ADEUS, SARAMAGO


Rave, I am really down in the dumps today: my favorite living writer is no longer living!


"I am edging towards cashing in my chips, too, as far as that goes." Rave grabs a beakful of tortilla española.

Nonsense. You're just bidding for attention. And I am serious--when I read The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis I felt like I had started a new life--well, literarily speaking. Saramago was the one writer who was always original, always ready to stand the sanctifed, the sanctimonious and the received on its ear. Most recently in the novel Cain.

"Congruent, I think is the word I'd use--a libertarian communist, in his own words."

All of the great ones have recently moved on: Antonioni, Bergman--and now Saramago. The folks that made great art out of really putting their eyes on the way our species lives on this planet.

"Maybe they were finally just too nauseated to go on."

Odd you should mention that, given that I just finished re-reading Sartre's Nausea. I thought after nearly 50 years I would give it a second chance. It still wasn't all that good. If there ever was an over-rated Literature Nobel--it was not Saramago, but Sartre.

"Didn't he refuse the prize?"

I think so--and that was probably his greatest literary truth.

"At least he didn't send Simone de Beauvoir up to give a rejection speech wearing a warbonnet."

CINCO DE MAYO REDUX

Raven is making a mess with his toast this morning.

What's with the slob act, Rave?

"I am just celebrating Cinco de Mayo."

But Rave, according to my watch it's June 18th.

"Not in the soccer-psychotic world of Mexico. The 2-zip win against France yesterday was the first time Mexico's gotten one up since Cinco de Mayo and the Battle of Puebla."

Actually, Rave, I think Juarez having Maximilian shot by a firing squad was AFTER the Battle of Puebla.

"I dunno. After all, we are living in a country whose pre-Hispanic past--in fact whose past previous to 1900 doesn't exist. According to the Secretary of Public Education, anyway. If they had their way, Mexico's history would start in 2000--when Fox the Fatuous Fuckhead was elected."

Must be why they are having such a hard time putting together the two hundred years of independence, one hundred years of revolution celebration.

"Fuck yes--they even hired a gringo publicity firm to put it together--to the tune of millions...."

COCKEYED IN THE SADDLE, AGAIN

Rave, man, looks like we are back!

Raven is fussing with the ground coffee in the espresso pot.

"Fuckin' A, but when are you going to get the coffee mill fixed?"

Ah, the little guy doesn't like the osterizer results.

I will pick it up tomorrow from those jokers at the Mercado Nuevo--hope it will grind again.

"Back in the old grind--no more osterized coffee pablum. Hooray!"

So what's up, Rave?

"Well, I will soon be filing a humungous copyright infringement suit."

I'll bite. Regarding what?

"Since BP the cheapball Big Oiler blew it out its ass in the Gulf, all the animal species are infringing like crazy on my color!"

So, who's the mark for this suit?

"Shit, man--those other animals don't have any money. I am going after the deep pockets in Britain. Lloyds of London probably insures those pikers. I may end up owning the fucking queen!"

Hmmm. Rave. she may be a little too long in the tooth for that stuff, my infringed feathered friend.

"Figuratively speaking, that's all. As in the crown jewels. I'll be rolling in it."

Sadly, it's all those other species that are rolling in it now.

"Yep, petroleum party's practically over."

Speaking of copyright infringement, Rave: I am slowly writing a poem called just that. With any luck, we'll be reading it here soon.

"I'm only holding my breath for a cup of coffee--not for film at eleven."

IN MY 66TH YEAR: 66 STANZAS FOR MY MOTHER

1.

The first dramatic
memory of my mother,
from when she divorced
in 1947:
wide black crownless I. Magnin's

hat and gabardine
suit, floating in the open
elevator cage
of the Smith Tower--before
I vomited my breakfast

(just like I did in
my father's Buick on the
way to Seattle)
and the operator told
us to take the stairs, that kids

almost always threw
up in her elevator.
We got out, but my
father got tired of packing
me up to the top of the

then tallest building
west of the Mississippi,
and went away to
Chicago. My mother stayed
with my grandparents and me,

wore her city suits
to keep books in our small town,
and my affair with
the Smith Tower has outlived
all my other love affairs.

2.

My grandparents' house
was an old Victorian
built from lumber hauled
up from The Dalles by ox teams,
put together with square nails.

Winters it was so
cold ice formed in the bathtub;
next to the oil stove
in the parlor, my mother
argued with my grandmother

while I hid out in
one of the unheated rooms
upstairs--twanging a
banjo and tootling a
clarinet to let them know

I was in the house.
When my mother decided
to marry again,
they took turns reeling me in
like a trout onto their laps

while they fought over
who was going to keep me.
I have custody!
my mother shouted, and sent
for the police to take me

to the tiny house
on the bottom end of town
with its apple tree
out back, and my stepfather's
Chevrolet in the driveway.

3.

Three moves in one year
gave me a baby brother,
a scar over my right eyebrow, a sled with my
name on it left inside our

fence by my grandpa
in the middle of the worst
snowstorm in decades
(because my mother forbade
her parents to visit me)

and an apple box
from which the Easter bunnies
escaped the music
of Rimsky Korsakov out
the kitchen door to the field.

My mother made crab
salads and donuts and wore
striped shirtwaist dresses
when my stepfather's college
friends came over with their wives,

and I had to take
the enormous world atlas
down from the table
where I travelled its pages,
memorizing the products

of Bolivia,
the rivers of India
and mountain ranges
of Europe--while my brother
teethed and raged in his playpen.

4.

Once my stepfather
graduated, he was hired
to teach the 6th grade
in another town, and my
mother once again filled up

boxes from the store,
piled them in the living room.
Harry and I went
fishing from the crack of dawn
in a rowboat on Park Lake--

my first fierce sunburn--
and he tried to teach Marie
to drive their brand new
Studebaker Champion
convertible. He went out

every night with
his buddies to celebrate,
and one morning I
came downstairs and found mother
sitting along on the couch;

the sheriff told us
Harry had died instantly
when he crashed his car
into a tanker stopped just
off the Cle Elum highway.

After we buried
Harry, my mother bought an
untrained dalmation,
painted the kitchen cupboards,
signed me up at the nuns' school.

5.

With the insurance
money mother bought a small
house close to my school,
but beginning school brought on
a continuous fever,

and I returned to
my grandparents' house to spend
half the year in bed.
Next thing we knew mother was
a platinum blond and had

moved to Wenatchee
for a stint of bookkeeping
before moving back
home--lock, stock and my brother--
to become a girl again

at 30. She spent
her weekends playing tennis
for expenses and
trophies, read Vogue magazine,
shopped and bought a series of

Ford convertibles.
She had some tennis boyfriends
that came to nothing;
then a turbulent affair
with the police chief that cost

him his job and his
marriage, made him my mother's
3rd husband--and at
35, Marie left with
him for California.

6.

Life among the palm
trees panned out so well that in
1959
I made an upchucking trip
by plane to Los Angeles

and spent the summer
babysitting my brother
in a little house
whose back gate opened into
orange groves and romances

with neighborhood boys--
but my mother and stepdad
objected to boys
from Valeria Drive, said
they didn't mix with white trash,

did not even speak
to any of their neighbors.
That seemed to be true:
my stepdad went out boozing
with his political pals

in another town;
my mother passed her free time
smacking tennis balls
against the patio wall
and restoring French antiques.

I got bored spanking
my brother with a hairbrush
for not learning his
multiplication tables,
went back home ahead of time.

7.

Mother took a year
off from work and made a stab
at writing fiction--
typing up stories for her
course at the junior college

and sending them off
to the Atlantic Monthly
and the New Yorker.
I only read one (and stole
an image from it for one

of my own stories)
so didn't know if
they were any good or not;
but her writing of fiction
petered out to a scrapbook

of rejection slips.
So she gave it up and went
back to keeping books,
restoring furniture and
searching for schools that would not

expel my brother
for taking his stepfather's
revolvers to class.
The short story that I read,
autobiographical

though it was, revealed
nothing of my mother's life;
to me she remained
a mystery throughout my
years in university.

8.

Once I was married
and studying a Master's
in San Francisco,
mother sent us plane tickets
so she could meet my husband

(who was afraid to
fly and numbed himself with gin
and valium for
the one-hour flight), but when we
arrived mother was in bed

with the flu. She spent
the weekend there, getting up
when we were leaving
for the airport to smile and
shake my husband Roger's hand.

A few months later
they drove up with my brother,
announced my mother's
new job as postmistress of
their town, and took us out to

eat in Chinatown.
Before they left, my brother
and I body-surfed
at Stinson Beach while Roger
fished. After that visit, I

began my job search
at universities in
the East and Midwest,
since my mother swore she was
allergic to cold weather.

9.

Mother did visit
us in Connecticut six
years later, and met
her two-year-old granddaughter.
She and I drove to Salem

to an auction, walked
through the fallen maple leaves,
ate Japanese food
in Boston, came back to dress
Renate as a ghost for

Halloween and eat
veal cutlet grinders at the
Italian cafe.
The next spring we went to France
(after I picked up typhoid

en route in London):
The soft grey blur of Paris
gave way to the sea
and sun at Sète, where I bought
incredibly tiny jeans,

then rode shotgun in
the Hertz rental Simca up
into Switzerland
and back again to Paris,
arriving without typhoid

and without learning
much more about my mother--
who ate a burned croque
monsieur at La Fregate and
complained that her teeth were black.

10.

Grandfather died when
I turned 35, and with
that my connection
with my mother became less
than ever. She drifted loose

from the family--
fighting once a week by phone
with my grandmother
or me, refusing to go
to grandmother's funeral,

raging because I
gave grandmother's ruby ring
to my cousin Pat.
By then she was obsessing
about her pug's eczema,

her own hemorrhoids,
her fears about retiring
and breaking the frame
of habits that held her life
together all those years so

precariously.
Just do it, mother--I said
on the telephone--
it's time to be an adult:
go see a psychologist,

sign up for courses
at the university,
move your business
to France; if not you will soon
become crazier than shit.

11.

After she retired,
mother flew to Santa Fe
for a long weekend;
in the museum shop she
dropped a Badger fetish like

a hot potato
although it was her spirit
animal. I went
south after that, and she snapped
the tenuous thread between

us, cutting me out
of her will because I'd moved
to Mexico, sure
that Mexico's government
would grab her art collection.

One night she called me
and said she wanted to make
amends. Fine, I said,
go ahead and make them. But
by then she was too crazy--

bouncing in and out
of dementia wards until
there was no place left
but her nearly empty house,
remortgaged by my brother--

who sold off paintings
and antique French furniture
and then, finally,
pulled the plug on her life one
day before I turned 60.

THERE IS A TIME

(FOR THE SPIRIT OF JOSÉ LIMÓN)

Looking for my seat
at tonight's dance performance:
It is very dark,
and I fall, bashing my ribs
against the balcony rail.

The beat has gone out
of my body--like air leaves
a balloon, slowly;
I didn't notice it was
now a bag of brittle bones.

At this time of life,
how do we choreograph
the pace of aging--
how to find the right music
for a face in the mirror

hiding behind the
remembered face we put on
every morning
to become invisible?
Which pace is right for walking

alone in the street?
It is a time for treading
lightly, avoiding
cracks in the sidewalk: the back
you break could now be your own.

May 30, 2010

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.