15 October 2007

a poem regarding an idea regarding empire

it seems that the left
has always
wanted -
in america, i mean -
has always - excuse me,
wanted -
can i please get a drink -

to be a part
ahem ahem
of some
kind of ummm
you know

like what they had in france

against hitler

berets and wide shoulders
and wide cigarettes
called gauloises -

for the love of
the marvel
of it all
for tomorrow
we may die.

call it resistance.

who do we know
who knows what resistance
truly is?
who do we know
who right now battles
an invader?

if the dragon
(and i mean no harm to dragons)
is coming toward you
and its intentions
are cruel
you fight with your teeth
and your claws
and you dont stop
until the dragon retreats.

if the dragon is
yours,
maybe you
know something
of use to those fighting
for their
lives -

how to make it stop
or,
how to kill it
from behind.

26 September 2007

coyote poem

a prologue to 'coyote poem'
to be posted
at all meetings
once the photocopying
budget is approved (action item)

first allegiance
eat
second allegiance
more coyote
third allegiance
chorale practice
fourth allegiance
raven
fifth allegiance
limelight
(hint: coyote likes life
stuffed with
cottontails.)


preface to the coyote poem as requested by coyote

a past reference in
verse
that fails
utterly


“Road Runner, the coyote's after you.
Road Runner, if he catches you you're through.”

That coyote is really a crazy clown,
When will he learn he can never mow him down?
Poor little Road Runner never bothers anyone,
Just runnin' down the road's his idea of having fun.

“this song, if you call it such,”
said coyote,
one eye watching the
ticker tape,
waiting for a ship
to come in,
“wants for intelligent rhymes,
a meter that doesnt feel
like the kind of wagon an
okie would build
just to get drunk in
and crash,” said coyote.
(coyote laughing)
coyote
said, “this ditty
shows a real lack
of knowledge.”

coyote said,
“i hate this song. ugggh.
it make me want to scream.”

coyote wears glasses that
make everything
move
and says
“pop music, pope music, poop music.”

coyote likes to listen -
the nuthatches and monk
trade licks.
its also true
coyote
is sometimes so lonesome -

yes, coyote cries.

coyote impersonates
smokey r.,
spins on his
heel – winks.
wags his well-groomed
tail
coyote says, “really,
i'm sad.”



and now, coyote poem, proper

1
coyote
on the question of
where to dig one's den
said, “i fall
strongly
into the category of them
who say
if its draws you,
follow -
like the earth follows
the sun...”

coyote said
“dig your den
at home” and
then
coyote had to
run.


2
after dark,
when its only
headlights and
taillights and
those bright yellow
eyes

coyote,
puzzled,
head tilted,
tongue out
- “why do you
kill all those
rabbits?”

coyote
looked over and
said
“your freeways are
why she dont love
you
anymore.”

“and that,” said
coyote, “ain't
all.”



3
coyote on edge,
distracted,
looking over shoulder,
looking back, “can't you
think of something
good to say?”




4
coyote pissing
on the vinyl siding, cold fall
night, steam rising,
owl screeching
said, “there's enough in the
grocery store to last
me 300 years -
once you guys are
out of the
way.”


5
coyote's wet tongue,
licking - “wake up,
wake up -
i was only
joking,”

coyote kind of worried,
kind of
sorry –
cant stop laughing.
“oh brother,” coyote
said, “i didnt
really mean
shoot
yourself.”


6
coyote under the stars
asked, “who doesn't
like old cheese? - who
doesn't want
a few extra
mice in the cupboard?”

meteors shooting
from the back of
coyote's head and
coyote said,
“ssshh! these new jokes
are sleeping.”

25 September 2007

3 poems of the first day of fall

first day of fall 1

this morning
these
elegances return -
2 big ravens circle those trees -
loudly engaged.
half the world is blue and half is grey.

yesterday we saw
three hermit thrushes in
the green dappled sun
of the last summer day.


first day of fall 2

its a day of dusty robins
our practices augmented
look into these black eyes
perched.
in the primary tongue we say,
timber - we say, let's see
cash - we say our time
is stolen - hold up these
centuries with this book
or that and now there are
two, more,
small eyes watching.
the anti-hero is
also a lie. you dont
need a tracheotomy
to know which way the wind
blows.
any chainsaw knows the tune.



first day of fall 3

fog on the hill top
some leaves are red, some turning -
i keep scaring birds.

the night arrives on
fifteen robin's wings - rain gossips
through yellowed leaves.

20 varied thrushes
flushed into the fogged lower limbs -
the sun on the sea.

What is spirit manifest?

briefly then, this essay was written in 2004. the statistic regarding the casualties among women and children in iraq is from the Lancet, the british medical journal published october of that year. 3 years of war and war crimes later, and that number has grown ten-fold. over a million iraqis have died as a result of this “war”. this essay appeared in the fulcrum, march 2005





Every sky is charged with meaning and calamity echoes through the night; - the morning news of death in Iraq. Commentators once talked exit strategy as if we were trapped in a house a-fire. Now there is only the roaring silence of stupefied resignation - as if we are lost in a dying world – and we are.
Worlds end. Puddles dry up. Species extinguish. Empires fall. Perfectly good ships are driven by storms to unfamiliar coasts and the bottom of the sea. Sometimes loss is mere loss – the sea swallows; each, but Ahab, understands that thunderstorms produce wind, rain and fire. We all know the difference between what is right and what is wrong. We know the difference between good times and bad.
I am not going to tell you that our culture is destructive - that it kills. What, about this world, isn’t known by all very well? This is not a matter of education, this predicament we are in. A choice has been made. Already too late for so many, we are now in the process of the long goodbye.
We must confront this simple fact; we have waited too long. Polar bears and seals and arctic nesting birds, terns and ducks and fulmars - to name but few - will likely be extinct or very near extinct at the end of our century. If we preserve them, we will have preserved a few individuals, imprisoned for their own protection. We are losing the arctic ice cap and right now, there is no solution.
We are losing the temperate rainforest - and the oceans and the deserts and the jungles and the plains. We hear news of this loss each day as we sit in our cars on jammed freeways and oil barons drop bombs on the fields of their dreams. Reuters news service ran a headline - arctic thaw could open vast oil and gas region, along with another that claimed arctic thaw may open ship lanes; but risks high – meanwhile, in California, they tried as terrorists kids who torched a few SUV’s
No more than a casual glance reveals the state as it is. Avaricious men rule the day. They care not what they destroy in their frenzy to plunder. They abide by no law and they speak in vulgar lies that would corrupt the ear and mind. Their ambition is bare. Their distortions lounge in plain sight. To believe them is to renounce all that we hold dear – the presence of beauty and the possibility of justice and the everlasting expansion of what it means to be alive. Witness the efforts to colonize our minds in the news of the day – to colonize each private spirit in each private home - to thwart and subvert and hitch to their plow the spirit, the hunger that moves us to act, and steal the growth meant for flower and fruit.
The scale of this crime is vast and it’s deep. Nowhere do we see a geography free of the footprint of these men. Central Asia, central America, south central LA, and everywhere else, are well within scope of their roving eye. Look at the threatened sky and the dying species and the lost hope for progress from the stolen rule of brutal monarchs to life lived for the purpose of being alive, each and every live thing.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man then I must restore it to him though I drown myself...but he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. – Henry Thoreau

Overwhelmingly sad as it is, it has come to this – we could have stopped our slow descent to present conditions a long time ago – we might not have made war on Mexico in 1846. We might have abolished slavery without recourse to bloody war. We did not. Instead we have accepted in its various forms the evil men do in pursuit of a diseased hunger’s fulfillment – instead we have allowed the same appetite that ruled kings and burned so-called witches to occupy our markets, our lands, our thoughts, and our hearts. George W Bush’s presidency is not legal – a supreme court ruling would not make it so; George W Bush’s presidency is a crime against democracy – against the people of this nation – George W Bush’s presidency is a crime against humanity - and against any higher authority of which I have ever heard.
We are killing and we are dying. No more war - no more cars - no more smokestacks into the sky. How much more obvious does this need to become? - as if the felon had some legitimate voice in his own disarmament. Arrest them if they try to stop us from stopping them from killing the earth. Arrest the asinine man installed in our white house as honestly as democracy has been installed in Iraq.
Any action by our government that isn’t at once the apprehension of George W Bush and his partners, bosses and underlings - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove, Ashcroft, Powell and Rice, et al, - and standing them before a court to be tried for their crimes is an action without meaning. The executive branch of our government is the branch that enforces the law and the branch that enforces the law must not be outlaws. If our government is unable to prevent this usurpation, this taking, this stealing, then our government is hollow and meets not our needs; we must change it by whatever means necessary that justice would prevail.
It is the gravest of insults to claim that George W Bush won the moral vote. Every thinking person is appalled. If we name those who kill moral, where do we stand in opposition? This, alone, exposes the election as a farce. No christian could accept 66,000* killed women and children as a christian act – certainly not christ. Bombing civilians! – as if christ had ever endorsed bombing soldiers – as if christ had left a list of who we might bomb and kill and whom we might not. Imagine the depths of convoluted thought required to assert the christianity of war – and think of young boys in art class drawing bombers with their cargo bay opened and yelling, bombs away!
They would if they could but they cannot own our souls; what cannot be bought can neither be sold. The good news is that we are always free – though that expression costs us our lives. Faced with any circumstance we choose our own path. Fight or run, submit or rebel and our freedom is intact. The surface of this world is not smooth. Box canyons and precipices and rocks the size of mountains may block our direction, yet still we are free. The truth of the world, the presence of all that we do and don’t see, never diminishes. We are always free to do what is right.
Actions ramify. Patterns emerge in unprecedented passage from here to here. While we never step into the same river twice each fresh stream rides the back of its mother – if only as an echo that sounds still and stiller and silent at last but for the fact that no amount of forgetfulness - willful or blithe - erases that world which gave the world we are living.
There is no flaw in consequence – night follows day – love follows love – grief follows loss – joy follows beauty – justice follows truth – these natural laws hold sway – nothing stays hid – footprints lead everywhere – everything moves – a movement toward or a movement away - and beauty and justice and just-what-is-so are always becoming, always arriving, as regular as the surf and as patterned besides - telling each just what each needs to know.
We reap what was sown. We sow the seeds gleaned from our harvest. If in twenty years the freeway ramp high outside my window wades up to its knees in the newly risen sea there will be no need to wonder why. The shushing surf in our ear each night will offer its testimony each moment, each day. I tell you each of us feel the wound in our lives and the sorrowful sky over this madly broken plane.
Violence and chaos are not our birthright. We are not helpless. We have somewhere to get to and eventually all that we see that is brutal and wrongheaded, all that is destructive and mean, all that is oppressed and thwarted, all of this will be accounted for, tallied and redressed. In this way are rights inseparable from natural law; - our visions of beauty and justice prove themselves; our thirst for freedom proves freedom’s cause. This is what is meant by a self-evident right. To demand that some live under a law that others do not, to give protection to some but not all - this is dispiriting, most literally and sublime.

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I
will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is
usual in such cases. – Henry Thoreau

The time for action is now. We must disavow any tie to this illegal and monstrous machine that rolls through the world killing what it cannot enslave. In today’s news we learn of marines killing wounded prisoners; - in last month’s news it was marines killing civilians; - and in the month before that it was marines torturing their captives - and so on and so on, back through american lynchings and the original cultures that were simply although gruesomely, violently, evilly wiped from the land – and please let’s not forget the captives at guantanamo and the straightforward dismissal of all the conventions of international law – america is a rogue nation and our allegiance to it criminal.
A reckoning is due. Do we not have to repair the damage done? Amends must be made, after all. It cannot be true that there are too many people for justice to prevail, or that the people alive are the wrong ones. We have only each other. Each era has only those who walk and breathe. We are in a low row of blocks in this cathedral that we build. Have we any more idea about its completion than our red blood cells have about the thoughts that we could not think without them?
Political solutions have failed. A political solution to a crisis of spirit, or nature, makes as much sense as a mathematical solution to a pang of grief. Belief is action and action ramifies. I am saying that unless the first law recognizes the equality of live things and our need to ever expand that law's inclusiveness then I’m not very interested in any other laws that follow.
Freedom, and free will, dictate that true morality lives only within each person’s breast - that a moral enforced is worse than useless but crippling. How, exactly, might our nature require a class of priests or princes or police? - be they spiritual, economic, or thirsty for blood? This is where every church fails. As if we might get into heaven bullied by thugs, or through mediated mercy, or by virtue of any of the material blessings of man.
I know that I have not addressed very practical matters, such as, how to prevent cruelty today, but it seems that when my attention is on the things I’ve described, my actions in the world are improved - I become more just - I no longer see all other cars as traffic and myself the only true driver. Suddenly I am a center surrounded by centers circumscribed and ensphered, enspiraled and flung, as whole and complete as any other satellite of the sun, and the sun and its center, and the center around which it too flies, and that center’s bond to the beginning of time. Any hierarchy is a lie - there are no governed but those who consent or those who are violated. To live under a rule which does not exist is no easier and less valid than to live with no rule at all. Any hierarchy is an act of violence; any minority is a mob’s creation. There is a record long enough to see what makes us human. An evolutionary trend is easy to establish – we are growing, and we grow toward the sun, which shines without abandon on each extant thing - that what needs nourishment is each point of view. We are here to learn kindness and we are here to ease suffering and we are here to love beauty and tell ourselves tales about why this is so. We have an inborn right and need to grow - to become what we obviously are here to become - cognizant of each life's identical right. Who among us could ever arrange creation? - who tells whom who goes to heaven? No hierarchy can produce a just society. Eventually we must abandon the mob. Soon we will see our so-called consumer-culture as the worst kind of mob rule - giving not a glance to what is trampled and lost - and what is lost is so great - as everyone everywhere already knows and doesn't require me to tell them.
The despair of the last decades – at least since 1945 and twice dropping the bomb – is the despair of powerless witness to malevolence unrestrained. Allende assassinated by the CIA – MLK and Malcolm X and all the prisons holding the rest - the lie of the domino theory used to justify Viet Nam - the secret wars waged all along – Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Korea, the Philippines, Cuba, Peru – the list goes on and each item is but an example, each one sufficient to try and hang the guilty, but only an example of the deeper crime: those who operate this moneyed and corporate american government believe they have a right to their agenda; they believe collateral damage is a cost they can bear; they claim ownership over what cannot be owned, river, salmon, salt, sea, oil, bodies, land, forests, people, minds, hearts, bones.
The mounting losses, the mounting crimes, in any realm, in every realm, are raised to an un-sufferable load – already a mass extinction is underway. Our witness cannot be denied
It seems as if we have heard for so long that our own eyes and hearts cannot be believed – as if the history of lies somehow corrupts the truth – as if the fact of great crimes makes all action suspect - as if a betrayal of what is right proves righteousness wrong. We will not abdicate the only ground that we have. We owe no allegiance to an idiot king or the court that anoints him. We are not separated from the source of our lives, even if our society seems to have largely forgotten that its ladder leans on the branches it cuts; and we, assuredly, are not divorced from our own conscience. A mediated world and our government’s failure to protect itself from such horrifying abuse and George W Bush’s vulgar and clear disdain for life do not strip the world of meaning, least of all the meaning of right and wrong. We, who reject this sickening war, and all wars, who mourn the loss of so many animals and plants and places outside that devouring grasp; who very simply mourn the loss of the love of what is alive - we must know that we are right, motivated by affection not greed, by devotion not conquest, and that our cause is just. This era in history can lead only one way – away from destruction, ownership and greed. The war must stop. Another bomb must never fall – certainly not from the hand of the heart that needs justice and beauty and truth to prevail.
George W Bush is not the president, but the presidency’s destroyer. There is only one reason we live in so-called wartime: he wages it. His lies have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. George W Bush and his accomplices need to be isolated before they cause more harm – they cannot be trusted loose in the world, certainly not occupying the white house, the pentagon and the justice department (imagine! him in control of the department of justice; as if that alone doesn’t describe the truth of our government and the condition of our world)
All opposition to Bush is moral opposition. And eventually his lies will fail, as all lies do. His appropriation of god is at most blasphemy and blasphemy is powerless against what is true. We are safe when we say that his adherents are, at worst, as criminal as he, at best, deceived. What divides us from them is what divided the slave-owner from the slave and the abolitionist. Lines are drawn and in each sphere – as always, these lines lead straight to action – shapes revealed; what we see is what we get – what is spirit manifest, but a body, autonomous, that acts in this particular, actual world?

20 September 2007

fall ducks

fall ducks like
leaves onto
the small bays,
the lakes. a burst of
new life.

the barn swallows'
vacant nest -
a strange tug (already!)
from the next road.
this evening the inland sea
colludes with the wide
pacific and every bird
races toward some
sort of shelter -
its a day of startled
cries and
possible loons.

ravens will work,
and gulls, too,
on behalf of
the sun.
old kulshan is long
gone - now
she's known as mount
undone.

18 September 2007

at the bridge motel

dear dk

the view from crack balcony
to downtown is
good,
if you like that sort of thing,
the city is burning itself into
another quotidian night and
there is always,
for some reason, more
room to toss
another log onto the fire -
look at the great
eminence on the hill
emanating.
last night we listened to records
of a lost world
spun by our downstairs
neighbor - right now
through the floor
its the city of new orleans -
again
and again
and its beauty
does not diminish -
it hurt
to recall how much i had believed
that world of
worlds
the old tune promises -
i could list five songs right here
right now that
i took as articles of faith
and seen that faith
beaten if not crushed.

last night i saw two
fellas outside your
closed motel talking
and the one said to the other -
did you sell me that
album on
ebay? -
and it turns out that
yes, in fact
the two had met
in cyberspace -
an awkward moment passes
and flowers and becomes
a grinning business
handshake -
vigorous and with the opposite
hand shoulder grasp -
you'd of thought they'd
just invented manifest destiny
so anxious, and giddy and
furtive
were they.
one of them
is struggling with
studied 1956 -
and he's twenty-six -
he can't believe
none of us
has cigarettes.

the furniture comes
unglued in the rain.
and this morning on the
front page the
rate of them who jump
from the aurora bridge
means all pedestrians
must be denied -
buses, trucks, cars
just keep right on tumbling by
from a source plentiful and
on high -
here in room 11
there are poems i could have told you
years ago and i dont think you
would remember them today
i dont.
i see the long lines of cable
strung out from these walls
and beyond – the city at night said
what's his name, what's his name
you know, the guy from the doors
who made joan didion weak.

you get a strange glimpse
the fallingest down
you can get -
lets sit here now
awhile and see who
the real tourists are.






take care

monte

16 September 2007

taken to the bridge, the beginning of the middle of california

right now i am in that old motel.
i am writing this from a bamboo desk and the walls
are not that sweet.

the walls (since i mention them) -
not exactly free of
discernible traces - need further
study -
there are forms and lines
no bureau could perceive.
we all need more time.
take the absent geranium -
the balcony 's lost sorrow and the
rush for speed that is
pure and soft as
o! the wind against
your cheek.

we wait for them
who will burn
the next room
and the realignment of our
happenstance
on vectors that can
only converge -
are you digging
this transmission -
we wait for a shotgun and
a long
written road.
you find the meaning of
these birds in the
feathers of her
crowning achievement .
or you do not.
the moon is more than
a good idea -

we will never forget rue
mouffetard and chez franprix -
why leave this city? -
a ruthless baguette stands at the gate
and many fail to pass.
the roman soccer field and the way buildings
lean way back and touch
those lost deeds, the crusted and frozen jewels
and cigars soaked in the burnt language of
our lingering dreams - o the flash and bitter
streak against that morning and this
sunset clouded reminiscence
i am not afraid to tell anyone
that these rooms have my scent -
i have seen this one bad word at a time -
ive watched a clean surface punctured and wounded
until each glacier wept -
each for a daughter now lost - how?

have you seen the way eyes roll back until
everything is forced into the stall -
squeezed through the chute - we say its
humane (o this intrusion - this de-rarefied air -)
takes more in the tank than it carries.
that

spot on the interstate , that
mile long stain.

have we been to this very here
before?
its the motel and the fast
stop. 9 or 19
miles to empty.
i've cleaned my windshield
now and again - sure, we all have -
i've taken
as breaths the sins
of the father - worn my
own skin to dust
on the machines of
our labor.
ive knocked mortar from bricks with
a chisel and a
hammer
each night
beneath the snow filled sky of some
mountain somewhere in the
mountains.
its easier
than i thought
to get almost
anywhere but
there.

if the headlights catch the bird in its teeth
its the way of the road to fill a blanket
with relief and let it lay with hard mittens
by the side of bleached grass.
mixed with piss,
this world can sting.
there are shipwrecks
you'll never know about -
each live thing
in turn
sliding down

have you seen the tail lights flash
and pull away and while you shake hands
with the king
of the delta who
sings the merciful truth
about the red light
and the blue
into everybody
turned toward the ground
and how starlings return with
kahoutek.
these flames of that bird -
that dog is
no dog -
that dog,
my friend, is
coyote.

this poem
cannot go on
but how
can it be stopped -
this is central
to the mission
as the mission
was conceived.

we are talking
about this spool of desire
and our widened hearts and
the way some carry what they can and
some what they cant.
nobody wants
to be the one
who smells likes a bad check -
i am writing this from
the
arena of that dismay, -
much later and filled
with feathers and that ancien regime
of eye
that you or you might explain -
its an uplift, they say
that made the
high cutting edge of the
sierra nevada -
yes real, yes real, yes real.

02 September 2007

on loss, unprecedented

1 - singular

i am thinking about what these days will mean in the
future -
i mean these days which i can't help

who could?

it isn't as if we are driving up and down i5
with all of our clothes in the
back of the station wagon and a
dog who once yearned to flush pheasant
from the bramble
now dreaming of rest stop
garbage cans.

maybe that's too specific

maybe i mean
something
less hopeful

maybe i mean the part
where you notice
you are falling from very high
high enough to give you
time to think about
speed
and distance
and momentum and
force
and how an object in motion
tends to stay in motion
even when headed
for the dirt

and also how gravity
doesn't know -
doesn't care -
what it catches
as if the fact
that all
things fall
a-pace
means all
things are
equal

and this too

that somehow it matters - still -
what i do
as i fall


2 - unprecedented

we can start with polar bears -
we can start with freeways -

i am looking inside the old books
and i am going to be very happy to find
in one of them - or not even -
i would be happy
to learn from a magazine devoted
entirely to one
signal idea -

but happy is the point -

how happy i will
be when i find in one of the old books
or magazines
or pop hit chestnut from tin pan alley
or any alley at all -

i am saying
i don't care
where the clue
is buried

i am happy to find it

i am happy to find it

i am happy to find some kind of idea,
or suggestion regarding
what's to be done
when what needs to be saved
is lost -
a first hand account -
i mean
for
crying out loud

25 July 2007

Dear Tony Snow

quoting you below i think its a pertinent question to wonder just how far down you will go to
make this turn of events seem the fault of congress and not the criminal antics of your bossman and his gang -

you will certainly go down in history for this one, old boy

you make ron zeigler look smooth and decent.

“Now we have a situation where there is an attempt to do something that’s never been done in American history, which is to assail the concept of executive privilege which hails back to the administration of George Washington and in particular to use criminal contempt charges against the White House chief of staff and the White House legal counsel,” said White House Spokesman Tony Snow.

 blog it

killing thistle

killing thistle

sunday afternoon the fifteenth of july
back home on this island
the sounds of small aircraft
and speedboats and
lawn machines including my own
electrically powered "weed whacker" -

(but i'm just trying to
keep the grass
back from the space we
think we need -
for the trash -
for the recycling -
to park the van -
get to the pump -
get to the compost -
around the back door of
the metal trailer built in 1956)

we dont have a garden -
but the compost at least
helps slow the speed
our big green trashbin
fills -
the trashbill
is long past
due -

we pick the berries
and the apples in the fall
and yesterday
laura made two arrangements
from flowers and grasses
and ferns
picked here and there -
in glass jars with
beach rocks and
sitting on the heater meant
to resemble a fire -
currently out of propane -

the electric bill is
paid, and when
it gets too cold we can heat the
house with the oven
and
the oil-filled radiator
that plugs into the wall
cost 40 bucks and
does a pretty nice job -
besides,
it's july
and right now the temperature
must be 85
degrees -

but i digress -
i want to think about
this meadow, again and
how today i cut back the tops
of some thistle to below its
lowest flower or bud.
i'd just learned that
such a cutting does
the plant in -
it must be annual - though i'm
no expert -
i'm barely a novice - and
the thistle that i
cut were few - they'd been
blocking my view of a pile
of old and dried
blackberry vines
heaped to burn at least
two years ago
and now a regular part
of this meadow -
and deep inside, i believe,
there are sparrows -
cant burn it now
so it stays -

now two ravens
call and remind me
why i came.
barnswallows feed their
fledgling babes
perched on the
pumphouse roof

and again, the ravens call and
the swallows return -
the thrushes song
spirals between the two and
and beyond -
a red tailed hawk - fifteen
minutes ago - brought in
a cool wind and
now both hawk and wind
are gone -

here's that wind
again.




24 july 17hr00

my friend fran
often says
to
encourage the growth of
what is wanted
rather than try
to
eradicate
what is not -

i think it is safe
to look at this tree,
a western red cedar,
tipped on its side
and still alive
and ask what is needed
to help it thrive.

wind knocked it over
no doubt –
and the himalayan
blackberries and asian
thistle surround it
in the center of a field
of blackberry and thistle
and grasses short and tall
with beer cans and tires
lurking beneath the summer green
and new construction promised -

this cleared field -
should i dig up the blackberry
and beat back the thistle?
or plant douglas fir and red alder

now
halfway along the trunk of the cedar
its thick down facing
branches - broken and
slowly rotting – by decades
lower the trunk
to the soil – and
branches are starting
to grow
toward the sky and yet
just as surely
the tree grows toward the earth

and here along the middle
beneath the horizontal trunk
a small cleared circle, unused
growing in, where people
used to come -
you squat to get in, and
there is the decaying remains
of the bench seat
of a truck,
stuffing dried or
missing -
as you might find
a carcass
of a squirrel that's been
hunted -
its springs all rusted -

the cedar must have
fallen in a blowing nor'easter
the crown points southwest -
at the base
the wood is dying -
but i wonder
that cedars don't
regenerate this way,
root from a branch,
like vine maple or
kreosote plants
in the desert –
branching from a root
that is more like
a branch -
true, what once was
the rootball
is covered in blackberry
but the upside sprouts
bright green.


18hr15

between my hair
and my spit and my
blood and my piss,
if i haven't
left a seed
in this field,
i have
left a sample.

19hr50

swallows above the meadow
between the porch and the water -
i cut more grass around
the trailer – raked
into big rolling bundles
so much grass – much of it taller
than i am – and gone to seed.
thistle thrives
in places disturbed
three pigeon guillemots
race north -
juvenile robins
hide and seek
in disguise -
and now i hear
a young loon cry.
how can i
uproot the berries
and not
the earth.

22 July 2007

on the matter of artifacts, corpses, and rights

to a friend

on a part of the question
of how we might distinguish
between that which has
rights
and that which does not:

well, one thing is clear
any rock borrows nothing
to be -
which you simply cannot
say
of an artifact -
always built from somebody's bones -
nothing made from
what wasn't -
what is here –
what is made
is made with what is here -
the question of how we treat corpses
is the place in this world
where our traveling
thought and the
beat of the earth
coincide
what is here
was here. hear the
nuthatch's tin horn
and try to remember
the last hummingbird
you saw -
what is made
was made from the corpse of what is
here.
see the diatom dead
at the bottom
of the sea. the seas die.
i see across the water
i see the refinery at cherry
point.
ive seen kinglets and chickadees
and sparrows collude.
how often these tall flames
from the mainland –
we are the ghosts.
you are a ghost. you are.

18 July 2007

point fermin, of a monday



this morning

on the rocky shore

beneath the shale and

sandstone cliff

forty pelican's unspooled

themselves from beyond

my sight and

banked to the left,

banked to the right

flying just above my

extended reach -

their perfect soaring,

coasting flight -

a cuneiform - a telegraph -

whatever it is

that they intend

i hold it in

my loosened grasp

and see it only when

i slit my eyes

and obliquely

let them glide.

19 April 2007

and this from the BBC business page

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Iraqi oil wealth 'going untapped'




Iraqi oil plant
Iraq has known oil reserves of 116 billion barrels


Iraq's oil reserves are significantly untapped and daily production could be doubled within five years, a report has concluded.


Iraq is sitting on potential reserves of 100 billion barrels, nearly twice as much as currently estimated, according to a study by energy analysts IHS.


If these reserves were exploited, it said, Iraq could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer.


But a major improvement in security and investment was needed, it added.


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05 April 2007

april 4 1967 MLK Jr at the Riverside Church "Beyond Vietnam - to break a silence"

These are the times for real choices and not false
ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our
nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must
decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all
protest.

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28 March 2007

not like we didnt know this, now its official

clipped from blog.wired.com
The Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower and watchdog group in DC, released a report (.pdf) today detailing a top-down government campaign to suppress climate change research that deviated from policy positions within the Bush administration.
The GAP report, "Redacting the Science of Climate Change," took a year to assemble and relies on information from dozens of interviews and thousands of FOIA disclosures, internal documents and public records. It illustrates an organized and secretive White House effort beginning in 2001 to restrict scientists' ability to accurately communicate their research results to the media, the public and Congress. Using low-level proxies, the administration altered press releases, muzzled scientists who spoke openly and, frequently, routed requests for information about sensitive research to the White House. In the report, GAP focuses on NOAA but includes information on similar tampering at NASA and the EPA.
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guilty as charged, charges dismissed!

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Rumsfeld torture suit dismissed




Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld apologised for abuse at Abu Ghraib


A US court has dismissed a lawsuit against former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld over claims prisoners were tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan.


The court accepted that the nine men who sued had been tortured - and detailed the torture in its ruling.


But Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the five Iraqis and four Afghans did not have US constitutional rights, and also that Mr Rumsfeld was immune from such suits.

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24 March 2007

More shameful news

John Bolton Admits U.S. Resisted Calls for Ceasefire During Lebanon War
John Bolton, the former top US diplomat, has revealed that the Bush administration deliberately resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire during Israel's invasion of Lebanon last summer because it wanted to give Israel more time to carry out military strikes.
Bolton – who at the time was the US ambassador to the United Nations -- said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel's campaign wasn't working.
Bolton told the BBC he was "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire.
Bolton also said the US was deeply disappointed at Israel's failure to remove the threat from Hezbollah.
More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and 43 Israeli civilians died in the war. Israel also lost 116 soldiers. The total number of Hezbollah fighters killed is unknown.
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21 March 2007

all seabirds go to heaven

Newly discovered West Coast arrhythmias cause

Interplay of climate and currents disrupts marine ecosystems

San Francisco, CA -- Oceanographers, climatologists, and ecologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting report that unusual ocean conditions and marine die-offs are changing the way scientists think about the future of ocean resources off the US West Coast. The researchers' new synthesis of decades of atmospheric and oceanographic data reveals that increasingly wild fluctuations in winds and currents appear to account for a series of recent anomalous ocean events -- from repeated low oxygen zones larger than the size of Rhode Island to massive die offs of seabirds. The scientists say that the underlying swings in winds and position of the jet stream are consistent with climate change predictions.

"There is no other viable suspect right now, no other obvious explanation," says Jane Lubchenco of Oregon State University. "We've entered new territory. These arrhythmias in the coastal ocean suggest we're observing a system that is out of kilter."

Understanding the interplay of warming, winds, and storms with ocean currents and biological productivity is a whole new area of study that is proving urgent. In 2002, when scientists first documented low-oxygen zones off the US Pacific Northwest coast, they thought it was a startling, once in a lifetime, event. But these "dead zones," which suffocate crabs, fish, sea stars, and anemones on the ocean floor, have continued, with 2006 now on the books as the largest, most severe and longest lasting dead zone on record for the west coast.

"It was unlike anything that we've measured along the Oregon coast in the past five decades," says Francis Chan of Oregon State University. "We're seeing more and more evidence that changing climate and changing currents can lead to big and surprising changes in something as fundamental as oxygen levels in the sea."

In 2005 and 2006, researchers also found tens of thousands of starving birds washing up on shore at times of the year when the birds should be healthiest. And scientists trying to predict salmon runs have recorded large swings in ocean temperatures at a much higher frequency than the past, a change that signals large shifts in the amount of food available for salmon, birds, and marine mammals. Scientists link the low oxygen zones and animal die offs to changes in the timing and strength of upwelling, a usually reliable and regular wind-driven process that brings cold, nutrient rich waters up from the depths of the ocean and fuels productive coastal ecosystems.

"We are investigating the idea that dead crabs and sea stars at the bottom of the ocean are correlated with changes in coastal winds, which are in turn driven by changes in temperatures on land," says Lubchenco.

Around the globe, areas of coastal upwelling which include the waters off the west coasts of the US, Peru, and Chile, eastern New Zealand, southwest and northwest Africa, and the Arabian Sea, are known for their abundant sea life and account for nearly 50% of the world's fisheries landings. Upwelling on the US west coast typically begins during the spring, triggering growth of phytoplankton and fueling marine food webs from the bottom-up. Many marine animals time their breeding and migrations with this influx of nutrients and growth of prey populations. But in recent years, changes in wind patterns and the position of the jet stream have changed the timing and strength of upwelling, disrupting these long-standing patterns.

"These are not just little blips," says oceanographer Jack Barth of Oregon State University. "Winds in both 2005 and 2006 are outside the envelope of what we've seen in the last twenty to forty years. They are the two most anomalous years in the last two decades -- and they are anomalous in opposite directions."

Starving Salmon

In 2005, relaxed winds delayed upwelling of cold water and nutrients by several months, resulting in water temperatures 6 degrees Celsius above normal and causing the typical boom in small, prey fish populations to occur too late for feeding salmon, seabirds, and whales.

"In 2005 we saw no upwelling in the spring, but then it came on so strong that we saw the same amount of upwelling in two months that we usually see in six," says Bill Peterson of NOAA. "The salmon go out to sea in mid-April to mid-May, that is when they always go out. But in 2005 they found nothing to eat -- by the time upwelling started, they were dead, starved to death."

Then, in 2006, unusually strong winds doubled the typical amount of upwelling, and increased the influx of nutrients to the system, but these strong winds ebbed in the month of May, just when salmon went out to sea. These mismatches in timing of upwelling are critical for many salmon species whose return to spawning grounds has been only 2-4% in recent years, and Peterson predicts that 2007 will be another low year for salmon returns.

Sea-bird Die-offs

In the spring of 2005, the volunteers who work as citizen scientists patrolling beaches found tens of thousands of seabirds washing up dead on beaches in Washington, Oregon and California. Emaciated birds littered the beaches because the normal spring upwelling that fuels food production didn't occur until much later in the season.

"In Oregon, the volunteers would literally wade through 80 dead birds in a mile. They feared no birds would survive," says Julia Parrish of the University of Washington who leads the citizen scientist program. Murres' and cormorants' breeding cycles are timed to coincide with the boost in prey fish in the spring. Tied to coastal breeding colonies, they are not strong enough fliers to travel hundreds of miles to find new food sources.

In 2006, scientists have also documented unusual die-offs of migratory seabirds such as auklets that visit the US West coast during the winter months. "They appear to be starving to death at sea. It's not bird flu, not another disease, not oiling or some other chemical," says Parrish.

Increases in the severity or frequency of storms, a prediction from climate change models, may also be a major factor in the survival of these seabirds. Winter die-offs are linked to stormy weather conditions.

"The total number of wrecks (die-offs) is increasing over time, as is the severity of these events and their duration," says Parrish. "This year we are heading into a mild El Nino and we are sitting on pins and needles to see what happens."

Unprecedented Dead Zones

The supercharged upwelling in 2006 also created thick, green-brown waters off the coasts of Oregon and Washington. When these phytoplankton and zooplankton blooms sank to the sea floor and decayed, they consumed large amounts of oxygen, creating a 3,000 square kilometer "dead zone" that took up nearly two thirds of the water column and squeezed mobile animals like rockfish into shallow habitats and suffocated everything that could not swim away.

"Phytoplankton blooms are normally thought to be a good thing because they ultimately support the food webs that produce the crabs, salmon and tuna," says Bruce Menge or Oregon State University. "But too much of a good thing can be bad."

Two months into the dead zone, the scientists surveyed the sea floor. "We were shocked to see a graveyard," Chan said. "Frame after frame of carcass, carcass, carcass. Dead crabs, dead worms, dead sea stars." Two weeks later the scientists returned to the same place. This once biologically diverse habitat was covered with a white bacterial mass, indicating that the system had turned from low to no oxygen.

"The fact that we saw no fish - alive or dead - suggests that many were able to escape," says Lubchenco. "In previous years, fish that have escaped the low-oxygen area appear to have returned once the oxygen was renewed. This year may be different, however, because unlike earlier years, the living habitat was also suffocated. This year there was no home for them to return to."

Predicting the Unpredictable

"Climate change is upon us, there is no doubt about that, but what we don't know is exactly how it is going to affect upwelling," says Peterson. "What's catching us by surprise is the rate at which warming is hitting us. And, of course, how fast the ocean has changed -- that is what amazes me."

The scientists hope that by better understanding the interplay of warming, winds, and storms with ocean currents and biological productivity, they will be able to help managers and fishermen plan for changing ecosystems. Predicting shifts in ocean ecosystems requires sustained observations. "We are poised to deploy a fleet of underwater robotic sensors to enable better understanding and useful predictions," says Barth. If scientists can predict the impact of dead zones or years of low salmon returns, for example, managers can better adjust fishing quotas or regulations accordingly and fishermen can modify where and when they fish.

Scientists hope to get ahead of the curve on these surprises, but many mysteries remain. Despite intense hypoxic zones, for example, Dungeness crab catches in Oregon have been high in the last few years. In California, scientists are trying to understand why rockfish populations appear to be congregating in the northern and southern ends of their ranges. Future changes in the timing of upwelling may favor particular seabird or salmon species, changing the make up of animals along the coast. And animals that live their adult lives close to shore, like mussels and barnacles, are likely to react differently than fish that live further offshore.

"We need to think differently about using and managing these ecosystems," adds Lubchenco. "We should be expecting more surprises. Climate models predict increasing uncertainty, with wild fluctuations. And this is exactly what we are witnessing."

###

NOTE: The scientists will discuss their findings at an AAAS News Briefing on Friday, February 16 at 3:00 PM Pacific time, in the Hotel Nikko. Research from a new paper to be published in PNAS will be presented at the press conference (Article #00462: "Delayed upwelling alters nearshore coastal ocean ecosystems in the northern California current"). For more information please contact the PNAS News Office at 202-334-1310 or e-mail PNASnews@nas.edu

The corresponding AAAS session titled, Predicting the Unpredictable: Marine Die-Offs Along the West Coast, is on February 17th at 2:00 p.m. For visuals (video and photographs), please visit the AAAS virtual newsroom on EurekAlert! or contact Jessica at jbrown@seaweb.org or #(831) 331-0507.

Contact Information:

Jane Lubchenco
Oregon State University
lubchenco@oregonstate.edu
Cell: (541) 231-7159

Julia Parrish
University of Washington
jparrish@u.washington.edu
Cell: (206) 276-8665

Francis Chan
Oregon State University
chanft@science.oregonstate.edu
Cell: (541) 510-6685

Jack Barth
Oregon State University
barth@coas.oregonstate.edu
Cell: (541) 231-1703

Bill Peterson
NOAA Northwest Science Center (Newport, OR)
Bill.Peterson@noaa.gov
Office: (541) 867-0201

Bruce Menge
Oregon State University
MengeB@oregonstate.edu
Office: (541) 737-5358

Steve Ralston
NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center
(Santa Cruz, CA)
steve.ralston@noaa.gov
office: (831) 420-3949

12 March 2007

snow geese

o run to see beyond the trees
five hundred
or so
snow geese in their
vees -
telling travelers' tales to the
island below.
and here, down here,
a thousand robins sing
their nest-building song -
so soon?

the wind races through
the tops of the trees –
the sky flat grey and
the temperature
is falling
again with the light.
salmonberries beginning to bloom and the
alders' red catkins cast a warm
burnished glow, - the curve
of the grass covered trail –
each perfect thing -
each loving old thing -
can i wear, as a garland or
wreath, boughs of
dougfir
and spent deer bones?
or graft fallen limbs
to the tips of my fingers and
wave my hands through
the night in the warm
storm sky
grazing the snow geese
as they fly?

7 march 2007 6pm

11 March 2007

in this prison

this is an older poem, written in the mojave desert may 2002
i'm posting it now because i've had it on my mind for a few days and dont know why


in this prison there are many birds
in the back yard of romance there are
many birds - gray jays and warblers and
sparrows and ravens - there are doves on
every fence - they grow like fruit on every
fence and the fruit on the trees are birds
too - waiting to drop and spread their skins
and let their seed take wing and climb
up into the sky - above this prison there is
no fence - to climb to the sun - to visit the blue
bottom of the sky - the overturned sea - the spilled
and spilling sea - we sink with ease into the
great sky - the large and boundless bounded sky -
bound it curves and curving comes home to roost and
here it abides in the backyard of romance as birds that
slide down the stream of blue and hang as fruit on every
fence - they fly down the sky as planets fly and flung -
not free - bound to whatever sun as they find - and every
sun is captured in all suns' gravity - and stars and
sea are also bound by love in this prison filled with
birds where every tree bears fruit that flies straight toward
the dirt where wings abound - spread and spreading under ground
and climbing down into the sky and glory there toward the sea and
minerals that walk and breathe and shed their skins and cast their
seed - in this backyard of romance i am the seed and hang
inside every bird on every fence duty bound whose wings are
clenched to their breast and i depend from every fence and dropped
and dropping toward the sky's blue embracing infinity and toward the
nest where i will feed the birds who grace each prison fence or i will fall
from some loose beak and shed my skin and spread and spreading the dirt will take
me to her need - the seed the earth and love's command - stretched or
compressed - there's only time in this backyard of romance - the moon and
sun consimplify - they kiss and bleed and scrape their sides against roughened
space and beauty's need - my own blood's here to testify - i've been below
and been beneath the dirt that grass grows tall to hide in this backyard
of romance where birds descend to complicate the air with voices that
are rarely heard and seed the fence that grows and growing contains
the rest - in this prison where birds are true to the sky's
command and following they swoop to light and flower full
on every fence - in this prison the sky the sea are one
with each and call for birds to take the seed and this
is how the seed may leave and find the earth that's
moist with need -

10 March 2007

skull

right now
watching the old deer's
skull dissolve back
into the forest,
look how much longer
a thought may linger -
how much longer
than i thought.

and this flying insect, at rest
looks like a small bit
of leaf or bark -
long legs, runs
errands in a square
foot of forest floor –
stops at the alder leaf,
the salmon berry twig,
a small piece of moss,
this old thinking skull,
and her vertebrae
in orbit.

08 March 2007

fourthirty pm

the sixth of march -
wind up and clouds
building in from the
southwest -
two juncos and a song
sparrow dig through
the litter beneath
a thicket of
blackberry
i've seen robins
write poems
at the tops of trees
as they
watch the day
become night,
watch
the sky sail past -
watching
what cant be named
ceaselessly move -
we feel
the pattern of the waves
as we see our own mind -
any moment,
whether we are
one, or as one, or
alone, alone -
the mystery of being
in whichever attire -
here
is where the mystery
lives.