I am going to put some poems I have been writing over the past year on this blog during the next week or so.

They all bear some kind of Raven imprimatur, although he says poetry is not his bag.

AFTERNOONS WITH LEO AND SOPHIE IN CASA ALTA
For the spirit of Leo Kenney; Oct. 10, 2007

After my classes
in the university:
the real world of art
is watching Leo painting,
smoking many cigarettes,

drinking way too much
red wine, mixing pop music,
I Ching and sunset
on Elliott Bay—Sophie
a tangerine lioness

on the windowsill.
We’ve lost that lovin’ feeling?
Yes, it’s gone, gone, gone—
and with it underpinnings
of mystical expression,

the swinging sixties:
Tavola and bubble gum
openings, Leo
in his patent leather cap
from Carnaby Street

dancing with me on
a houseboat’s deck, and Sophie
dreaming of mice
like diamonds. As the sun sets
on the day’s painting drying

on the tabletop,
on the pale flowers fading
in a Chinese vase—
dropping their seeds for the birth
of a new painting, a new

ideology:
make art, not war, while jungles
of jungles of Vietnam
and Bolivia are blooming
with hope and revolution.

And it all goes wrong.
Yesterday makes 40 years
since the death of Che.
Leo and Sophie are gone.
But paintings remain: the seeds.