MLK Day and the Inauguration Tomorrow

I am so happy that our new president will be inaugurated tomorrow. I am very hopeful, and it is ideal that this ceremony follows the Martin Luther King holiday so closely. I've had a full and rewarding day watching CNN --- all the festivities and the anticipation.

One Dollar Plants One Tree

Let's do something good for the world.

You Tube Clip from our Dub Poetry Workshop

I am so pleased to be able to share this clip from our Dub Poetry/Music Event that took place at our college in January. Our special guest was Jamaican jazz guitarist Maurice Gordon, but this clip features a young man from Aruka, British Guyana, (now studying at Claflin), who did a spontaneous song for us called "I Need Your Love Every Time, Jesus." He was one of the band members who just showed up from various local colleges and the community to form a last-minute band on the stage with Maurice. It was just too cool. The video is shaky because we did it ourselves, and we are just learning, but we are pleased to be able to reach students where they live --- on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and MOG ! We will be posting students performing their dub poems over the coming weeks; this is our first effort.

Music for Thursday reflection --- Jaco Pastorius on Guitar

This Silver Lining

I finally got my picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Ha ha. By the way, did you know Johnny Depp has been on the cover of RS six times???!!

extraordinarypoems

extraordinarypoems

My Music Blog at MOG.com, if anyone is interested in checking out some groovy music.

Candy Valentine

What a sweet day!

Candy Hearts

I eat them at the bar instead of popcorn now,
eat hearts by the handful, hearts with messages
I skip, hearts that beat sugar beats

oh sugar sugar
oh honey honey
you are my candy girl
and you got me wanting you

but occasionally I pause to read one,
to see if it has easy- to- follow directions
that could make love simple
or just something promising

like "I hope."

How to Have a Great Monday Morning

Dear Patient: This prescription takes approximately thirty minutes.

Awake at 6 a.m. and prepare hot chai with vanilla soy milk and one packet of Splenda. Eat a low-fact (or, low fat --- aren't typos funny sometimes?) cinnamon graham cracker while waiting for chai to cool. Take the chai to your home office or wherever the computer is stashed. Play an online game, preferably Scrabble so you can get some words in your head first thing:

fable
suede
vault

and others

Read a passage or two from J.D. Salinger's "Seymour: An Introduction."

Oh, you want an example:

"It seems to me indisputably true that a good many people, the wide world over, of varying ages, cultures, natural endowments, respond with a special impetus, a zing, even, in some cases, to artists and poets who as well as having a reputation for producing great or fine art have something garishly Wrong with them as persons: a spectacular flaw in character or citizenship, a construably romantic affliction or addiction --- extreme self-centeredness, marital infidelity, stone-deafness, stone-blindness, a terrible thirst, a mortally bad cough, a soft spot for prostitutes, a partiality for grand-scale adultery or incest, a certified or uncertified weakness for opium or sodomy, and so on, God have mercy on the lonely bastards."

(Thus, Amy Winehouse takes the Grammies. And I love Amy Winehouse.)



Answer a few e-mails and write a few shiny new unsolicited ones.

Finally, for exactly three minutes, sit in front of a mirror with a 32 fl oz bottle of Miracle Bubbles, and blow bubbles at yourself.

Happy Monday, Everybody!

A Not Ungrateful Theme

Spanish Guitar

Working on a Poem

I am going to annotate my own poem-in-process, to see what it can tell me about where it has been and where it is going.

First line:

"I am from a papa preacher, Oscar Floyd Moon,
when church starts at 9:30, I mean 9:30, not 9:31."

Now while this makes perfectly good sense to me, I wonder if readers will understand that Oscar was a preacher, and that he insisted on punctuality. Surely.

"I am from his bride, Dollie Hyatt, her hair braided and coiled,
her patchwork quilts for everyday use. Thank you, Alice Walker."

I've just changed from Dollie Jeanette (her first and middle name) to her maiden name because it is more satisfying and carries the Hyatt clan that is so important to my genealogy. No one but me will no this, however --- so what is the point? Well, what is the point of the whole poem? That is the question I should answer or leave alone. And I keep struggling with wanting to include the fact that I called my grandfather and grandmother Oscar Mayer and Dolly Madison.
The reference to Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" will go unappreciated by those who haven't read it, but they may at least know her name and wonder about it.

"I am from people who missed school picking cotton"

(This must stay in --- it signifies my socio-economic class, doesn't it? Doesn't it say, "we were sharecroppers --- or they were?" Does it bring to mind, though, the scratches, the heat, the aching back? Well, how to do that? Shall I bring in a broiling sun, alchol and cotton swabs?)

"An uncle whose first check from his first job" --- should I say that he was about 16? Or was he 14? Does it matter?

"bought school lunches for the year for his eleven brothers and sisters (oooh --- I left out the number before --- and the number is so important. It's a staggering number. I want to mention the triplet uncles, but damn it this poem is too long already. Leeo, Cleeo, and Theo will have to have their own poem.

Carolina in My Mind

Alison Krauss sings James Taylor song

[via FoxyTunes / Alison Krauss]

I always liked this song, but I love it now that I live in South Carolina. Just wanted to share.

The Year of Magical Thinking

I haven't posted in a while, so I'll just jump in for a minute and tell you that I'm reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which has had high reviews. More later.

I love this Poem

I just discovered this wonderful poem by Dylan Thomas. It's especially nice for an insomniac like me; I'm going to try to memorize it. My friend Debbie would scold me for that "try" --- so, I'm going to memorize it.

In country sleep

I

Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear,
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.

Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn
Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
And prince of ice
To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise
In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,

Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed
And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.
From the broomed witch's spume you are shieldedby fern
And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.
Lie fast and soothed,
Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood.
Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern

Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell
Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves

Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.
Sanctum sanctorum the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most

For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood
Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you

Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house
In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch
And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four
Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch,
Cool in your vows.
Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pouncing boughs
Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure

And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn,
This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks
In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls
Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks
The waters shorn.
The night and each night since the falling star you were born,
Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls,

As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides
Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the wind-
Milled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands
Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged
Apple seed glides,
And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides,
As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.


II

Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks
And the wings of the great roc ribboned for the fair!
The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hare-
Heeled winds the rooks
Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books
Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox

Burning! Night and the vein of birds in the winged, sloe wrist
Of the wood! Pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves!
The stream from the priest black wristed spinney and sleeves
Of thistling frost
Of the nightingale's din and tale! The upgiven ghost
Of the dingle torn to singing and the surpliced

Hill of cypresses! The din and tale in the skimmed
Yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail! The sermon
Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen
To seraphim
Leaping! The gospel rooks! All tell, this night, of him
Who comes as red as the fox and sly as the heeled wind.

Illumination of music! The lulled black-backed
Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves
Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on the moonshod hooves,
In the winds' wakes.
Music of elements, that a miracles makes!
Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act,

The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue
Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly
High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly
Lying the sky
Might cross its planets, the bell weep, night gather her eyes,
The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew,

Only for the turning of the earth in her holy
Heart! Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go
Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow,
And truly he
Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea,
And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he

Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking
Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair,
But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer
He comes to take
Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake
He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking

Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come.
Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear
My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear
Since you were born:
And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,
Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun.




From Dylan Thomas: The Poems, published by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971
Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1956, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1977 The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas.

Creating a Medicine Wheel

I've got wheels on my mind.

"The wheel in the sky keeps on turning,
don't know where I'll be tomorrow."

I read about how Ezekiel saw the wheel when I was reading the Bible a week or so ago, and then I had to go find videos of choirs singing the song on YouTube. Then I started thinking about creating a medicine wheel (I'm still planning that). I have an idea for a virtual wheel with angels at each direction and in the center. Here are the angel images I chose. Earth Angel, Angel in Black and White, Classical Angel, Urban Angel, and the Angel who Wrestled with Jacob.

I got the idea about the angels when I consulted my tarot cards for inspiration, and immediately drew the Wheel of Fortune. Synchronicity. This particular card features what first appeared to me to be an angel, but now I believe it is just a woman in various stages of mental health and spiritual well-being.

If I complete the medicine wheel, I'll need to do a ceremony with music, sage, and drums.

Can't See the Forest for the Trees?

I'm reading a book about writing called The Forest For the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers, by Betsy Lerner. Here are a few choice passages from today's reading:

"I often get very tense working," said novelist and critic William Gass. "So I often have to get up and wander around the house. It's very bad on my stomach... My ulcer flourishes and I have to chew a lot of pills. When my work is going well, I am usually sort of sick."

For others, writing is the only way to alleviate what ails them.

"When I'm writing I find it's the only time that I feel completely self-possessed, even when the writing itself is not going too well," remarked William Styron. "It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time --- for jittery people. Besides, I've discovered that when I'm not writing I'm prone to developing certain nervous tics, and hypochondria."

Which one of these is you --- or are you somewhere in between? It might be worth exploring this issue.

Poems

Some Beat Poems

http://www.allenginsberg.org/

It's the first time I've heard some of these --- so we're listening together.

Let's see; what else is on the agenda today? Well, I'm going to try a new approach to solving my insomnia and other physical problems such as weight gain. I'm going to cut out certain "highly reactive foods" (according to Elson Haas, M.D.) and see what happens. I'm going to do this for the remainder of August.

No cheese, corn, cow's milk, eggs, oats, pineapple, wheat, or yogurt. The hardest will be wheat because I really don't know what has wheat in it, and I have also developed a very firm habit of eating wheat bread all my life, thinking it was the healthiest choice. It may be difficult for me to remember. But I'll do my best.

The Absence That Zero Stands For

I am reading a book by Robert Kaplan about the zero. It's called The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. There is a note to the reader in the front suggesting that the book should not be too intellectually threatening to anyone who has had high school algebra and geometry. We'll see. I'm on the third chapter, and just about fifteen minutes ago, I stopped reading because I felt a poem coming on.

Here it is: (and the title is the same as my title for this post).

Lovely word to look at, zero ---

like a snake who has eaten lunch

and becomes satisfied but remains open,

casually, to a second meal.

For there to be nothing, there must be

something, which is what a person

means when he or she says, "I feel nothing" ---

clearly a lie.

What he feels is anticipation or recollection,

and she wears her zero like a collar or a halo ---

struggles in its chokehold,

enters its noose and waits.

Either way it accompanies him

with the ominous sound of a gong

or at least the meditative "ohmmmm."

She is not alone as long as she

has the zero --- even if she is in its belly,

having been eaten, and now lies unmoving.

Even then, she fills a hollow space.

Catch Me on Facebook, Too

Shark Week

I can't wait for this series on the Discovery Channel, for some strange reason. It just looks compelling.