index Klyd Watkins Hoe N Tell

hoe n tell
gallery of work new to TTG and sometime online workshop
Hoe N Tell items are eventually moved into archives to make room for new crops. To those looking for recent favorites please click the theme patches link on the left frame. Or check by poet in the poet's index

From the jukebox
No longer able to play your saxophone
Sitting alone like you
Forgotten in a downtown pawnshop
Tagged for a quick sale

And Billie Holiday sings softly in your ear
Brings an instant smile to your face

The shrill cry of Lorca rings out in the night
Jazz notes loud as thunder burst the

Peter Harleman asked me if thought these poems were too obscure. I did not. Reading the poems without seeing the paintings becomes a way of seeing them.

No one
came to
help you
after the
paint splashed
in your eyes.
A forty‐niner
like you,
a Frenchy
with a
Mexican wife
who could
take care
of himself,
who meticulously
detailed everything
he saw, but
who was
forever
looking up
even in the mines,
looking up and
peeking at the
sky. And
you were
looking up
as you were
painting the
ceiling
of Leland Stanford's
tomb,
your tomb,
the tomb
of your blindness,
of your poverty,
of your lonely
final days
when no one,
not even Leland's money,
came to help
you after
the paint splashed
in your eyes...

Ah the theater
of it all,
as if your
paintings were
too big
from mountain
to valley
too luminous
to be anything more
than events.
Grandiose things,
full of buffalos
and Indians
who would
decay
and
wear out
with time‐‐
like your house
you had
to shut down.
You passed
out of fashion‐‐
no soul
they said,
only big
chunks of
sky and earth
and light
torn out
of frontier
vistas
that
will never
be seen
again.

I moved to Los Angeles! And it's been awhile since I've stopped by the Time Garden. Glad to see it's still kicking up the dust. Here's a little squib I just knocked out.

The Boston Burglar

after long silence speaketh the time gardener . Funny—In my total neglect of here still some motes spun in the sun slats above the alfalfa, an Australian poet reading good American poets here . A good thing that . What I’ve been doing is day trading stocks, out of financial desperation . Worry not, folk; it is financial desperation, not emotional or spiritual . I am good . Trading stocks, we use a technical study called Bollinger bands . You need to know that reading the pome below . Joe Blofstein is my mentor in the trading thing and this instant message was sent to him in our on and off conversation thru market hours . Lower case and quick spelling IM style moved over pretty much unchanged, tho of course this piece of conversation was too long for one IM—took two .

because they are still mad about the state of the union speech i'm guessing they sell at market when prices are dropping to bring down the price and buy when they are down . bring them up then, when everyone has bought in, they sell at those high prices, at market plenteously, to bring the price back down, again and again, it is by not selling they bring it up again, they r on th other side of that play i want to make with the help of bolinger bands, short at the top and buy at the down . the difference is i hope to get good enough to play it passively . they can play it actively . they shake th bollinger bands out into being like flapping a wet towel . we have to call their bluff . i mean the country, not us wee traders . we have to say go ahead on, take the markets down, take yourselves down, we can still grow potatoes in the potent ground, we will still carry pepsi colas and highlander beer on fork lifts, and fork lifts will still break down and we will fix those fork lifts up again, for that is what churns this country on the outside where the snow is falling, the breath on the air, and it will churn it still when u r crying feed me money or i'll dry up and take u with me, but the grocery stores will stay open . they will put green cash into boxes again, if they have to, but why wd microsoft go down if the banks do, down some it wd, att&t, don't have to go down all the way—still there are customers wanting to pay, desperately wanting to pay, because it is not credit we need, it is groceries we need and we need to fix the forklifts to bring me sweet sam adams, sam adams does not have to have a stock price, he has to have a fork lift, because he has to have me buying his beer, so forget the banks, fix the forklifts, go ahead on, fix them please

return of Little Hawk— Elaine Baker put this one up on her MySpace page before, but I'm glad to present it here too

a wolf never cries, he moves away silent
into darkness, his life alone in shadows,
the smell of blood is on his breath,
he has eaten well and moved on
to his next feast, so bode well the moonlight
and stick to the well lit paths of your life
for he is there always waiting to take you,
and devour all that you dare to leave behind,
the careless caress of an aimless lover,
the sound of a door shutting forever,
echoing abandonment into the corridors
of memory shed like silken slide down
bare shoulders where we laid down together,
i tasted your wild desert mesquite soul,
your unshaven face burning a hole into
my soft mountain leather beadwork heart,
this melting together,
abandonment of value,
safe harbor, commitment, daylight,
words, words that hurt, words that bind,
we threw it all away to walk in the woods
see it all with eyes that know how to watch
and find the nuance, we saw it together,
we found something together that
rose above the words, the endless words
that i cling so nervously to, in this silence,
i reached for you and found your kiss,
it's all i have really, that and the memory
that my hands found on your beloved face,
nose that points you in the wrong direction,
lonely wolf, where does your heart wander to
in your long nights alone, where do you go?
i turn away to my cup of tea, a slice of lemon,
a spot of peppermint on my throat
to give me a louder voice,
some burnt sweetgrass
in my little kitchen
to take me away
to prairies golden with song
and sunlight,
and a little blood
so i can remember you,
lonely wolf,
there in your night,
the song of the wind
whispering a message
in your tufted ear,
and the sweet smell of night
in your funny nose
that points you away
from me .

I am a bit surprised to TTG still alive, in truth . I have so little time for it . Just when it has been still for weeks some little trickle you know. Reviewing poetry is among the things I haven’t time for certainly . But I am aware of three new works in American poetry that are too good not to at least mention . Two are by young poets (that means they are younger than I am), David Pointer and jeremy gaulke . They have worked at their craft and become as good as we need them to be, which is pretty damn.

David Pointer’s new title from alternating current press is Camelot Kid’s Triggertopia . Seek it out . And from The Temple Inc comes jeremy gaulke’s what the master does not speak of . The two publishers and the two poets should be followed by those who enjoy watching American poetry on its birthing edge .

And a man of my generation, the very prolific and celebrated Ivan Arguelles, has a huge new work that feels like his masterpiece. Tho I confess I have not had time to do more than tiptoe around in it, I want to plunge into it very soon, and I won’t wait till then to tell yall to check it out at

http://www .lulu .com/content/paperback-book/comedy-divine-the/7424638

Tracey Darling that darling has it seems a new darling, and a rime to document her joy, which I paste below.

It's a shame you
are not a little less lazy as a poet . You have all the facility in the
world . Get to work Joel . Save the time garden .

Well, Joel, I'm one
Nashville poet who's
absolutely all for single payer,
expression excused . All these
people saying a government agency
can't work still use the goddamn postoffice
and there are plenty of private enterprise
competitors to the postoffice which they could use
instead, but every bill they pay goes thru
the postoffice, and they stand up and say
govenment can't do anything . When the army
trys to go private and bring in Haliburton and
Black Hawk and all sorts of contractors
they literally lose billions of dollars, lose, as in
don't know where it is, but when the army follows
its naturally socialistic nature (what? you thought
the army was private enterprise? no, no the army
is government) i say, when the army follows
its naturally socialistic nature things get done
the right way . Well you could argue about what
they've paid for hammers but that came when
the military-industrial complex managed a while
to skew it from socialistic to capital spigot . In general
soldiers can run an army when it is totally
not for profit . Government can do things . Government
can handle our general health insurance .
Why should employers have anything to do with it?

You ask a neo-con would you rather pay four thousand
a year in taxes or twelve thousand a year for private
insurance and they answer the latter .
Now don’t get me wrong . Free enterprise is your only
champion when it comes to making things and selling
things and loading things in a truck and moving them
to Memphis . Fertile is free enterprise
where profit comes from doing the job right .
There’s no conflict of interest . But when profit goes along
with doing the job wrong, as in privately run prisons,
where profits are increased only by cutting costs, there is
a conflict of interest . If you’re a private health insurance
company you must say “no, we won’t pay for that”
every time you can get by with it, or you’re not doing right
by your stock holders . Conflict of interest with doing
the job right . It’s a situation, like police work, where only
a socialistic solution is sane .

Mission Accomplished:
Enlistment Completed

The ex-Army sniper accepted Friendly Fire's full
service financial network as global freedom

The 1X-Army sniper, an alcoholic, mistook a tar
covered concrete block for a servicable car battery

The 2X-Army sniper lying in the sun's favorite
side street watched the growing waistlines

of the McMansion expansion generation asking
himself if they were like the Jewish pianos of WWII?

After swearing off Mission mess he realized that
poverty, stress and street life harvested hope right

out of the bloodstream so often that chemicals of
completion no longer restocked themselves naturally

The negative-X Army sniper died under a dog tooth moon
after a three-drug cocktail: poverty, anomie and alienation

Shocked in my garden of healing trees, realizing that I was embarked on a journey to last 'til death do us part,

Since Memory and Resurrection play the largest parts in the work I do wherein Death has no dominion,

This decision is interfering with my ability to act . I REALLY have more important things to do .

You and the ol' lady oughta have Sari Nusseibeh to the White House for dinner some formally, casual evening .

And if the Israelis get Lucky, an the crik don't rise, I think he'd make swell neighbors .

But please don't bother me about Nationalism, right now; it's too much like where do I put the trees .

Then, finally, I got my flowering trees from Tennessee planted in the field behind my house .

As I rolled in the rich, black earth I was overwhelmed by the sense that I WAS ENGAGED IN AN ACTIVITY FOR WHICH I WAS BORN .

Next I must build windbreaks of plywood to shield the tiny twigs from the ocean blasts of howling hurricane gusts .

Then I'll paint them white to reflect the sun's warmth, to help the sap to rise .

Because Ahnold, that muscle-bound Austrian, just kicked the props out from under

good question, Joel—John Berbrich is the editor of Barbaric Yawp. I "met him" I think thru Charles Ries. You see more like the poem below by clicking on the poet's index link and then on . . . . you guessed it

one of the classic CRa McGuirt pomes, and old one, that I post in anticipation of this collections coming from scars publications

March 27, 2009 11:40 AM) I have bragged before here about the little books coming from alternating current (go to alt.current.com). I stuck their beautiful black and white edition of A Sound to Drive Away the Coming Darkness by Christohper Cunningham into my jacket pocket the other day for something to read while waiting on Linda at the doctor's office. It's a lovely read. The grimness in the title is sustained thruout the poetry (from "struggling up"),

and it's no surprise to me that Cunningham's grimness turns out to be an advantageous poetic stance. It is honest as can be and intense, and it comes from a place that any human can find within herself. Because "sometimes / there is / music," grimness becomes the setting for brilliant moments of beauty, becomes the angle they can best be seen from. Look for the discarded soda can scultures of motorcycles by the homelss vet in "the ride" for just one example.

I was interested in getting hold of more poetry by J . Glenn (Jack) Evans, and when his book Window in the Sky came bundled with the movie “ Christmas Mountain” at an attractive price, I sprang for the bargain . The movie’s graphics showed me it was a western, a genre of great nostalgic value to me as to most Americans, and the information that “ Christmas Mountain” was one of Slim Pickens last films completed its credentials . But what a pleasure when a work you turn to for the pull of nostalgia turns out to be so strong and real . The cinematography is dominated by mountains and snow and contributes to the sense of severe weather as a force in the drama . It is cowboy cinematography certainly, with the colors of horses and hats and wild turkeys against the white, but the starkness of Bergman intrudes more or less from time to time, particularly when the town is shown and even more particularly when the church steeple is shown . “Christmas Mountain” reminds me of Steve Earle’s great and modest Christmas carol, “Nothing But a Child,” in the way it shows the birth of any baby to be reminiscent of the birth of Jesus . Christmas Mountain had necessarily to be a take on Dickens of course and it is a subtle one—instead of showing an old grouch who opposed Christmas won over, it takes a town’s people who give lip service and niggardly charity at Christmas and advances them to real neighborly aid and merriment . So yes it’s a formula movie—it has that modesty and the modesty of advancing its simple story in a old fashioned western movie way, with the cuteness that moves half the narrative progression in any movie with Slim Pickens and/or Fran Ryan (who will forever be Ma Kettle to me) . Yet there’s an effortless allegory going on somewhat reminiscent of “The Twilight Zone .” What fun .For more information on the film, click on www.poetswest.com/books.htm

note from Joel "the good" Waldman (I sent Joel a recent photograph of trees in my yard--hence Shakespeare in his note)

Just finished my tour of the garden.  Here in the boonies where we have nothing 
but dial-up, it took close to an hour of sitting and shivering in my drafty 
studio as I waited for your walk among the winter trees to download.  Worth it. 
 Made me think of:

W. Shakespeare

XXVIII. "That time of year thou may'st in me behold"

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day	5
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie	10
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by:

—This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Nice work Clyve!

And speaking of nice work and shivering, that poem "Peeing in the Shower," sent electric tickles down my geriatric spine as I read it. The Time Garden has discovered yet another great, working poet in Elaine Baker. As tough a feat as it may be, you have humbled me by including me among Such fragrant flowers you tend and the soaring Little Hawk.

Joel

new one from little hawk--aka Elaine Baker

peeing in the shower

the warmth surrounds me,
wet and alive, naked,
hair flowing down my back
clinging to curves,
hands slippery
moving in currents
mysterious and timeless
across womanly contours,
the electric touch
that i allow myself,
in this hot hot shower,
as i caress and purr,
soapy round breasts,
my rising and falling belly,
sprouting hairs between
curved long legs,
and soft backside.
and in my mind's eye,
i see you and your smile
coming to me across
a dark secret memory
full of scent and touch
and sweet permission
and in this memory,
i reach out, naked, wet,
seeking to access
that feeling again,
hands finding the source
of the pleasure that you
stung me with all at once,
and the gift that i gave you,
and your smile across
that silent chasm of two souls,
that smile that reached me
and found safety in my heart,
cradling your soul in my bosom,
and as i pull myself into that
heated moment, i release
and feel the hot flow
down my legs, the yellow stream
that trails down the drain,
and i feel again the giving up
and sink into the hot water,
lost to you, lost in you,
and in loss, i am found,
i am relieved,
i am free

Elaine "little hawk" Baker

C Ra McGuirt has a collection, to be called no poem, on the way from scars publications. This little jewel from the 90's will be included.

drunk poet

shit, i am
fucked up

where’s my
gold star?

Heath Row, whose poetry has appeared here, says this, for anyone who wants to check it out: "Klyd,
I'm working on a new project you and yours might be interested in. A mail art PDFzine called Papernet Gazet. It's designed on the model of Global Mail. Looking for listings for the debut issue. Any help you can offer will be much appreciated.

http://tinyurl.com/papernet-gazet

Heath

Joel the good drops by—

Hey, my poet colonel

Much Love from the West

Coasting

            along,

Singin'

My Song.

Side

            by

                    side.

Regards to all.

Joley the G.

2 from propaganda press/alternating current

Alternating Current
PO Box 398058
Cambridge MA 02139 USA

http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_catalog.html

A review by Klyd Watkins

I recently reviewed leah angstman’s an alien here, here on hoe n tell . leah’s book was one of a series of tiny little pocket books from propanda press, the “pocket protector series .” Shirt pocket sized . It’s a fresh format and the lil’ books present living poetry in tiny type . I have just read two more of this series, Slice Of Life by Kevin M . Hibshman and Ice Age by regular hoer David S . Pointer . (Both are $3 .00 plus $2 .00 s&h .

Kevin Hibshman’s voice is conversational . I like that . A number of these poems inhabit a little world of only the speaker and “you .” All of them address real human ears . Here’s a nice sample,

Gray is no longer the same color in Vermont .

The line makes vivid sense in context . I hope it will tease you into buying Slice of Life by ordering from the address or the link above .

David Pointer’s poetry is unstable but sound . Reader, say you are a fencer, and you and the author, David, are fencing; well, when the ground splits beneath you, simply jump like he does, confidently, onto one side or the other, and parry on . David takes the reader thru some serious play, proving as he goes values that are undeniable yet under almost unanimous attack . He reminds me of many poets, including Mike Panasuk, including Klyd Watkins . The way he presents the enduring moral triumph of the poor and the weak reminds me of Charles Potts . The knowing and singing mind at play does that kind of work .

He has grown since Wheelchair Dancer, tho of course I love that book .He gets language to do his bidding with less strain . His narrative slips into metaphoric dream pun, his images slip into events . Story and metaphor, image and event work together to suggest, no, to prove, truth . He is funny usually and usually mythic .

What shall I pull out for a tease? How about this?

… Only
the Marine
Corps Recruiter
offered a job
re-shoeing
the horse drawn
hearse of
American
Economic
History .

I highly recommend this little read . (See above to order .) David is becoming a star, yall .

Next Weekend
Joel Waldman


Jeeze!

I tried to call...machine.

I tried to Ichat...nuffing.

I got AfroCuban on the Radio

Bailar, oye!

Watusi.

Fa shure, fa shure.

Even though he hates me I'll even give Kurt

A call.

Too much to remind Harvey that his poetry is better than mine.

Sportsmen sleeping between the Islands.

It is not possible for me not to love you

Pop

On Jan 8, 2009, at 11:34 AM, Adam Waldman wrote:

And we must forgive the Philistines, baby,

It goes with the territory.

Joel Waldman

note and poem from Little Hawk—elaine baker

Klyd: Oki!! just wanted to write and tell you thank you so much for allowing me into your garden!! the poetry there has been an absolute wonder. wows for the new work by Jon Taylor...The Angler...and i thought i was the only poet on the planet who had poetry roiling around in my head constantly! i have been enjoying the wordplay by Joel the Good. i love how he stretches out a word and wrings out its essence:

That my de

cen

dants

Might

yet

live.

let's hope that he lives to write more wonderful poetry!! i look forward to that! and sincere thank you to Laurel Johnson for her kind and encouraging words. beautiful shadow indeed. one rarely thinks of oneself in such flattering light, we leave that to kind strangers so thanks once again for reading and for understanding where i was at that time of my life.

and then there is You! i took a circuitous journey through intro to Ghost Trees. i am not an adventurous type and as i surveyed the layout of this poem, i shrank back and wondered if i could survive but instead decided to make the journey. and what a journey it was. as i clambered clumsily through the trees behind you, i found myself enjoying the layout, the wordplay, the mastery.

my mind fretting over the stark prose confession

that I canʼt afford to come to these woods

and write poetry

because it reduces

the intensity of my lunge toward money thus in masochism

churning my mind

contemplates

sacrifice of

the true poet led

down the hill singing

burn me lord burn me Iʼm still full of shit

"lunge towards money" indeed! we should all be the poorer for it if you ever decided to abandon poetry and lunge towards that money. i for one am resigned to being a poor poet with a day job and the satisfaction of having "angled" the words out one more day and for having learned something new about poetry in finding your timeless garden of delights!!

this is a learning process for me, even at my frosty old age. i have read all the major poets old and new in my childhood and teen years. i found influence in the words of Bukowski and Brautigan, more recently Sherman Alexie. i have written all my life and am finding my own voice. what a fantastic discovery. but reading the works here has opened a whole new door in that they show me that i can push farther to achieve understanding and bring music to my voice. that is what i have found here in the words of these fellow poets. i am awed, i am minimized, and i am inspired by them and also by your works. thank you all for sharing your voices with this humble participant, this lowly humble poetess.

Little Hawk

elaine

finding my way

It is good, this discovery that

not everything revolves around

bloody hormonal anger anymore.

My cinnamon teacup life is not

fractured, it is whatever I wish.

A good day can be created from

life-long ashes of loss.

My heart lies protected

In the hard shell I have laid on

During long, sad, rainy days

When I first traveled here.

The journey brought me here

The journey ended and yet

I find myself looking to the west

Where so many disappear.

I long to travel again,

My heart says go,

Child in the back seat,

Crayons and puddles of tears.

Saddled and ready, I rise

My nomad Indian soul begins to walk,

My life-strapped travois follows,

My feet touch the prairie once again.

Little Hawk—elaine baker

2 new poems by Jon Taylor

Jon Taylor

Sweet solstice yall Klyd Watkins

a Christmas note from Laurel Johnson

I finally stopped the merry-go-round long enough to check out The Time Garden. Some good new flowers growing there. The work by Little Hawk really appealed to me and I enjoyed seeing her photo in the garden. Her poems were powerful commentaries from a woman discovering her own beautiful shadow.

Another treat was the new poem by Joel the Good and seeing his photo in all its colorful glory. Regardless of the topic he chooses, Joel always strikes a familiar chord. I enjoy his wry musings more each time he submits a new poem.

Ellaraine Lockie is a favorite of mine. The poem about her brother resonated with me because my youngest sister had colon cancer surgery three years ago. What a horror, indeed, to watch the results of chemotherapy -- allocating antidotal roles to archangels -- and radiation. I love her work.

Your review of Leah Angstman was incredible, Klyd. I know a little about Leah Angstman. She's an amazing young woman, poet, and publisher. Not only did she publish David Pointer's work, she recently published poetry of another of my favorites, 91-year-old Ed Galing. Some insights into how this young woman thinks can be found in a commentary she wrote, if anyone wants to read it: http://edgaling.blogspot.com is the link.

You are an exceptional Time Gardener. Merry Christmas my friend.

Laurel

new voice on the time garden: LITTLE HAWK

camouflage

i wanted to be
invisible and not
noticed...so i
disappeared like a
little puff of smoke
and became this silent
ethereal presence in my
family of ten noisy busy
siblings as they bounced
and played and fought their
way through the inevitable
transition into adulthood.
Always I slid by like a
whisper of a person, a frail
faint outline of a female
that was always watching
and never did i ever put
myself into the fray and
the entanglements of children
and teenagers, nor did i bother
to learn how to grow away
from this brood. Instead,
i learned how to be alone.
It was then, away from the
fractitiousness and
the discord of that place
that i looked down and
discovered my own shadow
and when looking inward
upon the silent chasm
that was my heart, i found
my dreams, my love and
my soul all intact and
waiting there for me.

Little Hawk

twenty years of marriage . . .all wasted on a few stupid violent acts . . .a few black eyes for what? pride? why did i stay so long, what was i there for, why did i waste those 20 years there?

Just Walk Away

Why?
Why do you stay there?
Why do you stay there with that black eye?
Why do you stay there and take it?
Why do you stay there when you can
Just walk away?
It’s so easy,
It’s so easy to walk away,
It’s so easy to walk away from
Your entire life.
Your plants, your rose bush,
Your cat, your goldfish,
Your photo albums, your family heirlooms,
Your children, your possessions,
Your security, your car,
Your means of financial support.
It’s so easy, just walk away.

Maybe I’m stupid.
Maybe I’m in need of education.
Maybe I’m in need of a ride.
Maybe I’m in need of common sense.
Maybe I need a place to stay.
Maybe I need some blankets .
Maybe I need a bed.
Maybe I’m in need of a few dollars.
Maybe this is the answer to all my problems.
Maybe this is stupid.
Maybe I’m stupid.

Just walk away, just walk away .
Just Walk AWAY.

Little Hawk

thus speaks Joel the Good—

I know that lots think I am crazy

They may be wrong

But then again

My daughter needs a mountain bike

To keep the sulfurous air of Honolulu

Free of noxious burning fossils

That my de

cen

dants

Might

yet

live.

Ordinarily I'd end the lyric here.

But I have a Mountain bike

rusting on deck

because,

A Peter Lit says

I am a pussy for not wobbling through traffic

through the pain

my security-breeching joint brings

Even to the softness of a step-through ( we used to call 'em girls).

Suffit!

How can I get the machine to Anna?

This poem ended long ago.

I'm waiting for your reply.

Joel Waldman (photo by Eleanor Cooney)

the time gardener reviews leah angstman’s an alien here

http://alt-current .blogspot .com/search/label/Books%20Available

Poetry chapbook now available from Propaganda Press . $3 [which includes US shipping; out-of-US add $2 for shipping] . Mail check or money order made out to Alternating Current, along with your mailing address and description of what you are purchasing, to: Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge MA 02139, USA .]

I have found me a new poet to enjoy . I became aware of leah angstman because she is involved with, or perhaps she is, Propaganda Press, which has published David Pointer’s Ice Age [http://alt-current .blogspot .com/2008/10/ice-age-by-david-s-pointer .htm link] . Now, I have read a short stack of leah’s chaps . I feel they all contribute to an inside out autobiography . The poems come with such intimacy from the speaker that at times the external scene is briefly left unset . The honesty with which a life is examined in leah’s books must have value—perhaps the kind of value we used to get more from fiction, until Bukowski moved Henry Miller’s narrative style into free verse . In leah angstman’s poetry the reality of emotion almost rudely bumps the language up into song . As here, from “afternoons like this:”

we are boob adjustments right before
we catch his eye
we are what our friends like
and often what they wear
we are mostly dead
but sometimes so alive
on afternoons like this

Her style uses a conversational diction camouflaged in the speech of her reasonably articulate peers, so much so that when metaphor or simile show up the figurative language seems to have had to push itself thru the failure of the literal . This can leave the metaphor, metaphorically, thrashing about out of control at times but it disallows the falseness of figurative language as adornment . Her style being based on the speech of her contemporaries leaves it far stronger than if it were based on the writing of her contemporaries . From “in bed with nicotine sex:”

stale in the air you
humanize public breathing waste
breathing nicotine waste

Another fortunate characteristic of her style—her line is real, a forward force, a pedal of rhythm.

when we’re wounded
we’re wounded so bad
holding hands up
they won’t be tied
hold me up
i’m so high
scott
i am so high

(From on scott leyman, pt . 1)

Don’t go to leah angstman’s poetry for the wrong reasons—don’t go there to reinforce a Pollyanna greeting card sense of reality . Don’t go without the generosity of spirit to appreciate the whole range of what is exposed. In another chap of hers (I write this from memory) a girl tells her, tells the speaker in the poems, “i hate your poetry,” and the speaker in the poems answers, “i hate you too.” So there it is, the human war of self and mirror, right in the face . I argue with her myself . She is a boy/man watcher, that’s a good thing, and she’s very good at conveying the sexual yearning of early groping and such—you can find plural skilled examples in her work of either—but when it coming to actual fucking, awkwardness is more likely to be portrayed than fulfillment. Again you could find plural examples, like this one from “riding bareback,”

did you cum
he asks
i think hard for a minute

But I stop my argument and think, well this is a sign of good writing, that I am engaged with some very honest, human centric verse.

leah angstman’s world is not altogether grim. I love her memory of being with her grandfather (from “1926”),

i was a kitten with twitching whiskers

and look here, don’t you love this? (from “my memories don’t fade because I keep blowing life into them”)

. . . there’s a part of you that
doesn’t belong to her
and I know because I licked the spoon
and no one wants the ice cream
once the spoon’s been licked
except the licker

from Ellaraine Lockie

Klyd--I just checked out The Time Garden" for the first time in a while and saw 
that your mother died.  I'm so sorry.  Please accept my condolences.  I enjoyed 
R Ca's poetic tribute to his brother and hence to your mother as well.  Your 
comment about her wanting you to write a poem for her really resonated because I 
can't write on command either.  And I had a similar expectation from a loved 
one.  Here's what happened when my brother was dying of colon cancer:  One day I 
took him to his chemo treatment.  I asked the nurse many questions about what 
was happening and wrote down some of the answers.  When we got home, I heard my 
brother tell a neighbor that I was writing a poem about him and the chemo 
treatment.  I was not.  I could tell by the proud tone of his voice, that I had 
to write one though.  I was horrified.  But there must have been a poem already 
running around in my upstairs because it just came tumbling out.  I mailed it to 
him embedded in a sheet of handmade paper, and he loved it.  He died a couple of 
months later.  I'll stick the poem on below.  I don't think Hallmark is likely 
to buy it.

I hope you're doing okay.--All best, Ellaraine

Brotherly Love

I knew cancer was coursing

through his body

in stage four deadly drama

The doctor having prepared us

for the final act

in his appointed position

A combination of God

and aggressive casting director

Allocating antidotal roles to archangels

with names like Leucovarin and Kytrel

Typecast as side effect soldiers

Performing all-too-temporary truces

I knew he'd be a memorable hero

Benchmark behaved like a hundred year oak

Even though no malignant knots

ever before blighted our family tree

He sits rooted by the peace

of each pain-free day

Suspended in the soft deception

of a leather lounge chair

While bombs of chemotherapeutic

proportion drop from plastic bags

Staging his private world war

Poisonous parts played out

in provisional victories

I didn't know I was an actress

Another stretch he's pulled

in my elastic existence

Like the tugs that lured

a little sister from farmwife fate

The push into college, classical music, safe sex

All the quality-of-life debts

scripted across my cinematic mindset

As I sit watching the IV

rerun its surreal suspense

And I pretend in Oscar-quality portrayal

that oak trees are immortal
and make-believe can recast reality

Ellaraine Lockie

from Laurel Johnson

Loved the Waldman prose poem and also the one by Charles Ries. I don't have enough sense to join the circus so I just decided to retire. Laurel

Me Three

I gave up writing because

my Muse moved on to greener pastures,

to soil rich with the manure of

excitement, enlightenment and inspiration.

Everyone these days, it seems,

has more to say about politics,

injustice, love. They live to

breach all walls in prose and verse.

Not me. I can't seem to walk

and chew gum at the same time now,

let alone write and survive

in tandem. I'm in good company:

Ries and Watkins retired too,

and I make three.

Laurel Johnson

[note I, Klyd Watkins, was always threatening to stop writing poetry, back in the day. It was a way of pouting or negotiating with the muse to get her to make me rich and famous. There are lines in Ghost Trees that address this. Now in fact I have not produced written poetry for several years and have lost the momentum of style, but I am recording poetry still.]

letter from Joel Waldman--almost a poem, as is the way with Joel

At last it can be told!

The Greenwood Creek has a deep hole. All summer it has held
approximately twenty steelhead. They appeared to range in size from 5
to 25 pounds each. One day my wife was on her walk with three other
local ladies. They came across three huge fish flopping in the gravel
shallows, access to the ocean denied by low water. The women grabbed
the fish and took them to the freedom of the open sea.

I went on one of my typical enthusiast's campaign: "Free the
Steelhead!"

According to Fish and Game regs, at that time, one may not touch or
in any way interfere with the "natural" processes of the fish's life
cycle.
"Let 'em die," I was told. "You can watch."

As I prepared my midnight sneak with shovels, the response I got from
my neighbors was typically dismissive, " Oh, no! Waldman's at it
again,"

Well, age and age's evils got the better of me.

I started to think about all the troubles I had managed to get myself
into.

There was that Freedom Ride in Maryland when the teenagers in their
pick-ups chased us back to our busses while the sheriffs watched and
laughed.

There was that CHP arrest and imprisonment for three flecks of
marijuana scraped out of the lint of the flea market jacket I was
wearing.

I remembered when I was grabbed at the podium in Madison Square Garden
for attempting to read a poem and thrown out of my own graduation
ceremony to wind up on the streets in the midst of law enforcement
clubbing the local Black Panthers.

There was the time the cops dragged me out of the office's of the San
Francisco Foundation on California Street for applying for the Joseph
Henry Jackson Award for Poetry.

Now that was no fun at all! Those bastards locked me up in the lowest
bowels of the hi-tech American version of the Hanoi Hilton and threw
away the bloody key!

Y'know...I was starting to learn.

At any rate, long story short, any time I went surf casting, I took my
trapped brother-fish a few squid from Safeway and surreptitiously fed
'em.

Today the river opened to the sea and the Steelhead are free.

At last.

I'm out for Obama's press conference.

J the G

Charles Ries quit writing the way I have done by writing about it.

WHY I GAVE UP WRITING AND JOINED THE CIRCUS

I left it all— the paper and pens, publishers
and agents who could not love my inner
fantasy— and joined the circus.

The make-up, big nose and fancy pants
helped me overcome my feelings of
obscurity. I created an identity grander
than my literary art. I now have something
worth writing about.

I married the fat lady, she gave birth to
a midget; I learned to swallow swords,
made friends with a contortionist who
told me to turn my pens into pretzels,
and live like a real man.

Charles Ries

Many of you know that the time garden's mother died this season, on September 24, 2008. I have not written a poem on the occassion. In fact my mother found her way into only two poems of all that I've ever written. She wanted me to write her a poem but when someone wants you to write them a poem what they really want is a greeting card. One mother's day I obliged and drew and wrote a card for her but it got stuck between poem and greeting card and didn't work as either. My friend C Ra (aka Curtis McGuirt) lost his brother recently and I place here the song he made from his grief, in honor of Iola Carden Watkins as well as Scott McGuirt.

SANG THE WAKEBARD

Jay he was by Law, but all here called him Scott

It was his middle name, and fit him well

Christ was not his Way. If you say he went to Hell

Make sure you speak this lie where I am not.

We mostly called him Scotty back in his wild youth

When Jay enjoyed his smoke and knew a knife

Could have won a scholarship with his good hand at art

But the teacher, she abhorred the things he liked:

Warlords wielding wicked swords of bloody dripping steel

With buxom wenches on their brawny arms

Ninja masters sneaking up to do some shadow-harm

I hated her for hexing him, and that’s how I still feel.

Scott never was a hero like a quarterback in school

He didn’t slay some foemen in a war

Loved his wife and children, and worked hard 'til one day

He couldn’t stand the struggle any more.

I took him to his ending not knowing that it was.

Was there to find him fallen to my floor

Watched over him a fortnight until they asked me, “Sir,

His brain is dead at last; should we do more?”

I said he wouldn’t want it, then I drove on down

To the place that did my Mom not long ago

Bought from them the freeing fire Scott had asked me for

Then took me home, where grief smiled by the door

A Wake we had on Southern land owned by Father Ray

Mad O’Rourke, he came, and many more

From a few miles and from hundreds. We all ate and laughed

As Jay Scott would have wanted, I am sure

Left out of this song, I know, are many major things

Like Scott’s apprenticeship to Master Lee

Far across the ocean, where Jay acquired some Light:

Fiercer ways to fight, and walk in peace

In this little world, I know I'm not the best of bards,

But though it hurts me hard, I still must sing

For the simplest of reasons; I know you all can see--

Jay Scott was my brother, and he died.

--C Ra

Sharnon Doubiago has a new book: Here is part of a press release from University of Pittsburg Press: "Poet’s new collection is brilliant proof that ‘new poems just keep coming’ PITTSBURGH—Sharon Doubiago is a prolific poet who knows herself intimately and is deeply committed to her craft. As her latest collection, Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems, nears release, she confidently states ‘the new poems just keep coming.”
“I am a Free Verse poet, deeply concerned with the serious issues of our time, and have tried in my writing to find and allow organic form that is true poetry, true freedom,” she mused. “I am a lyrical poet of love, a political poet, a deeply personal poet, a poet of my communities, a poet of witness, a poet of nature . . . a geographer, a historian in search of what’s not been recorded— a questioner of, and sometimes activist against—the accepted taboos.”
Love on the Streets features selections from four of Doubiago’s books of poetry, two of which are book length poems (a style for which she is noted,) Hard Country and South America Mi Hija. It also includes poems from the collections Psyche Drives the Coast and Body and Soul.

from John Berbrich

Urban Archaeology

another vanished species
blue-bodied, blue-crowned
red-faced with a call
shrill and loud and particular
singing its own curious song
at the crossroads
of evolution
arms flapping north and south, east and west
attempting to direct all the flow of
human activity
no living memory has seen one
yet we have ancient photographs

* * *

among the rubble i have discovered the
artifact
a traffic cop’s tin whistle

—John Berbrich

new from Joel the Good

Four for Sale

I have four for sale but I know not which.

Come to my studio (Country)

Where we will chat about the price

Of everything

And the value of nothing

Is it the other way around?

Help me out of my sundry quandaries

Now that I have discovered

that

poetry

matter.

Joel Waldman

Back to Baudelaire—unless Jon hunkers down and translates some more, this is the last of the Baudelaire translations, which The Time Garden is very proud to have presented.

Get High

You must always be high. That is everything, the only question. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time which breaks your back and pitches you to the ground, you must get high without ceasing.

On what, you say? On wine, on poetry, on nature, as you like. But get high.

And if sometime, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the cheerless solitude of your room, you awake, the high already faded or disappeared, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that moans, of all that runs, of all that sings, of all that speaks, ask what time it is, and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will tell you, “It is time to get high. If you will not be the martyred slave of time, get high now, get high without ceasing. On wine, on poetry, on nature, as you like. But get high.”

translations from Baudelaire
by Jon Taylor continued

The Dog And The Flask

“Here, doggie! Here, doggie! Here, Tutu! Come smell this fine perfume, this fine perfume I bought at the best perfume shop in Paris.”

And the dog, wagging its tail, which is, I believe, with these poor creatures, the sign corresponding to both a laugh and a smile, came near and raised its wet nose with curiosity over the open mouth of the flask; but then, leaping back with surprise, it barked and growled and bared its teeth at me, as if in reproach.

Ah! Miserable dog, if I had offered you a plateful of turds, you would have inhaled with delight and, perhaps, even have eaten. And so, the indignant companion of my unhappy life, are you like the public, to whom one must never present delicate perfumes, which exasperate it, but only ordures carefully chosen.

written by Charles Baudelaire

translated by Jon Taylor

The Eyes Of The Poor

Ah! You want to know why I hate you today. It will no doubt be easier for me to explain than it is for you to understand; since you, I believe, are the finest example of feminine density one could ever meet.

We had spent together a long day which, to me, had seemed all too short. We had promised each other fervently to share all our thoughts together, and that our two souls would from now on be as one – a dream with nothing original in it, after all, except for having been dreamt by all men and realized by none.

That evening, a little tired, you wanted to sit before a new café which formed the corner of a new boulevard still littered with rubble and showing gloriously already its unfinished splendors. The café sparkled. The very gaslights burned with the ardor of a debut, and lit with all their brilliance the blinding white walls, the dazzling expanses of mirror, the golden moldings and cornices, the murals of pink cheeked pages leading dogs on a leash, of laughing ladies with falcons perched on their wrists, of nymphs and goddesses carrying on their heads platters of fruits and meats and pies, of Hebes and Ganymedes holding with arms extended little dishes of Bavarian dainties or glass obelisks many colored with flavors of ice cream – all of history and mythology put to the service of eating and drinking.

Right in front of us, on the sidewalk, was standing a brave man of about forty years, with a tired face and a greying beard, holding with one hand a little boy, and carrying on the other arm a little creature too small to walk. He was doing duty as a nanny and taking his children for an evening stroll. All of them in rags. The three faces were very serious, and the six eyes fixed the new café with an equal admiration, nuanced differently, however, by the age.

The father’s eyes said, “How beautiful it is! How beautiful! It looks like all the gold in this poor world shining from the walls.” The little boy’s eyes said, “How beautiful it is! How beautiful! But this is a place where people like us mustn’t go in.” As for the eyes of the littlest one, they were too fascinated to express anything but a stupid and profound joy.

Songwriters say that pleasure softens the heart and makes the soul kindly. And they were right that evening about me. Not only did I feel sorry for that family of eyes but I felt a little ashamed of our glasses of wine and our carafes, larger than our thirsts. I turned my eyes towards yours, dear love, so I could read there what I was thinking; I gazed into your eyes so beautiful and bizarrely sweet, into your eyes so green, your eyes inhabited by caprice and inspired by the moon, and you said to me, “I can’t stand those people staring at me with their eyes bugging out of their heads. Can’t you ask the maitre d’ to shoo them away from here?”

How difficult it is to understand each other, my dear angel, and how impossible to read one another’s thoughts, even for those who love each other.

written by Charles Baudelaire

translated by Jon Taylor

translations from Baudelaire
by Jon Taylor

The Dog And The Flask

“Here, doggie! Here, doggie! Here, Tutu! Come smell this fine perfume, this fine perfume I bought at the best perfume shop in Paris.”

written by Charles Baudelaire

translated by Jon Taylor

note from Laurel Johnson [posted July 31 2008]
Hi Klyd,

You've added so many new treats to the Time Garden that I can't keep up with you!!

I really enjoyed Jon Taylor's Baudelaire translations. I hate to admit that I've not read anything by Baudelaire so Jon's translations forced me into it. Your reviews of the Richard Krech books were very well done, far better than I could have done. Maybe in your spare time you should be a reviewer, too.

The Panasuk poem made me smile, as did the little exchange of comments about the poem between you and HorseFly. I hope to see more poems by Panasuk and haiku by Heath Row soon.

I've had to stop accepting review books for awhile so I can work on a big writing project.

Laurel

Thanks Laurel. I'm eager to hear about yr new project.

online zine River Walk Journal has reviewed Kathy Skaggs Poet Laureate of People Who Hate Poetry http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/vol5iss1/skaggsreview.html

The Poor Glass Cutter

There are natures purely contemplative and not at all suited for action which, however, under the influence of a mysterious and unknown impulse, sometimes act with a suddenness of which they themselves would have thought them incapable.

Those who, dreading some new hassle from their landlady, stand cowardly for hours outside their own door without daring to enter, those who hold a letter for fifteen days before opening it, or who wait six months to take a step that needed to be taken a year ago, yet sometimes feel themselves abruptly driven to action by an irresistible force, like the arrow from a bow. Scientists and philosophers, who claim to know all things, cannot explain from where such a wild energy comes to these idle and irresponsible souls, or how, incapable as they are of doing the simplest and most necessary things, they find at certain moments courage in excess to carry out the most foolish and oftentimes the most dangerous acts.

I have myself more than once been victim of these fits and leaps of madness, and am convinced that evil demons insinuate themselves within us and make us act out unknowingly their most absurd whims.

One morning I woke up irritable and short tempered, weary with idleness and wanting to do something out of the ordinary, something startling, and, I’m sorry to say, I opened the window.

The first person I saw in the street was a glass cutter whose shouts rose hoarse and piercing through the dirty Parisian air to my window. It would, however, be impossible for me to say why I was seized at the sight of this poor man with a hatred as sudden as it was total.

“Hey! Hey!” And I called for him to come up. Meanwhile, I laughed to think how my room was on the sixth floor and the stairway very narrow, and how the man would have a great deal of trouble making the climb and would catch in many places the corners of his fragile merchandise.

When he finally appeared, I examined closely all his wares, and I said to him, “What? You don’t have any colored glass? Any pink, red, or blue glass? Any magical glass, any glass of paradise? You’re bold, aren’t you? You come into the slums, where poor people live, and you don’t bring any glass to make life beautiful?” And I pushed him sharply toward the stairs, where he stumbled whimpering.

I went to the balcony and picked up a little pot of flowers; and when the man reappeared on the front steps, I dropped my bomb into his pack of goods. The shock knocked him backwards, and he ended up breaking underneath himself all the little fortune he carried with him, making a sound like a palace of crystal burst by the thunder.

And, drunk with my madness, I cried after him furiously, “Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!”

These practical jokes are not without peril, and one often pays dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who has known for a moment the fullness of joy?

written by Charles Baudelaire

translated by Jon Taylor

The Lovely Dorothy

The noonday sun has overwhelmed the town with its direct and terrible light; the sand is shimmering and the sea a blinding mirror. The stupefied world has made a cowardly retreat, and takes a siesta, a siesta like a savory death where the sleeper is half awake and tastes the pleasures of his own annihilation.

Dorothy, however, strong and proud as the sun, is walking down the deserted street, the sole living thing at that hour under the immense blue sky, and making in the light a burst of dazzling blackness.

She steps forward, softly balancing her torso so slender on her hips so wide. Her dress of clinging silk, of silk tinted a pale pink, sets off sharply the darkness of her skin, and hugs closely her long legs, her hollowed back, and her pointed breast.

Her red umbrella, filtering the sun, casts a bloodred shade on her nightlike features.

The weight of her enormous and nearly blue mane of hair pulls back her delicate head and gives her an air both conquering and indolent. Heavy pendants chime secretly from her little ears.

From time to time a breeze from the sea lifts the corner of her skirt and shows off her thigh, gleaming and superb; and her foot, like the feet of marble goddesses that Europe encloses in its museums, faithfully imprints itself in the fine, beach sand. For Dorothy is so prodigiously vain that the pleasure of being admired is greater with her than her pride in having been set free; and though she doesn’t have to, she goes barefoot.

She steps along so, harmoniously, happy to be living and smiling a distant smile, as if she saw far off in space a mirror reflecting her figure and her beauty.

At the hour when the very dogs moan with pain under the beating sun, what compelling force then stirs the indolent Dorothy, lovely and cool as a bronze statue?

Why has she left her little cottage so neatly arranged, whose flowers and grass mats make at so little expense a perfect boudoir, where she takes so much pleasure in combing her hair, in fanning herself, or in looking at herself in the mirror, while the sea, which crashes the beach a hundred steps from there, accompanies her wandering reveries with its powerful monotone, and while the iron pot where simmers a stew of crablegs and saffron rice sends her from the courtyard its exciting aromas?

Perhaps she has a rendezvous with some young officer who, on distant beaches, has heard from his comrades of the famous Dorothy. Unfailingly she will beg him, the simple creature, to describe for her the Opera ball, and ask him if one can go there barefoot, as to the Sunday dances where the old Cafrines themselves become drunk and furious with joy, and then again if the beautiful ladies of Paris are all more lovely than she.

Dorothy is admired and petted by all, and she would be perfectly happy if she weren’t obliged to heap dollar upon dollar to buy back her little sister, who is eleven years old and already so mature and so lovely. She will succeed without a doubt, the good Dorothy; for the sister’s master is so greedy, too greedy to understand any other beauty than money.

written by Charles Baudelaire

translated by Jon Taylor

To Each His Delusion

Under an overcast sky, on an endless dusty plain, without roads, without grass, without a thistle or a thornbush, I came upon a troop of men marching along with backs bent.

Each of the men was carrying on his shoulders a gross delusion, as heavy as a sack of flour, or of coal, or the backpack of a Roman foot soldier.

But the monstrous load was not an inert weight. It sat upon and oppressed the man with powerful and rippling muscles, and fixed itself with enormous talons to the back and shoulders of its mount. The ferocious head of the beast looked over the head of the man, like one of the helmets worn by warriors of old to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy.

I went up to one of the men and asked him where they were going like that. He told me he didn’t know, not himself or the others, but certainly they were going somewhere because they were driven by an irrestible urge to march onward.

It was curious to note that none of these wanderers appeared irritated with the unspeakable thing hung about his neck and gripping into his back; they seemed to consider it as part of themselves. And none of their tired and cheerless faces showed any sign of despair. Under the spiteful dome of the sky, their feet sinking in the dust of a soil as barren as the sky, they staggered forward with the resigned look of those condemned to hope forever.

And so the procession passed by me and lost itself in the clouded horizon, at a place where the featureless surface of the planet held nothing of curiosity to the human eye.

For several minutes I stood there trying to understand this mystery; but soon an overwhelming indifference settled upon me, and I was more heavily weighted down than they were themselves with their crushing delusions.

written by Charles Baudelaire

translated by Jon Taylor

posted July 7, 2008 from Heath Row—a haiku

Haiku in Transit

Rainy Friday morn
The airport could be madder
Grey dilution, peace

right livelihood—Klyd Watkins reviews two books by Richard Krech

In Chambers: The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office. Buffalo, New York: sunnyoutside, 2008. $10.00 available thru sunnyoutside.com as well as amazon.com.

Rumors of Electricity. Buffalo, New York: sunnyoutside, 2008. 2 nd printing . $8.00 available thru sunnyoutside.com as well as amazon.com.

Richard Krech was one of Berkeley/San Francisco poets in the sixties, participating in that epoch of electrifying political activism. Like Charles Potts and other legends, he spurred on underground poetry by writing, promoting readings and publishing. According to poetsencyclopedia.com, in 1976 he quit writing and began the study of law. Fortunately in the new field he was able to continue his fight for social justice, practicing criminal defense. And we are fortunate too that he returned to poetry “early in this century.”

In his recent book, In Chambers: The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office, unfamiliar forces interplay: law and the practice of law to increase freedom; Buddhism; poetry. Not that poetry is in any way a subject of the collection. The poet does deal with the language of the court room here and there, as in these lines from “Gandhi Also Spun:”

The semantic warrior spinning yarn.

It is good yarn.

The stuff of freedom.

Hugh Fox has written of this poet that he never wrote a bad line. It would be hard to write a bad line with diction as transparently vernacular as Richard Krech’s. The incorporation of terms with precise legal uses, and of concepts important in Buddhism, only serves, somehow, to make the language all the more common. (I don’t mean that in any pejorative sense.) This poem illustrates:

Mindfulness to Changed Circumstances

Out of thin air
an opportunity
may arise so quickly
that you must
take advantage of it
right away
or not at all.

Again, from “The Lunar Calendar,”

They have a law for this
situation,
Section 1368,
“too crazy to stand trial .”

Very clean language. The treatments of law here could not work in prose. “The Lunar Calendar” presents a particular criticism of the American legal system that just couldn’t be achieved anywhere but in a poem. And, in “Avoiding the Third Strike,” variations of clothing carry a connotative weight only possible in poetry. “My client wears a red jump suit and shackles . . . / The prosecutor sports a designer suit/ and well polished shoes,/ the judge putting a robe over his . . . / My suit gives me entrance to the discussion . / My client’s interest toward freedom/ is advanced.”

Krech has good stories, little splatters of narrative set in amplifying context.

We provided the tape
to the prosecution
after the police had testified
under oath, after
their lies
had been nailed down

(“Caught In the Act, or KPFA Strategy”). The title of “Have Gun Will Travel” appropriately evokes a television hero, eventho the conflict portrayed is not physical. The protagonist achieves “victorious removal from the courthouse/ into the clear night.” Great fun.

The impact of Buddhism is familiar in the non-academic stream of American poetry since the fifties. It keeps rowdy company thru passing references in Ginsberg and hangs around with evergreens in Snyder. These are two among hundreds. In Krech there is a feel of a serious study and practice of Buddhism, not evident in every poem that cries Bodhisattva. The poems insinuate how Buddhist principles are carried into his legal practice. Going into a courthouse,

the pocket Buddha I carry around
with me
goes thru the
metal detector in a basket;

(“Pocket Buddha Passes Thru the Metal Detector”). In “The Gudgeon Fisherman” the poet portrays the clever and cruel activities of certain scam artists to such effect that the reader is ready to condemn the heinous criminals. Krech too disapproves, but in (Buddhist) terms that surprise:

The gudgeon fishermen
have no shame.
Their confusion
is colossal.

“Confusion” is exactly the problem with the gudgeon fishermen . It is not the fact that this is a Buddhist point of view that makes it so effective; it is because it is truth, a truth that pulls us in. We must own up to some confusion of our own.

The subtitle poem, “The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender’s Office,” is certainly the center piece of the collection. It is a huge little poem. At the end, the poet says of his legal career,

This right livelihood
surely is on the path to liberation

Bearing in mind that a bodhisattva is one who foregoes nirvana to save others, consider the power of the word “hell” in the poem’s beginning line: “The advocate strides into the hell worlds.” The habitual hyperbole we use when we say “hell” to describe a situation gets jolted up to the literal here.

In Rumors of Electricity we switch from “legal poems” to “travel poems.” And as Bodhisattva includes the simple pleasure of good stories, these pieces give the simple pleasure of quick visits to unfamiliar, exotic, even strange, places. We feel “nostalgia for a place/ we’ve never been” (“After Atget”) on many pages.

From “After the Lapin Agile:”

Bistros still spilling laughter
out into the street
way after we went to bed.

From “Sitting Here:”

at the ruins just outside of town
where five minarets still stand
a group of children found us
& followed past two bridges
until saying goodbye.

I can’t tell, in these poems, whether the familiar conquers the strange or vice versa . The balance between how foreign the people and places are and how, at the same time, identical to us they are—how there and here are so different, so much the same—that balancing swerves about everywhere in the poems, which are busy

questioning the relative consistency
of impermanence.

In “Nishat Bagh Revisited,” Krech writes, “The present can’t help/ but intrude into the past ./ Place includes both time and/ location .” // The location where the Moghuls sat/ under the trees/ beside the channeled water/ which spills into Dal Lake/ still exists . . . .// The place where the Moghuls sat/ under the trees eating fruit/ watching the rushing water in its channel/ as it spills into Dal Lake/ no longer exists.” (The quote above does not at all summarize the poem—there is much more to it, including philosophical humor on the nature of time.) This impermanent character of place gets stated directly here but it is illustrated all over the book . That consciousness moving among the words is one thing I want in my poetry supply, and it is here. “Place” in these travel poems is, like a view at twilight, always slipping into the past, imperceptibly moment by moment but perceptibly minute by minute.

The earth itself is a collection of such places. That earth is impermanent is not the province of these place loving poems—geologic upheavals are not used but subtler forms of earth dissolution are very effective, the way desert sands form ocean-like waves for example in a couple of places. And in this subtle but powerful moment at the end of “Chahar Square.” The speaker and an Afghani teenager have greeted each other, with minimal use of each other’s language, and they pass on,

I walking toward the Citadel of Herat
the wind carrying much dust with it
in this most ancient of Asian cities.

Now yall need to obtain these books and read them several times over and then you should go back to the remarkable poem “Laotian Music,” in Bodhisattva, and see how it ties the two books together.

As for the physical books, there are beautifully designed and produced.

bibliography: http://www.verdantpress.com/krech.html

Berkeley Daze section in Big Bridge http://www.bigbridge.org/BD.HTM

Joel got us into this California trip, let him continue it, even if it is in a note back to his boys in New York.
I value Joel Waldman poetry so much, and he writes so little, that I have had to lift some of it out of a note he sent along with regrets that he could not make his high school reunion. Joel it was who began our recent focus on the San Francisco poet’s reunion, quite by accident. These lines accompanied his note to the boys back home at his 50th reunion.

Dear Grand-papa Ivan, our star quarterback,
So sorry I missed the homecoming track.
But the bad news doesn't stop there . . .
I am trapped in my own smoke and mirrors,
And now you live just in my prayers.
The work you have done is heroic;
Your efforts, unquestionably brave,
But I stew in my juice by the ocean
And pull on my belly and rave.
My share of the Bush bucks are coming,
My wife in the house cooks our fish.
A chopper as quick airport pick-up, a Lear jet,
Remains still as my wish.
So my Brothers at Clinton,
Forgive me.
You live with me yet in my dreams.
Unfortunate solipsist stumbles have cursed me with alternate schemes.

My blessings go out to the Ronnies
Auster and Auslander, too.
Pfeffer and I told old stories,
We know y'all are still true
Blacks and Reds
Forever.
And so remain, aloof.
Old school chums, JD
Teenagers,
Young bodies
For our garlands,
Live on as our proof.
I will always love our school days.

It's dinner time.

Joel

And to all the local, self-enlisted poetesses and poets
I'll be listening.

Joel Waldman (The Good)

Richard Krech: 2 pomes

Rene Magritte Wore a Suit Every Day of his Life

Listening to you
in yr 62 nd year
talk with joy and enthusiasm
about flowers in the garden
helps me see
that ten year old girl
who once inhabited yr body .

The thread of yr ancestry
filling yr soul
like DNA of the human race.

Memories of wood cooking fires
smoke of grilled meat
filling the air.
Thousands of years of this.

Dividing and growing up till now.
Repeating routines.

Remembering Hassan-i-Sabbah
in his safe retreat
hurling thunderbolts
at the West.

The street in Switzerland
that bicycled off

into acid dreams
we remember today
in clear reality.

I looked at you
in the light of day

hold both yr hands
in mine, inhale
yr eyes.

Slight breeze cools us
as we Bar-B-Que
in the garden.

Middle class folk.
2 car family.

Suburban Sunday afternoon.

7/30/06

At the End of Time

Singing a song of youth and freedom
we burst out of the segregated fifties
to establish times now studied in detail
and reflected in the myriad changes wrought .

The same struggles now
in different garb w/ different words
and theocratic bogeymen
w/ Kalashnikovs and cell phones .

You must think of it as the second act
of a play.

The stage has turned.
Characters more developed. Some are dead.
and new relationships emerge.

You may have stepped out for refreshments
at intermission.

When the curtain rises again
there is more invested in the outcome,
a deeper meaning is found
as perspective grants knowledge.

A wider scope
yet able to focus
on the breath of an insect .

Maybe its just that “now”
is more vivid than “then.”

Is there a third act?

Does yr heart beat
any stronger
than did that
of yr ancestor?

Yr grandchild
will found a dynasty
as real as the cuticle
on yr left thumb
but you will never get to see it.

And they?
They may never even know
that you
used to exist

at the end of time.

6/28/07

Richard Krech

The good Joel Waldman's report was of interest to Hoers. Witness these 3 reactions.

from David Pointer:

Klyd, I always enjoy reading about the poetry scene from the 60s. Chris Harter/Editor Bathtub Gin currently on hiatus is coming out with a history of the small press at "Scarecrow Press" at the end of June. I think the first volume goes from the 60s to about 1980. "I got into "Home Planet News"a poetry newspaper in New York. Donald Lev is the editor. Take care for now.
David Pointer

and from Laurel Johnson:

I bet you get tired of my blathering emails, dear Time Gardener. I enjoy catching up on the poetry and commentaries accumulated since my last email. Enjoyed immensely reading and rereading David Pointer's and Charles Ries' Mother's Day poems. Both were quite delightful and appealing. David's shock at learning his mother was a teamster really amused me. But beyond that, his descriptions of trucks laboring up mountain roads, cornbread cobbler sliding off the seat, and flowers planted by mile marker 74 were skillful recreations of a life none of us have lived. Ries's poem took me back to my own childhood in winter. He describes those winter days through the memory and imagination of the child he was, with such fondness. I relived the numbing cold and anticipated returning to the warm house alive with supper smells.

Joel's report from the San Francisco '60's poets reunion was interesting. Wish I could have been there incognito, hearing them read and listening to their reminiscences.

Good stuff, Time Gardener. I love visiting the exceptional flowers growing in your garden.
Laurel Johnson

and from Ellaraine Lockie
I just checked out Time Garden and read Joel Waldman's report on the Berkeley 60s Poets' reunion series of reading here. Hugh Fox stayed with me for the four-day event, and I served as chauffeur. I really enjoyed watching from the sidelines these great poets read and interact. The camaraderie and love was palpable. Here's a photo from the barbeque that launched the reunion.

left to right: John Oliver Simon, Charles Potts, Richard Krech, Luis Garcia, Hugh Fox, Richard Denner

report from th coast—Joel the good checks in with a report from San Fransico 60's poet reunion.

We just got back from a reading at the Bird and Beckett Bookstore in SF. Saw Charlie and Hugh Fox and Richard Krech, and John Oliver Simon. The last two fellahs were partners in an offset press operation during the 60’s in a garage in the middle of a large industrial area next to the Santa Fe railroad tracks. Today the area is a tree-shaded, trendy, field of boutiques and yuppie food emporia.

The operation of the press was self-touted as printers to the revolution: leaflets, broadsides and occasional chap-books. They did the printing for my first book, “Ice Princess.” They were very proud of the union “bug” for the IWW that they put on all their productions. John put out a magazine called “The Aldebaran Review.” Richard called his output “The Avalanche Press.” John had a literary orientation. Richard’s stuff was of a Maoist, anti-establishment nature. One of the leaflets he put out on a regular basis was called the “Grass Prophet Review.” It was a drug market report of street commodities and underground anti-war activities. Very outrageous and edgy stuff. That he was never busted is either a testament to freedom of the press or his wily good luck.

When the war ended, Nixon’s cointelpro blanket worked its black magic on the counter-culture; Richard suspended his writing from the public scene and enrolled in law school.

Many years later, having become a county public defender working in criminal law, Richard resumed his poetic output as the Bodhisattva of the Justice Courts. He also did some interesting work documenting his travels in Afghanistan as witness to the destruction of the great Buddha statues.

As part of the reunion-aspect of the reading ( I had not seen the old partners in over thirty years) it was wonderful to see and hear these dedicated poets. Of course, it was hard to witness the ravages of time on them, so big a part of my own early career as a poet. Richard’s amazing afro hair-do is gone, a gleaming, slick dome of a pate in its place. Always a good dancer, now my old friend walks with a halting and painful limp and must use a cane to get about. He had to be helped to the mike and be provided with a chair to give his reading. “Age and age’s evils...” about which GM Hopkins rails, did not diminish the strength of Richard’s new poetic output on the nature of Justice.

Simon has a new career as a part of the California Poets in the Schools project. He was an early contributing editor of “Poetry Flash,” a quarterly newsletter of West Coast events poetical and interviews with luminaries, some great, some near-great, some unintelligible.

For many years he has focused on translation of Latin American poets. For all his early underground credentials, he still maintains an aloof and academic, “serious” tone. Nevertheless, nostalgia still places him in a warm place in my heart for his dedication to the art of poetry. Still at it after all these years.

Charlie is, of course, still Charlie . . . . .

I got to meet Rychard Denner, the poet and editor of “Berkeley Daze.” He was decked out in his Tibetan monks robes and sandals. “Buddhist drag,” he calls it. He is off to a mountain-top retreat as soon as the reading series is over. I tried to locate another copy of the book he put out, but none are available right now. I gave my copy to my son as a birthday present.

Joel Waldman

Mr. David Pointer his mother's day poem

Member Local 41

I'm pulling up to the dock
doors of past decades over
learning my mother had
once been a member of
The International Brotherhood
of Teamsters, and two
episodes of disbelief later,
I could hear the labored
breathing of old trucks
and all things mechanical
nearly milling to moonlight
up the Arkansas mountains
down Monteagle steepness
with a wide windshield
vibrating its one chord
verse and chorus while
some terrified trucker's
cornbread cobbler slid
from the post-suppertime
seat to a floorboard full
of cold tools as my mom
in Kansas City, Missouri
shipping and receiving
department had traded a
day shift apron for extended
warehouse hours and a world
of old bridges now mixing with
darknight's unexpressable
divinity basket-mom's rising
as a Mother's Day flower
maybe a snow country lily
or Monet's bluest iris forever
planted by the heart's
mile marker number 74.

David Pointer

Markers
(originally featured in Bellowing Ark)

I didn’t understand it then,

why she clutched that old cigar box

to her chest the way she did

and bit her lower lip to keep from crying.

I said, “What’s wrong, Mom?”

as if a nine-year old could ease

or lend support to adult sorrow.

Piece by piece,

she laid each crumpled scrap of paper

on the table in our kitchen.

“Your father’s markers.”

Markers. What could they be

to make my mother cry?

That night, her tears shone golden

underneath the kitchen light.

I watched them fall,

wishing they would stop and Mom could laugh

or flash that sweet angelic smile of hers.

It always signaled all was well with us -

our family, her little brood.

Next to every marker signed by Dad’s hand

she laid a fifty cent piece or two quarters

taken from my piggy bank

that grandparents or relatives kept fed

for future times, for clothes or treats.

She said, “I’m sorry, Honey. It has to be,”

then laid an envelope beside Dad’s markers

and wrote a simple letter to accompany each one.

“I’ll pay you something every week

until my husband’s debt is cancelled.

It can’t be much because I have four kids to feed.

I’ll do my best.

Sincerely,

Verla Smith”

I asked her why she had to pay my father’s debts.

She said, “Because his debts are mine

and he’s the father of my children.”

Markers. Promises he made to bars

and gambling halls

where he charged drinks and poker losses

or danced with other women

while my mother waited crying in the dark.

I might have been a youngster,

but I knew the price my mother paid back then

and I’ve not forgotten now.

Golden was the color of her tears,

and silver were the coins she eked

to keep our father out of jail

and shame from her four children.

Laurel Johnson

Charles Ries' Mother's day card

THE MOON WAS JANUARY IN WISCONSIN

“Damn, damn, damn it’s cold!” I heard a guy four up from me say.

“Hey, no complaining. If the girls can take it so can you,”
came a muffled reply three behind me that shivered its way
through the frigid air from beneath a parka and a ski mask.

I was in line with the 5:30 a.m. wake up club waiting for the
Rec-Plex to open its damn doors because we (the regulars)
were freezing our asses off.

We’re from the land of No Complaining. Here is where
the weather defines you, molds you, silences you.

As kids we’d wrap ourselves in ten layers of clothes, leaving
only our eyeballs exposed to the snow and the chill. After 30
minutes of dressing, we’d be pushed out the door like
paratroopers being dropped into enemy territory. “And
don’t come back for an hour,” we’d hear our mother’s voice
trail off in the distance as the howling wind became the only
audible sound. The four of us bounded out onto a great, frozen,
wind-swept planet whose landscape we used to call our back
yard. We were Apollo 7. This was our moon walk.

At dusk, as the light grew dim and dinner time neared, we
pounded on the space shuttle door and asked permission to
enter - fearful that our hour had not yet expired. The benevolent
silhouette of our commander appeared, shrouded in a golden light,emanating the thousand scents from the outpost kitchen. She
permitted us to enter the lunar capsule, warm protection from a
frozen planet.

Charles Ries

note from Kathy Skaggs— I really like the 2 from Charles Ries. Wish I had time to write more. The poems deserve it. Or then again, maybe they speak for themselves. : ) Both those poems really spoke to me.
Kathy

notice of CD release

Molding's new recording, Buddha Tormented by Pol Pot, was mixed and partially recorded at Thundershack, Klyd Watkins'--yr humble time gardener's--audio studio. Click the cover image to surf over to thundershack.net for full information.

I have recommended poetry sites here. Why not recommend an artist's site. Art wire music is David Adkins site. He does sculpture out of paper clips and out of larger metal materials, pipe, tubing, whatever he can get his hands on. Some non-metal too, of dolls' heads for example, very interesting uses. I think his materials drive his creativity much of the time. He is seriously good. Look at his work here:http://artwiremusic.com/