Conversation With The Soul

Conversation With The Soul

The soul said, "Give me something to look at."
So I gave her a farm. She said,
"It's too large." So I gave her a field.
The two of us sat down.

Sometimes I would fall in love with a lake
Or a pine cone. But I liked her
Most. She knew it.
"Keep writing," she said.

So I did. Each time the snow fell,
We would be married again.
The holy dead sat down by our bad.
This went on for years.

"This field is getting too small," she said.
"Don't you know anyone else
To fall in love with?"
What would you have said to Her?

-Robert Bly, Morning Poems

Two Sisters

Pomegranate and corn,
Colorful kernels, juicy flesh.
Skin husk peeled in layers
Or thick round red elephant skin torn open.
Complicated insides, hairy belly button
Or oblong, green, layered wrapper with silk tassel.
Both born to be eaten!

I Work Standing

I work standing because my body is my antenna and I need to feel my feet flat on the floor. My buttocks, spine, and ribcage hold me upright while I think. Words flow through my soles, toes, ankles, shins, kneecaps, thighs, and rise through my groin, pelvis, abdomen, spine, lungs, and fly out the top of my head.

Orange

I dreamt I was at a Tibetan summer camp
I was looking around,
Hoping to see the color orange.
I saw white soup bowls, black clothing.
There was no orange at all.
Everything was black and white.

Sharon Olds

The Daughter Goes to Camp

In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept
creeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
hitting me in hot flashes like some
change of life, some boiling wave
rising in me toward your body, toward
where it should have been on the seat, your
brow curved like a cereal bowl, your
eyes dark with massed crystals like the
magnified scales of a butterfly's wing, the
delicate feelers of your limp hair,
floods of blood rising in my face as I
tried to reassemble the hot
gritty molecules in the car, to
make you appear like a holograph
on the back seat, pull you out of nothing
as I once did—but you were really gone,
the cab glossy as a slit caul out of
which you had slipped, the air glittering
electric with escape as it does in the room at a birth.

-Sharon Olds

Bathing in Your Brother’s Bathwater

Bathing in Your Brother’s Bathwater

Bathing, Miss De Angelo informed us in health class,
is very important, especially once you become a teenager.
In fact I can smell many of you this very day,
so I advise every one of you girls
to go home and take a good long bath tonight.
I know some of your folks like to skimp on water,
but consider it homework.
Say Miss De Angelo assigned it to you.
But Girls, let me warn you.
Never take a bath in the same water as your teenage brother.
Why?
Just picture this:
all those tiny bubbles settling on your legs
when you sit in a nice tub of water.
If you could count every itty bitty bubble,
that would be only a fraction of how many sperm
stream from a single man.
Even if he doesn’t touch himself,
the water does.
And it only takes one.
One fast moving whip-tailed sperm.
And you know how easy it is to catch a cold,
how quickly that little virus races clear through you.
And once that happens,
no one will believe you’re any Virgin Mary,
no matter what you say.

-Nin Andrews

Nin Andrews

Being A Writer In Your Later Years

My father was a talented pianist. But as he aged, he lost his ability to play. Or so he said. His friends didn't believe him, and sometimes at parties they would ask him to perform. I remember the late time he obliged. I was in grade school, and on this particular night, he played one piece after another with such zeal. I liked to watch his hands race over the keys, so I went to stand by his side. It was then that I noticed a sprinkling of blood on the keys. A small sprinkling, to be sure. But I announced it to the room. My father stopped suddenly, wiped the keys with his handkerchief, and sat down.

He was on several kinds of medicine then. I don't know which or what diagnosis he had a that time, but I do know he always said his skin was thin. And he would often mix his meds and take more than was recommended.

After he sat down, the room felt so quiet. A bleak mood hung over the room. That was when Eleanor Ross Taylor, a poet and friend of my parents, turned and said to me in her quiet voice: being a writer is one of the kindest arts. You can do it well even as you age. In fact it can become your friend in your later years.

I've always taken comfort in her words.

-Nin Andrews

Mario's Magic

We are having a beautiful storm, snow falling rapidly wrapping every branch. Last night Mario fixed our oven which had suddenly stopped working Sunday night when I was about to bake a cornbread. I had been worried; what if we can't fix it? Mario showed up at 4 PM as promised. He took a look. Then he asked me for a short stool. Then he asked for a towel to protect the top. He spread the towel out over the top of the stool. I said are you going to perform a magic trick? Do you need a black hat and a rabbit? He laughed. Then he pulled our vintage 1960's Thermador in-the-wall oven out of the birch cupboard. It looked like major surgery to me, but he was not worried in the least. Lily-dog refused to move from the spot on the turquoise linoleum at Mario's feet. She is in love with Mario, as we all are. Mario found the dead wire in the cupboard behind the oven. He replaced it in a few minutes. I am celebrating by baking through this morning's storm.

Poet Nin Andrews

I am always unhappy if I'm not writing. And when I am writing, I am not finished yet, and so I am wanting to write more and finish. But I never ever want to be finished because then I am not writing.
-Nin Andrews

Adrian Mitchell

I find it hard to talk about the things I care about most, even to my family and friends, and poetry is my way of telling them what I feel. I try to approach an audience as if it's made up of friends, or people who would be my friends if we knew each other. 'No communication is possible except between equals' as Illuminatus! teaches us. I write my poems for love - love of language, love of my family, friends and animals, love of the planet, love of life, and I'd be a damned fool if I didn't.

-Adrian Mitchell, Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits

Swamp Man

Twice I've seen him walking around town. Once in the Park Square parking lot walking into Job lot, and again on Cass Ave walking into CVS. He has long dreadlocks, down to his knees. He stares like he's plugged into dictation from Neptune. He walks like Frankenstein's brother, a remote control robot, lifting his knees very high with each slow step. He wears no shirt with his overalls, even in winter! His tan skin isn't even chilled. He actually drives a car! My husband assures me he isn't reading this on his laptop back in the swamp.

Kenneth Rexroth

In that hour I have seen
The long white gleaming throats of mountains
With faces lifted
To the moon.

-Kenneth Rexroth, A Lantern and Shadow

Albert Camus

We have preferred the power that apes greatness- Alexander first of all, and then the Roman conquerers, whom our school history books, in an incomparable vulgarity of soul, teach us to admire. We have conquered in our turn... our reason has swept everything away. Alone at last, we build our empire upon a desert. How then could we conceive that higher balance in which nature balanced history, beauty, and goodness, and which brought the music of numbers even into the tragedy of blood? We turn our back on nature, we are ashamed of beauty. Our miserable tragedies have the smell of an office, and their blood is the color of dirty ink.

-Albert Camus

Winter Soup

Last night at supper I was too lazy to leave the house and shop for groceries. I found a quart of pork stock that we made in August in the freezer. I put the stock in my largest pot with a quart of water, a big bag of frozen corn, four carrots and four stalks of celery and one large onion all chopped, a pound of rinsed lentils, and a dollop of olive oil. I brought it up to boil, then let it simmer. In another big pot I boiled nine potatoes. After the potatoes were done I fished them out and kept the water they boiled in.

The vegetable lentil soup got thick as it simmered. I thinned it with the potato stock, added some more olive oil, along with salt and red pepper flakes. It was out of this world. We ate it with my latest molasses raisin sourdough bread, slices of cornbread, and the naked potatoes. I looked out the window and saw an inch of snow was already accumulating on the ground. The wind was blowing hard and the wet snow clung to all of the branches, outlining them like shadows in reverse. A beautiful sight on a wintery soup night.

Cowgirls

Today I drove to Wright's Dairy for fresh milk and eggs and visited the cows in the barn. I saw a big momma cow with four black polka dots the size of dimes on her pale pink nose. The tag on her ear said Apple. I would have named her Polka-Dotty, or Dot!

I saw my favorite cow named Blue with her black eyeliner and her white fur with the black flecks that make her look blue. She was in the maternity barn, she's expecting! Mr. Wright said I could have a baby calf, but I live in the city.

The bare trees looked like glass, blown with snow, shimmering with ice in the sun. I felt like a cowgirl stomping around on the muddy smelly farm in my boots, loving it. The fields were white with snow and the tires holding the tarp down on the manure pile were all white, like a hill of sugared donuts.

Snapshots

I have never seen a bad photo of President Obama. How does he look so good from every angle? I'm serious. I hate the way I come out in photos. I usually cry over it too. Bill says, "It's because your face is always moving!" Since he told me this I have calmed down and now I come out better in photos. My family always took an annual formal family portrait as a Christmas card, and it's funny how as a kid I was always doing something weird with my hands.

Meredith Monk

. . . After a while, okay, you've worked twenty years or twenty-five years. Okay, so you've got this many grants, you've got this long resume, you have these people that hate you, you have these people that love you, you've done this piece, that piece, this piece, that piece . . . and then you go to your grave. And what do you think you have - a piece of paper that tells you all the pieces you've done? So what? The only reason for doing it is that you might have the joy of discovery on a day-to-day level. The only reason for doing it is really that you love doing it . . . What it gets down to is: how do you want to spend your time on Earth?

-Meredith Monk


I always think of the way that I work as similar to making a soup. You have vegetables and then you put them in the water and then the vegetables stay vegetables for a while. You just allow them to be separate — the carrots are carrots, the peas are peas and everything is just simmering. You're working very slowly, and little by little the vegetables start boiling down, and then little by little the soup becomes absolutely essentialized. That’s what I really think the process is about. And that takes some time and patience.

I think I still have some confusion about the critical mind. But it seems that there’s a difference between the critical mind, which is a kind of judgment, and has a harshness built in, cutting off impulses before they can develop, and discriminating intelligence, which can differentiate between what is authentic or genuine and what is contrived or forced. That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.

-Meredith Monk

December 4th

It's a summery 55 sunny degrees today. Which is a delight for us but I'm afraid it's not good for the polar bears and melting ice-caps. Lily and I walked to the library, and I got three gigantic books of poetry, two by Kenneth Rexroth and a book of prose poems, while Lily patiently waited for me. Then I walked to the shoemaker and brought him my other pair of worn out clogs, the ones with the gaping holes soles. He said he could fix them!

When I arrived at the park there was nobody but Lily and me, and we played fetch with the muddy-pink ball. I worked on her sit-stay-fetch skills, giving her little triangles of cat food from an old pocket-sized tea tin. On the way home I looked for the jumping fish, but the sun was not on the water, so the fish was not jumping. I did see a bright sun dog in the sky when I was nearly home, in view from East School Street. It was amazing!

My pal Rachel stopped by to pick up Daniel Ladinsky's book of Hafiz poems and have a cup of coffee. I was so thrilled she was coming that I vacuumed the whole house even under the bed! I opened all the windows to bring in fresh air. Perhaps this bout of spring weather has brought on spring allergies and spring cleaning. I washed Lily in the backyard, rinsing her with the green rubber hose. She was very tolerant. She even let me trim her dew claws which seem to grow very fast.

I made a big yellow cornbread for supper which we ate with the last of the turkey soup. I slow-roasted two trays of almonds. And I shipped a painting to its new owner. A good day indeed.

Mary Karr

That summer I fell into reading as into a deep well where no voice could reach me. There was a poem about a goat-footed balloon man I recited everyday like a spell, and another about somebody stealing somebody else's plums and saying he was sorry but not really meaning it. I read the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs and fancied myself running away to Africa to find just such an ape man to swing me from vine to vine.

-Mary Karr,Cherry

December 3rd

Yesterday it was rainy and it cleared up this morning. Then the sun came out and it was 65 degrees!! It's hard to imagine that it's December, people were buying Christmas trees last week! It reminded me of winter days when I lived in North Carolina. This afternoon I walked to drop off my clogs at the shoe repair man. The heels had worn off and the metal was showing through. I brought Lily into his shop. He loved her!

His shop had moved to a teal-trimmed Elm Street storefront halfway to Cass Park, so I continued walking to the park's fenced-in baseball field. A woman showed up with a huge, muscular, tan male bulldog the size of Lily. Lily established territory and then they ran in big circles having a blast exhausting each other! A young girl and her mom showed up with a little Boston Terrier who was running all around. The girl was throwing a pink tennis ball but the dog was happily distracted by all of the dogs and so he ignored it. Then Lily drank from a mud puddle, and then the male bulldog lay down in the mud puddle, flirting. When he got up he looked like he was wearing waders made of mud! Sexy to me, I thought. The girl with the pink ball wanted to play in the mud puddle too. She jumped in and stamped her feet splattering mud on her bare legs and summery dress. A tall lady arrived with a sweet white dog with spotted ears and tightly curled tail. She told me of her adoption of her dog. She said that it had been abused and kept in a cage for four years. The dog is new to playing, she said, and one woman chimed in, She's doing great! There arrived a brindle puppy bulldog, he looked like a tiger! His owner was a young delicate woman with dark hair and skin white as milk. She received a phone call while we stood around admiring our dogs and then hurriedly had to leave, telling her friend it was an emergency and that her father would come get her dog. The dogs and people all were getting along enjoying the unusually warm weather. I had a knapsack full of plastic poop bags I shared with people. The tall woman filled her dog's water bowl. All the dogs lined up to have a drink, then she gave all of the dogs treats. I called her the dog treat fairy! For a brief moment we were a little community. Then we slowly broke apart, hoping to meet again. People got into their cars with their dogs and drove away. I picked up the abandoned pink tennis ball which was no longer pink.

As I left the park, I looked back and noticed the sun reflecting on the rippling pond. I saw motion in the water. I stopped. I saw it again, I stopped and stared. I saw it a third time, it was a huge fish jumping ten inches into the air into the sunshine! It looked just like a miniature dolphin leaping for joy! I watched amazed, hoping it would happen again, hoping to share the experience with someone walking by. I saw three teenage boys coming down the sidewalk. Have you seen the jumping fish before? They laughed at me saying I was making it up. I was beginning to wonder if I had. Maybe it was a sight meant just for me.

Dawn

Some love to watch the sea bushes appearing at dawn,
To see night fall from the goose wings, and to hear
The conversations the night sea has with the dawn.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
Now you know why I spent my twenties crying.
Cries are required from those who wake disturbed at dawn.

Adam was called in to name the Red-Winged
Blackbirds, the Diamond Rattlers, and the Ring-Tailed Raccoons washing God in the streams at dawn.

Centuries later, the Mesopotamian gods,
All curls and ears, showed up; behind them the Generals
With their blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.

Those grasshopper-eating hermits were so good
To stay all day in the cave; but it is also sweet
To see the fenceposts gradually appear at dawn.

People in love with the setting stars are right
To adore the baby who smells of the stable, but we know
That even the setting stars will disappear at dawn.

-Robert Bly

Listening

The goose cries, and there is no way to save her.
So many cheeps come from the nest by the river.
If God doesn't listen, why are we listening?
Very deep water covers most of the globe.
Whenever I see it, I think of St. John.
There is no remedy for deep water but listening.
The King and Queen already know about love;
—They search for each other through the whole deck.
While we play our hands, they are listening.
The day we die, we'll each be like the fish
Abruptly jerked out of the water.
For him, it is the end of all listening.
Like thousands of others, I'm eating beet soup
In some Russian inn. People write letters
To me from Heaven, but I'm not listening.
The hermit said: "Because the world is mad,
The only way through the world is to learn
The arts and double the madness. Are you listening?

-Robert Bly
from The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

Mailing a Poem

I love that a poem can be slipped into an envelope and stamped and mailed for pennies, delivered through a slot in the front door, landing on the wooden floor. The dog barks at it, the black cat looks up from her red cushion in the window sun patch. My friend comes home and finds a letter, and reads a poem that is equal to a hug and a kiss.

Call and Answer

Call and Answer

Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we’ve listened to the great criers—Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now
We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

-Robert Bly

Jane Hirshfield

Optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

-Jane Hirshfield

Mirabai

The Coffer with the Poisionous Snake

Rana sent a gold coffer of complicated ivory;
But inside a black and green asp was waiting,
"It is a necklace that belonged to a great Queen"
I put it around my neck; it fit well.
It became a string of lovely pearls, each with a moon
inside.
My room then was full of moonlight, as if the full
moon
Had found its way in through the open window.

-Mirabai, from Mirabai, Ecstatic Poems, translated by Robert Bly and Jane Hirshfield

Sweet Dreams

I was having a fabulous dream. I was hosting a two-night Brave Combo dance party at an inn somewhere and everyone I knew was there. My friend Karen from high school was there too. I was remarking to my friend about having just seen my first cobalt blue Scottish Terrier. The dog looked like a toaster! I said, remembering the year all kitchen appliances were cobalt blue, and fire engine red.

I woke up in the early morning dark. The moon was full and sitting right over the backyard. Yesterday Lily and I had had two three-mile walks and a run in the fenced-in baseball field. A perfect day is prelude for a perfect dream.

Elephant Eternity

Elephant Eternity

Elephants walking under juicy-leaf trees
Walking with their children under juicy-leaf trees
Elephants elephants walking like time

Elephants bathing in the foam-floody river
Fountaining their children in the mothery river
Elephants elephants bathing like happiness

Strong and gentle elephants
Standing on the earth
Strong and gentle elephants
Like peace

Time is walking under elephant trees
Happiness is bathing in the elephant river
Strong gentle peace is shining
All over the elephant earth

-Adrian Mitchell

Adrian Mitchell

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

-Adrian Mitchell

Human Beings

HUMAN BEINGS

Look at your hands
your beautiful useful hands
you’re not an ape
you’re not a parrot
you’re not a slow loris
or a smart missile
you’re human
not british
not american
not israeli
not palestinian
you’re human
not catholic
not protestant
not muslim
not hindu
you’re human
we all start human
we end up human
human first
human last
we’re human
or we’re nothing
nothing but bombs
and poison gas
nothing but guns
and torturers
nothing but slaves
of Greed and War
if we’re not human
look at your body
with its amazing systems
of nerve-wires and blood canals
think about your mind
which can think about itself
and the whole universe
look at your face
which can freeze into horror
or melt into love
look at all that life
all that beauty
you’re human
they are human
we are human
let’s try to be human
dance!

-Adrian Mitchell

Mother Of Bread

Mother Of Bread

When I mix up dough I become the mother
of fermented yeast and fresh wheat
rising in my kitchen overnight.

I bring forth loaves from my hands,
breasts and loins.

The next day loaves bake on hot stone
the aroma fills the house.
I am the midwife bringing forth the golden babies
tapping the bottom of each
listening for the hollow sound of being done.

I arrive at a dinner party with my newborn
still warm, wrapped in a blanket.
The hostess becomes shaken, frightened of her own infertility.
She snatches the bread from my arms
and burns my child in the oven.

She produces a pale impostor
made by robots on some distant planet,
something her children will prefer, she assures me.

But her children delight in the slicing and eating of a warm
homemade loaf smeared with fresh butter.
Even a naked slice is good.
There has never been a child who didn't love my bread.

-Emily Lisker 12/2/09

Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry


What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

-Wendell Berry


A Warning To My Readers

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

-Wendell Berry

Rexroth

The conscience of mankind went to school to learn methods of compromising itself.

- Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Patchen

When We Were Here Together

When we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one another.

A bit of grass held between the teeth for a moment, bright hair on the wind. What we were we did not know, nor even the grass or the flame of hair turning to ash on the wind.

But they lied about that. From the beginning they lied. To the child, telling him that there was somewhere anger against him, and a hatred against him, and the only reason for his being in the world. But never did they tell him that the only evil and danger was in themselves; that they alone were the prisoners and the betrayers; that they–they alone–were responsible for what was being done in the world.

And they told the child to starve and to kill the child that was within him; for only by doing this could he become a useful and adjusted member of the community which they had prepared for him. And this time, alas, they did not lie.

And with the death of the child was born a thing that had neither the character of a man nor the character of a child, but was a horrible and monstrous parody of the two; and it is in this world now that the flesh of man’s spirit lies twisted and despoiled under the indifferent stars.

When we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one another. O green the bit of warm grass between our teeth–O beautiful the hair of our mortal goddess on the indifferent wind.

-Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Rexroth

At Least That Abandon

As I watch at the long window
Crowds of travelers hurry
Behind me, rainy darkness
Blows before me, and the great plane
Circles, taxis to the runway,
Waits, and then roars off into
The thick night. I follow it
As it rises through the clouds
And levels off under the stars.
Stars, darkness, a row of lights,
Moaning engines, thrumming wings,
A silver plane over a sea
Of starlit clouds and rain bound
Sea. What I am following
Is a rosy, glowing coal
Shaped like the body of a
Woman - rushing southward a
Meteor afire with the
Same fire that burns me unseen
Here on the whirling earth amongst
Bright, busy, incurious
Faces of hundreds of people
Who pass me, unaware of
The blazing astrophysics
Of the end of a weekend.

-Kenneth Rexroth

Naming

I have always loved naming things and I'm fascinated by the meaning and impact our names can have on us. Look what I found today when I Googled the genie box!

from Wikipedia
In Judaism, someone's name is considered intimately connected with his fate, and adding a name (e.g. on the sickbed) may avert a particular danger. Among Ashkenazi Jews it is also considered bad luck to take the name of a living ancestor, as the Angel of Death may mistake the younger person for his namesake (although there is no such custom among Sephardi Jews). Jews may also have a Jewish name for intra-communitary use and use a different name when engaging with the Gentile world. Chinese children are called insulting names to make them appear worthless to evil spirits. They receive a definitive name as they grow up.[citation needed] Chinese and Japanese emperors receive posthumous names. In some Polynesian cultures, the name of a deceased chief becomes taboo. If he is named after a common object or concept, a different word has to be used for it.

Rumi poems translated by Coleman Barks

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.

-Rumi
Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks



When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you're not here, I can't get to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

-Rumi
Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks


A Smile and A Gentleness

There is a smile and a gentleness inside.
When I learned the name

and address of that, I went to where
you sell perfume. I begged you not

to trouble me so with longing. Come
out and play! Flirt more naturally.

Teach me how to kiss. On the ground
a spread blanket, flame that's caught

and burning well, cumin seeds browning,
I am inside all of this with my soul.

-Rumi
Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks


Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

-Rumi
Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

Busted

BUSTED
from Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison (album)

My bills are all due and the babies need shoes,
But I'm Busted
Cotton's gone down to a quarter a pound
And I'm Busted

I got a cow that's gone dry
And a hen that won't lay
A big stack of bills
Getting bigger each day
The county's gonna haul my belongings away,
But I'm Busted

So I called on my brother to ask for a loan
'Cause I was Busted
I hate to beg like a dog for a bone,
But I'm Busted

My brother said, "there's not a thing I can do,
My wife and my kids
Are all down with the flu
And I was just thinkin' about callin' on you,
'Cause I'm Busted."

Lord, I ain't no thief, but a man can go wrong,
When he's Busted
The food that we canned last summer is gone,
But I'm Busted

Now the fields are all bare
And the cotton won't grow
Me and my family's gotta pack up and go
But I'll make a living, just where, I don't know
'Cause I'm Busted

Sandwich Dreams

I woke with the song BUSTED in my head! Our ensemble band performed it last winter in our Johnny Cash Carter Family Show. This morning I woke from a dream that I was making a spaghetti sandwich and then I got this image of a person eating his own toes between two slices of bread, while still attached to his body!

Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks describes his real training as a poet:

You get trained by other people whose writing you love.

John Steinbeck

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
-John Steinbeck

Moosenose

Yesterday morning I took a walk to Cass Park and Lily ran like lightning in big graceful circles. She doesn't need to chase a stick or a ball to enjoy running. She just loves to run circles in the field. As I was leaving it started to rain hard and my maroon cotton coat got dotted, and then soaked with rain. I was warm wearing my rain boots and layers of shirts and fleece pullover under my coat. By the time we got home I didn't want to stop walking so we continued on to Precious Blood Cemetery and Harris Reservoir. I liked the quiet feeling walking through the neighborhoods.

Too bad I'm not a novelist, the cemetery is filled with great names for characters. One of my favorite names is Silas D Bunker. Every time I go by his stone I get a vivid picture of him wearing overalls. Speaking of character names, my wet, smelly dog made me think of the name Dinky Staug. This morning I dreamt of a chocolate Labrador that looked like Bullwinkle the cartoon moose but with a black circle for a nose. In the dream I told the owners they should call their dog Moosenose.

Drop The Knife

Once a young woman asked Hafiz, "What is the sign of someone knowing God?" Hafiz remained silent for a few moments and looked deep into the young person's eyes, then said, "Dear, they have dropped the knife. They have dropped the cruel knife most so often use upon their tender self and others."


“Drop the knife. Those are profound words to me, for they encapsulate and distill the essence and goal of spiritual aspirants, and anyone who has entered a recovery program. Surely every human wants to avoid suffering, though self caused afflictions are complex. Most everyone is a kid in God's chocolate factory (this earth) with a belly and soul ache and gas. There is a poem in "The Gift" where Hafiz says "I have found the power to say no to any actions that might harm myself or another." Think about that a moment. My take is that one's experience of God - one's joy, one's creative potential - is in direct proportion to the ability to no longer harm oneself and others physically, mentally, emotionally spiritually."

-Daniel Ladinsky, The Subject Tonight is Love

Nin Andrews

ADOLESCENCE
The winter her body no longer fit, walking felt like swimming in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Everything stuck to her skin: gum wrappers, Band-Aids, leaves. How she envied the other girls, especially the kind who turned into birds. They were the ones boys hand-tamed, training them to eat crumbs from their palms or sing on cue. What she would have done for a red crest and a sharp beak, for a little square of blue sky to enter her like wings. But it was her role to sink so the others could rise, hers to sleep so the others could dance. If only her legs weren't too sodden to lift, if only her buttons were unfastened by the water she kept swimming through, and she could extract from the shadow of her breasts a soul as soft as a silk brassiere, beautiful and useless, like a castle at the bottom of the sea.

-Nin Andrews

Mashed Potatoes

Last night I took a walk with Lily to Precious Blood Cemetery just as the sun was setting and then I kept going toward the reservoir. It got dark but I didn't mind. I was starting to warm up and I was on familiar streets. I stepped from one circle of light into the next. There were very few cars out. It was comforting being able to glimpse into peoples' lives. Their homes were like doll houses in the dark. I spotted a lamp in one house, pictures over the mantle, bookcases, a fridge covered in magnets, a chair with a coat on it. Another house was completely gutted and being worked on. As I walked by it, a woman on the porch said "mashed potatoes." She was talking loudly into her cell phone. I figured it was what she was bringing to Thanksgiving. As I turned the corner I heard her say, "We're at my brother's house, the one he bought. We're here helping him fix it up." On our way home Lily and I said hi to all the lonely dogs that were outside in their yards.

Alice Hoffman

Perhaps what people said was true, that any man who lived long enough would eventually realize that the way in which he was cursed was also the blessing he'd received.
-Alice Hoffman

Lily And Dudley

Yesterday on the way home from the Big Apple orchard we took a side trip to Cass Park to let Lily run in the fenced-in baseball field. We chatted with a young couple who had a white Labrador puppy wearing a red harness. Their dog had us picturing what Lily must have looked like as a pup. The couple said he was 11 weeks old and that they had just gotten him three weeks ago. He had a pink nose and pink pigment around his green eyes. They said he was a Dudley Labrador, which is the name for a Lab with this albino-like pigmentation. His fur was like a bunny's, so soft, and his skin was loose. I said I would give birth to Labradors myself if I could, laughing.

While we spoke, five boys showed up and began a game of football. I asked them if we could share the field for about three minutes to let Lily run in circles. They said okay! I unhooked Lily's leash and she ran full throttle in exuberant graceful circles around the field, ignoring the kids who continued to play and watch Lily run at the same time. I admired Lily's long thin muscles on both sides of her rib cage. The boys were amazed at her running speed and grace too, as she ran top-speed through their football game. After a few minutes she had tired herself out. I thanked the boys and we left, closing the gate.

Hafiz Poem

BURGLARS HEAR WATCHDOGS

If one
Is afraid of losing anything
They have not looked into the Friend's eyes;
They have forgotten God's
Promise.

The jewels you get when you meet the Beloved
Go on multiplying themselves;
They take root
Everywhere.

They keep mating all the time
Like spring-warmed
Creatures

Burglars
Hear watchdogs inside of His
Gifts

And run.

-Hafiz, from The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Now Is The Time

NOW IS THE TIME

Now is the time to know
That all you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility

That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

-Hafiz, from The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Hafiz

COVERS HER FACE WITH BOTH HANDS

What
We speak
Becomes the house we live in.

Who will want to sleep in your bed
If the roof leaks
Right above
It?

Look what happens when the tongue
Cannot say to kindness,

"I will be your slave."

The moon
Covers her face with both hands

And can't bear
To look.

-Hafiz, from The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Andrea Barrett

I think science and writing are utterly the same thing. They are completely rooted in passion and desire, if they're any good at all. You can fall in love with the natural world in the same way you fall in love with a person. There's that same sense of helplessness, of lacking control over how much of your life you want to devote to it.

-Andrea Barrett

Two

This morning when I was walking Lily I was consumed by money worries, and thinking that I should just let go and cry about it. Then I looked down and there was a folded dollar bill sitting on the storm drain. I reached down and picked it up. It was damp. I put it in the front pocket of my jeans. Then I crossed the street, and spotted another folded dollar bill in the gutter, so I picked it up. It was also damp. Two damp dollars that warmed up in my pocket.

Martha Brooks

Each book takes me where I never expected to go. For this reason the process is organic rather than planned. I don't plot. The energy is all in the internal workings of the character and the external workings of place.

-Martha Brooks

Think of yourself as a writer who is navigating in a larger playing field than maybe you have dreamed about. Other writers struggle with words in Memphis and Paris and Beijing and Berlin - just as you are doing in your own corner of the world - so you are part of a big family. Language is the most important thing we own because it tells others who we are, what matters to us and what we need. As such, it is sometimes the only ticket we hold to freedom.

-Martha Brooks

Reading Outdoors

Today was amazingly warm and when I stepped out to walk Lily I saw the woman across the street sitting on her second story porch wearing a blue terrycloth bathrobe reading a book. Then when I got to the bottom of the hill I saw the man who lives in the pale yellow house sitting on his porch reading too. I have seen these neighbors for years but have never seen them reading.

Each Day

Each day I feel like a bird hopping off a branch, hoping my wings will open.

André Aciman

Not a sound could be heard on the empty road except a faraway dog and the rickety squeaks of our carriage, whose horse, for some unknown reason, knew Brahms horn trio well enough to let his leisurely footfalls stamp to the rhythm of the music.

To be dead meant that others could come into your room and never know it had once been yours. Little by little they would remove all traces of you. Even your smell would go. Then they'd even forget you had died.
-André Aciman, from Out Of Egypt

The Shift

The three month shift has arrived.

I am in the other house. Everything is upside down compared to the last three months. I wake up and take Lily for a very long walk, trying to lift energy up into my body from the chilly damp earth. After a few miles I am smiling again, feeling my leg muscles working hard as I walk Lily with the sun on my face.

During the other season I am walking to bring energy from the sky down into my body. Same challenge, opposite source. My body is my anchor.

In this house fear and worry are amplified inside my head, and the sensory impact of the tastes and sounds of words has dimmed. I don't want to get swallowed in worry but instead make use of this house. I'm sitting in one place for hours reading memoirs again, instead of poetry.

Nature made the variables and I am a perfect specimen.

Dog Bath

I just gave Lily a long over due double shampoo using the extension hose in the bathtub. She was very tolerant about it when I lifted her in! Giving her treats helped. Bathtubs are always frightening for dogs because it's hard for them to get a grip and if they struggle they slip. She did jump out at one point and shake while I was bending over to scoop the clumps of hair blocking the drain. So I lifted her back in, first her front paws and then her hind quarters and continued the final rinse. She was very good about it all. And now she smells so clean I can't stop hugging and petting her. I used the free sample herbal pet shampoo we were given when photographing the doggie parade this summer.

Edward Said

All families invent their parents and children, give each of them a story, character, fate, and even a language. There was always something wrong with how I was invented and meant to fit in the world with my parents and four sisters.
-Edward Said

Josephine McKee

No matter how energetic I felt, writing made me focus and relax. It interested me. I understood something in it, and so there was a chance I could resolve problems. Then maybe pain would disappear.
-Josephine McKee

I Do Not Understand

I do not understand cake mixes.
Like sex with a blow up doll
all the fun is taken out.
For me, the fun part is taking out
my big brown earthenware bowl from the cupboard,
scooping the powdery flour, salt, and baking powders,
and leveling each scoop with a knife.

The scent of the vanilla wobbling on the teaspoon,
like an eye with the reflected light its pupil.

As a kid I used to hypnotize myself at lunchtime.
I'd move my head in circles over the oil globes floating
in my chicken soup,
a dozen eyes orbiting in unison, watching me,
kitchen moonlight overhead.

Mixing up the cake batter with my hand-held mixer
vibrating like a sex toy,
then lovingly licking the bars of the beaters
one at a time
while standing over the sink.

I have never understood ham sold in a can either.

She Dreamed Of Horses

I recently had a dream where the word "peace" was written in cursive, in molasses, on the top of my closed blue laptop and my horses were licking it off.
-Laurie Giemza

She Dreamed of Cows

She Dreamed of Cows

I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
her body and put on the nightgown she'd worn
as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
She started at the beginning and recalled everything—
all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
This took her a long time into the night
and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief—
until sleep captured her and bore her down.

She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
under the tree and the brown and white cows
came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes, wet as
shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
an almost unendurable joy came over her and
lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
she flew with the cows.

When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
She looked a long time at her living self.
Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.

-Norah Pollard

Twister Dream

I dreamt Bill and I were on our street but it resembled Brooklyn. There was a twister in view off in the distance, but coming towards us. We ducked into a basement level Chinese restaurant. I had Big Lily-dog under my arm balanced on my hip (all 75 pounds of her). I was thinking, this is just like The Wizard of Oz except Toto is awfully big!

Who Says I'm Not Good at Math?

Who says I'm not good at math? I've calculated every mistake I've ever made, to date!