AWAY FROM US: For the Spirit of Roger Wolfe

The shadow of your smile
when you are gone
will color all my dreams
and light the dawn.
P. F. Webster

Big birds flying across the sky
throwing shadows on our eyes
leave us helpless....
Neil Young

1)

October moonrise
on empty DeKalb cornfields,
1968:
Year of assassinations,
police brutality and

driving Chicago
streets in bleeding August heat,
the Tet offensive
and leaving San Francisco—
away from Reagan’s attack

on education,
cats and kittens in the car.
Canadian geese
flying south with the frost, sun
falling into Scorpio:

We are far from home,
from the Magnolia Beach house,
childhood in Eastern
Washington wind and snowstorms,
apartment in the Richmond,

classes in the fog,
classic films at the DeYoung.
Now we’re in the core
of the country, where maples
bleed their leaves into the snow

and we lose the love
we found on Roanoke Street
gliding along the
Fox River in a kayak
that you built, easy as pie—
it just slid away
from us up an island bank
into the nettles.
There is a stinging when love
is replaced by a friendship

that isn’t easy:
Like ocean water hitting
a cut you don’t know
you have when you wade into
a perfect day at the beach.

2)

3 years was enough
of being blown around on
the icy streets
by winds off the prairie, so
I designed to resign

from my teaching job,
go back to graduate school
and have a baby.
You went along for the ride
through falling leaves in Amherst,

I walked barefoot through
Copley Square in October—
too pregnant for high-
heeled shoes. And a daughter comes
at the November full moon:

We are not alone.
At 6 days Renate sleeps
through The Mily Way,
starts a childhood of midnight
movies, trips to antiques shows

up in the Berkshires
or where my people come from,
Quebec—where you pose
as the winning general
at the door of Montcalm’s house.

I think we wore out
New England—knocked mussels off
the rocks on the beach
at Newport, walked up and down
main streets of villages

until we were tired
of colonial houses,
Provincetown tourists,
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” on
the pizza joint’s jukebox,

packed up to go home,
crossed the country again, with
a kid and a cat—
white clapboard houses speeding
away from us in a dream.

3)

Our apartment looks
down over Elliott Bay;
I can walk downtown,
but the city I walk through
is not aging very well.

Sunsets compensate
briefly; better move by the
university—
where that which we lost began
over glasses of draft beer

in the Red Robin,
where I danced to “Rescue Me”
on the bar and knew
we would be young forever
and ready for adventure.

Another house to
paint, coloring on the pages
of my unhooked life.
You drive back and forth
to work in another town—

sometimes outrunning
alcohol with cigarettes
rivers of coffee,
lakes of t.v.—sometimes not—
still up for midnight movies

though Renate shouts
in her stage whisper: “Dad, what
are we doing here?”
Even a 5-year-old knows
when something is broken not

to keep fixing it;
another round of marriage
counseling, I take
a job at a printer, we
buy you a used Fiat and

fill out the papers
for Do-it-yourself Divorce.
In the courthouse hall
the loneliness only 2
can share fades away from us.

4)

25 years pass:
Yours in work, hikes to the beach,
clothes I bought you in
the 70s, mushrooms hunts;
mine in different careers

and mostly alone—
free to pull up stakes and head
for the Not-Yet-Known.
When I fly from Mexico
to the States, Renate says

you weigh 90 pounds
and have gone south with the wife
to Baja, searching
for retirement property.
“He’ll never make it!”, I shout.

“It’s Midnight Cowboy—
his favorite movie—with
Ratso Rizzo dead
On the bus in Miami.”
Folks in the restaurant look

at me in horror,
as the reality of
our fiction swamps me,
and later Renate calls
to say “We jinxed Ratso: He’s

in the hospital.”
The now-diagnosed cancer
takes over your life,
leaves you waiting for your death
for 15 months of t.v.

and Marlboro Reds,
and your wife doesn’t want me
to visit you, so
I wait in Mexico for
the shadow of your smile to

be erased from my
life’s pages. One Saturday
while I was napping,
you came and said good-bye, and
then you went away from us.

Delirium of Reason, Images by David LaChapelle

1.

“Louie Louie, me gotta go”.

Richard Berry

We all came here through

the dark rumbling birth canal

of other rubble:

genetic recollections

of flame trees in Africa,

shady caves in Spain,

freezing Siberian steppes;

stepping numbly on

a path of frozen ocean,

building fires in a canyon

to sear the chased deer

with an arrow in its heart,

sleeping 2 meters

deep under the Armory

vibrating with rock music—

while the big river

pulses down a slalom run

of salmon hell-bent

on reproduction, Darwin’s

ghost urges the fish upstream.

We were the odd ones

streaming down the highway to

the Spanish Castle,

dancing and spawning dreams to

The Wailers’ “Louie Louie”.

In our innocence,

we refused to pick up the

burden of guilt, our

history trailing behind

us like an ancient snake’s skin

to be buried in

a common grave or sent home

in a body bag

from Vietnam, or other

places we ripped to pieces.

2.

“Jesus, where has Nature gone?”

Neil Young

Christ’s passion, riding

in Bucephalus’ hoofprints,

leads to holy wars:

good shepherds against bad,

horns of plenty against piles

of rifle bullets,

oil rigs, a fractured ferris

wheel in the landscape

of mosques, in the dead soldier’s

hand a bloody Blackberry.

The technology

of death has taken over:

the more the car crashed

its performance was enhanced,

and Gulliver is tied down—

a Ken doll threatened

by 72 Barbies

in purple burkas.

Destruction and disaster:

what was paradise is hell,

and God may be dead,

but Jesus is my homeboy

so we will be saved;

the Old Testament prophets

were just along for the ride

to the old folks’ home

or the Alzheimer’s ashcan.

In this pop-up book

all is feast, and decadence

is insufficiency of

attainable things:

nothing can fill up the hole

left by the absence

of reason—the pretext for

erasing other species.

3.

“My luck hasn’t run out yet.”

Keith Richards

In the Boston night

the former president’s hair

shines in the spotlight

while one of the Rolling Stones

enfolds his mother-in-law.

A concert begins:

the aging Italian

director jump cuts

the guts from Jumpin’ Jack Flash,

and it’s not all right—in fact

it is not a gas

at all, but an exercise

in releasing flies

from their coffins of amber

to sweat and melt on the stage

like tears going by,

or our imagination

running away with

us one more time, and going

absolutely nowehere, fast.

Art has dribbled down

to mad camera angles

smashing life open

like an over-ripe melon,

getting no satisfaction

and on to the next

kill—while Jagger’s horse’s teeth

splatter on the lens,

dance like piano keys—

and it’s only rock and roll.

When we arrive with

our suitcase at the world’s end—

and find that it’s gone—

will there be a new earth with

2 moons? Maybe not, for us.

SPINNING IN OUR GRAVES

Rave is staring at the computer screen with that fixated, I need an Alka Seltzer look.

What gives, guy?

"Too much of that shortrib leftover cazuela. And waaaay too much gringo acrobatics."

Acrobatics?

"Yeah. Everybody is patting himself on the back for electing a half-black guy as president. And saying that Gringolandia is now post-racist. How absurd to say that and to celebrate Martin Luther King Day when they assassinated him for being black and having the balls to speak his mind. This guy Obama isn't speaking his mind--he's just a puppet saying what his owners tell him to say."

What's he saying, Rave?

"He's not even president yet but he's foaming at the mouth about Chavez being an impediment to progress in Latin America, and saying he's only going to talk to other leaders when it's BENEFICIAL. Right--when it benefits Big Oil and Big Guns--neither of which has to do with Chavez."

I would say that there is going to be a rude awakening and a bad hangover in Gringolandia when folks see that they voted for a shell and a shill--except most of them wouldn't know the difference. The only thing that prevents Obama from being the Worst US President is that Baby Bush broke the mold.

"Broke the mold? He blew it to smithereens!"

WHEN GAZA'S ON FIRE, SMOKE (AND BURNING WHITE PHOSPHORUS) GETS IN YOUR EYES

Raven would be fed up to the teeth--if he HAD teeth--with the genocide taking place in Gaza.

His only comment, cynically wise bird that he is, has been:

"The zionists kill as many children as they can--so that they won't grow up and become guerrillas. And the Palestinians try to produce as many children as they can--to keep up with attrition. It's just like the Middle Ages."

How can I top that--even though I am blogging on other sites and neglecting my own?

I am not wishing anyone a happy 2009, as I don't want to be taken for a hypocrite.

RAVEN REFUSES TO CELEBRATE TURKEY DAY

Raven is happily reading the final results of the elections last Sunday in Venezuela.

"Chavez' party took 17 of the governorships being voted (a net gain as 5 of the ones won in 2004 ended up siding with the opposition) and 81% of the country's mayoralties. Good going! Of course the opposition media--including the New York Times--claim that the opposition made huge gains--when they actually lost 300,000 votes since last December's referendum on the constitutional changes and the chavistas gained just over a million."

Rave, it's typical spin--the whitewashed term for LYING--just like I see on all the sites that I blog on where the fascists just make stuff up. They have figured out that most readers--at least in English--are ridiculously ignorant and believe anything that they see repeated more than 3 times--especially if it is on t.v.

"Well, I suppose it could be worse. If we were celebrating the demise of turkeys, for example."

You have never eaten turkey, Rave?

Rave scratches his head for a moment.

"I probably ate it once or twice during my scavenging days, yeah. But I wasn't deliberately gunning for turkeys as the basis for a meal."

But tomorrow we are going to have roasted stuffed provençal-style chickens for my birthday. What do you think about that?

"I will at least eat the stuffing. Let me think about the chicken part."

Life is waaaaay too complicated, Rave.

Rave isn't listening. He's clawing through a back issue of Bon Appetit magazine.

CRACKER ALERT!

Today a cracker violated this site by misquoting it on the site of the Miami Herald. It appears, Rave, that escapees of Carl Hiaasen novels have nothing but time on their hands to search for info on bloggers.

Raven turns a blind eye to the yellow cat, Squirt, whose paw has grabbed a piece of Raven's picada.

"Really? I guess breaking and entering to rip off t.v.s is no longer as profitable in south Florida as it once was and down-on-their-luck burglars are now snooping in blog sites."

Do you think we ought to let Carl know that his crackers are on the loose?

"Naw. When they get hungry enough, they'll go home. Meanwhile, let them eat cake."

Rave, you are no proponent of the Rights of Man, apparently?

"Nope, I keep telling you that humans have confused being at the top of the food chain with being the superior species."

LASAGNA LOVER FOLLOWS VENEZUELAN ELECTIONS

Raven has been glued to the computer screen most of the day. He barely paused to ravage a plate of lasagna.

"It appears that there has been a massive turn-out. They are keeping the polls open until everyone waiting in line has voted."

Is that good news, Rave?

"Probably. The problem last year--when the Constitution changes didn't pass--was high abstention. If that doesn't happen the Chavista majority will probably keep the same number of governors, mayors and state legislators that it has had since 2004. And that means a chance to accelerate the revolution."

Even with petroleum prices so low?

"Yep. Mark Weisbrot had an analysis of the prices and budgetary issues for programs on Venezuelanalysis.com yesterday or the day before. It appears that the petroleum prices really don't matter that much."

Always good to hear good news, Rave. I wish I could say the same for what's happening with Obama appointments in the States--Hillary Clinton for president of Israel--er, secretary of State. Not much of a cut above Condolences Rice. And it looks like the same old same old retreads, so the policies will be the same.

"Couldn't be otherwise. After all, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same stuff over and over and over and expecting different results."

We live in an insane world--or haven't you noticed, Rave?

"You betcha. Any lasagna left?"

OVERDOING IT?

Raven, you rascal, you are overdoing it with the salsa de guajillo.

Raven dribbles a ravishing red from his beak: "But in times of scarcity, excess is de rigeur, my dear".

Ah, really? Did I hear you clearing through gullet to shriek "Let'em eat cake"?

"Hardly. I was being sarcastic."

Hmmm. Likely story. Meanwhile, anything new in the world?

"Same old same old, I fear. More of Clinton's cabinet ready to be appointed by the president-elect. Even Clinton's long-suffering mate. Israel has turned Gaza into Auschwitz. You know, the more things change...."

I know: The more the stay the same.

"Looks like lasagna weekend?"

And classic Mexican films, starting with "The Pearl".

Poetic choice, as wisdom is scarce as hen's teeth.

PERSPECTIVE: FORT VOLISSOS

(For Spiros and his family)

On Sunday most stores
close on Chios, but we find
water for the trip
over the mountain in search
of the world’s best olive oil.

We pass the orchard
of my friend Spiros’ neighbor,
who presses the best,
but he isn’t there—so we
go on down the western side

of the island to
a popular martyr’s shrine.
This sunny morning
Saint Markele’s severed head
hovers over the garden,

its halo intact,
as we walk the shaded paths
where believers in
miracles will spend the night
of the feast in sleeping bags.

Here where land meets sea
anything could happen, but
today the place brings
only hunger—which we sate
at a beach café before

leaving. On the road
back we decide to climb up
to Fort Volissos;
we can see it from the road,
but the footpaths are complex

and we ask the way.
An Albanian worker
decides to lead us
astray, but we manage to
make it up there anyway.



There is little left
of the fort besides its view
of village and shore
and sea beyond where ships fly
like great sea birds in the haze.

My telephoto
lens allows us to spy on
people leaving church,
gossiping on their way home.
Beyond them the bay opens

to the Aegean,
and to the south volcanic
black beaches pebble
midday family picnics.
This island still suffers its

memories of rapes,
slaughter, pillaging and fires:
mastic villages
have few entry gates, others
look like parts of the mountains—

to be overlooked
by the near-sighted pirates
searching for gold
but ignoring the rich island
light, the ebony olives

and the trees dropping
their sap like silver drachmas.
Globalized pirates
now pass the island by: they
have other fish to fry;

young folks abandon
it for Athens and the hope
of jobs, while elders
bury the dead—posting their
black-rimmed obituaries

on telephone poles
and waiting for their own turn
to be remembered.
Old shipowners’ mansions wait
for restoration, daily

losing more shutters
to the wind, and in Kampos
orchards are heavy
with golden lemons and dreams
of Homer, the blind poet.

Perhaps blindness is
necessary to see things,
and poems better
constructed from simple words
so long as the heart writes them?

BRINGING IT BACK HOME

(for Tom)

Helpless (peace, Neil Young)
like a feather in the air
suffers the downdrafts
migrating from one idea
to the next spot on the map

of the unconscious,
what it means to be alive
escapes down the warp
in the carpet's pattern, turns
up on the side of the road

to Xochicalco--
ruins of Place of Flowers--
where in the court one
ball hangs suspended, never
falls nor reaches the stone ring.

If I could only
count the stones that are missing
from the buildings here,
put them all back together,
I would take it all back home

to that mythical
place in the Universe where
we must have started
as random thoughts one boring
Saturday afternoon, then

proceeded to drift
over the continents like
an accident waits--
ready to create road kill--
plunges into the abyss.

DECIDER ACTS OUT THROUGH DOG

This morning Raven is chomping down bolillos from our mercado dipped in fried eggs covered with salsa de guajillo, sour cream and chopped onion.

Suddenly he begins cackling raucously and spits a beakful of breakfast at the computer screen.

Rave, what's going on here?

"Hah! I was watching a video of Bush acting out through his little dog, Barney. A reporter stopped down to pet Barney, and Barney hauled off and bit his hand!"

Well, Bush was trained by his masters to snarl and bite--and that must be what he passed on to his dog.

"Oh boy. A whole new Axis of Evil: reporters."

If I say so myself, Rave, considering that those guys have been the ones to sell Bush's lies and spin to the gullible gringo public (I am not going to call them citizens as they believe that all a citizen does is vote every once in a while when he or she finds himself or herself with empty pockets), I'd say that Barney is a fair amount smarter than his master at spotting the Axes of Evil.

"I guess so. It used to be that the Dylan line, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", was a truism. Now only the non-human species knows."

Rave, the Vogel uber Alles....

COWBOYS AND INDIANS
(In memory of my grandfather Clovis)

1.

Your grandfather Louis,
deprived of a native name,
then of his French name
when he crossed his family
into the United States,

deprived your mother
of the warmth of the long house
of community,
married her off at 13
to bear 11 children,

bury her husband.
A widow at 41,
she moved you all 2
thousand miles to Snoqualmie
Pass, way on the outskirts of

civilization,
built a big log house and called
it The Donut Inn,
frying mountains of beignets
for ravenous travelers

who couldn’t care less
if French or English mumbled
from her raven’s beak.
There you tumbled in the snow,
wild with being a child, high

above your brother’s
dedication to building
his tourist cabins.
There you chose the better part:
learning to be Hawk, learning

to read the deer tracks
and bear droppings, then turning
your eyes to Pancho
Villa’s revolution far
to the south, in Mexico,

where his horses’ hooves
drummed your dreams to their flash point.
In adolescence
you discovered a way to
be Indian AND cowboy,

and cover your heart
with the dust of Mexico;
inevitably
that lead to rodeos, where
brother Indians became

other cowboys, and
where the Nez Perce were
the top riders. But
the purses were pretty small
because the winners weren’t white.

2.

When you married Ruth,
both of you were just 18.
Your mother suffered
scorn from your mother-in-law,
child of an aristocrat

born out of wedlock,
despite their both being French
speakers in Anglo-
land; the price hypocrisy
imposes on loneliness

is the steep learning
curve of assimilation.
But you had the sense
to create your own nation—
putting fire to metal

and producing sculptures
of long-forgotten flowers,
horses like arrows
and your wonderful kettles
of hammered copper and brass.

You made what pleased you,
and did what you pleased:
trading old rifles,
catching snakes in the sagebrush,
hunting arrowheads along

the Columbia,
mining a mountain top for
gold, shooting winter’s
supply of elk, deer and bear,
and always, your fast horses

bursting from the barn
to battle down the muddy
track at Longacres,
while you tipped your expensive
Stetson at the bets window.

When the snow backed off
in spring we would ride your jeep
up the canyon road
until it got stuck up to
the axles, then winch it out;

liberating it
from the mud called for a few
candy bars: Baby Ruth
or maybe Butterfingers
that you bought by the carton—

before heading back
to the ranch and grandmother’s
lemon meringue pie.
Sugar and coffee were your
fuels, and they served you well.

3.

When I was edging
toward adolescence, you gave
me some good advice:
“It isn’t necessary
for your grandmother to know

what you are doing”,
which surely saved me a lot
of aggravation.
Teenage boys copied your spray-
painted jeep—a precursor

in the 50s to
the psychedelic buses
screaming The 60s—
and college guys got credits
for watching you drink coffee

and carrying your
equipment at the World’s Fairs:
the Smithsonian
had you demonstrate metal-
working, and strange women gave

you their phone numbers
while the college guys looked on,
wishing they were you.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch my
grandmother put her foot down,

said “no more horses”—
so you bought a pair of mules
and scattered horses
around the valley, giving
me a map of where they were

in case of your death.
When I got married we lived
on Magnolia
Beach with no central heating,
so you came with your chain saw

to cut up driftwood
for our fireplace, let women
chase you around in
the Red Robin Tavern while
my new husband coveted

your magnetism,
feeling young and foolish in
his tie-dyed tee shirt.
You drank a few beers, went to
some galleries, predicted

our difficult life
as a couple, then left us
some firewood, loaded
your saw back in the Bronco
and headed back home to the ranch.

4.

1970s:
You completed 50 years
of marriage to Ruth,
refined your artist’s vision
with cataract surgery

that allowed you to
spot dimes along the roadside;
you kept the silver ones
in the small trunk I gave you
both for your golden wedding.

And because Ruth had
backed out on your plan to spend
those golden years in
Mexico, you expanded
your academic antics,

devoted more hours
to searching for blue agates
in dry river beds,
hammered out more bracelets
and pieced onyx mosaics.

My daughter spent school
vacations watching Grandpa
create war bonnets
and swap his jewelry for
Navajo bracelets of

Blue Gem and Kingman
turquoise. An Easter
studio portrait
of you two shows a blank space
between Renate’s teeth, two

grins gleaming below
your big Stetson, and that last
summer in the tall teepee
you made, Renate sat guard
while you dreamed, and the cancer

metastasized from
your colon to your liver.
“Grandpa promised me
he’d tell me the old stories”,
she said, “But mostly he sleeps”.

The photo I made
2 weeks before your last dream
shows you transparent,
but with all your teeth and hair.
We buried you in zero

degrees of bright snow,
so like a Quebec landscape,
the day before my
35th birthday; I said:
“Time to become an adult”.

5.

A few weeks after
your funeral, Grandma Ruth
rang me up to say
your chickens had come home to
roost: the ranchers who had hid

your horses from her
wanted to know what to do
with them. “I told them
to keep them—and realized
that was the first family

decision I’d made,
after almost 60 years
of marriage: he let
me believe I was calling
the shots, while he always moved

all of the pieces”.
You must have had a good laugh
imagining Ruth
learning how to trade horses
and sell your gun collection—

not to mention barns
stuffed to the rafters: snowshoe
prototypes (one for
each year), toboggans, skis, sleds,
deer and elk antlers—the stuff

accumulated
by a man from the mountains
who made the valley
his playground. It fell to Ruth
to fall and shatter her hip,

unload all of your things
on other mountain men and
sell the property.
She vacillated: “I don’t
think he’s want me to sell it”.

“It’s your decision”,
I said. “You can try taking
care of 5 acres
pushing a walker, and live
6 months—or buy a small place

and live another
several years in comfort”.
She got rid of it,
moved into a mobile home
and neighbors helped plant her prize-

winning dahlias.
We had a long phone talk
3 days before she died—
I was in Boston Common,
buried in October leaves.

6.

Ruth outlived you by
9 years, and 5 years later
I followed your dream
to Mexico to find my
home writing and producing

theater here in
the birthplace of Zapata,
dreaming in Spanish
of revolution: a day
when Native people will not

be tempted to “pass”
because the land will belong
to he who works it,
and no one will have to choose
between living on his knees,

dying on his feet.
When snow covers your gravestone,
here it is 80
degrees, and you, who slept in
winter on an electric

mattress pad, under
an electric blanket and
down comforter--while
wearing socks—would finally
feel warm. Here in our valley

sometimes I smell snow
falling on the high pass to
Mexico City;
deer come down and steal fodder
from the cows in the ranchos

up in the near hills,
like they did in Ellensburg.
Here hawks and owls swoop
down out of the guaje trees
to hunt on the riverbank

for rats and field mice,
and ravens are forced to bathe in
polluted water.
Young men leave the villages
to pick crops where I grew up,

far in El Norte,
while here their fields and their wives
lie fallow, waiting.
Washington made treaties
with Mexico, stole its land,

destroyed its culture,
builds its reservation wall.
The turquoise stones in
your bracelet that I wear
are the skies of our planet.

Don’t Do It
For Carl T (9/2/1944—4/1/2007), with thanks to
The Band and Dylan Thomas

1.
I was black magic
woman, dancing in thirties
velvet when we met,
my dress from an antiques shop
cut down to fit my body:

110 pounds
of rocking silk in DeKalb’s
simmering cornfields.
You drank the long, hot summer
from a bottle of Jim Beam,

introduced yourself,
and we talked all night in your
apartment above
an insurance agency.
Fact: We never stopped talking,

even when that meant
late night long distance calls from
places like Texas,
my husband rolling over
in bed, passing me the phone:

“It’s Oh Hi, again.”
Then, when we were divorcing,
a rough patch when you
tried living in my upstairs
in Seattle—which didn’t

work, and your father
drove you back to Illinois
for the tough struggle
to get sober: Brush with death,
hospitals, the halfway house,

coffee, cigarettes.
When your father died you sent
me the soundtrack to
The Big Chill”, and that told me
we had become middle-aged.




2.

A few years after
I decamped to Mexico
we started taking
vacations together, in
Zihuatanejo mostly,

still staying up half
the night talking, watching lights
dance across the bay,
tuning your guitar to waves:
the optimal spot to write

songs. Those songs
reproduced, began to form
a critical mass:
a poetic, musical
X-ray of the times we’ve lived.

The surgical steps
to bring it all back home, safe,
on a c.d. took
so much energy, and time,
that suddenly we were old.

3.

One night your phone call:
“They told me I’ve got cancer.”
Then the treatment starts;
6 month’s after my former
husband’s death, I am hopeful—

and even more so
when your e-mail comes telling
me that you need sun,
have bought your Zihua tickets.
I decide to fly there, too,

feeling too old for
all night bus rides without sleep;
but once I arrive
at the bungalow and see
you are now a shadow, so

transparent that palm
trees and the beach pass through you,
hope becomes anger
at your refusal to live,
at your holding on to shame.

Saying “Don’t do it,
don’t break my heart” in silence
is really a drag;
watching you spitting your life
into a wastebasket, and

smoking your death, two
packs a day of it, pacing,
refusing to eat
or bathe, is seeing you go
gentle into that good night,

when rage is the spark
absent from your tobacco.
On April Fool’s Day
the sun rose on your last waltz:
You did it, you broke my heart.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

I soaked guajillo chiles overnight so that Raven and I could breakfast on picadas this morning while reading La Jornada.

Great stuff is salsa de guajillo, but the news about candidates for Obama's cabinet is NOT:

1. William Daley, brother of Chicago's mayor and best known here in Mexico for his promotion of NAFTA as Clinton's Secretary of Commerce;

2. Michael Froman, from the failed Citigroup and college buddy of Obama's from Harvard days;

3. Susan Rice, another Clinton cadre whose spoils for helping in the campaign may include becoming National Security Officer (shades of Condolences Rice, best known for her derisive comment, "Let 'em eat my Ferragamos", to the victims of Katrina;

4, 5. Two other Clinton retreads are being considered for Secretary of the Treasury--a position both Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers have had before;

6, 7, 8. John Kerry, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson (all failed candidates or pre-candidates for the presidency) are being mentioned for Secretary of State. Richardson is another Clinton cadre, but does have international experience as UN ambassador;

9. Arizona's governor, Janet Napolitano, on whose watch so many Mexicans have been killed, is up for Attorney Gerneral.

Not good news at all. Just the usual suspects. Where's the CHANGE, Rave?

"Don't ask me. I am still stuck on that little old lady who said, Where's the beef?"

Raven thinks with his stomach, as always, and it appears he is feeling a little nauseated at what he sees.

It appears that although Hillary lost, Bill will be back in his old job as president.

BURY SANTA ANNA'S LEG--AGAIN--IN THE CATHEDRAL

Raven and I have been flapping around on a bunch of sites today to see how folks are responding to the election of Obama in Gringolandia.

Rave is now eating the last of the dill biscuits we made to eat with Texas-style chili.

"I can't believe your species. The gringos chose the lesser of the apparent evils--a man black like I am, instead of a professional geezer whose claim to fame was being an uncredited extra in the 70s film, The Deer Hunter. Big deal. To read their comments, they brought down the Berlin Wall again, singlehandedly. It's crap!"

You betcha it's crap. Especially since they are still building the Mexican Wall.

"Well, at least that's providing work for undocumented immigrants."

True, Rave. Folks are being paid 10 to 15 bucks an hour, maybe, to build a wall to keep them out.

"I felt compelled to post a cry for a little reserve and common sense. Want to hear it?"

Sure, fire away.

Raven pings the remaining biscuit crumbs off his print out:

"Wow: Could you possibly be a little more self-righteous?

Just because you gave a few bucks to somebody who promised change? What did you actually DO to make that change possible?

Eight years ago here in Mexico, the same kind of foolish born-again euphoria percolated after the July election of the PAN president, Vicente Fox. The PRI had been in power for 71 years and people were tired of the same old perfect dictatorship, so they created the concept of the USEFUL vote--voting against the PRI.

Folks asked me, the day after the election, what I thought Fox's presidency would be like. My answer was, "He will be the worst president in the history of Mexico".

Months after the election the father of one of my bright students told me that Mexico was a new country since July 2nd. I told him that new countries were not born because folks voted in a different party, and I asked him what HE was doing to make it new. He had no answer.

Time has passed since July 2, 2000. Last year Fox was voted the Worst President in the History of Mexico by the majority of the folks in a national newspaper poll. Take it from me, he had some stiff competition--for example, Santa Ana, who gave away more than half of Mexico's territory to the gringos for a plate of lentils. But Fox did it--left the country in ruins, where the monument to his presidency is a huge white elephant library that cost about 4 billion dollars, is unusable because of water entering from all sides and destroying the few books purchased for it. It can't be entered as it is falling down--but all of Fox's cronies and family members who looted the country were paid handsomely.

I suggest that you gringos be a little more cautious before shouting from the rooftops that Gringolandia is great again--simply because you had to choose between the fear of being homeless and clinging to the racism upon which the country was founded.

There is a lesson for all of you in the Fox presidency."

I hope they get it, Rave, but I am not betting any of my devalued pesos on it.

MOHAMED TO THE MOUNTAIN: CANJILON LAKES, AGAIN

For Maryanne


1.

Twenty years ago
we took your big GMC
pickup up this road:
first, a stop in El Rito
to greet the French plaster saints,

then through the canyon
painted gold with aspen leaves—
the black and white trunks
echo end of the season sheep
as the truck bucks over ruts,

points its nose cloudward
into the turquoise stone sky.
Road Closed the sign says;
to hell with that, we open
the wire gate and go on up

to fish in the top
lake, where the first October
snow falls on our hair
before we head back down to
Echo Ampitheater.

There swallows toughen
their nests, trying to prolong
summer forever,
and we try to grab our youth
as it dances into fall.

2.

It’s been 14 years
since I left New Mexico
for old Mexico,
and I only went back once—
now almost 8 years ago—

so when you meet me
at the airport I’m lost in
a foreign country—
and you are back from the dead,
the land of leukaemia.

My friend Lorenzo,
who had to leave his daughter
in that place, tells me:
Maryanne will die, they all
die—that’s just the way it is.

We have a Spanish
saying , I remind him: No
one has bought his life—
I could be run over by
a bus tomorrow morning.

But I take a plane,
instead, to go once more to
the Canjilon Lakes—
as one of two survivors
of this disease that is life.

3.

Your husband worries
that we’ll do something foolish:
go up a closed road,
get stuck in mud overnight—
but we have made it through the

worst that can happen.
Savoring our breakfast of
chiles rellenos
in Española, we are
chomping at the challenge that

is repetition.
As afternoon opens in
El Rito Canyon,
our old friends the sheep welcome
us back, and an off-road shrine

is visible now—
because this year’s leaves are down;
the Sacred Heart beats
inside the stones and under
oak leaves painted with honey.

The aspens dance bare,
their silver, like our more than
middle age, ready
to be inlaid with turquoise
for a bracelet around

our survivors’ lives.
The road has been recently
graded, and the last
segment—just below the lakes—
is asphalt. A few patches

of snow like old skin
waiting to be shed linger
in sunless shadows
around the top lake, where two
fishermen unload their gear.

We won’t fish this year—
just unloading our old lives
is sufficient sport.
The sky falls into the lake,
where we are like silver fish

ripe with reflection,
lighter than swallows, flying
down to Abiquiu
and beyond, lining our nests
for the new life of winter.

November 17. 2007

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.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN?

Raven is wearing something on his head that looks like a set of earmuffs.

What the fuck, Rave?

I wave my hand between his head and the computer screen, and he takes off the muffs.

"It's spring--you know, SPRING--when a young bird's fancy turns, etc. Except that I am not a young bird. And I just do not want to hear the cackling cacaphony blasting in every tree around here."

Now, Rave. You wouldn't be just a little envious, would you?

"Naw. I am too old for that, too."

So what are you doing in this provincial Mexican spring that's better?

"Cheering on Chavez the Peacemaker. He raised an enormous ruckus, got everybody's attention by moving a fistful of battalions to the Colombian border--then torpedoed the US agenda of Let's You and Him Fight by becoming the peacemaker in Santo Domingo--complete with his singing of a merengue."

Fabulous. Smartest guy in the hemisphere, with the exception of Fidel.

"These days that's not saying much. With everybody thinking with his wallet--or his genitals. I hate spring!"

He puts the muffs back on. It's no use talking to that bird.

Raven and I have been out of touch in a long time.

He's still in Mexico. I am in Caracas.

Will post the latest political stuff later. Despite the complete nonsense going on here with bogus protests for the non-renewal of RCTV's concession, I am poking through the museums and starting to write poems again.

ARTIST'S STUDIO 6 a.m.

Caracas, Venezuela
May 31, 2007


In the Museum
of Contemporary Arts
I walk slowly past
a group of wooden figures--
Homage to Velazquez;

their painted eyes track
me as I run smack into
the canvas wall of
"Artist's Studio 6 a.m.".
Falling with the morning sun

more than 40 years
into the Seattle past,
the 2nd floor pre-
renewal Maynard Building--
I awake in our brass bed,

start a new life in
a parallel universe.
Our 12 foot ladder
stretches out of the painting,
ratcheting me skyward now

above the spattered
palettes, hot plates, the old chair
swivelling in front
of our dreams--some battered, some
flattened--others almost new-

HOLDING THE BAG


"He did it! The old sonofabitch, Augusto Pinochet, danced off to prepare for the next lifetime, leaving everybody in Chile holding the bag--including its current president."

Raven tosses the crust of his french toast into the garbage can.

We knew he would. I really would have appreciated seeing him rotting in jail, but at least he will be rotting someplace.

"He must have started stinking before he died, then."

Rave, that's a line from Mother Courage. I didn't know you were a Brecht fan.

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me. I am a veritable Renaissance Bird."

Don't you mean virtual Renaissance Bird?

"Smartass."

Raven slurps espresso and turns back to the computer screen.

"At least they aren't going to give him a State funeral. Probably because this president of Chile was tortured by Pipnochet's goons. If he had kicked the bucket on Lagos' watch they would have dressed him up like a pinata and wrapped him in the chilean flag."

I would like to think that this means that the Manichean weighting of our moment in history to the side of evil might be lightening up.

"I would be cautious about thinking that. But there is a little bit to back that up."

And what might that be, Rave?

"Hugo Chavez is currently leading the votation for Time's Person of the Year at 28%. Followed hotly by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, our veritable next-door neighbor at 23%."

How many times did you vote, Rave?

Raven turns his beady eyes heavenword.

"I'll never tell."