My mother takes me on tour, saleswoman in tow
my father calls it "the mausoleum," mugs as for FBI
my mouth is shut as though threatened with soap.
The sky above Cougar Mountain glows dull opal.
I remember the winter fort my father and I dug
snow for by the swingset miles west of here. Halo
clouds memory. They're eighty, too late to redo -
downsize first before this move that makes it all
real. Downpayment's next, they've given oral
nods. Its all decisive. I am used to muddles.
Soon we'll Goodwill garage and basement scrap.
My father calls it "the prison" but he's exerted
words as she's made plans. He'll sign the check.
He's lodged his protest, will move and lapse
to late night solitare computer glow. Each atom
wound around its axle spins. This place
a lovely isle "hermetically sealed" he says, etc.
this heaven they have saved so hard to earn
Upscale ski lodge, hospital tucked upstairs it's got
fine dining, health club, library, trendy art glass,
bathroom emergency pull cords shown with tact
its somewhat act this active living while they bide
awee towards death, and yet.

3/28 Sheffer Crossword Poem Draft



I pull it from the oven careful in mitts
when that one's sold paste the red dot
There's better hot water at the spa
we love the Hunt Club but we ate in
Pablo and Pindar immortalized the ode
I profer regrets that everybody has
calf with three legs bound at the rodeo
Bindweed, Loosestrife, Dyer's woad
Sunday in the Park, The Ironers
all who publish are not male
I'd rather spite my nose than coo
Vodka stinger for Elaine, get me a mai tai
Spears to tell it all till she goes splat
cut a figure, up, above, a rug
if I love the book I read the intro
what you've never owned you can't resell
you'll know barbarians by their hoards
hold me tight to your chest don't be a miser
you imagine flute but blat the tuba
fifty ways to leave your habit
the heroes of our film are those who rob
I keep a shrine at home for Owen
condo on the magma in Hawaii
jointed goatgrass, puncturevine, millium
You be Lone Ranger, I'll be your scout
You play Saint-Saens, I stumble over Sousa
this room is empty but not for let
I cannot place exactly what I'm for
nobody warned me at the onset.

Last night the culminating reading for the school I've worked with since 1992. Yes, 1992. Not these particular kids, who didn't exist in 1992. They're fifth and sixth graders - and poets. I handed each a poetic license, entitling them continue to write and revel in poetry. One of the kids came up to me afterwards to check out the meaning of revel. One mother asked, "They wrote those poems?" "Yes," I said. "Except for A.," she said. "He wrote his too," I said. "But you said he memorized it," she said. "He wrote it and then he memorized it for the reading," I said. "I can't imagine those words coming from him," she said, at which point I realized A. was her son. Every year there's one sixth grader who is so truly sad our poetry making/reading time is over she/he gives me a touchingly awkward goodbye speech and hug. Here's what this year's fellow traveler, a boy, wrote and read at the reading:

Ode to Poetry

Traditional

Ode to poetry
the awesome power of blah
a river of words
leaving people in awe

a picture may be worth 1000 words
but 1000 words is one great picture
cutting, crafting, working words
make a wordily overture

Rhyme

Poetry is an art as some might agree
true poets that is to a certain degree
but my goal is, surely you'll see
to make other people believe like me

Haiku

Poetry is fun
it isn't true poetry
if it isn't fun

Discipline is key
strong nouns, strong verbs, strong writing
rhyme sometimes won't work

Come With Me

Come with me
to the place
where there is poetry
don't grab your keys
you're already there

Traditional

there it is, that's it
I know that that was short
but I was kind of hoping
you'd be the poetry sort

in the humongous hole of poetry
I've only shown you a dimple
it may look just like building words
but I can tell you, poetry isn't simple

-B.

Here's the poem the mom didn't recognize as her son's:

My Mind

My mind is a mass of incandescent gas
a giant nuclear furnace
where hydrogen turns to helium
with a temperature of 17 degrees

-A.

as Hamlet knew to be is not to do and
if you've gone behind the shed
you know what clings to you like odor
unless you're alpha dog, a Leo
honey bees desert the hive
you left the door wide open
your missing eye won't make you Odin
all that staggers in your stead
cacophony begins with gavels
we claim too many gods to seat
you're not the princess and the pea
emir bowing to the east
which brings us to the vole
we are the proles with tails to wag
mucking lodges as they ski
for all our thorns we won't meet Herod
Caspar Milktoast Mitty not one ace
Used Fleetwood Prowler bachelor pad
Ramen fills the cart not orso
ground-bound as emu
we've no Aunt Bea or Opie
doff porkpie or fedora
you will never reign as champ
a perfumery of leis
did not turn you someone else
you have a turn, it's not the end.

Received an email from a colleague (with an mfa in poetry btw) that included the phrase "we're fast encroaching on national poetry month" and I think to myself jezus h god in a lampshade why the fracking he#(* do I take seriously the rejections I get when supposedly educated supposedly language loving people don't take the time and brain to use our language with attention. I know this person was not writing tongue in cheek nod nod wink wink but earnestly. I'm a little disheartened. Do I have an audience? Can they read?

I spent two hours this morning looking for a place to take five or six poems. A couple of weeks ago I sent 16 poems to Alaska. They said they wanted up to twenty. I send work every Saturday and look forward to it, which is funny, given that in past years I've sent a flurry once every six months unless someone asked me to send them work or someone local had a cool/funny/weird submission idea - tee shirts, bookmarks, bus placards. With sending work every week, it doesn't matter if one week I have a brain fart and send strange poems or poems inappropriate to the journal, because the next week I'll be sending somewhere else so the stakes aren't as high as when I was throwing poems to the one and only wind I could ever trust I could generate - would I build steam a second time in the year? I couldn't trust that I would. I circled contests in Poets & Writers and sent with thousands of other desperate once or twice a year submitters. I felt prostrate. I get excited now, thinking about who I'm going to send to, about what I'm going to send. Maybe some journal - I'm sending to many more now that I don't have to do it all at once - will take my work. If not, at least a lot more undergrads are reading my work.

3/22 Sheffer Puzzle Poem Draft

When the rains come, he marches us two
down the squelching trail . The view
is stunning but the stench has me rapt.
The brain is wider than the dust bin
and all the world's a bell jar
its so dark we dare not stare to sky.
Before the wonder bra, before the lei
all that's grim that will come after
he steers by sextant and weathervane
we live on hardtack and pesto
there are no tracks to put an ear
to. We believe in radius and ulna.

3/21/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft


Caveat-Containing Epigraph
you gotta read these babies fast cuz I'm yanking them from the site
as I revise and send them out into the vast poetry-in-print universe
for I do believe I do believe


up the rutted trail tromped the laden ass
musical with metal pots not even a tail to wag
prehensile ears heard grins on every face he met
but that's a portent for another age
like Egypt's fall involved a viper
we've had court cases and president for ape
and no one sweet as Jack to Rochester
cars toddle through potholes as we sit
we count comets with our toes in Yukon
flash our gold encrusted sash
we've been there too
up through the crenellated pine
we gotta leap or fester
gather rosebuds to our chests or plunk
piano in dingy parlors, taste
cardboard or cardamom, the jester
laughs at you pal
seven league boots across the seas
jeeze dive into it with all our mites
the strobe light's lit we've got the stage
greens in our teeth, berries now for Sal
Dostoyevsky peels another onion
it's awful quiet under sod.

PONTOON NUMBER TEN

Floating Bridge Press has come out with a double anthology of Washington State poets for their tenth anniversary - a "best of" section of poems from the first nine years, and the selected poems for year ten. My poem, nothing to hold onto, is included! They have also published an anthology of poems from Metro's poetry on the buses project, which you can buy at the same site. Mine, from 1999, wasn't chosen. Wah. But still.

Literacy Night at HIMS last night. I got all the little anthologies produced for three classes - including the one which has two books in one, each upside down to the other, and not the same number of pages, and with COLOR photos of the kids reading their poems so that the stakes were frickin high at Kinkos when I pushed that copy button. I ended up having to purchase a long armed stapler for $32 bucks, but there's a scam everywhere to keep you coming back. At Kinko's there's the educators discount of 15% to lull me into spending $200 on spec, hoping for reimbursement (I know now IS coming,) and at Office Max by I-5 in Wallingford (pass Open Books and wave at John and Christine,) their come on is that if you, an educator, sign up on line for their program, you get money added to your account for next time. There will, I know, be a next time, so I'm in, but I much prefer the cleaner percentage discount rather than the buy more get more later American way idea.

Speaking of the American way, I have not heard Obama's entire speech on race, but what I've heard rang so calm-headedly honestly true I was elated. Nobody in politics has talked this seemingly frankly about race in forever. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in a different era and with different goals (and was a PREACHER.) David Horsey's political cartoon in this morning's PI hit the heart of the matter, Obama calling for whites to give up their security blankets of prejudice and racism and blacks to give up their security blankets of rage and resentment.

3/8 Sheffer Puzzle Poem Draft

Life was easier before we were woken
vertical energy of the a-frame
nobody fussed was it truth or virago
except for Iago who was, this is a bracer,
real only on stage or in escrow
loggers boistrous with lagers
if you were in town you rooted for our team
and wood nymphs wandered Aden
before our lives were writ
but to return I'll need an aide
someone more loyal than son or sib
who I might like more than Ike
onto the stage strides Obama, balm
euphony from start to ciao
we scratch that seven year itch
and twitch for sonny to begone. Maids
and lads we want to scream out yes
for years have laid low
quagmired in Cheney's eddy
history pronounces worse than sad
and none of us can hide
we used more om's than ohms
to resist, want new iconic
mystery to raise and make up
for Hoss and Joe we need the Greene
man with that Spencer energy
ah to be legendarily herded.
--

here's why political poetry is awful.

You gotta love JP Patches if you grew up in Seattle - there's a project to put up a statue with pavers all around to celebrate him. If you recognize any of the following, you gotta contribute:

Patches Pal
ICU2 TV Set
Gertrude
Esmerelda
The City Dump
Ketchikan the Animal Man
Miss Smith

Chris Weems, the man behind the clown, is dying of cancer. Crap.

3/7/08 Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft


Anticipate and act all day
coil tightly like a snake or perm
remember phone dial
pull on finger, New Haven
where you saw your father laze
your dog at heel, collective allele
your answers don't lie aft
set type, your els and ems
be braver than you're craven
bring on those midnight beads
smuggle in the answer key
green acres broad as Eva
Scotch as steelcut oats
Mother of Berries before the lid
slides to I'll bet the pair
we've every red print Ace
Give me this day my daily pen
the value's in the dally
in the valley we'll be shaven
and run away from her
but that is neither plum nor egg
you've time to yack in Yakima
it's all immediate, slow down, shag
your poker face grave as raven
you really ought to give Iowa
a nod or quarry from your hunt
hammerhead of sea or peen
say unto others yes and yeah
for what you reap you've got to sew.

3/6/08 Sheffer Crossword Poem

A flicker plies phone wire. Air blower blats nigh -
bird lifts, peanut cheroot, wire twanging from the sag.
If I were a real birder I'd memorize mohawk or tam
chant genera et cetera. That's not my area.
This entire opening a ploy
to lull you we're observing spring biota
while underneath I've got Tim Burton
his Zappa hair but you don't care I'm not your mom
in spring at school I penned immolation, ossify
admired tattoos and tights and all the blazing glaze
that meant exempt to
not accept the wheel
that's life. I was on the outs
with every oven's pie
remote as Alps
(which may not be how would I know?)
hills and dales I refused to go o'er
in those old smelly springs ere
have a good day sent me semi
comatose. I never tongue kissed LSD.
This isn't about me you know
Jesus wanted me for a sunbeam but I'm a comet
that with luck will fizzle through dark not an
April afternoon oblivious fauna
humping as I orient
for flashy burn which is our
Millay though Ms. McGraw
faded fair in love
I would not be her muling heir.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

You can still get my book nothing to hold onto on Amazon.com. They also carry In My Life: Encounters with the Beatles, which has a personal essay of mine in it.

We gathered all the baskets but forgot about the eggs.
the kid on the hillside with the ewes renewed his sos.
water bottle spilled across my skirt, some become alar
but I'm among the stung ones hoping for a moment alee
before the ratcheting paw
a day in the shade in Napa
another risible ruminate.

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.