Two Sketches from a Bungalow by the Sea

Koh Rong

From a cabin just west of paradise,
Where wine flows free, liquor freer,
And smoke, it clouds the air.
O how peaceful, how sensuous
The women dance their drunken way.
Romantic and astute, the conversation slurs.
The cocks the crows, the birds they cheep
Among the eucalyptus and the palm.
The fishing boats, they grind and putter.
This perfect native life, this retouched paradise.


Interlude in a Breaking Wave

First light and the grumble and slosh of the waves
Washing the sands with the breaking of days.
Some remaining footprints and some bleached bones
Of moments that roared, their echoes mumble.

Each wave changes the quality of light.
A memory brightens;
Other ones turn darker, or fainter
In this the first light in the rumble of surf,
In the tumbling selves
As night washes back into sea.

Book of the Dead, a scene

I am working on a new story, part of my book, Transmigrant Journals. This story, The Book of the Dead, Frayed Ends of a Broken Thread, is made up of a number of short, interwoven but non-linear scenes. Here is one:

Reading Akutagawa’s The Story of a Head that Fell Off. When I nod off, I dream I am Xiao-er. I am lying in mud by the edge of a gentle stream. Willow leaves tremble above my head. I dream I am dying, no, that I am dead and I have washed up on an unknown bank. Realizing this, I am struck by a bolt of panic, and I jolt awake.

Swallowed in grief, I look about me and see I have been lost in a reverie. This moment is too piercing. I am at graveside, and the casket has just been lowered. The shovel is lifted by person after person, each struggling to drive its blade into the wet clay and rock, to lift it, to shake its load into the grave, to drive its blade back into the clotted earth.

I pull the shovel out of the muck, then drive it back in with a violent shove. As I lift and throw, I see the casket is open. Horrified, I drop the shovel and it clatters into the open pit .

Swallowed in shock, I open my eyes. I am lying in mud by a gentle stream.

The 102 Voices

I have come across a rare and ancient archeological find(!) while unpacking a hundred or so boxes into my study. (Re: our move from LA to DC).
In a box we recently removed from a storage locker in Pittsburgh remaining from when we packed up my parents' house after my dad died a year and a half ago, I found this poem, probably from 1971. It was mimeographed (yes, before photocopying became generally accessible!), which is to say, blue print, typewriter font, on a crumbling sheet of 16 lb. paper, brown and jagged around the edges.
One of my earliest extant poems.
The images come from many troubled dreams and troubled days. Oddly, I can still remember the context of many of these images. Dare I mention some? Vietnam War, hippies, drugs, revolutionary talk, a university campus, and I am immersed in surrealism, psychoanalytics, and dreams.
I will try to reproduce what the poem looks like, typos and blotted out lines included:

               The 102 Voices

Time of light voices.

City traffic backing up
A jet landing
A dog howling
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx At a door a knock
Chains rattling
A radio and TV
Unsettled turning of an old man

An undercurrent of whispering.

Chopped Harleys on the expressway
A junkyard in the forest
A broken wine bottle
Children playing
The theatre is full
The one sitting opposite, his head gone
Others leaving

More voices.

An open library
A free museum
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A green statue in a park
The light changes
A glass high school
A finger pointing
The inocent confess
Music in an auditorium
A dead cliché
People leaving a speech
A recurring fantasy
A nightmare
A thief protects a crying child
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Voices shouting in the night.

A doberman tearing at a fence
Forbidden country
The badlands of South Dakota
A rocky shoreline
A carriage stops
Those lying in the dust run off
A tornado walks east
Running steps on a bridge
Heard from below
A nude is being painted
A fire burning
A world created

Gottverdammerung, 5

This poem is a brief flash of lightning in Gottverdammerung: In the End ov Time, Bouk 6 of my poem, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. The poem is set in the Shoah. You can read other scenes from this Bouk by clicking on the label “Shoah,” a screen or two below, on the right.

Technically, the poem tries to emulate the unfolding of a fractal geometric pattern.

Likwidz

Likwid data,
It drips thru yur feengz.

Likwid naeshen,
We slipt thru thaer faengz,
Afraed, fraed intu driplets.

Likwiddaeshen,
Ript thru thaer draeng; maengelled intu greefs,
Graevz in pitlets,
Blud drips and leengerz in ravveenz.

Likwid data.
It draenz in rivvulets, drips intu ravveenz.

Likwid naeshen.
Raenz and the leevz ar shivverreenz,
Runz intu rivvulets: greeverz, disappeererz, disseeverz.

Likwiddaten.
Leevz shivverreeng in thunderz,
Drippen a droplets intu deep ravveenz,
A disbeleeverz feengz reech frum a shallo graev.

Likwid,
Blud and feerz and diyer ideyaz.
Beleef drips intu ravveenz.
Feengz grip at oeld deseevenz.
A pepel kleengz tu frinjen, torn tu slivverz,
Drivven intu faenten shaedz a shaddo.
But duz not dissappeerz.

Images and poems, Sequoia National Park

On Feb. 7, 2009 I posted an image from a little book I drew and calligraphed while at Sequoia National Park. The book was done in pencil, and didn't scan very well. However, I finally took a little time to enhance the scans, using IPhoto on my Mac. I have Gimp2 on my PC, but the menu structure is obtuse, and the software requires the user know a large number of keyboard combos to accomplish the simplest task. Since none of those combos are intuitive or easy to find, I never really figured out how to enhance the scans.

So let this Mac skeptic say very clearly: sure was easy with IPhoto. Never used it before, and still it was, boom, boom, boom, done!

Anyway, here are some snippets I prepared for another document. Hope you enjoy them. Oh, and btw, "sequoia" is one of only a few words in English that has all 5 regular vowels in it.

scenes from Sequoia National Park

Took a 5 day trip with 31 7th graders to the mountains of Sequoia National Park in central CA. We stayed at a lodge at about 7500 feet elevation. The scenery was brilliant, day and night. I kept a little sketch book of visual and verbal images, the writing of which, I think you'll agree, is rather uncharacteristic of my general work. Here's the last page, visually the most pleasing of the lot. You can decide for yourself concerning the text. I will put the whole booklet into a slideshow in the near future.

Written in Beijing

Beijing Journal: Hutoongs

I know I cannot see far
Among these alleys and their crooked, aching ways.
But step by step and veil by veil, I pick my way,
As if thru gauzy curtains; as if thru dusk and shadows.
Another dead end. I turn and brush aside another veil.
It slides across my face in whiffs of charcoal and kabob.
Beyond, I push back courser curtains of dust and fumes,
Swirling in the wake of a motorized rickshaw.

With each step I traverse a momentary universe.
This one is bordered in a frayed brocade of rubbish.
And then, behind a curtain of airy music,
A man squats on an oily stone, picking for ball bearings
From a pile of motor parts. Like a fine machine, he rolls them
Between his finger and thumb, to test if they are worn.

Now, sitting within a lacy cloud of boiling tea
Two men play a board game with ivory disks,
Thinking, slamming, sliding, then... I've passed beyond.

On a slower board, a roof tile slides.
The world thinks; it slides some more, and slams
With a muffled crash into a hidden courtyard.

Wondering, searching, I bend and peek
Around a low and narrow doorway framed in banners.
What say these hieroglyphs on crimson drapes
Fluttering around doors into a still more narrow path?
Aha! I see the broken roof tile, where it lies
Among a stack of crates, a twisted broom,
Some broken pots, a heap of coal.
So much more, but these veils close so fast...

I come to another set of doors, all patched and shrouded
With hammered plates of tin and heavy bolts.
Someone else’s hand throws askew these veils.
Inside, a wall of broken bricks, aslant to the vertical.
By art or by decay, it achieves a certain grace,
As I pass by. And that veil, too, turns once again opaque
Within this maze of glimpses and conjecture.