Occupied (they, theirs)

 

                                                                              -for Robin Magee...   

Capt. Barefoot shares

the old saw:

If a cluttered desk

is a sign of a cluttered mind

what's an empty desk?

Holed up in a new house

in their mid-70s

they get to clean out the old

Re-enchanting the temp shelves

with hardbacks, chapbooks, pictures

plaques, awards & freebox superfinds

the Captain's 

in heaven

They're not into the cyber-savvy

podcast-eared Ikea-primed

sparse architecture of the virtual

Instead, they're flying the wind-whipped

Ukrainian flag on their front porch

in spring's sympathetic magic of solidarity

A true believer in

the serendipity of accumulated

happenstance revealed

Says itki keeps the neurons firing

to hold memory's charge

Call me a hoarder

the Captain confesses

I call myself an archivist

Wandering the stacks

till the end. Until all matter

transubstantiates into

Jack Mueller's kaleidoscopically 

emerging form

Bristlecone 3

 

The new issue of Bristlecone, Colorado's latest online litzine, is out -- thank you Joe Hutchison! 

Go  Here 

to read the work of Patricia Dubrava, Jeff Foster, Beth Paulson, Daniel Klawitter, Lary Kleeman, John D. Levy, David Mason and yours truly. 

Below's the poem of mine that appears in the mag. The Rainbow Family is considering hosting this year's national gathering in Colorado:

Rainbow Gathering

-for Dolores LaChapelle

Purple lupines tell us more than park rangers

when we camp amid their wolfish blooms

Tug their starry leaves until the dew

seeps into our skin & we come to realize 

what a wet kiss can really mean

"That ain't dew," pipes up McRedeye

"that's coyote piss.” And the laughter we

hippies ring from the bell of our mouths

announces not ecstacy’s vespers but the 

zen koan of the Trickster's leer. The fear 

in the cop’s sneer. Despite the arguments

for & against Earth First!, Murray Bookchin

coast redwoods & the superiority of the

sensuous, we’ve learned how to drum, hum

& chant. How much morning tai chi teaches 

us in the shadows of Shandoka's slopes

How quickly we can recover the lost harmonies

of the Wild. How deep Nature’s alive inside us

Hungry hawk chicks nested in the branching

of our neurons. Whole fields of timothy &

escaped orchard grass up against hot splashes

of Indian paintbrush. Golden mariposa petals

Wind-whipped groves of spindly doghair

tremuloides, false hellebore, sweet cicely &

& the 40-year flowering of green gentian

All the plant lore that any good Crone knows

Hiking with her we stumble into beauty

Carry home stone. Bone antlers. Trilobites &

fat boletes to remind us on the way to & fro 

what’s meant in taking the time to lose

ourselves in skies gone psilocybin. To grok 

bristlecone pine impervious to alpine gusts

To settle into the embrace of our more

than human family, and even if only

for a few days, to hear our own opened 

hearts singing us back into the mystery

Tax Time

 

Winter of our Discontent

Expected snow

but their band of flakes

a no-show

No surprise

This dosey-doe

of cloudless skies

Drumbeat of tax cuts

border wars, coal scat

& plutonium futures

Itki’s undanceable

Unsustainable

An off-key bully boast

Itki's care frozen mid-step

Wisdom in flaming absence

Let’s face the facts, we’re furious

Time for manifesting anger

that makes the floor shake

Calls us out 

to act on

our thwarted socialismo values

Mad as shaggy manes 

busting up

through the White House lawn

Disgust pushes us

onto the Beltway dancefloor

for a little Aztec 

two-step

A tarantella of protests

where outside action comes from 

an inside movement

Outrage that won't stay put

Though, as one Ish Nation poet scribed

putting a hopeful spin to the story

In every good tango

there’s a step backwards 

too

Nevertheless, McRedeye sez

no time for tip-toeing

This ain’t  no ballet

Best be joining 

hands & yes yes

 jumping into the mosh pit

Vernal Equinox

                 Microbes stirring in the soil,

The very air alive,

Crocus and daffodil,

Iris and hyacinth emerging from bulbs,

Rose and lilac with their beauty and scent.

Green fire waking, 

With all the joy  of Persephone

returned from her sojourn in the underworld.

 

Birdsong fills the air again as these angels 

court, mate, nest and search for food,

tickled into wakefulness by light and warmth.

Your cells are laughing too

Let them laugh despite so many woes.

Join with one another in  gratitude and praise.

Of the promise of Spring and of longer, lighter days.

Amy Hannon (aka Amalia Sabatini), Clinton, NJ

OUR VOICES, OUR RESISTANCE!

Judyth Hill of PEN San Miguel de Allende has organized an international presentation of poets from around the world  bearing witness to global struggles, human and environmental. As a member of her chapter of PEN, I'm proud to share my poem, Building Alliances

Building Alliances

“There’s been too many ripoffs for too long”

-Leo Lyyoki

If I had a hammer

& not the one that busted

in my hands as organizers are

busted for planting

trade union pegs

to stretch the corporate tent

A hammer that wouldn’t

buckle under

to repeated blows

Merciless sun baking sidewalks

Tools pushed to their limits

Snapping under pressure

If I had a hammer

forged of the Mother’s fury

yet tempered with love

for all her relations

two-legged four-legged

buried stone or spiraling seed

A hammer shaped to

the will of the people

Nothing could stop us

from driving a nail through

the heart of the beam

to begin the reconstruction

Building alliances

powerful as the wind

that rips a roof to shreds

or sweeps a prairie clean

The order of the reading has changed to:

Iya Kiva: Ukraine PEN ~

 Linda Marie Baros: French PEN

Inga Gaile: Latvian PEN ~

 Pam Uschuk: PEN America

Diane Régimbald: PEN Quebec ~ 

Bana Baydoun: PEN Lebanon

Dragica Čarna Slovene PEN ~ 

Ma Ma Thiri: Myanmar PEN

Cristina Wormull PEN Chile ~

 Arinda Daphine: Uganda PEN

Veera Tyhtilä: PEN Finland ~ 

Anise Jafarimehr for Zeinab Yousefi: Kurdish PEN

Wezi Msukwa-Panje: Malawi PEN ~

 Aziz Isa Elkin: Uyghur PEN

Art Goodtimes: San Miguel PEN ~ 

Stella Nyanzi: Uganda PEN

 

The Quantum Physics of Fame

by Wendy Videlock

who wants small circles

when bigger circles make waves

maybe that’s the point

Amache Monument

 As I wrote in a recent Facebook post,  "My grandmother was an illegitimate child left on a doorstep in Japan and raised Japanese. She came to this country just before the war, and saw many of her friends in San Francisco's Japantown forcibly relocated to Colorado." Today Sen. Michael Bennett made this announcement. 

Wonderful news from Washington this week: 

The Senate and the House of Representatives passed my bill to establish the Amache National Historic Site, a World War II-era Japanese American incarceration facility outside of Granada, Colorado, as part of the National Park System. On Monday, I spoke on the Senate floor and passed this legislation with the support of all 100 senators. 

The bill now heads to President Biden’s desk as a result of the tenacity and hard work of Amache survivors, descendants, the National Park Service, and community leaders. 

I’ve often said that American history is the story of a struggle between humanity’s highest ideals and our worst instincts. Amache serves as an important reminder of this contrast – our government locking up its own citizens on the one hand, and Japanese Americans holding onto hope that we can move past this dark chapter in our nation’s history on the other. 

This weekend, I joined Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for a roundtable discussion and a tour of Amache with survivors, descendants, community leaders, and the National Park Service to mark the 80th anniversary of the executive order that began the forced internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans. 

This moment is a testament to the resilience of Coloradans like John Hopper, a high school principal in Granada, and his students, who led the tour of Amache yesterday. John and his students have been taking care of this site for decades, collecting items from all over the world that former prisoners have sent back to ensure the next generation of Coloradans learn about what happened at Amache

I’m grateful to have worked with Senator John Hickenlooper, Congressman Joe Neguse, and Congressman Ken Buck  to make sure Amache will have the resources and recognition it deserves for years to come. Amache matters to Colorado, and I look forward to seeing the president sign this important legislation into law. 

[Graphic by Rafael Jesús González]

GRAND VALLEY ... My friend Jacob Richards of Grand Junction has been a fearlessly progressive voice in a very conservative region for decades.  His latest project is a Peoples History of Grand Junction. You can go to his Facebook group HERE ... I posted his latest installment detailing the role the Grand Valley played in receiving the Japanese-American detainees from the West Coast. Visit my Facebook wall HERE. 

TALKING GOURD ... For 30/40 years, before the Telluride Daily Planet killed my Up Bear Creek column I'd feature a poem at the end of my op-ed "three-dot journalism," as San Francisco legend Herb Caen used to call it.  I'm going to be doing that again occasionally with the Union of Mountain Poets. I'm looking for short poems, if any readers want to submit ... Kicking things off is my friend Hannah Helfer. 

[Graphic by MaryJoy Martin]

Western Civilization

Driving in the dark

Trying to get home

My eyes are heavy

The headlights are harsh

And I feel sad

that I can't see the moon

-Hannah Helfer