
only made sun hot
melting away the locks
that kept me hidden
desperate and miserable
year after lonely year

i'm through with
malady and despair
or perhaps they are though
with me for a season
and when i say "through"
i mean only "liberated"
and when i say "liberated"
i mean "attempting it"

because the sun is shining
and my birthplace is joy
i am nothing without
the minute to minute revolutions
breaking out in the streets
of my consciousness

rebellion and surrender
go hand in hand
like a birdsong
never before heard
or the crazy love dance
of sparrows on thin branches

life is a drive to create
and it never stops maddening us
until we participate

until we dive 
head long into the ecstatic
break a leg in the grand theater
and don't hold anything back

i dove into malady and despair
and i don't regret it
you cannot regret that
which brings into consciousness
the reasons you were born
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vendredi 8 juillet 2011

Day of the Osprey




i spent most of yesterday morning on a new bird project that fell into my lap when i opened the side door and spotted a multitude of "eagles" in the sky--or were they hawks?--landing in the old growth trees where the eagle family had been and now is gone. there were so many of them.

i rushed outside with my camera, trying desperately to capture these fast birds gliding on the cold gray air of a very overcast day; there seemed to be so many--maybe 15, 20? it was hard to tell because they kept coming from the east toward the trees, overshooting them and then circling back. i noticed that some were landing deeper in the forest, in trees that i cannot see from my porch; we are sunken down from the road and just two blocks from the great columbia river.

i actually was confused because i thought that these birds looked a lot like seagulls, with heads bent forward and a curved shaped to their wing, but they were the wrong color. also, their wingspan looked like that of a hawk at times, with that full-wide talon spread: it was especially huge when it was gliding high. but when descending, the wings would arch back like a swallow.

they were crying as they flew and after they landed in the trees. i'd heard that call before. it was a squeeky song, somewhat melodious, a sharp, throaty, whistling kind of sound
 
i did what i always do in such instances: i hit the web full tilt! and there they were, my osprey, exactly as i saw them flying, exactly as i heard them crying. i'll post my pictures and video... most are at a distance, but one flew right over my porch and i nailed it with my camera from underneath... big up for osprey day!

you can hear the cry in an mp3 HERE: http://www.allaboutbirds.o​ rg/guide/Osprey/id
















 



akampher shot this in 2007 in clatskanie, oregon, around 20 miles upriver from us on the columbia! kismet!
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