I'll try to post something before leaving for Portland at 5:45 tomorrow morning...(coff)

Men Explain Things To Me (Part II)
437 children being tested for DNA
against hundreds of adults


"'I had a happy childhood,' said Rita Jessop, 27,
who left the sect three years ago,
after being married at 18 to her father's friend
who was 50 and had four other wives."

"'It was a lot of fun,. It seemed to me people
were so happy.'"

"as the investigation continues, some church leaders
seem to be purposefully misleading them"

"one mother named Rebecca
says she saw a young girl walk up to a sign in a shelter
reading 'Guests.' She crossed it out and wrote
'Prisoners.'"

"'There would be people
who would just disappear from the community,
and the leaders would say,

"They were called on a misson.
They went to Zion."'"

"From the start he populated the YFZ
with only the most obedient, hard-core members,
even if it meant breaking up families."

"The Mankins, who often flew over the compound,
say they never saw any toys at Eldorado.
'There's nothing,' says Kathy.
'There's not a sign of a child out there.'"

Evening

The light at the Rescue Mission just went on,
red and blue. Jesus Saves. And white lights
from the headlights, not very many,
and the traffic lights that change every minute
regardless.

In the market today, arugula, lettuce,
asparagus, seedling tomato plants.
Hothouse tulips. The French baker's croissants.
So cold and windy we all still wore our mittens.
Babies lay swaddled in their strollers
with their feet hanging out
useless. The mothers saying "Spring?
What spring?"

Let's take our books next to the fireplace.
Open the curtains and watch the houses
blink out their bedroom lights early
as the wind makes the bare trees sing.

That Kind of Movie

It's the kind of movie where at the end, you find it's a woman who's murdered all the women
and faked their rapes by hiring prostitutes to sleep with the man she wants to frame
and removes his semen from the prostitutes and places it in the murdered women,
all because the man she loves tells her it's a good idea.

It's the kind of movie where a really good actor is telegraphing "I am doing this for the money"
so as not to be typecast in action roles for the rest of his career.

It's the kind of movie where women fall in love with men who are not very interesting or kind,
but who are in the movie script and available, and the women who fall in love never ask
why the men they love are doing what they are doing and never seem to consider that
what they are doing might be a bad idea.

It's the kind of movie where I can tell that the man I am sitting next to is counting up
the number of plot holes and making lists of questions that the screenwriter ought to have
at least addressed instead of having point-of-view inconsistencies, dei ex machinae, and
extraordinary coincidences coast over the major plot problems.

It's a documentary.

It's the kind of movie that years ago you'd have cried at, before you realized that the writer
doesn't have any idea what people who work all day for a living actually do for their livings, that
most don't have long heartfelt conversations with people with any frequency, and that most
would rather give up than take the huge risks demanded of them in the movie.

It's the kind of movie where everyone has easy access to guns and would rather use them
than think.

It's the kind of movie that makes you come out of the movie blinking because it's staying
light outside later and later, and both the theater and the film's theme were very dark,
and you wonder what your brother's doing down there in Texas, apropos of nothing in the movie,
and you call him on your cell phone & leave a message for him that makes no sense

except that he knows you thought of him.

Marsden Hartley

Gertrude Stein was a cup of tea and the word "Moi."
Hart Crane, a sea full of eyes.

"For once, the galleries are quiet. Like they're supposed to be."

"How will the geese get out of the sculpture garden?"

They look like model ships, but on inspection
prove to be models of shipwrecks.

Nobody tells the elderly woman that they'll fly over the fence.
They probably don't want to embarrass her
but seem rude nevertheless.

The heels of these shoes are low
but click loudly. And echo.

I skipped the April 18 poem (too much on Friday's agenda, including a reading by Tony Doerr that filled the Lookout Room in the Student Union). But Al found something while shelving books (finally!) that I thought I'd share. It's in an envelope postmarked Jan. 30, 1981, handwritten with a fountain pen, and is a response to a fan letter.

Dear Janet,

Thank you very much for your letter. Since you write yourself, I need not tell you how gratifying it is to me to know and be assured that my book has been meaningful to a reader. It seems to me, in fact, that a book is, ideally, so purely communicative that its being is completed in a receptive reader's experience of it. A theory that makes you into a species of collaborator.

Since you do write, I am pleased by your consciousness of prose as such, of imagery, and precision. It seems to me that the resources of this wonderful language have been generally unexploited for a long time--there has been the long domination of a notion of realism that ignores the very profound roots in experience and consciousness of the sensuous properties of language. Emerson is exactly right--every word was first a poem.

Thank you for your good wishes for my current work--my best wishes for yours.

Marilynne Robinson

* * * * *
Funny to think that the book that so impressed me is set not far from where I now live...

I can hardly believe it, but with this poem I actually have FINISHED my sequence of erasures of Dickinson's 1861 and 1862 poems.

I have no idea what I'll write for tomorrow! Pray for me.

1862.67 (494-498)

                    His business
                has been

To


          fling Sand


                         "Get out of the Way, I say"
Who'd
Would you -
                     be the fool to stay?

The Day
                                   of Gold
                             of Purple
                                old

                   as the World
And yet



Too near
                                    



        Candle
       Flickering




                          in the Cold
                                        Trudging
                                World -

The Cruel - smiling -                 World -
                   it's





                                forgotten -


                    Hands
Lifted

       supplicate

       
           be finished



                         

                               




The
     Danger
Is

                               opon the Soul
   
To go without
           challenging Despair.

1862.66 (491-494)



We want
Honors -

Flags -

                      a friend's Hand -


                  the Ministry
                                            -



To offer brave
     Lives

                              Divine



                                 Benediction







Not a
                                        cool
Hope
Not



                      lying                      -
Yet         Nature




            was still -


          forget
               that 
                      -



Memory

                 did'nt come








                                         Declare -
Were you            there?

1862.65 (485-490)

                         it came
                          by degrees -



               reprieves

         long enough for




                                            rallying
                                             -

               a





                     kiss
                                                  with


    Mother
Or Father -








                                                                       on the Lawn
Indicative that


          Darkness    is about to pass


I deemed

            therefore



That I                            adjust


My Faith
      when
My Faith


                       steps

                  abroad
To do His                 Will






How dare I

                                           fail



The
                                     Men -

1862.64 (482-484)


                            the
  General



Rendered
"Sweet"
Liberty


                 won       by



                                              possession
                                  in the land -

Could I

Not opon         knee      thank


And


               Praise



           the

              Benefactor
Making

                              Blank
A                         Way

To                                        advance



    ends
                                        -

Apparently the content of my postings has placed a banner ad for a candidate I do not support at the top of this blog.

Let me just say this: Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama. Barack Obama.

Thank you.

[Great: now I've got Pur-lov.com & the Love Calculator. But at least it isn't a Republican.]

I'm not sure "Recess" fits the meaning I mean for it (the end of a deployment), but I think Adamant is a good name for this administration (or for Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Bush...).

1862.63 (478-481)


                Adamant

                      put
            agonizing terms


      down


                   I could not stop






My labor


We passed the
     Recess -



                         He passed Us
The                                                        Chill
        on



                                      the Ground -



Since then - 'tis


                                  Eternity -

He              like those Who've nought to lose
Bestowed                 to

                                 Us



             Men,
                                      

His Comrades
                      
                     left alive
                        to die

                                 to justify






This                                honorless
    futile Diadem -

A shortie today.

1862.62 (477)

He


         stuns you by Degrees -


          the                    Blow
                                               - further
Then nearer - Then




                       your naked soul -

                                                in their Paws

For Maj. Stuart A. Wolfer (Emmett, ID), 36, killed Sunday in Baghdad's Green Zone, and Sgt. Michael T. Willey (Boise, ID), 23, killed Monday in Sadr City.

1862.61 (473-476)
I was




    stationed
                              

With this poem I get farther along in NaPoWriMo than ever before. Thinking about Nuri al-Maliki, Bush, & Cheney today.

* * * * *

1862.60 (468-472)

              Gulf
                        of solid Blood -
                              the


                    appointed Creature


         bows    and





      fetches


And
         could be


                               like

The Minor One    that




                                   cared to please









                    the mighty





         none could see

It's weird: snow flurrying down, temps going from 34 to 50 today.

Written while listening to the testimony of Gen. Petraeus & Ryan Crocker...

1862.59 (466-467)

                      Possibility -


Superior -



       for an everlasting



      Occupation -



A Solemn thing
To
                      hang
The Maker                         

Dedicated to Gen. Peter Pace . . .

1862.58 (462-465)




The General



                            - dazzling pace -










         makes no show for

An independent           -

Was ever                  like

                  the



       other            s
           the Twitter
              opposite

                                    to
                            the Whole -



    wished a way
                to
           magnify
                            the



                            Blood
                opon
                     the Road





                              far

                                       away

1862.57 (457-461)


Sometimes

          they do not die



        who have




                               bared
                                a Bone -


                 Steel's
              grimace in the Flesh -
How

                               - not polite -


                              to



                                      require












         reasons




Therefore -




Transport
          such
              Tent by Tent -
                           Flags

   Cover
Not
                                                  Us -


          notice Us - no more -
                                      turn away
                        o'er and o'er

1862.56 (455-456)



They



  did not dare
For fear





                                 of

The

   Prison




                   to look
For the
   deal       stated as Our












      Posture

                                      - Not so real
                            Liberty -








      something passiver -


         Liberty
                 like a Dream
                for any             but
    That

OK, that worked. Let's try it again.

1862.55 (452-454)





                          we

                        stand up          -





                            some sovreign



   few
Smile - and alter - and prattle



Our journey
                          almost
To that
                       Term

                took sudden awe -


     Forest of the Dead -

Retreat - was out




                 because
                      it would be
                           power dropped



I sang firm




I


                               must pass
Through

                 the Grave -

                   World


   we were true -



                    I knew not                      - till then -