Sitting in the K Falls Library with ee cummings, Emily Dickinson and the Dickman twins. I've closed Michael's "The End of the West," a poem too raw to let me rummage through like I
usually do. He's brave, this brother. Matthew is more Whitmanesque, protective of
his readers. Michael's more f*(& you, this happened. Oh. What happened yesterday 7th period
(and I thought I was over this but apparently not, I can't stop telling anybody) was a direct
punch to the face, aslant only in that the wielder of the blow was shorter than the receiver. How hair trigger how match to sparkler how falling star fast what happened IS.
I said, "This has to stop." I said, "Stop!" My voice pitched low, I lunged towards what was now a bear hug, the room afire with adrenaline and desire for this to escalate. A troubled class,
ten boys. And where was the certified teacher? And what does a poet know to do?
I knew one thing: this had to stop. I made the boys separate. It stopped. The punchee energized and giddy, the puncher laid his head on the desk partly hidden by his jacket, the room awash in racket that lifted like geese, laboriously and continuously, the rest of the period.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK here in the Klamath Basin.
I photocopied pages of the story 9th graders read
and had to write 5 paragraph essays about. Handed
them the pages, handed them Sharpees. Had them
make BLACKOUT POEMS. Amazing to me that
some didn't wield sharpees, but all gave them back
today. I borrowed 9 from the office, need to give
those back. I prefer to be the endless font
of whatever you want, but physical resources
are limited. "Can I have a quarter?" Jeremy asked
at break. "I don't have any money," I said, then
checked the zippered pocket of my teaching bag.
"Nope. Sorry." He wanted to buy a muffin.
I wanted to give him a quarter. And a million
Sharpees and a good life and dental work.
There is so much more to school than school.
There are germs in the air boring into ears
I'm not talking about microbes. Or earbuds.
I don't even know what I'm talking about,
though my nose hairs detect toxins, head
throbs. Come on, just wield that sharpee over
the page. If you don't know what you're doing
GREAT - please, don't know what you're
doing, it'll be more interesting. Substitute
not too awful, ponytail down his back, my age.
He wants to be a writer, to write a novel or
poems, he could if he had time. "It's all about
showing up at the writing table," I said.
He comes from a family of professional
musicians, can't tune, he said, the radio,
but spent did he say four or forty years
studying math? How come it's all about us
adults and not the kids with the sharpees
on their desks, talking about homecoming?
Nostos is Greek for homecoming, Nostoc
is the genus name for mare's eggs. I saw
thousands of Nostoc yesterday from
my kayak on Spring Creek, held three,
broke one open accidentally, like a water
balloon whamming against the patio floor.
No smell, the colony warty green orbs
dotting the rubbery substance filled
with water. Water bubbles from sand
or ash from I don't know where. The head
of the Creek is a dead end, Spring Creek
is fed by underground springs, like
some children must be to survive.

Vagus Nerve - heard about it on NPR, wrote down "Vegas nerve"
because the commentator called it "The Wanderer".
I Googled (correctly spelled) vagus nerve and discovered
a TLA for a new way your life can be messed up by your body.
VNI, which is associated somehow with hiatal hernia,
and which made my eyes glaze. The Vagus Nerves, there
are two, interconnect your cranium with your vital organs.
The dictionary asked me to look up "vague" - which means
in addition to what you know something about wandering.

Uncertain, tentative, and the 9th graders chat and chat. Not ALL of them. It's important to walk around, to see what kids are doing with their assignment. It's important to remember that the loud kids aren't the whole class. It's important not to ignore T. It's important to remember what I love about the juniors. NO seniors. Sadly. I worked with them two years, will wave at them in the hall. Not as much history with the juniors, just last year, a smattering the year before. First days don't tend to be stellar. I feel ignored, sidelined. I am not magical, why does it matter that I come back/came back? What does the new teacher think? She can't talk during prep since she'll be subbing for a teacher who is not at school 6th period. They'll pay her "comp time" - "I'm not sure what that is," she says. After school, creative writing club. After fifth period I'll find a place for us to meet.

One 11th grade boy wrote a poem for his recipe for a fiction stew. It contained a great line, and then a very poor line. He read it aloud to the group while part of the group hung over each other's desks and chatted, as though we weren't doing anything worthy of their attention. Are we doing something worthy of their attention? My reverence for fiction, for the word, for the possibilities reading and writing can bring comes up against the kid who says, "I do not write." He copied the Four Truths for Writers onto his folder. He doesn't do ORIGINAL writing. He doesn't care if he flunks, is daring me to be upset. "I don't care," I say, as I always say. At this school if I made it my mission to capture everyone who says "I won't!" I wouldn't have time for the kids who write. Which saddens me.

Favorite word lists? Forbidden word lists? No more sex or peyote or smoking bowl stories - that last cleverly disguised by the bowl being smoked containing "skunk". I didn't play acronymble with anyone. Let's do that with 10th grade. I taught them last spring.

There were hilariously imagined scenes in a few of the stories, and of course B.'s was deep, long and ended gracefully, though the ending was neither neat nor happy. So glad to give her space to write.

If I am true to teaching writing, I will love writing in public, I will stand up for good writing, and sing its praises, I will read my own writing with gusto even if kids don't have the manners to pay attention. If I am going to go into the classroom, I have to remember where I set my pen and my water bottle and who genuinely wants my attention. It is not my job to second guess whether my work is "good" - it is my job to do the work.

Road trip in rain, dark,
imposition of fog,
expulsion of breath,
inability to see increased
as grip on wheel.
No Kerouac, Jack Cassady,
just me in a yellow VW
hoping to pull in
to the La Quinta Inn
in Bend, Oregon.

---

White pelicans sighted
on Agency Lake, rain
has stopped, cumulous
billow above Campus Drug,
I sip a genuine latte
at Matteo's by OIT.

The man has left at last
who said, "what
they call child abuse, we
call discipline at my house,"
along with
his child who played
behind the half wall
by the table where I sit.

He invited his table companion
to Chiloquin to shoot guns
this weekend. Come on up!
Borrow my gun, or my wife's.

Train Mountain last night,
a fund raiser, where I rode
the little train, adults single
file on little padded seats
without sides - Cessna pilot
seats, they fold down
when not in use
which was nice
what with the rain.
Little towns and a full size
campground first come first
served where you can stay
all summer and volunteer
to work on the track and
the little towns in all scales,
the little deer and smaller
horses along the route,
the long tunnel we passed
through made from drain tiles.

The vegas nerve is called
"the wanderer" - its branches
wander all over the body.

Magpies this morning, two
sea gulls as I drove along
North Klamath Lake towards
town, a white egret in flight
with its ankles tight together
trailing behind.

I've sacked my stock of readers

and see my followers decline

am I in decline here on the fainting

couch, lumbering towards what?



Jets ply sky above me, I've finished

THE HELP, and who am I to tell

anybody how to live or what to give

a rip about?



Fall in love three times a day

my poetry advice book counsels.

I write that down, but don't

take that crap from nobody.



Nobody can tell me what to do,

not even me. Books lean

along my shelf and I've gotta

come to myself before I leave



To do what good I can through

poetry. My love for words.

My joy in jostling them to make

them sing so I'll take wing.


See that's the thing so easy

to forget. That all the time

the things I love are smack

in front of me.



--



!

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for 8/14 on 8/17 in the Wallowas


Skate quickly over the soft spots
calculate often but smell the calla
edge your lawn and dream Egypt
believe Bach and Bartok, the basics
beset you, your dreams are knives
that skid or cut downhill like skis.
Identify skinks, forget the martins.
I think you forgot to count that lap.
In Renaissance we were beset by boils
the best of times for you Leona
Send your barbs aloft gentle angler
into this bone-cold stream. Drag
another river for the man, the van,
but he is somewhere dry, renamed.
Do not underestimate your demise
for I am bossy and not your son
Oh hon the fan blades pull me nicer
pass the ice and disregard the datum
it's a one or zero, not a two
and you are who I've gained.
Energy pulses, the egrets emit
nothing extraordinary, the oriole
does not live here, you are Aries
bow and all. Drop your shawl and call
your extraterrestrial minions.
---

A little bit garbled and odd, the above, as am I. Yesterday we drove from Pullman to Lewiston, Idaho, then up and up and then he stopped the car. I thought, "a lookout, yes!" Such a good idea, and I brought out my camera. He unhooked his bicycle from the rack, and rode the winding road to the bottom. And now we're in a coffee shop in Joseph, Oregon.

Yesterday we hiked up from Wallowa Lake - I led, I'd been here a month before, up the Joseph Trail, except I didn't take the right turn, and we hiked up and up, and the suspension bridge over the west fork of the Wallowa River did not materialize no matter how I willed it. We'd been walking more than two hours when I asked backpackers coming down the trail if the bridge was just ahead. No it wasn't, no matter how many details I singled out to inquire about. I so wanted Jim to see that bridge. The backpackers said there was a great lookout over the river about 35 meters ahead, so we went, and took pictures. We were planning to get up early this morning to hike up to stand on that suspension bridge, but when we woke up it was 8:35.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Draft for 8/9/10


This cloud with a black belly is not a liar
nor is the mechanism of the T-bar.

We got our fan mail at the flea market
the summer we went off the radar.

The sight of blood or is it beetroot
threw my steering wonky at the go carts

The answer to what ails you is a miter box
a half wine barrel full of bearded iris.

The lake is calm and then it roils
which spoils us when we should have reeled

We've healed and well-heeled study rim
behavior in Antarctica

Oh Spartacus your skirt is short and noisy
you grin like someone who could split the atom

when all we need is money for these cans.

The sky is hazy as if I've only my lazy eye
to see it, though both eyes are open, if
not attentive. Twenty miles uplake
the Rainbow Bridge fire is still burning,
the wind has gently turned so smoke
filters down like vague longing, like
insufficient desire, not the ravages
of fire. Our friends watched a cougar
lap at the lake between their house
and their garage. They say this has
changed them. Who has it changed
them? They are cautious already. Will
the dog never again be allowed out?
The apricots are gone, and the grapes
inadequately ripe. Tomatoes plump
in half wine barrels on the sunny side.
I nip the tips from basil crowns
that long to go bitter and to seed.

Poem with One Syllable Words
(except for the title)

"Scram!" I scream.
I mean, "come here."
I mean, "I love you."
I mean, "help!"

I don't know who I am
so I Google the blanket octopus
that unfurls its Batman cape
and nods its ungainly head
another sci fi brainy alien

My daughter met manatees
at the boathouse in Miami,
they backfloated, drank
from the hose, slow-bodied,
drowsy-witted, the big one's
back striped by the blade
of a speed boat.

Two robins fight or court
I don't know them
A third flies in
below a cloud shaped
like a fish. The sky
is whitest behind the hill.
A fishing boat shifts
on the lake.
Mist moves away
from brightness.
Another bird produces
a tweet that repeats
that seems out of its control.
The robin stutter stops
across the points of light
that tip the grass blades
walks a step
two foot hops
stops. Drops beak, misses.

The breeze rises,
the sun a whole ball
separate from the hill.
The robin hunkers, dips its yellow beak,
misses again. I do that too.
Catch and release, yes, but
miss and release too.

Old Crossword Puzzle Poetry Draft from 7/9/10

What define us are our acts
sitting in the shade with ades
or driving home in Larks
we stare into the night - there's Ursa
while elsewhere there's a crash in Ulster
and someone's found a shard of gneiss
under the refrigerator. How acidic
your ade, how tryingly
you shake shaggy head, so much ado
and you not even Kafka.
Oh sweet, oh entres nous
I left my change on Elm
this life this lemon not a test
what's best? Who knows? Toy
with blocks or check your lists
we try, we die, we break our necks
ah love ah life how genial
to watch the snake uncoil
to try or not to cope
to run like hell like Adam.
A baby's grin my alibi
your wisdom dusty as sage
and no ink in my pens.

--

Well trusty rusty that and on and on
we hanker more - what more lovely
than time and air in both my lungs?
And thus begun I wander willy nilly
cross this lit up screen - oh peanut, oh bean,
when you were green and all this world
our cloister - shucks kids, its so soon over
what more matterful than that my
days are full of you and sun beats down
and Mars grows daily closer.

Poem begun with a line by Emily Dickinson


Bring me the sunset in a cup
sunrise in a red lacquer bowl.
Bring me another day in which
to loll and listen, dig in the garden,
pluck apricots heated by sun,
bend forward to suck juice -
another namaste.
Bring me the clear August night
under a new moon, Milky Way
to wander past the Pleides and Mars.
Soon enough it's Autumn
the sky that wakes me deluded by fog.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for Thursday, July 8


He says the thoughts don't count, it's acts
that move the planet. I sip lemonade
as the sun gets out of the way for Ursa.
We've waxed ridiculous as we've sat
in lawn chairs or the sand. Entre nous
we've taxed each other tryingly
vying for right or the shinier toy.
Ah, girl and boy - (thank Kafka
for the cockroach). We dis-ease the elm
in flinging at each other - Errol
Sheik and sheik, nobody cowers
here. We butt heads like wrynecks.
Let's turn to thoughts, they're most congenial
and even if menial, beautifully uncoil
or roil inside so I appear to cope.
There's hope for us malingerers
I don't know exactly where. Oh Adam,
were you here and what's your alibi?
We stalk the sky where there's no sage
or any hope in clouds. Raise pens
and praise our luck - our words are sonic
and a tonic more trusty than a tsar.

Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for July 7. 2010


Did the Romans think in italic?
Did the shah?
Italians on the sea of blu,
and you all glorious and linear.
In Triest where we were held up
in the fantasy - not the eeriest -
I was so anxious
I couldn't even aim.
What's to gain except the pot?
why not serve the suava
or rot? If I was Kim
and you were Gunga Din
would we still wind up in Joliet?
Crepuscular or trepid
The hirsute eat more iron
Her suits required irons
Their curtains were chinz not iron
and me without Yvonne.
Walk on.

--

The Beetle saga continues, with a probable happy ending.
I started it, uh, didn't start it two mornings ago.
My hypothesis - it was parked on too steep an incline
and couldn't get fuel. Jim called our mechanic and lo,
the mechanic thought the same. Jim parked it on the flat
and no action. We left it to the alchemy of time and
played with our weekend guests. This morning Jim
came inside and said, "Guess what?" He had taken
the front of the car in his two hands, shaken it vigorously
and then the car - STARTED! I've just driven over
the pass, uneventfully, and am now going to drop it
at our mechanic's for diagnostic testing and the various
voodoo the computerized hoo hah puts the car through.
Right now I'm having coffee in the horrifying too-muchness
of the Bellevue Whole Foods. Jim's in a meeting
and I don't want to sit in the car all alone as darkness falls
out there in car fixing land.

AHHH, to go home and rip open the envelopes from
the held mail and clean the house and then head south
and east and east and east to Summer Fishtrap!

Life is more than slaps and jabs
do not waste your time - taste
marigolds - set your barbecue to char
oh the oriole, the oracle, the oreo!
There's nothing you that's usual!
Cha cha, tango and the hora!
Cicadian is a nicer rhythm than the Roth
We've packed false noses, do not act
amazed we've parted seven seas
and named the thousand islets
would you've preferred to hunker
in the molded chair? Sing O'Hare
and Logan, do not persist naive
your life will end do not pretend that's nada
Depress me not and do not do the dirty
solo. Bar your doors to Kirby men and Avon
what do you crave on? It won't make you ill.
is you is or is you aint them doers?
waves waste shores there're more to trek.
There's more than cling to clemency.
Your flaming wang's decree.
Ah me, ah you, what else?
We've swatted, spat and sat
enough - shipboard now, avast!
strip all your gears and sprockets
Meadowlarks to you we're merely
crystal in the geode.
Your grayly beard won't make you Lear.
Oh bore me not, we've tossed our ores
for naught why not be otters?

Allen Braden, who teaches in Tacoma, on Verse Daily yesterday.
The sound and the sense
ahhhhh.

New York Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for 6/30/10

To wit to woo to be or not to be a twit
to glide across a stage a sage like Glover
We shun the drums and toss away your boa
Twine spells to rout the noxious weeds and Reno
rose is a rose is a rose no matter you rename
and fame was what we didn't want - remember?
Alas the cherries bloat - if only it were dry
what can we try, sky closed as shuttered inn
and bins loom empty dark while some
retreat to godthrown fears, that's ceded,
oh my penly dears, my lambchops.
The cloudy sky has turned us navy
and you, oh nothing I would take in lieu
for any Boolean cerulean indigo hue.
amethyst in the geode, and you my ore
my heaven duck my light-bearing eleven.

As the Barge pushes up lake under an overcast sky, here are some word pair definitions:

elegy: a sad poem, especially for soomeone who has died. from Greek elegos
eulogy: a speech or piece of writing that praises someone highly. To eulogize or eulogise is to praise highly. from Greek eulogia, praise (we know Greek logos means word)

propensity: tendency to behave in a certain way. From Latin propensus "inclined"
tendency: 1. an inclination to behave in a particular way. 2. a group within a larger political party or movement

Huh. (All definitions from Oxford Dictionary of Current English. The book.)


Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft for Tuesday June 29, 2010

Malvolio in his tights the world's a stage for olio
refresh your caches full - croxetti and fine cocoa
You adore all words, they bathed you sore in utero
List birds and rivers. Say amethyst, say Cree
Your tongue has territory too how vast an area
an aria to every book nonsense to lit
Issa, Chaucer, epic poetry or saga
write a raga to the shores of Iwo Jima
eulogize your rat faced dog, it's all okay
pen words to and with what you adore
What else? What more? Oh words you are the cat's meow
the mother lode the goose's golden egg the priceless ore
for you have aged more well than Stephen Rea
if out damned spot all greed and screed we'd oust
what better flow than this unless it's tidal
for truth winds through its mobius strip but atom
split from wit and wonder yeast will rise.