Waste of time to wait for facts

what's her name who cares it's Amy

Ama someone's mama but hey Aloha

smile to meet you why have to opt

feet choose and flit can't find a dinar

it's so hot I've nothing to conceal

cardamom waft a fancy stamen

hesitation walk your mother's oven

The Portugese arrived, the Jews, and Ari

how now brown cow calf at your hip

we have no need of saints here Agnes

Kashmiri silk, the Moor's last sigh

the garbage smokes at center stage

ayervedic fabric FabIndia. Ignore

is practice too. Hoard change and pencil

cotton baby blanket on the bed no parka

search the idiom for tome

flutist against a white wall lietmotif

so what's the motive where's the ore

in storehouse go-downs, nag

me never crunch fish coconut toast

caste marks calls to pray no hatred

thali meal curd meets dal congeal

creamsicle salwar limeaid kameez

blue tarp black pepper a taxi hit

red bus rumble scooter cha cha

stoplight means not stop but segue

looming doti, gold chains, condo ads

come Jew Town Spice Market on and ons

my wanderings my anxieties Max Ernst

Why the h#($*& would I post voice mail on my blog?
hey, this is me, don't forget the rhubarb. And the tp!
I'm, yeah, we just got in, yeah, I'm waiting for them to open the door.
Where are you? uh, oh, right, I see you. Hi hi! oh shoot. turn this thing off.
goddam it's taking a movie. I don't know. Here you do it.

2/28 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft:
Coda

You smote smell with one hundred Bans,
moon in the seventh dorm that's ebbed,
in the dark, exposed as Bela.
What else would you do in lieu?
Every clock strikes XII,
leaf pivots on its axel,
lilac on the breeze my favorite odor.
Oh sting we will not last the eon.
someday we'll play when we're retired,
hear our lives as through a cantor
each moment framed within its gotcha
the point described along some arc
the answer was always neither/nor.
Oh you were elegant as any ibex
on skis aswish as ice skate
oh Thunderdome thy name is Max
oh G. oh please that mellow sax
oh stannum balm, ah tin.
Every day was our premiere
every aspen from one seed
each dove who lived it cooed
and you, so eloquent when mum.
The dead are just the earth's alumni
so why does that sound psycho?
if there's a god is this his jobsite
the weatherman's Old Sol.
Inside each capsule there's a roar
amo amas amat and on anon.
But rest here with me in lea
of river maybe Nile
we'll perm our hair again be Pert
no matter that we've erred
sing for me again, your salient alto.

So well anyway jeez.

I am not going to go chronologically through my days in India. I thought I would do that, then was felled by a post-air travel cold, then got to thinking chronological order is a boring way to think about my trip anyway.

You can't borrow anybody else's life. I've tried more than once to sluff mine off, tribute to my reptile brain, the idea that I could just slump out of my too-small dead carapace and grow myself a new one. Those resolution types of incremental growth type changes are difficult, require diligence and discipline and drudgery, that is, day to day adherence to what I said I would do. This is the only way to get anywhere I've wanted to get myself, but I still dislike it.

Poetry, I, too, dislike it. Marianne Moore.

I'm wearing the new fragrance from the small hovelly perfume store in Cochin. They keep the fragrances under a glass counter in quart size stainless steel thermoses and fill a vial only when you order one. The fragrances are of the essential oil persuasion, not perfumes per se. I don't know very much about perfume, but I like the smell of this one: "green orchid." I also bought "Kerala flower." The last perfume I bought, a few years ago, was in Paris. "Jaipur" - and now it strikes me that Jaipur is in India. I stopped buying the perfume when they started the s/m bondage ad campaign. Obviously I am not in that company's demographic. The first perfume I bought was when I was in high school. "Wind Song". It went so well with Jim's "Jade East."

Kerala was hot and humid, a challenge for NW native me. I went up to the tea estates in the Western Ghats partly to see them and partly to wake up one morning with dry skin. The first week I was in India there were times at night I almost couldn't breathe, heat and humidity weighted my chest and my lungs got a little panicky.

The man came back in a small white car (not a Hindustani Ambassador, and not a Bajaj Rickshaw Taxi, these I would meet later,) a small white probably Japanese car with the word "Radisson" printed on the side. My luggage and I got in. We languished in the confusion of traffic, my driver honking and being honked at, the car suddenly lunging at an angle, halting, lunging, halting, straightening, swerving, halting, then driving into the hazy night to pull up ten minutes later at the door of the Radisson, which looked like any Radisson anywhere, except that there were doormen in white turbans out front, one of whom opened the door for me, while another man took my wheeled bag out of my hand and wheeled it to the front of the check in desk. As I checked in I looked behind me to see that my lugage had disappeared. I commented on this and was told that this was as it should be. How many pieces? the man behind the desk asked. Two I said. Another man walked me past a counter where I could see my luggage as we headed towards the elevator. I hesitated. He said, "they will be brought up." He pushed the elevator button, told me my floor and room number and presented my passcard key with two hands while bowing. I went up and locked the door, wondering how long I would have to stay up to receive my luggage. There was a dim glow to the room but the lights wouldn't turn on. I tried all the switches, then the knobs on the lamps. There was a knock on the door. Did I mention I didn't have any small denomination ruples? That is to say smaller than 100? ($2.50 US but my book said that was too much to tip) I felt uncomfortable as this new man brought my luggage into the room. He noted the lack of light other than the dim glow. "Put the card into the slot," he said. I put the card into the slot at waist height by the front door, simultaneously remembering that this was the method in Greece last year and probably other places. He bowed and left. I turned lights on and off. I ate most of the complimentary chocolates on the little white plate on the table by the bed. I lay in the comfortable bed and set my alarm for 5am. It was midnight.

Sentences of Three Words
from Learn Malayalam in 30 Days

You sit in the chair
The book is on the table
Smear oil on the face
Children should wake up in the morning
Must go to temple at dusk
Must wash the leg and face
There is no bitter gourd in the market
There is no limit to anger
Marriage is to-morrow

Alphabets Are the Outer Garments of a Language
-from the forward, Learn Malayalam in 30 Days

Malayalam is the language of Kerala, one of 22 official Indian languages, and impossible to show you without downloading the Malayalam font. I've been trying for 10 minutes. It's a Dravidian language, which made me think of Druids, but no, sadly, the Druids have (had) nothing to do with Malayalam. Malayalam the word is fun to say, and Malayalam the language is fun to listen to. It's also spoken in Sri Lanka and on the (in the?) Lakshwadeep Islands.

I've reread my 200th entry, in which I had many worries about my arrival in India, especially because it would be late at night. Lots of flights arrive in Delhi late at night. It is possible that most of the flights arrive then. The airport has been under construction for a few years, and is ugly and incoherent. After I cleared passport control and customs I dragged my luggage towards the "arrival lounge" which is an elegant phrase but doesn't match what met me. Through the automatic glass doors there is a metal tube railing to either side of the cement walkway. The walkway slopes uphill and along the railing on either side are people crammed in two, three, twelve deep. Each is holding a sign with a name on it. I panicked. What if I didn't see my name after walking through the entire gauntlet? I could barely focus, let alone read. I breathed. If I missed my name I would turn around and walk through again. My ability to read improved. Man, there were a lot of signs. Then I saw that some of the signs had logos around the periphery of the white space where names were printed in sharpee. Soon thereafter I saw "Radisson" on a group of these signs, and lo, my name was on one. This registered on my face. A man made eye contact from behind the sign, and walked to meet me, taking hold of the handle of my suitcase. I followed. Another man in Radisson logoed jacket took over. He walked briskly forward, I ran to catch up. He stopped at the curb, handed my luggage back to me, said, "wait here." I did not move. I think he said, "I must get the car." Cars careened past. People got in. I stood where I was on the edge of the roadway. An interplay of horn honking chorused around but not at me. Cars zoomed forward, clustered, blocking each other from moving, broke apart, honked, drove on, reconnected, separated, disappeared beyond my sight. I stood. People clustered outside the airport building. They yelled at each other. It was coolish, cooler than I thought it would be. I wished I hadn't left my jacket at home. I wondered if I was on my own now. A woman smiled at me. I smiled back. I breathed. The cool air felt good, knocking the airplane staleness out of me.

POST 200 Moment of Silence

I'm off to India on Sunday. Off to I N D I A. I've engaged in email conversation with someone at the bajillion dollar hotel I'm staying in my first night near the Delhi airport and have finally gotten him/her to reveal to me the meaning of the phrase "appropriate transfers have been arranged." Their website stated they had an airport shuttle. How would I get the shuttle? I wondered. Would I have to call the hotel? Would I have to go outside and stand on the curb at 11pm while people tried to "help" me? Would someone be waiting in the lobby with my name on a card? It took several emails back and forth to learn that someone will be waiting in the arrivals lounge with my name on a card. YEA! Unfortunately I have not been able to obtain any rupees. The local supply has dried up. I have to call around today and tomorrow to see if any returning traveler has cashed in rupees, or I'll have no money to tip the person with my name on the card and look like a cad or bad person. There is an ATM in the hotel. Last resort. What is an appropriate tip? What is the exchange rate?

I got my shots. I think it's excessive to buy the steriPEN for $80 at REI when bottled water is available everywhere. Right? I'm not going out in the bush on an elephant. I'm going to the biggest city in Kerala. Why use commas when separate sentences are so punchy? I am currently in pursuit of noise-cancelling headphones for my flights, airplane ambient noise being high on my list of fatigue inducing bother. I bought some for $34 yesterday at Bartell's, brought them home, and Jim and I tested them by running the garbage disposal, dishwasher and his espresso machine. There was some noise reduction, but not as the box claimed 70% noise reduction. I took them back. I've looked online and there appear to be cheaper options than the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 ($350). Sennheiser sells the PXC-250 for about $100. Etymotic Research ER6 is another choice. My eyes are blurring. There's also JVC and Creative Aurvana. (not Nirvana.) Brookstone and Sharper Image sell their own brands. Who knows how good they are? Brookstone and Sharper Image say they are great! We are deep into an area of no interest to me - I just want peace for the hundeds of hours I'll be aloft.

Also for my flights I have purchased pressure hosiery, oh yes, and these will be so comfortable on arrival in India though my feet will not be the size of elephant hooves (feet?) which is a good thing. Also JetLag homeopathic remedy and some moisturizing solution to spray up my nostrils to prevent dry nasal passages, the cursed cause of inflight illness induction! YIKES!

1/23/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft

Do you guzzle or do you sip?
Ask around. Ask Roy, ask Dana,
let's go. Chop-chop.
Do you scream, rant, coo?
I'll know your answer by its odor,
your language by the lira.
Own disgruntlement or awe,
pay compliments or mortgages.
oh and so I'm Bambi
now, and what's the sum
of your parts? It's all enol,
grease monkey or mogul.
Moreover,
we've got enough rope
to you know go ape
among the sumac.
write AB or eta
we've sewn the same seam,
you, me, Morrison,
Archimedes and his screw.
von Leewenhoek's near
mirror, germs sending sos,
seen now, soon taboo.
Make me no Morse Code
and put me in no urn
send me to Oahu
in April or in Adar
I'd go there any sec.
Pull hard now on that prop
and throw out your meds.
Dig something living with that hoe.

Oh my goodness, here's a video of the University of Miami Women's Crew. View it! My daughter the athlete is the Assistant Coach of this team. My heart swells and soars.

10/18/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Draft


Never marmalade always jam
the story of a life without leis
without ever calling "Fore!"
the ability to conjure ice
without opening your freezer, Aria
without costume, amen without evil.
We do not need the Mesozoic
to remember living in dens.
Oh sigh you say she's
not even trying to forge,
I don't know she roams
through this poem off a pier.
My dears, here's your eggs.
Pitch 'em mesdames
if you're so sure of who you are.
Are the planets only balls
hurled out of another era
unpremeditated, minus mesquite?
GSAT, MCAT, PSAT
results dead without urns
and here's another beau geste
earnest in its way as essay
necessary in this heat as sari.
Did you catch them there that pair?
Do I need another messmate?
The answer once again isn't
no or I don't know go feel your oats
while you have the tune. Oh HAL.
House of me, chez
you you're never too busy
to fall down. Another round of I Spy?

1/1708 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft

All that cleans you is not soap
all who love cannot wed
all your alibis aren't ironclad
there are those who see thru
you raw as you are and hero
supermam tarzan liontamer emir
All who believe in NASDAQ have IRAs
All who listen don't hear mermaids each
lithe all impossible as psalms
When Scylla speaks does she rasp?
Do we care we're out of style?
On Donder Blitzen, Rudolph Cupid
and what do think of all this Wes?
I'm dangerous as moray eel
Hard pressed as an iron
near the Tannhauser Gate in the end
Don't we all seek Batty's sass?
All that underskins our ads
All the wincing of our age
All the treasures in your purse
All you love goes out of order
your dog and Depp, pals, Pitt
this is it (you knew I'd say) inmost
the utmost awful word now cool
now gone now charged as ion
All can get the wrong idea
All and any, Arnie, Anne
All the many loves of Sue
and you (groan) do you sort
wheat, chaff, doer from the deed?
Does it matter Mr. Mr. Mr. Mrs.?
All this fiddling all these eras?


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. - Ray Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Blade Runner

Last night I read at Hugo House where I haven't been for a year or so, not since the changing of management, but still it looked the same except the guy at the front didn't know me and vice versa. I was a few minutes early so there were barely any people and nobody who wasn't reading too, chairs around the little round tables, little stage with too high lectern and black wall behind, a line of wine beer and water bottles on the bar on the left side of the bar, kitkats, peanut butter cups and skittles on the right. A lot of us read. All WITS writers. Rebecca introduced us via anagrams of our names which was lively and fun. Not everyone timed their reading beforehand which always bothers me ever since a poet at Arizona AWP read forty five minutes so that Philip Levine had about ten without going over time. We were all women last night: poet, young adult author, poet, poet, poet reading memoir, children's nature writer, poet, and poet. Subject matter: Hanford Nuclear Reservation, high school love triangle at the Showbox, deep play, three gringas (putas) in Mexico, lesbians in Yellowstone's landscape, service dog coming of age story, Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans for so many, sex swearing and silent suffering. Time well spent.

Because I could not look you in the face
I used a macrolens and photographed your toes.
Our mother pretended you were like any of us
only lazy and trying to abuse her patience.
My sister who lived through worse she says
says you were diagnosed borderline paranoid
schizophrenic. At school they said you were
emotionally disturbed. The drill at home was we
ridiculed you, looked down our noses, ignored you.
my father pinned you down once in the kitchen,
a commotion of brussel sprouts and grunts.
Our father who as I was setting the table,
I lofted forksspoonsknives off a placemat trampoline
picked them off the floor and hit him again
but he wouldn't make a sound of his own at all.
He's a nice man my mother said, but
I sat in a chair and listened for hours. You
were downstairs yelling or playing your drums.

Today is Post #190, ten more days to #200. I may make cupcakes.

In the 6th grade today, we read a poem in Wu-Yen-Shih Meter. Say that again, out loud, Wu Yen Shih. Ah, now here is the poem:

Pools and Wells

Rain pools heed no dreams,
but wells, deep, reach far,
drink earth's chill dark streams,
tell us who we are.

I just sought the poet by typing in the title and first half of the first line. The first entry is about Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man" (best musical EVER) :

young ones peekin' in the pool hall window after school Ya got trouble, folks, right here in .... Oho, the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin' down the street ...

Next is a Walter de la Mare poem reference:

George Herbert Clarke, ed. (1873–1953). A Treasury of War Poetry. 1917. 56. The Pool Rings his Bells. By Walter de la Mare ...

on to H.G. Wells:

And far away beyond the ditches and pools and the heaps was a forest on the mountain flank ...... “‘I have taken no heed of any news for many days,’ I said. ...ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/w45tw/complete.html - 440k -

then George Sand:

The Devil’s Pool George Sand The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Vol. ...... Despite the Cold LITTLE MARIE seemed to give no more heed to the child’s odd ...www.scribd.com/doc/395560/George-Sand-Devils-Pool - 271k -

and from Lyrics and Comments:

Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow! Fear neither root nor bough! Tom goes on before you .... Sand and stone, and pool and dell Fare you well! ...

But I digress.

We continued writing Lunes in ELL classes which today was one large teeming noisy chaotic and productive hive. Here are some lunes by kids in the beginning and second level ELL classes (grades 6-8):

brick scream loud
chair fall down, cry out
loud, forgive brick.

***

ducks like rain
and Toyota Corolla in the
park as always.

***

Sun through snow
melt the cold of season
shine our day


***

I write my
story at my school and
at my house

***

I saw mother
in my heart and father
in my lung

***

sleep in New York
I will read in Monchasa
as you dream

***

the pretty princess
she is in the castle
she has toes

***

In Philippines there's
alot of fruit that they
planted and harvested

***

go to Africa
to the Heaven and boxing
the people's houses

***

Window is broken
wind is coming from outside
it is cold

***

Superman sleep flying
Batman sleep jumping and the
Spiderman sleep webbing

***

there's a book
that talks about a werewolf
that pushes rocks


****

These are all lunes, the rule for which is three lines, first line three words, second line five words, third line, three words

1/15/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft
Just So Story

When carpet was psychedic shag
green as your eye after a jab
from the boy behind you, a kind of mash
note for the tongue-tied, (his name was Carr,)
but he and the carpet belong ago,
like the Galicians' olla podrida
lost (it was food) to the French, or how alga
seem gone and then mushroom
green as a corroded room key
trapped where ogees
meet floor, while out the window mtns.
unless you, poor you, have gone to Fla.
And so this poem brays
memory, never keynote
or, let's face it, coming up for air.
We're off my dears to see not Wiz
nor stories of my childhood woe -
Stop writing on your notepad!
I'm here at behest of zest and color,
to load these words in this van
of sound and I hope sense, to mob
your mind with whimsy then scoot,
for I today ignore the padlock
to my deepest June Lockhart.
I'll leave the underworld to Odin,
I'll probe no plangent ache,
just what my dears is here to see
to do and what oh no is nono
I leave to you. She who woos
what wounds is not my favored spy
just so I'm here therefore I grew.

Back in the classroom this morning, with a 6th grade class that's learning about China and with two ELL classes who have just published a book with 826 Seattle. 826 Seattle has just won a golden apple award from the State of Washington. Yea them. Also they have a space travel store for those needing to provision themselves. Could that possibly be correct?

I have spent several teeth gnashing minutes on the NY Times website hoping to be able to get the crossword puzzle. I even purchased a one year crossword subscription but none of the activities I tried allowed me to fracking play the game so I could use it as the basis of a poem on this blog. Dang it. Now I have to depurchase the subscription too since I have to purchase some fracking widget to allow me to play online which I DO NOT WANT TO DO. Troglodyte (is that the spelling? ) that I am I thought I could print out and play the crossword puzzle using my antiquated pen (G2 Pilot, black). Even when I pushed the supposed "PRINT AND PLAY" button, no dice. I am not even that spazzed and jazzed about playing crossword puzzles in the first place. I just have trouble finding words to make poems and so use the puzzles to get words to get me going as I don't actually think I have any thoughts or ideas of my own until borrowed words kick me into gear. This was a problem for Peter Sellers, or sort of this was his problem. He thought he wasn't a person really, and needed a character to play to feel like a person. See how that is the same sort of problem? Mine is much less dire of course, unless you are a poet. This morning I said hi to a teacher I worked with earlier this year. Outside her room on big paper is this quote: "I, like my poem, am a work in progress." One of her sixth graders wrote that in her journal. Oh YEAH!

Gorgeous day with the mountain visible as I drove my sister to the airport so she can go back home to San Francisco. I finally got out for a walk about 3:30, aiming as directly as I could given houses and fences for a water view. Some days, most days looking at water makes everything better. Now the sun is down and the white house across the alley gleams sickly yellow like sheets that have been bleached too many times over the years. I have a space heater at my feet so my leg won't spaz out. I went on the walk sans snow pants and sans uggs boots. This is to say I went walking around the neighborhood dressed like everyone else, which was a boon for my sense that I am on the mend. I still don't want to prepare to teach tomorrow however. I want to lie about on a divan and have someone peel grapes for me. They could throw them against the window on my command for example if I didn't feel like eating them.

I've sent off six poems to meet whatever fate.
airplanes, vans with zipcodes on their sides
cinched canvas bags, conveyer belts,
white plastic mail crates, dump and sort
then into some grad student's hands.

1/11/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem
DANGER, It's a Brutal One

Finger to the counter I flatten another ant
things fall apart Yeats said, in the gyre
and I hasten that, hand bone hard as boot
I don't wonder anymore, girl or boy
I've gone killer, made that evil leap
I'm a Jack or Kelly the Ripa
of ant murder, I'm the Capriati
swing on solenopsis invicta, also
they multiply like bamboo shoots,
skydive foam atop my black and tan,
my logic trail along the baseboard, you'd act
not blue as Wilson after Hudson,
more Wallace in his black watch,
forward thrust of cornered boar or sex
you'd drop that mein of lamb and ewe
social justice aint for ants dear, hush,
punch me that ant trap from my kit
I'm no Buddhist, my hands meet
ant gut not in prayer. This Ira
is my American life. They ride fax
machine, ring glasses, add curds
to yogurt. This no way to garner
kudoes, though I'm brazen as RAF,
I lift floured arms like my Aunt Ida
drop rolling pin in time
no prisoners in my brig
I kill, brutal as cousin Jennifer
each spiky hair another ouch
I'm Jason steering the Argo
into the fray, I go, all to no fro
you bet I'll beg you to abet
to suss out their nest
and squash them. Yes.

1/10/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem

Here are today's rules: begin line with down word, end line with across word,
when there is no down or no across, only use the numbered word that exists.
And we're off:

Seer, squinch your saggy eyes, swab
wine from your viewing globe. Trace
arcs to messages in my palm
behind your porch light. Loretta
Lynn of visionaries, read my leaves. I
Eat your wisdom true as Dots,
ale to my fish plate till I'm fed up.

Enclosed with SASE is hope ebb
Bebe pellet, lock of faded hair.
Best to you and to your ketchup.
Sealed aeorgramme for Eire
Yale locks twice twined then bolted
Birth certificate born to nee
I wish so hard to be enchanted,
ago is where I'd go
beyond the range of CBS
from post everything I resign
my new apartment I'll unlet
answer the future No
Relay regrets, let 'em repro
Eddy Sonny Ernie who've
skiied or somehow sped
pin dropped, dis-
encamped from now
robes billowing, that red
cellophane over Asia
Kin of old that ends.
back out inch by inch
HBO can't hold me
views of the polluted bay
okapis revived, beating odds
views of the sinister abbey
ply or two of tp I'll leave. I
had a chance at humor
prep the ecto plasma
call forth the asp.

TOO FRICKING MUCH.