BY JAN HAAG

INTRODUCTION + POETRY + ESSAYS + MUSIC + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

HAAG'S BIO

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS



THE 2007 POEMS


INDEX


RAIN III

#01
01-02-07

The wild rains rain wildly down,
the blustery wind blusters, my legs
are damp from my walk, my
head full of droplets of rain.



POPPYCOCK

#02
01-03/11-07

Both the OED and the Century are silent on the subject;
both 1933, the one calling it U.S. Slang, the other simply “obscure.”
Not until 1976, ‘82, ‘85 do I find in one of my dictionaries,

The American Heritage Dictionary, that anyone bothered to trace it down
to a Dutch dialect: pappekak, from the Middle Dutch pappe + kak,
dung + defecate, from the Latin cacare. In any case, that was my

reaction to Pound’s letters as quoted by Margaret Anderson in “My
Thirty Years’ War,” p.159 to 172: Poppycock! Mostly poppycock. Which fits
right in with our modern “Sheeit!.” Pretentious, precious, self involved and usually right

enough -- but who wants to read it? -- and capable of divorcing
a friendship or two, as did my first circulated draft of “Trivium”
(now named “Gods and Goddesses” -- and possibly to be finished one day soon).

Poppycock, all that pretensions, precious drivel, Ezra used to show off
his erudition, which he, doubtlessly, felt no one but he was actually
capable of understanding. What a jolly masturbation fest! One of the most refreshing

things about M. C. A., is her language of the real
world even though used in admiration of the “sensitive,” the weird, wild
and often wonderful. But Jane Heap says it all in an article quoted

on p.147: “The mind can never be so lonely in
those places where the mind has never come as in a place
where the mind has gone [and]... There was no one to ask about anything.”

She is talking about having grown up in an insane asylum.
And I, of course, am talking about having grown up “artistically” with
the ministrations of The Great God Leshikar and James (Mirabeau) of Sunnyside Avenue.



BREAKING HEART

#03
01-04/05-07

The most pathetic scene in all of literature
is Jane Heap’s return to Brookhaven*
in the middle of the night to dig up Alice
in Wonderland’s body and trying to revive her
whom she had chloroformed because,
returning to New York at the end of summer,
she and Margaret knew there was no home,

in their city lives for the sickly kitten.




*Margaret Anderson, MY THIRTY YEARS’S WAR, p. 204




POET’S SONG

#04
01-11-07

I sing and nobody hears,
nobody listens, nobody cheers.

I sing for nobody. I sing for God.
He certainly doesn’t listen.
She certainly doesn’t cheer.

I sing for nobody, nobody cheers.
Who is this nobody, nobody so dear?



THE VEDAS
or
VEDIC CHANTING

first draft
#05a
01-14-07

He who has never heard the Vedas
chanted through the cool of an ashram
just at dawn, has never heard the yearning
of the human spirit, and no matter what he has
heard besides, he has no concept of the empty heart
open to perceive the infinite loneliness and magicalness
of the human, one lonely human lost in the vastness
of earth’s tragedies and treasures, endless in time and space.

Loosely based on the rhythm of two translated sentences from Paul Valery's Essay on Leonardo da Vinci.




THE VEDAS
or
VEDIC CHANTING

second draft
#05b
01-14-07

He who has never heard the Vedas
chanted through the cool of an ashram
dawn, has never heard, and no matter
what he has heard besides, has no concept
of the awesome yearning of the human
spirit, has no measure with which to plumb
the depths of the empty heart, to perceive the infinite
loneliness, the splendrous magic of the perceiving human,
a lonely being lost in the vastness of earth’s tragedies,
treasures, endlessness in space, time and desire.



THE VEDAS
or
VEDIC CHANTING

first draft
#06a
01-14-07

Vedic Chanting as the red sun crests the horizon,
nasal, harsh, as resonant as the strings of the sitar,
the names of the gods wafted like smoke into the air ,
the goddesses named, light as snow flakes in the Himalayas,
perfect in design, ephermeral in their embodiment,
as if the crystals of their designs could call from peak to peak
like the winter city appearing and disappearing in the fog of dawn.



THE VEDAS
or
VEDIC CHANTING

second draft
#06b
01-14-07

Vedic Chanting, as the red sun crests the horizon,
-- nasal, harsh, resonant as a sitar’s metallic strings --
wafts the names of Gods -- smoke into the air.
The Goddess’s honorifics fall, snow in the Himalayas,
light, perfect in design, ephemeral, as if their crystals could
call from peak to peak -- like a winter city appearing,
disappearing in the fluffy fog of dawn.



THE VEDAS
or
VEDIC CHANTING

first draft
#07a
01-14-07

Vac, Sri, Durga, Radha, Laksmi, Kali, Parvati, Saraswati

Never given a chance for a course deflection,
beyond Krishna's wild imaginings, I have yielded up
any longing for fruits, canceled, and cancel each
desire as it arises, refuse, and am able to refuse
because of my feminine body, involvement in cousin
killing, in the egregious silliness of war. Man’s highest calling?
To kill his fellow man. Let’s sit on the shore
of Ma Ganga, ring our bells, chant the Vedas.




THE VEDAS
or
VEDIC CHANTING

second draft
#07b
01-14-07

Vac, Sri, Durga, Radha, Laksmi, Kali, Parvati, Saraswati

Never given the chance for a course deflection,
beyond Krishna's wild imaginings, I yielded up
all longing for action’s fruits, canceled, and cancel
each desire as it arises, refuse, and am able to refuse
-- because of a feminine body -- involvement in cousin
killing, the egregious silliness of war. Man’s highest
calling? To kill his fellow man? So much for Man’s
reasoning. Let’s sit, padmasana, on Ma Ganga’s shore,
ring our bells, strangle the goats, chant the Vedas.





WHOSE WEATHER?

#11
02-20-07

The days slip by on mossy feet.
Sphagnum moss, long-tailed, thick-cushioned, moist,
or, for this winter -- “The hottest January

ever,” I read, hear from the radio,
flit over on the web, while I
while away icy blasts of dark, windstorm-

days hiding from the weather -- the sphagnum
may be stiff like that branchy frost/
ice I saw once, a million miniature

albino Christmas trees, perched along the spindly,
n=aked Chautauqua branches, twigs. Thirteen feet of
snow in a month that year where

thirteen inches were expected for the winter.
I’m sure it must be warm for
Siberia or the Arctic, but here it

feels like newly, superbly repaired refrigeration. So
days actually skid by on slippery streets,
layers of thin, black, invisible ice, with

a sudden tip sideways, arms flapping, bruised
knees. However, two days ago, the first
all over, full blush -- a hazy green

from the distance -- of the giant canopy
of the small-plum tree beckoned. Up
close, green/red buds on every branch

clued crocus to bloom, daffodils to swell
pointy blossom pods, snowdrops, past their prime,
to flare out and abandon their petals.

I’d have to tramp through woods to
actually see the sphagnum, so I touched
none of it this winter/spring of

thin ice, thick snow, dire prediction. How
do they average out the fierce cold
of my world with their “hottest January?”



BEING II

#21
03-16/06-05-07

I can hardly wait to get into bed and stop being
for one more day, for one more hour, one more minute,
to disappear into the absence of time.

God! I can’t even competently handle my own elusive identity anymore.
I turn it all over to you to do with as
amuses you. Do whatever makes you laugh.

And I will laugh with you -- heartbroken with shrill laughter. What
a dirty trick is consciousness, consciousness of being, being that cannot
be helped or hindered with being’s exigencies.

My sisu has all but vanished and soon, so will I.
Fog clouds the brain, faintness overcomes the body containing the heart.
The spirit wants to bed down eternity.



INSTEAD

#22
03-21/24-06/05/07

So, instead of using my considerable intelligence to
“just live,” I was intent on “doing something!”
“What” never became quite clear. So I did
a bit of this and a bit of
that. It was a fragmented, often enjoyable life,

often tormented. I wove “pots” of words. Something
the ancients couldn’t do; they had no computers.
They could approximate the beauty of 0 1
0 1 0 1 0 1, but could
not configure the maddeningly precise, real thing! One

could drink in the words, but there was
no water, hence no life, hence no way
to drink up one’s life in the auspicious
moment. That awful, continuing necessity to do...! Then
relief -- of that unrelaxed pursuit of death instead.



A VERY STRANGE THING

#23
03-25/06-05-07

Reconsidering -- again -- my turn into old age:
I do believe I can recall the exact moment real aging
set in. I was getting off the bus,

and I thought -- I think -- that it
would be amusing to try it one step at a time.
You know: step, put the other foot down

on the same tread and step again
-- step, step -- because my left leg hurt, mildly. It had hurt
for some time. It was as if I

were going to pretend old age -- just
to try it out. Now, as I look back to then,
there must have been something about it that

intrigued me, for I remember trying it
again and again. A little to favor the aching leg, but
probably more ensorceled by this aging thing --wondering,

I’m sure, what the bus driver and
other passengers were thinking. Well, of course, as I grow smarter
with age and aches, I know, though this

pretense was a very strange thing for
me, nobody was looking, no one was thinking anything at all.
Since then, I have discovered how very kind

most Seattle people are. They now take
one look at me and, knowing I’m old, immediately give up
their seat for me. Mostly young girls. And

I do so appreciate it. Even though
it is hard for me to consider myself old at 73.
I guess it’s my spirit that has grown

old. In fact now, from time to
time, I can do no better than step, step on the
same step -- something my father would never have

done! As I do so, always -- almost --
I think of him: so determined to put one step above
the other right up to the doorway to

death. And I think: “Jolly good for
him!” Somewhere, deep inside, little Jana Maria, giggles -- still thinking it
great fun to pretend she is old, but
knowing it simply can not be true!



NOW I’M BECOMING

#24
03-27/06-05-07

Now I’m becoming witlessly fearful to live without
teeth. Very slowly it has dawned on me
that most of the time I will be
-- well, I can’t even count them -- toothless -- in

front. Four front teeth gone, and one on
the upper right side. Actually doesn’t sound like
many, does it? Of course, there is one
missing at the back of each row, and

maybe three more from the lower left -- but
they’re all in back and, for the most
part, don’t show. It’s the four front teeth,
which cause the little-old-lady, shurnken-front-

upper-lip-look -- and those two fangs! My
new teeth are at home in the refrigerator --
for consideration. They’re wax at this stage -- and
one mustn’t drink hot coffee. Otherwise -- like a

candle’s wax -- they’ll melt and slip right down
my throat. That is quite a dark riverine
image to contemplate. I didn’t mind the loss
of the foursome (they were first knock off

some thirty years ago by a stumble and
replaced by a “permanent” bridge over four little
gold cones) until just now -- as it dawns
on me, like a slow winter sun, that,

in the bathroom mirror, most of
the time from now on, I will be
toothless, brushing, brushing, brushing. It seems I’ve been
newly captured as a slave to my teeth.

Does that make me sorry I didn’t take
better care? Not at all. For now I
am beginning to learn to spend time with
these really quite handsome new pearlys. Thus, on

the third try, I’ve fallen in love with
those who once were my slaves. Some things,
put off, cause unexpected delight in odd ways,
in old age -- because there is no choice.



CHECKING ONE’S CHART

#25
03-28/06-05-07

Ache in the groin and gut, gas -- perhaps
less than yesterday, more than enough for incipient
nausea, lack of hunger -- but the spirit feels

good -- mostly. Even the body is coming along. Do the
meditation, do the exercise, come back up from
the Chapel with the intention of bed again.

But first, try my teeth out on Charles.
Warming them on a plate in the cupboard,
I can feel my courage failing as I

approach putting them in for the first time
-- at home. Who knew, almost four months ago,
the effect of a few teeth being pulled?

I feel vulnerable. I begin to look like
Father without his teeth, with his sunken lip
and yawning, cave-like mouth -- when he died.




THE NAIVE EAR #2

GRUNTS AND MOANS POETRY

Presented by
Hugo House and Nonsequitur

#26
03-31/06-05-07

Not a word of English: shrieks, lip-flap, doodling,
but no words, except those read from a book.
They may have been from some obscure African speech,
lingua franca of a dying dialect, read with anesthetizing
seriousness, free of meaning -- twittering birds in a forest,
swans on a lake, but one missed the trees, water.
I left before half time with sure knowledge that
I could make myself into a concert. Literally. Moans
and groans, twitters and twerps, whistles and whooshes issuing

from three not very attractive, middle-aged guys
strolling around the stage, on and off it.
Human noise-makers. Nothing particularly unexpected. Not like,
during one of those centuries back then when
people (the French), more broadminded then they are
today, had a farting orchestra, steady, finely tuned
to elaborately controlled pitch and timbre notes. Tonight,
however, there was a digital section, however, with

a laptop projecting its beam more or
less steadily, off center, on a quarter
of the Chapel’s very large screen. White
letters on dark tumbling about the screen,
one of the less than attractive guys
had a name for the project -- which
failed to stick to my mind. Another

“etude” was in vivid colors: smearing,
jittering, up, down, across the screen,
in almost-words in color, really
quite pretty color. I do love
saturated reds. I understand they, at
least the Poets of Hugo House,

are moving here -- their new
performance home. “O frabjous day!
Callooh! Callay!” I let my
eyes roam round and round
the high ceilings, the arches,

the civilizedly plain lighting,
and remembered with quiet
dignity, that in here,
in the dark, every

morning, just as
the sun rising
makes the stained

glass glow,
I do

my

meditation, my
yoga. Silently.

With Shiva-purna.
Nunnery life may
be a bit

unusual -- but first rate.
At the concert, my
interest zeroed in on
going up to bed.




I HAVE TO

#37
04-25-07

I have to get used to not doing
as much as I used to, not doing
as much as I’d like to -- in some
old judgmental way. I had a ton, several
tons, of energy then, like a nuclear fission,
exploding, flaring, glittering, dashing through the sky of
my desire, like the sun’s radiance, brightly flaming,
burning itself up. Nothing will be left one
day of the sun or me. Today I found the sum of my cat’s appetite.

He wants two pieces of kidney on his
plate. Not more! Otherwise he behaves like Emily
Post, always leaving something, apparently out of nicety
and good manners, on his plate, as if
I were too generous, but I’m not, and

I have to get used to not doing
as much as I used to, not doing
as much as I’d like to -- in some
old judgmental way. Don’t overwhelm the universe. On
the other hand you couldn’t if you wanted
to. You write 5,000 poems and think it
a big deal. Nature tosses away 10,000 plums
on that white-Mount-Rainier of a tree
in the backyard of your nunnery -- every year.

And doesn’t hesitate to create another 20,000 or
maybe 100,000 fruits on this single 11 acre
plot. Not to mention how many blades of
grass can be counted if one devises a
system for dividing the counted from the uncounted

as one slowly crawls about on one’s knees,
I have to get used to not doing
as much as I used to, not doing
as much as I’d like to -- in some
old judgmental way. “I’d like to do nothing,”
tosses out my highly successful, perpetually traveling astronomer
niece. She doesn’t know, in training as she
is for world class recognition, that when it
comes time to do nothing, it will be

even harder to keep the 10 million blossoms
at bay in the spring, They tell us
we are about to, but how, just how
would you snuff out even one continent of
burgeoning blossoms -- knowledge any parking lot can confirm.



TOENAIL CLIPPINGS

#41
05-12/22-07

In the beginning it’s a rather admirable stance:
admiring everything, the slightest lisp or tiniest weed,
the elegant curve of the cat’s claw shed,
the tragic necessity of discarding nail clippings from
one’s youngest daughter. So you save the tiny,
translucent bits, put them, reverently, in a jar.
Then, in the 21st Century, christen them art.

Quite rightly, insofar as no one else ever
captured that exact squeak of the contrabass clarinet,
nor brought it to concert to preserve it.
In this age, there’s no objection to, nay recognition
of, foolishness. The desperation just to live has
reached unimaginable heights. No one else has thought

to tinkle an icicle specially imported -- involving split
second timing -- from the 57.00N latitude as it
lies across Latvia, with a tiny hammer of
Toolox steel, at the moment when the very
last bit of ice is returning to water.
It’s done, it’s clapped for, it’s called art,
an intellectual game far beyond Lascaux Caveman’s sensibilities,

beyond the Renaissance man’s all encompassing excursions. No
human at all, man or woman, ever thought
to call their toenails art until the early
21st Century. There were other names for it:
grave goods, burial rituals, eating, sleeping and sloughing.
Today it all comes under the rubric: art.

One listens soberly to the utter boredom of
tootings, groanings, shrieks, knowing that up in one’s
own attic, are saved words: nouns, adjectives, verbs,
giant piles of little conjunctions, articles, prepositions, piles
and piles of them, conjoined in various ways
which may or may not make sense. But,
once manifested, can you deny them their unique

stance on the stage of art. We’re catching
it all today. Yesterday, we hated to toss
out, today we despair of enough storage space
as we reduce everything to word and image
and house it in cyberspace. That elegantly curved
toenail clip, infinitely valuable in itself, can be
immortalized, studied, scholarshipped. Praise and mourn the toenail
as the rest of the world goes by.




FEEDING FRENZY II

#42
05-22/28/06-03-07

Out for a cup of coffee this morning...
wanting to go to Starbucks, dreading to go
to Starbucks, because, last time I went to
Starbucks, a flibbertigibbet of a girl, tested my

patience so, I thought I was climbing Everest
just to get an ounce or two of
soymilk. First, the blond ignored me as I
gazed about to find the cream and sugar

counter (it had been moved). I smiled at
her, spoke to her. Then, when she finally
took time to understand why I was
standing about, it took her an age to

find a carton of soymilk. Then she embarked
on another age to find a wee cuplet
to pour an ounce into. Then I, in
her absence, snatched the carton, took it to

my cup. Returning it to her with a
smile, she snarled at me that: “Now! I’ll
have to throw the whole thing away!” Apparently
my touching it had contaminated the whole of

the newly opened carton. “Very good,” I answered
pleasantly. Leaving the carton at her fingertips, I
strolled away, out of that Starbucks, I thought,
forever. Perhaps all her regular customers were lepers.

But there is, one cannot deny, something about
a cup o’ Starbucks that has become coffee
to the literal minded. So I tiptoed up
to that neighborhood Starbucks, and tried to peer

in the window. Finally I cracked the door,
saw a boy and an older woman working
and no flibbertigibbets. I even ordered a 12
oz instead of my regular 8 and, in

spite of a cold, and wishy-washy determination,
with luck, I found a Seattle Times in
the bin and sat down to read and
drink. On page 3 I found: “’It’s one

of the most horrible, humbling experiences I’ve ever
had, walking over those dead bodies. A lot
of times you have to step over their
limbs...’” said Daniel Mazur, U.S. veteran of

5 Everest expeditions, about “the bodies of a
few dead climbers [which] partially block the razor-
edge climbing route near the summit.”* A lot
of the heroics of these mad, disabled mountain

climbers sound like the follow-up to school-
yard dares. But nothing is horrible enough, it
seems, to turn them back, nor persuade them
even to pause to hack off and haul back

an arm or a leg, or even a
finger, so the dead’s dear ones can properly
mourn over the body parts of their singularly
sacrificing relatives. And, by the way, Starbuck’s policy

regarding soymilk has changed. Now, behind the counter,
they pour whatever measured amount they decide upon
for you, and lid the cup so that,
apparently, you won’t notice, compliment, criticize the amount

of their choosing. (It was satisfactory.) They do
not let you near the carton. No doubt
their employee’s hands are fully tested before every
grip for non-contaminability so that they, with impunity,

can handle soymilk cartons. Other coffee shops just
hand you the carton so you can pour
the amount you choose -- or some even leave
it out on the cream and sugar counters

in pitchers along with the 2% or 1/2
and 1/2. It reminds one of the early
days of moon exploration when astronauts were quarantined
upon their return from the moon. The wise

men of those days wanted to assiduously guard
against moon-contaminants, never considering, apparently, that they
would more likely contaminate the moon then it
would contaminate them. Just a day or two

before I had read about an Everest, Sherpa-
only climb: no whites, no foreigner, just an
8 man Sherpa climb, the 17th for their
guide, Appa, who, if he succeeds, will break

his own (16 climbs) record. I am addicted
to reading old newspapers that failed to be
thrown out at the proper time. This was
from April 20, 2007, Seattle Times, page 2:

“Sherpa seeks to rise to occasion again.” Mountain
climbing articles keep mentioning that Everest was first
“conquered” in 1953. Hmm. In the whole several
billion years of its existence and the, at

least, several million years of human’s existence, is
it believable that no one at all climbed
the world’s highest mountain before the Christian’s nineteen
hundredth and fifty-third year? Not even a Sherpa?

Odd that they knew how to get there,
knew they had gotten there, if they had
never been there before. Perhaps this climb-“because-
it-is-there” mania is just a modern

malady, acute and contagious. 200 people (a count
which may or may not include Sherpas) have
died of it in just over half a
century. On May 20th, the Seattle Times, page

A5, mentions: Samantha Larson, who may or
may not be the youngest (19) foreigner (neither
from Nepal or Tibet) to ever attempt (she
has neither succeeded nor died as of this

writing) the 29,035 foot summit. (The youngest foreigner
might have been a 17 year old French
lad in 1990.) However, in a footnote-ish paragraph
the Associated Press concedes that a 15 year

old Sherpa girl from Nepal (no date, no
name) was the youngest to ever summit Everest.
So it’s not only age, but nationality and
sex of who is who in the climbing

world that counts re records, record breaking, death.
I’m afraid eating may become an ultra private
affair for me, for though my new front
teeth are so attractive, indeed, beautiful, a dream

come true, they are not comfortable to eat
with, hence, like the ancient and traditional Brahmins
of India, I may do my eating first
and alone from now on, fore-front toothless.

*Seattle Times, May 22, 2007, p. 3 -- (my father's 101st birthday, if he were alive).




CHAMBER MUSIC 3: SILENT ROOM

Installation

#47
06-09/26-07

Steve Peters’ “Library Piece” on the CD track:
a treble, slightly shaking almost foghorn-like sound
and a faint click/tingling, lots of quiet
-- my mind busy busy busy wondering what makes
those peculiar sounds in silence? and who has

the patience to hear them? Are the books
blowing the fog at each other? Faint warnings,
but not too evident... and that resonant click-tingle?
I find myself staring intently at the screen.
It, too, is always luminescent with ignorable information.

That woodwind-medium-high-pitched sound stirs a
little panic in the blood, as if someone
were peeking through night windows -- Or is it
crickets? ice-legged crickets? like the weeds I
once saw on a winter day in our

almost frozen Pennsylvania stream -- bell-like icicles clinking
together. Is this what printed words whisper among
themselves in the silence, free from readers, patrons,
people? Suddenly I want to know if library
silence was recorded on a sunny day or

in the shade of a Seattle drizzle* -- at
Greenwood -- a renewed library I’ve not yet entered.


*"Cloudy day, intermittent sun, no rain to speak of during recording." Steve Peters, gmail, 6/11/07




I HEAR

#63
07-09-07

I hear the humming in the air,
the birds’ caw and chirp, the planes
passing overhead. There’s also like a waah
waah sound, a far far away clicking,
a chirp. I saw the four, at
least, little swallows at the front entrance
today, two to a nest, one nest

on each side, high up, in shadow
above the arch. The big bird comes,
the wee birds open their mouths to
screech, are fed, and pull their heads
back down to the nest’s rim, while
the big bird flies out to find
the next course. I can’t tell if

the same big bird is feeding all
four of the little birds. But I
have seen such a sharing of labor
before when at Allan’s the nest fell
off as he drove away, and I
worked like a beaver to restore some
semblance of “home” for the little birds

and, having succeeded, several big birds flew
in to feed the little ones -- flight
after flight after flight, while several repaired
the nest, flight after flight after flight.
The wires hum faintly, the refrigerator sounds,
there is also a continuous rushing sound,
probably the traffic on I-5. Even in

daylight, one can imagine, but cannot see,
the diamonds running north, rubies flowing south.
The swallows choose to have birds and
feed them, I choose to have poems
and record them, the universe does its
usual job of digestion. I listen to
the churning, the humming in the air.



OCTETS AND QUARTETS

#64
07-12-07

“You’ll never succeed if you don’t narrow your
interests down,” “specialize,” “concentrate on one thing,” “choose,”
“minimalize,” “localize,” “stick with one subject,” “declare your
major.” However, now that I’ve reached 73, and
have “not succeeded,” and remain intrigued by everything,
I feel I can read what I want,
go where I choose, study whatever, nod in
on the 10,000 things that still beckon me.

It seems everyone else has written their book,
sung their song, traveled the world, maybe it
is my destiny to read their books, hear
their music with dour delight, ponder their footsteps.


The Olmecs, Toltecs, Findhorn gardeners, moon landings, Himalayan
treks, Transylvania and Pennsylvania, making ghee, shipping cookies
to Korea, sitting in Zen, sitting in Samadhi,
kayaking the oceans, swooning to Hubble deepfield images...

What is this odd necessity to study one
thing and ignore the rest? As if life’s
goal is only to win an award? What
has always interested me (among other things) is
the famous travelers, who went, who saw, and
never wrote a word. We’ll never know their
thoughts, their unarticulated visions, the welling up of
their speechless joy on seeing a new world.



FRIENDS

#65
07-13-07

Ever since I learned, quite early on, that
most friendships depended on me doing a lot
of things that I didn’t want to do,
I have considered friendship a somewhat bad deal.
They call it “tit for tat,” but I
always found the “tat” missing. No one ever
seemed to want to do what I wanted
to do. So I had a bunch of
friends that I got to do a bunch
of things with that I didn’t really want
to do at all.

"Friends" always made me think of a “Dear
Abby” that I read, cut out and carried
in my wallet for years and years: “Dear
Abby: I have two friends and I hate
both of them. What should I do?” How
I sympathized with that poor darling. And getting
older didn’t make it get any better. I
just got somewhat into the herd mentality of
doing what they wanted to do and smiling.
Then, quietly friendless, doing what I really wanted
to do by myself.

So after years and years and years of
working at friendship, for the most part I
gave it -- friendship -- up. Now I do what
I want to do, without needing to justify
or explain -- blissfully alone.



THE BELL

#71
07-22/23/24/25/12-18-07

Listening to Steve Peters’ recording (called “three rooms”,
which has a cylindrical bronze, possibly copper, bell
on its cover) that he gave me yesterday
during the early part of A Festival of
Wayward Music, at which about fifty practitioners of
odd music presented an outrageous, and outrageously successful,
program of his Nonsequitur, from noon to 10:00,
I find my finger tips compelled to comment.


SO


I’m getting old enough and feebleminded enough that
I can’t remember what I have written about --
or not. The eight foot bell, for instance,
that was my duty, for a while,
one winter, sitting in Zen at Su Dok
Sah in Korea, to ring -- at 3:00 o’clock
in the morning. Have I written about that?
I suspect I have. But here, perhaps, is

a clearer image: I put on every piece
of clothing I had brought to Kyol Che,
(the silent, winter sitting of the Buddhists) plus
the new-to-me, grey, nun’s robe, and
walked out into the, often, quite light, starry
night. It was especially luminous when the snow,
drifted down, like powder, to cover my shallow
footsteps. I walked across the outer courtyard, that,

empty, looked out, almost forever, toward nothingness, emptiness,
toward the sturdy “torii” structure (twice my height)
that housed the iron, black bell: I grasped
the log (on a chain ? on a rope? --
probably the latter, for its silent pliability), swung
it back and forth, back and forth to
pick up a rhythm, a momentum, and then
released it, the small log against the great

cavernous bell. Bong! Quite soon the great ringing
died into reverberations, overtones, a faint ringing in
the dying silence of the starry night, a
sky humming across snowy land. Being there, alone,
beside the ninth century temple, and the other
newer, paper-walled buildings, I circled the bell.
As the reverberations continued, I walked with slow
measured steps, pacing round the bell from south

to north, to stand once again, facing east
from the other side. I lifted the now motionless
log to begin again the slow rhythmical swinging.
Thirty-three times I released the log, rang
the bell, walked the silent, measured circuit round
and round the bell. The chanting, by then,
or maybe the bowing, had began. 108 bows.
(I was young enough then -- at 54 -- to

do them all but correctly: bend the knees
until they touch the ground, then without using
the hands and with a graceful slowness, stretch
out full length, the hands, in namaste, lightly
touching the ground -- even at Su Dok Sah,
I was more a Hindu than a Buddhist.
Then standing up again without using the hands.

108 times. Then the mono-tone-ous chanting began, after
that meditation. During the day, there was endless
activity, the endless stillness of the mountain, longing
for companionship, the memory of the reverberating bell.



HUM



Back in Americs, Los Angeles, in 1988, I
went to law school. There I first heard
“The Economic Theory of the Law” -- which can
be economically stated: “Make everyone pay for everything.
Charge what the market will bear -- and a
little more.” Keep dividing the world into smaller
and smaller owned plots, littler and littler actions,
multiply every process, control the seeds, the weeds,

make everything cost, so we, the owners, will
make money, so everyone else will be too
hungry, too busy “making a living,” or as
Joe Dominguez said: “Making a dying,” so they
won’t revolt -- or they won’t revolt until its
too late. Own the water, own the land,
own the forests, the oil, the water, and
the “free” National Parks. Charge what the market

will bear (and a little bit more). Own
the world. Let them work, man and wife,
to buy a home, to feed the kids,
to buy comic trash so there’s never anything
left to allow a vision of quitting work,
nor a desire to sit in the quiet
of a snow-laced temple, to hear music
in the lingering reverberations of the iron bell.



UNBEKNOWNEST TO ME

for Steve Peters
#72
07-23/08-01/02-07

I didn’t even know I had a longing
for strange sounds in the night, to lie
on a hard bed in the darkness of
a South Indian night, to hear and to
dream strange dreams on that pillow made of
straw, to be so content to be nowhere,
beyond the knowledge of my friends and relations,
quite beyond the knowable of my heretofore life,

to hear the whining of a bell going
on and on and on in the night.
Now I am old and no longer travel,
but I have known the bliss, romance of
sitting perfectly still at the feet of the
Buddha made of stone. I, too, am made
of stone. How few are the elements out
of which the mad multiplicity of the earth

is made and stuck together by that insistent
whining of the bell, running off like a
Mandelbrot Set into the chaos of infinity. All
the same and all different. The same sleep
in the darkness of an Indian night as
tonight in north America, held together by the
knowledge of my fragile ear. I used to

wonder how Oistrakh got that bell-like tone from
his violin, now I wonder from where the
bell gets it’s Oistrakh-like tone, a violin
in the night -- the silence of sounds, the
violence of soundlessness.



COOL MORNING

#75
07-31/08-01-07

It’s hard to tell if I have enough
intellectual energy left, enough sisu, to write a
poem -- today. I thought I did this morning --
with enchanting sunshine, golden and fragile, flickering across
my white walls, the mountain out, wind in
the cottonwoods. Then what did I do? Lingered
long in the cool air, ate some fruit,
slid back under the warm covers, brushed Shiva-purna

297 strokes, and dawdled. So there was no
time to write a poem before I walked/
bussed to my class to hear, this morning,
about the rings and irregular and regular satellites
of the distant planets: Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and
Jupiter. Remembering, even as the lecture proceeded apace,
only an fact or two, I began to
think about how the mind, my mind at

73, actually works. How it is different than,
say, it worked at 21, when, without effort,
it seemed -- let me emphasize seemed -- to retain
without effort. Or did it? That’s the point.
Now if I can grasp just one idea
or two from a lecture, I feel triumphant.
I savor it. I relish it. I roll
it round and round on my tongue and

through the synapses. It cascades outward and outward
into all the remoter areas of the brain,
captured by the gravity of some, and sent
onward by the albedo of others. And, as
it always did, the brain likes to see
most things as metaphor for the human condition.
The oldest objects (planets, moons, satellites, asteroids) evidence
(to the human eye or camera) the most

bombardment of their surfaces. Is there a metaphor
here? The older one gets the more one’s
surface is covered with all those “slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune” -- until like a planetary
surface, an ancient rock, iron or ice surface,
one becomes so covered with craters, that new
craters cease to register -- or mean anything. One
is beyond crater density as a meaningful gage

of one’s age. Perhaps this is the significant
morning on which, with the glittery lacy sunshine
dancing on the walls, I have reached my
personal Roche limit, where, pulled between gravity and
the tidal forces, between moons and rings, and
thus, finding myself immobilized, I stay safely cocooned
in bed, in the warmth, in the cool
air. But then, if so, I will have

missed the ethereal, lacy, high albedo dancing of
Drumheller Fountain’s shooting central and auxiliary sprays, cascading,
dazzling in the morning sunlight. It was turned
on -- in all its drop-letting glory after one
more prolonged spring/summer of intestinal repairs -- between
the time I entered the computer lab for
an e-mail check, and the time I re-emerged
on the Mt. Rainier path to cross over

to class. Callisto, one of Jupiter’s moons, is
recognized as the most heavily bombarded object in
our solar system. Callisto, an attendant on Artemis
(Diana), and Apollo’s twin, was the nymph who,
as punishment for a dalliance with Zeus (Jupiter),
was turned into a bear, and slain by
Artemis, the virgin huntress (or her own son,
Arcas). Dead Callisto continues to orbit mighty Jupiter.



THE 17 SURFACES BEHIND KANE

#83
08-09-07

Today, I decided to take a different way --
not directly across Red Square, but behind Kane
and down in front of Suzzallo to Mary
Gates. On this route one doesn't see Mt.
Rainier, but then Mt. Rainier is not out
today. It's overcast, but warm. It's supposed to
be midsummer, but it is like winter/fall:
Ice cold rain yesterday and, though overcast, a
little steamy today -- if you walk fast enough.

I feel a little pushed, a poem gathering
in my head, desperate for an outlet, like
rushing to the toilet. Will I get there
in time? To keep it in, I count
the paved surfaces behind Kane. Two, are concrete.
The other 15 are various dates, sizes, shapes,
textures of asphalt, macadam. It's like walking a
moraine landscape, or an archaeological dig. Will careful
planning, next time, take me to the dinosaurs?



GREETING MADNESS WITH STEADY GAZE AND A SMILE

for the Persian, Kamran Sadeghi
#85
08-26/27-07

Memories, dreams, illusions, visions, the full deck flashing,
sometimes gently, at times wildly before the eyes --
at the outside perimeters of the eyes (especially
the right eye) -- in corners, in shadows, in

mind’s recesses, in inaccessible senses -- an, at times,
amusing light and sound show -- shadows, dancings, presences
declaring their presence, sometimes bringing presents, at times
bringing the horror of unseen, partially seen, hideous

things. I smile and attend to the (by
consensus) knowable before me: flickering intensities of blacks
and whites, lights and their absences, igniting into
the crystalline incision of pure light, red light,

blue light, green light, orange, yellow, sticks of
light, angled hues, penetrating patterns, purple light, depths
of delineated illusions of light, but no thingness
-- there’s no match (adjective, adverb, adjectival clause, adverbial

reference) in a human vocabulary for the effect
of unembodied light (sound) shown on the shadow
(resembling, from one angle, intermittently, the cockpit of
the Enola Gay) of the grand piano and

heard (via magnets on the strings) as high
mystical sounds of exquisite horror, delicious hysteria, transcendence,
pure screamings and scratchings and shrill gloriannas lacerating
the soul, playing havoc with perception, with limits,

as if we now saw in the infrared
spectrum, in the ultraviolet light of imagination, scientific
speculation, at a level unknown to the gurus
before the electronic age, or, possibly, known, but

inexpressible, the inexpressibility of enlightenment, perhaps, or death.
But there -- shining on the undulating curves of
the grand piano’s belly-side, its lid held up
like a Dervish wing casting, on the white

wall, a gigantic shadow eternally passing, steadily there.
Like Beck and Cuba, trust me, it’s there.



TWO NEW BUILDINGS

#88
09-05-07

Two new bright white buildings? In front of
the Seattle-scape, dark with distance and gloom. From
someplace sunlight is leaking in. I put on
my glasses. They’re not new buildings, just reflective,
stair-stepped at the top, turned at an
angle one to the other. Or maybe they’re
parallel, glossy finish, with a striped look for
the window lines. The atmosphere is murky. All

the buildings look dead and empty. You don’t
see people from this distance. Sailboats, yes. Fire
boats, with their arching spray, yes. Little boats
even. On Lake Union. Seaplanes landing, occasionally. Or
taking off. And the big roaring jets, once
in a while, from Boeing or Sea-Tac. You
can guess, by looking out of the window,
that civilization was here sometime ago. When I

was young. Perhaps. I hear from down in
the parking lot the chatter of children, and
adults, leaving, or maybe arriving, at the Meridian
School. It’s only 9:30. Light, such as it
is, comes from the east. There was an
eclipse the other morning, which I missed. Or
maybe not, I remember getting up around that
time, searching casually for the moon, not finding

it. Wondering, ever so vaguely, why it was
so dark, when I knew the moon was
supposed to be full. Then going back to
bed. My watch on the world and the
heavens is pretty casual. Too much effort is
spent on musing, lolling, reading, wanting to understand
what this human experiment is all about. First
there were the Gorgons, then the Dinosaurs, then

Homo Sapiens. Then what? Any place you start
has a history. And an end. We won’t
need a meteor from outer space this time.
We just need to invent a nuclear tripping
widget to set off all the missiles, warheads,
atomic devices at one time. Boom! In the
meantime, the children’s voices shout and laugh before
they’re silent. Mom ushered them away? Or Dad?



I LIE III

#89
09-05-07

I lie, shrouded in white. White sheets, comforter,
pillow slips. The tangled, crevasse-filled mass, when
I am not in it, reminds me of
Rainier’s topography, or maybe Kanchenjunga. Even though it
is a little grey from a lot of
washing and endless use, it retains enough of
the look of purity, unsoiled snow, serenity. Sometimes,
but very seldom, Shiva-purna lies among the ridges
and valleys, his paws outstretched, his white blending
with the white of the unmade bed. We
both spend a lot of time sleeping. Awaiting the
end of the world. Or destiny. Or both.



I HAVE BEEN

#90
09-05/0-07

I


I have been deeply immersed in the study
of the Atom Bomb: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Alamogordo, Bikini,
the Enola Gay -- you can’t study one without
the others -- plus the extraordinary cover-up by
the Americans, by the Japanese of its consequences.
Why so tangled? Interwoven? Inseparable? Mostly because there
so are few books, articles, documents, even in
the Seattle Public Library, one of the best

public libraries in the country, about the bombing,
about its aftermath. (It happened before the NET.)
There is so little information that it gets
all bundled together but, even so, doesn’t fill
one shelf. From all the city branches, you
could gather all the pertinent books, it still
wouldn’t fill one shelf. The greatest single disaster
ever contrived by mankind, and there are only

brief references here and there, fewer references to
the cover-up. Neither the criminals nor victims
want to talk about it. (Hardly a word
was said until the fish poisoning of 1956.)
So. Wars will continue. We’ve already enough missiles
to create the cataclysms that will clear earth
of the human species. Are we here to
recognize, study, mourn the passing of

the Dinosaurs -- without much luck learning from their
passage? Will there ever be a smarter species
than ours who will not only mourn, but
stop killing each other? Probably not. We’re designed
for it, hard-wired for it, awesomely successful
at it. Why change?


II

What if all the people killed
in all the warfare ever engaged
in had not died? What if
we had always lived peacefully with

one another? Would we, like the
Canadian Geese so admire, looked for,
met with exclamations of delight when
their great winged “V”s passed overhead,

eventually, like the Geese, need to
be exterminated to protect the Earth’s
green lawn? We keep interfering with
nature’s checks and balances, then panic

as things spin out of control.
Death may be the greatest gift
of all. Can we ever manage
to give it, receive it, without

slaughter.



REFLECTIONS

#96
09-17-07

At times I see reflections in the sky:
my trees, my building, my view, my face,
but maybe not, maybe they’re sky artifacts, dark
matter, maybe they’re illusions or dreams or visions
or dirty windows. I do know I am
not as certain of things as I used
to be. Maybe I’m flesh. Maybe I’m bone.
Or maybe, perhaps, some, as yet, undiscovered substance,
as silent as a tree, four square as
a building, changeable as a view, golden as
my face.



RUSHED

#97
09-18/20-07

The bird song, the pulse, the feeling I
must eat fast, drink fast, rush, with my
naked head, through the door, go to sit
for the artists, makes even my heart beat
faster. Obligation, created out of the endlessly malleable
substance of life, is the magic carpet. For

awhile there is nothing. Then there is an
obligation. Heaven and earth begin to move in
harmony while meeting obligations. Is this the substance
the Buddhist substitutes for desire? But, no matter
how rushed, one can pause long enough to
catch the pulse and the birdsong, to write

a poem. I wondered what I would learn
in solitude, independence, self-sufficiency, freedom. What have
I learned? That I must oblige myself to
life. Otherwise, free as a bird, hostage to
four billions years of creation, evolution, outsmarting myself,

I sleep, eat crow.



DEJA VU

#101
09-24/10-04-07

O me God, at a hundred and one
poems for 2007, and no more said than
usual. Having never seen a film by Mai
Zetterling, I looked at The Girls last night.

Very 1968. About what I wanted to do
in 1968. Got it on paper, but never
on film. But now, aside from the beauty
of its productions values, The Girls is bit

of a yawn! All that preaching -- to no
avail -- to an audience (shown in one shot),
fast asleep. All that heavy-handed parallelism. That
symbolism. That’s how our minds worked in 1968.

Many of the DWW tapes, just a few
years later, more adventurous, grounded, truthful than this.
The Special Feature memorial/reunion of the women
in Mai’s house in 1996, a treat. But

a mild one. When will documentarians get around
to releasing their subjects from the measuredly philosophical?
After all, they are still humans, not museum
pieces. Mai’s house, of course, exactly our 1968 dream!



LENORE

May 10, 1907 -- September 24, 2007

#106
10-05/06/08-07

I bumbled around in your darkness, trying to help,
but only making things worse. By then you were
a grand old angry lady. Sharp words and we
parted. I had feelings. I had never expressed to
Lenore before then that I had feelings. She obviously
had them too. So that was the end for
me. It was never the same, for me, after
that -- admiring the grand old lady. She wanted to
hop around, be spry and extravagant, to show you
the magnificent things she had collected. I had read
an article about the Chiru that, under its chin,
produced shahtoosh, the softest wool in the world. (Illegal,
now, to possess.) I remarked about it to Lenore
and she, the great weaver, pulled several shawls and
a hank of shahtoosh, light as air, from one
of her trunks. She never reminisced. Just an occasional
remark about this time or that place. There really
is nothing to say about making art. If you
are making it. Especially if you are making it
and blind. The solitariness of the human being wrapped
in her necessity to make art is the only
thing that really sticks with you, pays off, never
fails. It’s always there to pick up and do
one more stitch, weave another inch, change or add
another word, or subtract two. It never pouts that
you have been away so long, never speaks to
you, so, when it is silent, you don’t miss
its voice. 100 years old, diminutive, and dead. Brilliantly talented.
A steady worker. A good entrepreneur. A presence as
a meeter and greeter. But angry, before she died.
I understand that, I am angry, too. Not at
anyone, but at the way things are, the persistent
forgetfulness. But I often remind myself that things are
better off forgotten, than stirring up anger, stress, memories.
C’est la vie.



RECONCILIATION

#107
10-06/08-07

More and more, I have the feeling that God
knows exactly what she is doing (i.e. in things
like the decay and decrepitude of age, the endless
tragedies, frustrations, repetitions, the forgetting, the dying) except for
that initial mistake: the actual creation of human beings.



TOO MANY

#109
10-08-07

I am getting more and more sensitive to
my own thoughts and too many, too many,
too too many generate nausea. I’ve never before
spent much time thinking about people, person by
person, nor have I spent much time thinking
about events, one catastrophe after another catastrophe. Boom

boom boom, the world is torn apart, day
after day after day. It leads one to
ask: Why didn’t god create the world as
he wanted it in the first place? Then
leave it alone. Does growing, changing, just breathing,
always have to be painful, traumatizing? At least

I can look at the landscape without vomiting.
Geological structures often excite me with irrepressible glee.



A RAMBLE THROUGH THE LEOPARD’S
SPOTS ON THE CLOTHES

#110
10-10/11-07

Is it that, like the leopard, people develop spots with age. I
must check to see if this is true. My cat certainly developed
his color with age, white booted and dark coated as he now
is. But then, he only has one spot. Black. Small. On his
nose. I don’t remember it on his nose as a newly arrived
kitten. But maybe it was there; I just failed to note it.

In any case, he is not a leopard. But why is it
that old people, so many old people have spots on their clothes.
Even fastidious old people have spots on their clothes, not only spots
from other things, but spots from food. Food on the clothes, spots
of food. I, myself, have watched them fall, those aspiring food spots.
Standing at the counter, spooning my breakfast drink or evening soup. I

watch the spoon, not even full, list to the side, and oops!
There’s a spot! Which, no matter how fast one attacks it with
sponge or cloth, never wants to disappear. And yet, and yet, yet,
yet, yet, the blouse, the skirt, the shirt, the dressing gown is
not really dirty, not dirty enough to wash. Goodness me, who moves
around enough at 73 to get anything really dirty. No sweat, no

bloody bottoms, no mud on the knees. Only the ambient dirt, so
to speak, and not much of that, if you live on the
5th floor. However, cosmic dirt does seem to accumulate. Great hunks of
cosmic dirt and cat fur. It got so bad, as I got
slowed down, that I needed to hired Maggie to wash the floors
once a month. Gentle Maggie, who smiles like a girl and has

her ears plugged with in-going books. She, once a lawyer, now
takes care of all the public floors in the nunnery. She didn’t
like the practice of our pushy, murky law. Shy, sweet tempered, a
good person. Nor, I think, does she have spots on her clothes,
just plain, practical, good clothes. No spots. Is it that she has
a daughter? an adopted daughter and, with the young, one tends to

snatch off their clothes and douse them in the laundry -- constantly. No
spots, but then they do get dirty. Kids run around, sweat, get
into messes. I suppose my observation is just one more thought along
the continum of old people returning to their childhood. They need someone
around to take their clothes, churn them in the laundry. More often,
and with more energy, than an old person -- like me -- wants to

spend washing essentially clean clothes. Clean, except for a spot of salad
here, coffee drops there and, in spring, streaks of cerise raspberry juice.
It’s such a hoot to think of myself as an old person.
It’s a fraud, for inside, I’m just the same neutral no-age
I have been forever. But books. Who on earth authors books, that
tell me: “He was an old person. He was 73, no longer

spry, but intelligent.”? Who isn’t intellegent at 73? But then the other
night, offering a ride, the youngish (woman) driver says in a hushed
whisper: “The person who needs to follow us in the truck is
73.” I snort and say: “I am 73.” But, later remember I
don’t, in fact, drive anymore. Reading the obit page (which I didn’t
used to do), I note lots of people die in their early

70s. (With youthful pictures placed in the paper by their survivors.) So
I’m old. I guess. I find spots on my clothes, and kids
(usually girls), jumping up to give me their seats on our lurching
Seattle busses. Not always, but often enough. I like that, I really
like that a lot. It shows courtesy and fledgling spots of empathy
peeking through their youthful cool exteriors. They are more compassionate than bus

drivers (or boys) who seldom let the old, the blind, the lame,
the pregnant mothers with kids and carts get seated before they jerk
off (or snooze) -- as if they could quickly make up for being
off schedule (discourteous), by bringing the feeble to their knees. But drivers
have spots already, eating in their seats, drinking enough to keep their
cool. Not like leopards, really, but every once in awhile an older

driver will expose a spot or two of compassion. Metro, the bus
company, rather than instruct their drivers in slow smooth starts, deals with
the problem by posting a note that this bus may startup suddenly.



EVERY MORNING

#128
11-20-07

another for Linda

Every morning, awake, after coffee with remorse or delight, I, convinced, after 5,000 poems, that I have said everything I have to say, sit down in nothing-to-say-oblivion, and behold -- More! No, not necessarily more perceptions, but this morning’s perception of Mt. Rainier -- hidden today by fog in a gray sky. It’s cone or shadow, absence, presence, or remembrance, push against my diaphragm, bowels, brain to be articulated, acknowledged, saluted. Or one more facet of Shiva-purna’s cat and un-cat-like personality -- today his purring -- needs to be explored. These, Rainier and Shiva, the two liveliest aspects of my universe, press with the insistence of a rock/iron world against my hollowness. They cry

for expression. I note that Shiva-purna still hesitates for long moments when I tap the brush, but that when, in fresh inspiration, he makes up his own mind, he knows exactly where to sit on my book or at the edge of the rug on my bedcovers to get his next brushing. Is he thinking in those long intervals of hesitation? Is he reading my mind, thought by thought? Is he teasing me? He often, because of the little crooked, brown splotch on one side of his lower lip, seems to be smiling. Laughing? I guess that’s why living is easier than writing, you don’t have to do anything about it.

It just is, and if you are unfortunate or fortunate enough to be born where she can’t take care of you, then, I suppose, after awhile the urge to eat becomes so strong that you have to do something about it. But born into 20th Century America and living in the 21st Century Doom-land, with ever accelerating inflation that America has become, if you can still ignore the news and want very little, your needs can be met quite easily, with a modest luxury on a quarter of a million in the bank. It won’t buy a house, or allow much travel, except bottom class, or buy you love, for most

of it must stay where it is to generate income to pay a modest rent, buy food, shop at the Goodwill. Then, until the market crashes, you can live as brightly as you want to -- provided you don’t want much. And I don’t. America is just fine, today, if you keep your head in the sand. It is very beautiful, very luxurious and, as long as you don’t mind, or can ignore an inflated-by-greed-for-his-class madman in the White House -- quite lovely to live effortlessly in. But should you have a sense of morality or a remembrance of what America once was, once stood for, it saddens you as you eat your

genetically modified bread. But I write no more political poems, I read no more news (first there isn’t any -- just a bare censored trickle) in the newspapers, and I never did have a television set. And therefore it has been made to seem, if you don’t participate in greed or believe in the terrorist bugaboo the madman keeps encouraging, as if there is nothing to write about. The world has been reduced to economics, capitalism, terrorism and greed. There is nothing left in the mind for a poem to feed on -- excect my cat and Mt. Rainier. So though I have nothing to write about, I write many mornings about them.

Other mornings I just skip it. The Hindus and the Buddhists said that if I emptied my mind, I’d reach Nirvana. I always had a lot of interests when my mind was full. As it got more and more empty, I got bored. Emptier, bored-er, right up to the edge of despair. I peck my despair into the computer and O! ever so neatly organized, the thoughts are visualized and regurgitated. A poem. In the world’s post-Babel language. The rest of my time, I listen to lectures -- on every subject under the sun -- other suns, too, out there, beyond, discovered via Hubble, pictured in all their raging, raving, anonymous, awesome beauty.


5 x 111

666 words




Copyright © 2007 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu

THE 2007 POEMS

INDEX


23 -- A Very Strange Thing, 03-25/06-05-07

21 -- Being II, 03-16-07

03 -- Breaking Heart, 01-04/05-07

47 -- Chamber Music 3: Silent Room, 06-09/26-07

75 -- Cool Morning, 07-31/08-01-07

101 -- Deja Vu, 09-24/10-04-07

128 -- Every Morning, 11-20-07

42 -- Feeding Frenzy II, 05-22/28/06-03-07

65 -- Friends, 07-13-07

85 -- Greeting Madness With Steady Gaze and A Smile, 08-26/27-07

90 -- I Have Been, 09-05-07

37 -- I Have To, 04-25-07

63 -- I Hear, 07-09-07

89 -- I Lie III, 09-05-07

22 -- Instead, 03-21/24-06/05/07

106 -- Lenore, May 10, 1907 -- September 24, 2007, 10-05/06/08-07

24 -- Now I'm Becoming, 03-27/06-05-07

64 -- Octets and Quartets, 07-12-07

04 -- Poet's Song, 01-11-07

02 -- Poppycock, 01-03/11-07

01 -- Rain III, 01-02-07

110 -- A Ramble Through The Leopard's / Spots On The Clothes 10-10/11-07

107 -- Reconciliation, 10-06/08-07

95 -- Reflections, 09-17-07

97 -- Rushed, 09-10/20-07

71 -- The Bell, 07-22/23-07

83 -- The 17 Surfaces Behind Kane, 08-09-07

05a -- The Vedas or Vedic Chanting, first draft, 01-14-07

05b -- The Vedas or Vedic Chanting, second draft, 01-14-07

06a -- The Vedas or Vedic Chanting, first draft, 01-14-07

06b -- The Vedas or Vedic Chanting, second draft, 01-14-07

07a -- The Vedas or Vedic Chanting, first draft, 01-14-07

07b -- The Vedas Or Vedic Chanting, second draft, 01-14-07

41 -- Toenail Clipping, 05-12/22-07

109 -- Too Many, 10-08-07

88 -- Two New Buildings, 09-05-07

72 -- Unbeknownest To Me, 07-23/08-01/02-07

11 -- Whose Weather, 02-20-07




RETURN TO THE 2007 POEMS

OTHER POEMS


BY JAN HAAG


ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS


INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

HAAG'S BIO

21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context