by
All day the sky lurks darkly:
low, grey, thick with rain.
Across the back garden,
a mourning dove’s arc
becomes itself wholly
in a violent flutter
of feathers and leaves
as it finally drops
deep within the oak’s
dark twisted branches.
I have so many tasks
which take little time;
yet, I do not move.
I’m already here.
(July 18, 2025)
I want to believe
magic exists,
that somewhere
the clicks and clacks
of reason drift
free of determined
divination to finally
fall away like leaves.
I want to believe
some small gods
dance in scattered copse
and sing such songs
that might save us
from our future fall.
(July 9, 2025)
by
This is the second, maybe third, time I have read this book. It is that good. Oscar Wilde wrote that a book that isn’t worth reading twice is not worth reading once. The Truth about stories is worth reading once, maybe even three times. “The truth about stories is that is all that we are.” King repeats throughout the book as he tells stories within stories, mixing personal narrative with native “myth” and historical facts to illustrate, expand and deepen each section/chapter of his book. His themes are identity, how we become who we think we are, how we can change who we think we are; How others come to define us through the stories they tell about ourselves and themselves; and that we can change our world by changing the stories we tell each other. King is an indigenous Canadian. He focuses early on in the book about how one is an Indian, and how a large part of that definition is provided by the non-indigenous, from how one is supposed to dress to be seen as authentic, to convoluted arcane laws developed by the government in their attempts to control and eventually eliminate the Indian. He has a wonderful light touch in his writing style that makes an otherwise grim tale less horrific without sounding paternalistic. King begins each chapter with the story of the world carried on the back of a turtle, which is carried on another turtle ad infinitum. I assume to point out that there is never a sole basis for the story we live within. He ends each chapter in a similar way connecting the end to one of the stories from that chapter. Here is one of them: “Take it. It’s yours. Do with it what you will. Tell it to your children. Turn it into a play. Forget it. But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now.”
by
“We must ask grace from ourselves.
Our memories.
Let them
release us from the past.”
—Diane Wakoski
I call them forth
to excuse the present:
the responsibility lies
somewhere else,
in someone else
no longer me.
I don’t want to be
that, so I change,
take a step to the side,
and feel them slip past,
like ghosts, or smoke,
unmolested by time.
Then finally, so much,
which does not matter,
falls away quietly
like a cicada’s
dry carapace
at summer’s end.
(July 4, 2025)
by
I read Diane Wakoski’s Virtuoso Literature for Two and Four Hands over the last few days for the first time. I have had several of her books for several decades now, mostly unread. I would find volumes of hers at used book stores, pull them off the shelf, read a few of the poems, and think: I should read more of her. But then not read them once I had them home. I saw her read at the old Undergraduate Library at UT my senior year there back in the early 80’s. I don’t remember much about the night except she said something mildly disparaging about Gary Sanders earring. No big deal, but it is all I took away from the night. Oddly illustrating the importance of what one says out loud. Anyway, back to the response: She is very chatty, which fits her association with the Beats. Most of the themes are about family, identity, growing to be like your parents (mother in her case), missed opportunities, or rather regret for lost opportunity. She is highly accessible, which is not a bad thing, for the accessibility leads to a deeper text. For the most part I enjoyed reading the book, although she does tend to be a tad overly self-deprecating, which I find annoying as it occurs so often as to feel like false modesty.
by
Nothing is complicated.
Everything is simple,
if not simplistic.
Caught in worry, we
trouble our troubles
which are nothing really.
I read a poem today
on the internet: the poet,
obviously under the influence
of Bukowski, judges the bartender
for her intertwined tattoos
and for her storied fucking.
He ignores that what we write
often says more of the writer
than the subject of the poem.
We are the pen and the paper.
While in the slow dusk of life,
we see only with myopic eyes.
I’ve winnowed enough truth
from any number of lies to know
there is little difference, and
I’m not sure I trust anyone
anymore, especially myself
when it finally comes to that.
(June 30, 2025)
I should go pick up some milk,
but I don’t want to go outside.
I feel like I should feel guilty;
and, I do, but don’t know why.
I write sentences starting with there.
There has to be a better way to begin.
The chihuahua sleeps on my lap.
There’s the excuse I need not to move.
Memory raises dead regrets and trauma
until these mundane tasks of my day
can no longer breathe with ease,
and any agency strangles itself
in the detritus left in the tidal sand
of past indecision and hesitation.
(June 25, 2025)
by
I finished reading (again) I, Claudius by Robert Graves this morning. It is the RFB book for July. I first read it when I was in high school, forty years ago. I loved it then, and loved it again this time. It is a historical novel, set in Imperial Rome, told from the point of view of Claudius, who is seen as a harmless buffoon by his murderous relatives. Because of their opinion of him, he manages to survive all of the palace intrigues, and by the end of the novel, becomes emperor of Rome. (This is not really a spoiler if you have any knowledge of Roman history). The book ends with Claudius being declared emperor. In the sequel Claudius the God, his stint as ruler of Rome is told. I don’t have any plans on reading it again, but who knows. I remember it being as fun as I, Claudius. I, Claudius is funny, and historically accurate, as far as I know. The colder than ice ambitions of the characters as they maneuver for power is stunningly familiar to the current political situation here in the US. (sadly).
“We had a hedge back home in the suburbs
Over which I never could see:
—The Clash
Sporting my “Howl” facsimile t-shirt
after working out at the gym, I stop
by the local grocery store for a few things.
David Bowie plays on the store’s music track,
followed by the Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket.”
How ironic and fun! as I move down the aisle.
I quickly grab the gluten-free bread we like,
a pre-prepared sushi meal for lunch,
and a bag of ice since our fridge crapped out.
Down the road ICE maintains a detention center.
While on the other side of the world, jets bomb
Palestinians in Gaza, and the people in Tehran.
(June 18, 2025)
another poet sincerely warns us
that in such dark times as these
what with war starvation and hate
we must use our small voices
no matter how simple and off key
as instruments of dire witness
to resist death’s ubiquitous agents
for to do less would be complicit
yet surely we have surrendered
if peace beauty and love
are no longer words in our mouths
we have lost what we espouse
when their language becomes ours
our time is not indifferent to love
(June 12, 2025)
by
Against an indifferent blue,
the clouds are brighter,
a harder white,
than even a few years back.
The air’s seared earlier
in the mornings now;
one can taste it, raw,
at the back of the throat.
Before midnight,
sunset brings small relief;
and even then, morning’s
heat breaks early.
Lizards, not here before,
skitter across the rocks.
(June 6, 2025)
by
The conversation continues along
the old tracks of cliche. Clack-clack he says.
Clack-clack, she responds. And so goes the night,
Another milk run no one remembers.
I worry about what I should forget,
and forget what I should worry about.
In a forest of clear trails and side tracks,
one word completes the regrets of the whole.
It’s easy to get caught in an eddy,
to circle slowly back to past mistakes,
to unravel a gesture’s soft nuance,
to mean more than anyone could entail.
What could he have said? What could she have said?
The words are spoken. The cast’s determined.
(May 31, 2025)
subtext 