Well, I tried. I moved in here, prettied up the place, opened a few windows, hung some pictures...but it just didn't feel like home. Things jammed; doors didn't close well, and there doesn't seem to be an attic.

I'm tired of dying...let's see what living has to offer.

RIP Terry Schiavo, Johnny Cochran, John Paul II

Dying seems to be hanging over our heads like the cloud over Joe Btfsplk. (For the uninitiated, Joe Btfsplk was a character out of the famous L’il Abner cartoon strip who was dreaded and feared because he was a jinx.)

Every Sunday morning at 7:30 am (!!) I watch "Sunday Morning" on television, a CBS journal of events, music, art, headlines, retrospectives, et al.  It is delightful television, and my favorite show.  One of the segments today was on the Nomadic Museum, a 'traveling museum' that is in NYC right now, but destined for L.A., The Vatican and other major international cities in the future.  The architect who designed the museum out of cargo boxes is the famed Shigeru Ban, an artist in his own right with a vision that is captivating.  Just pack 200 artworks into the containers that are the walls of the museum and move on!  While looking like a warehouse on the outside, it looks like a cathedral on the inside, housing large photos that are serene and beautiful. 

The photos by Gregory Colbert are (to me) simply magical.  He travels around the world and shoots animals and 'animals' (people) in the most poetic, spiritual, feral ways. He made me cry when he said in the interview that "people are a lonely species" (isn't that true, true, true?)  and that is captured in his work.  He is an out of the mainstream artist who definitely rejects convention, and thus is on the outs with the art world establishment. (he won't accept grants or sponsors, only private funding from individuals, as an example.  He also doesn't show in public museums.)

The images he creates are incredible.  I only hope I get a chance to see them when they come to Los Angeles.  Here's an article I found to give you a taste:  The show is called "Ashes and Snow."

For those of you who don't get excited about poetry...take a gander at this:   "The Windstorm"

The rest of us can just take a cold shower!  Whew!

It’s your voice, the same rich river; time does not change timbre--but the tone’s another thing. I clutch the phone, waiting for the inevitable assault. The dogs come right to mind. So  I don’t inquire after all these years;  but I can see pink tongues, lolling little tongues even now.

Your deep voice was such a comfort until that winter drive to the Hamptons.  Along the edge of a gray, flat Atlantic, the snow clung in dirty mounds to everything it touched while you confessed your sins. I worried the thumb of my mitten, my heart going deaf, my ears already tuned to lapping waves, and the rhythms of puppy sleep in the back seat. Marriage vows scattered and flew, fragile as terns in a sky as we circled and returned to where we began.

 ‘The dogs have died,’ you say, just before my finger finds a dial tone.

 All the years of healing undone by just the sound of you.

Beverly Jackson

Under the glare,
Vietnamese eyes
flick back and forth
from each fierce
face to playing card
as if snipers hide
among the pips
or jungle guerillas
lurk in the aisles
of the poker tables.
Rice paddies sleep
in long fingers
with nails neat as
women, dealing out
sets of Hold'em,
flash of buddha gold,
pools of apple jade
in their pinkie rings.


The white man
they call Papa
loves them, but
takes their money,
his heart swollen
with their stories
of incredulous
salvation, afloat
on boats in open
sea wiith sharks,
without food,
clinging to fate,
delivered weeping
to safety, to the arms
of America, to all
unheard of goodness,
where Papa even
lets them win,
now and then.


Beverly Jackson
Originally published in The Lucid Stone

Today I discovered that there is someone who is plagiarizing poetry.  Not one or two poems, but an entire body of work, and each poem from a different poet.  Is there a word for such folly?  To plagiarize anything has always sounded like a ridiculous act to me.   To what end?  To live a lie?  The entire process of creativity is an end in itself.  One writes because one must.  Or to make money.  There is no money in poetry.  And what creative urge can be satisfied by stealing someone else’s poem?  It sounds, sadly, like the act of a person deranged or at best, very sadly
out of control for some reason known only to him.
 
But it got me to thinking about those dark places in all of us.  That part of us that envies and covets that which belong to others. Or the “keeping up with the Joneses” phenomena.  Most people would deny having such feelings.  It’s not a flattering idea to think of oneself as dissatisfied.  But is there anyone who hasn’t envied another’s good luck, good fortune, or good looks?  If this is part of the human condition (and I’m wagering that it is) then what allows some people to use illegal, immoral, and unjust means to steal another man’s goodness –while the rest of us are content to just swallow the pangs and strive for our own rewards?   Is it a kind of obsession?  A burning jealousy? Is it a mean, small minded payback?  Is it some putrid steam coming off the very soup of evil itself?
 
I can anticipate  the yada yada about family values, the meltdown of society, and the loss of  the smiley faced complacency of days gone by.  But this is nothing new . . . it seems to me that evil just finds new faces and new forms with each new era.  In this age of technological miracles and reincarnations of barbaric and ritualistic horrors of the dark ages, can anything surprise us?   Children shooting up schools, beheadings in a 21st Century war,  torture and AIDS as commonplace as traffic.  One can only shiver at the thoughts of what might be next unleashed.

Even on a world scale, the conflicts of the ‘haves” and “have nots” seem to be acted out like selfish children trying to grab the toys of another.  Whether it’s principles, oil, property, or prestige, it seems to span the existence of man—war, crime, greed, and retribution.  Gawd, it makes me tired to think about it.
 
But poetry? 

I’d just like to have an ass like JLo’s  

Just for amusement, (anything to keep from finishing the novel) a friend of mine took a poll of  a small writer’s group, asking for their ten favorite books, and then listed them, 62 books in all.  Then she asked us to pick just one as our favorite book.   Impossible, of course. I picked a book from someone else’s list, A Gift of Stones by Jim Crace.