Intimations of the Next World

1.

A wind in central
Mexico kites the roof off
our neighbor's cowshed,
and an earthquake devastates
the northeast coast of Japan.

A wave rises high
off the beach in Mazatlan;
monarch butterflies
in Michoacan prepare
for their flight to Canada.

Radiation spikes
one thousand times above norms
in Fukushima,
and 45 thousand folks
explode out of the city.

Tanks scuttle across
the north African desert,
while tractors rumble
into Madison, heading
for the capitol building.

US goverment
agents run automatic
weapons across the
border into Mexico,
and a gringo agent is

shot and killed by one
in San Luís Potosí,
while Fidel Castro
denounces the empire's plan
to invade Libya for

its petroleum,
and Berlusconi threatens
to chop off the hands
of judges who want to slap
him in jail for procuring.

In the Pacific,
the Blue Star kachina surfs
a tsunami crest,
dancing, bringing the mother
of all rains to Hopiland.

"Who Knows Where the Time Goes?"

(Thank you to Sandy Denny for the song.)

For the spirit of Kathy Robel Braganza (July 18, 1944-October 21, 2010)

In Freshman English
a strawberry blond wearing
a tailored plaid suit--
suit for serious student,
red and green plaid for not so.

We were pals in class--
outside of class she lived at
home, I in the dorm--
and while she studied, I drank
beer with my Indian friends,

scotch with the seniors,
scoffed at bookworms like her, as
I supposed she was.
Later, she pandered to Pope
while I hung fast to Dryden;

she swore I was nuts
after I nailed my version
of Mac Flecknoe to
our professor's office door.
Satire can be personal,

scatalogical,
designed to piss someone off,
I told her--clearly,
I was not a serious
student like she tried to be.

For a right-handed
person, Kathy had a left-
handed acting style:
said she would invite me home
for dinner sometime if she

thought I would accept.
That's when I met her parents
and saw it was tough
to be the last one at home
of a long rope of siblings:

the hand-me-downs are
out of style when you get them,
your parents are tired
of pushing kids to become
adults, and your romances

have no audience
except if you get married.
You were the first of
our group to march down the aisle,
and I was too hungover

at your reception
to pour the pineapple punch.
Four lovely children
later, you went to work for
our Freshman English teacher,

and I fished you out
to become the truck driver
for a new co-op--
a short-lived government child
that produced one suicide

before closing down.
In a few years we were no
longer all that close:
I moved to New Mexico,
and 10 years later moved down

to old Mexico.
Before I left for a gig
in the Middle East
we talked in your living room
about why I loved teaching

and why you didn't.
Your peonies and roses
were like my students:
we nudged them into blossom.
Your flowers are still with us.

COOKING UP A STORM?

Raven and I watched the film, Julie & Julia, a couple days ago. A few shots of classic French dishes, a few seconds only on the archetypal food street of Paris, the rue Mouffetard. Loved it while I was watching it, but then it melted away like watermelon sorbet.

"I thought it was going to inspire you to cook up a storm", Raven gives me a baleful glare. "All that you made me was a hamburger with A-1 sauce on part of a baguette!"

Yeah, well, sometimes inspiration takes a little time. And there were sliced tomatoes, redleaf lettuce and purple onions on that burger, too.

"Phooey--now you are institutionalizing lowbrow eating."

Rave, may I point out that you don't even have a brow. And isn't your breed of bird known as the Omnivorous Outsider?

"Some of us may be omnivorous. I'm not."

I see, some omnivoros are more equal than others.

"Something like that. You are forcing me to eat the last piece of pan de dulce, you know."

Who was it who said "Let them eat cake?"

"Marie Antoinette, although some say the phrase was apocryphal. Apocryphal or apocalyptic--they sliced her asymetrically."

Rave, it's rude to talk with your mouth full.

THE JINX IS IN!

Well, Rave, looks like a really put the jinx on the green mice when I made that huge lasagna with the 3 sauces like the Mexican flag.

"Yep, they just lost to Uruguay. But I am relieved by that." Raven reaches for the last bits of warmed-over lasagna on his plate.

Why?

"Because there was a lot of talk that the fix was in for the game. With both Uruguay and Mexico at 4 points, a fix to tie the game would have classified both teams. And since the game was not a tie, the fix was not in after all. This makes me feel a lot better as there is so much corruption in the World Cups."

That's because there is so much MONEY in the World Cups.

"You betcha. I don't suppose there is any more lasagna...?"

Nope, Rave. The 90 minutes of lasagna are over.

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....