quote unquote 

cautiously optimistic 

i truly believe 

that the glass 

is half-full. 

of poison.

--rob walker [original cliches; ginninderra press, 2016]

the spag fact

 

haiku

bees in the tansy 

yes                 no

haiku

doomscrolling on my phone

                     another early spring night

raccoons sharing kibble on the porch

haiku

third year of the plague 

early spring     queued at Safeway

some masked some not in mask

jean-paul sartre's favorite song

this is the scariest movie

forget the exorcist [1973] or any of the hostel, saw or insidious movies.  this flick, threads [1984] is one of the scariest movies ever produced.  this flick is a harrowing journey leading up to & 15 years after a nuclear war between the u.s. & the former soviet union & the effects of the nuclear war in the northern english town, sheffield.  watch it.  & remember that the threat of nuclear war is still among us.

quote unquote 

A lasting consolation is 

that through all this wasted time 

I've not stopped dying. 

-richard o. moore 'fragments' [writing the silences; u of ca press, 2010]

Pale Blue Dot - You Are Here (Carl Sagan)

32 years ago today voyager 1 turned its camera toward earth at a distance of 6 billion km & snapped one of the most iconic pictures in the history of our civilization.  the picture was made at the request of the late astronomer carl sagan.  our earth, our only home, is but a pixel of blue.  dr. sagan was as much a poet as he was a scientist.  i am in awe of his speech about our pale blue dot.  his cadence, his voice, his word choices.  it is masterful.  

below is a video that incorporates imagery to match dr. sagan's oratory.  the pale blue dot brings me hope because i am alive & sentient at this extraordinary time to witness such marvels of science & technological achievement that allows us to explore the planets & stars & brings us a smidgen of knowledge of the cosmos & our place in it while at the same time making me feel that i am less than a mote of dust.  there is still so much to explore.  every new discovery in science opens another window to things we still have yet to discover & learn. we know very little.  we are smaller than small.  we barely know our own place.  this photograph & sagan's beautiful prose poem are objects of our own humility.  our home in the cosmos.  along with an intelligence that evolved from the universe as we gaze upward we also gaze inward.  as we learn more about the universe, we also learn about ourselves.  i hope we learn not just to survive our follies but to thrive in discoveries.  poetry has a place in this too.  for it is in song we praise.  our little blue pixel, & everything in it, orbiting an ordinary star in a lonely arm of the milky way.  one galaxy among potentially trillions of galaxies in this vast vast cosmos.   

it's friday nite & you wanna hear the great sam cooke!

skate or die!

in the early days of this blog i'd joke about founding my own gang of middle-aged/elderly skateboarders  dubbed SKEAZERS, a portmanteau for skaters & geezers.  anna came up with the name.  i think it's brilliant.  i love skateboarding & skating culture.  i was a punk rocker who came of age with skatepunk.  i had my own stick, a santa cruz red dot with independent trucks & the wheels i can't remember, perhaps powell-peralta bones?  

i sucked at skating.  a couple of our punk acquaintances turned pro.  i remember seeing the great pro skater steve caballero one night on the k st mall break dancing among all the assembled punks.  but despite my own suckiness, for i've always been an uncoordinated goof, i loved hanging with my friends at the half-pipe, empty swimming pools & other myriad designated street skate places.  

& i never did found SKEAZERS for i know if i got on a board at my age i'd kill myself.  & not in a fast painless way.  no, my death would be slow & humiliating & a kneeslapper of physical comedy.  my tombstone would be LOPEZ - WHAT...?  with a pair of rolled back eyes & the shoulders scrunched up in the i-told-ya-so posture in bas relief.  

still, i love watching skaters.  & i delighted in this photo-essay published in the guardian about young indigenous women skateboarders in bolivia.  they skate in the traditional bolivian polleras, the bulky skirts worn by the indigenous women, cholitas, & bowler hats.  polleras were an object of discrimination.  these young skaters take back their heritage & wear polleras & bowler hats as a form of resistance when they skate.  these young women call their group, ImillaSkate.  

long may these women shred

skate or die!

let us praise the poet jaan kaplinski

i mean DAMN!  kaplinski was a blogger too.  you can find a link to his blog in my blogroll.  i've been wanting to hear what kaplinski would say re the risk of war with russia vs ukraine the u.s. & much of the rest of the world.  kaplinski's last post was published on july 11, 2021, in russian.  he was a polyglot & wrote in several languages including english, russian & i believe chinese.  tonight, i google his name & find that the poet died at age 80 on august 8 2021.  fuck!  i can't tell you in this short text how much jaan kaplinski's work influenced my own writing.  his simplicity & plain style might be evident in my own brand of antipoetry.  i can tell you how i discovered kaplinski.  i was a muck around student at university.  i spent more time in the stacks of the library than i did in the classroom making one magical discovery after another.  i am long attracted to poetry in translation.  particularly, at the time, the post-war eastern european poets.  i discovered the wandering border translated by kaplinksi, riina tamm & sam hamill published by copper canyon press in 1987.  kaplinski's simplcity sent me soaring as well as his buddhism that helped in the making of his poems.  i was hooked.  & have been since that day i pulled that book off the shelf in the university library when i should've been studying for my classes   poetry is ordinary as kaplinski's says in a poem regarding a day in the life of the poet, 'it is like this, or a little bit different/it was like that, or a little bit different.'  kaplinski also had the honor of having an asteroid named after him: 29528 kaplinski.  & because we live in the age of digital reproduction you can find a wonderful documentary about kaplinski, the kaplinski system, by clicking here,  

i fucking love this man!

i heard this song on the p.a. of a local garden store as anna & i had spring fever & shopped for plants & flowers & man! do i love marvin gaye his voice the sexiness of this tune when i heard this song i said to anna, the love of my life, this be my jam!

reminder

poetry is not a career it is a choice of life a way of living to paraphrase the poet eileen tabios poetry as a way of life poetry is ordinary & astonishing simple & beyond comprehension poetry is like yr first kiss as you held yr child for the very first time that moment of sex when you disappear into the cosmos as you delight in the delight of yr partner poetry is like the pleasure of shitting that movement & release as you sit for a moment silent on yr toilet thinking of getting to work on time what you might have for dinner & how the size of the universe is almost beyond comprehension poetry is extraordinary & ordinary like our lives as we be in the world wondering how the hell did we get here

haiku

dry winter, garden hose in hand 

                 among the potted plants

                 another step forward 

a large pile of raccoon shit