POEMS FROM INDIA BY JANINE CANAN

 

Crucifixion of a Woman

 

I. To the Fake Guru Who Blames Her

It is not she who should have fallen

at the feet of her rapists—

but you who should fall

at her disembodied martyred feet

 

and beg forgiveness.

 

 

II. To the Martyr

It’s the pole the men shoved

into your vagina through your intestines

to your diaphragm—

that I cannot  get out of my heart.

 

When you return, in your next life,

may every cell incandesce with Joy

at what your sacrifice achieved

for half of humankind.

 

 

III. To the Ancient Banyan that Receives Her

At your feet, how many urns of ash

of bodies battered, burned and raped

have been poured

 

feeding your ever deeper roots,

many expanding trunks,

long imploring arms?

 

And how many more vital young women

reduced to ash will be yours

in the centuries to come?

 

In memory of Braveheart Singh, Asia, 2013

 

 

O Star

My mother used to say

about me as a child:

Don’t worry, she was born

under a Lucky Star.

 

How did I feel about being

pawned off on some distant star?

Not good. But now

I realize she was right.

 

Thank you, O Star!

For your relentless, protective, urgent

beam that has shown me

my path in the dark.

 

 

Body and Soul

The body is flowing

downwards, downwards

to rejoin the earth.

 

How it must long,

the body, for that clay

and ash and worms.

 

When it arrives there,

the soul will be free

to rise and float away.

 

The soul that no one knows,

that cannot be seen

except by Seers who say

 

it is a vapor,

it is light, it is God’s

very essence.

 

Where will it go

without its cloak? Its shrine?

Its root? Its reason?

 

It came for some purpose,

assignment, or duty—

a role in creation.

 

Will it be satisfied once free?

Will it like the next stop?

Be happy? Lonely? Or sorry?

 

And those who do not believe

in what they cannot see

with their small soft brief eyes—

 

they will kneel on the gravestone

and cry, with fear

they will shake.

 

As their bodies keep flowing

downwards, back down

into the earth.

 

 

Meditation

My body was taken

and then my mind

 

and my heart was filled

with a deep vibration.

 

I knew nothing

for I had disappeared.

 

And then I heard the music—

in all directions, it was coming from me!

 

Path

It is one thing to hear about a spiritual master

and another to decide

to go and meet her.

 

It is one thing to accept her blessings again

and again, another to take her

as your teacher.

 

One thing to try to follow her teachings,

another to renounce attachment

to this world ever pleading.

 

One, to wear the pure white of renunciation,

another to put on the blazing orange

that burns your ego to a crisp.

 

And quite another to surrender

altogether, and become truly

one with God.

 

 

Knowledge

 

I Long Ago

Long, long ago,

you didn’t go to a church or an ashram

to be spiritual

 

every step you took

was spiritual.

 

II The Treasure

It is not found in books.

They are merely maps.

 

It is buried deep

in experience.

 

III To Know

In the long unfolding of humanity,

the constant search for our source,

much confusion

has arisen.

 

Now we need a purification

of confusion, if we are to know

the essence inherent

in all things.

 

IV To Feel

We know the teachings.

Now we to need to live them.

 

To sand away negativities

and egotisms, so we can open

our pores to what is

 

so we can feel

the light.

To Justine Shapiro, 2013

 

the 29th

The seasons seemed to shift
in the opposite
direction

missing was the equinox

present was a leap year
drawing out in decades
and a rare birthday
such as that
was only a moment
on your flesh

like a flower you were
blossoming under red leaves
the spring would have
to wait
with the reaper

in summer you can still
wither, and I could
freeze to death
under pedals of sun-beams

it matters little
the opinions of the clock
when time unveils a linear insanity
we will be living and dying
in the beginning and the end

 

too quick the sunset

I watched the colors
of the sunset
freeze;
an abnormal chill
spread through the fiery shades
dictating a glow across
a labyrinth
of dusty windows

I felt alive,
but suspended

dangling as if from
an abstract shape
in the sky
I saw everything
stop–
all time and the
flow of headlights
balanced in the last
seconds of the day–
the finale of eternity
holding strong in my gaze

alive for a moment
and when the moment
is over and the pinkish-orange
light fades into a cold violet
I could still be
suspended
in a shadow somewhere
still holding the glow
in my gaze

 

tomorrow

This morning I just had
to stand
in the window
without coffee
or stretch
or yawn
or even a cigarette

I saw the translucent
vapor crowning the hills
to the west,
and the far away peaks
to the south
under a thin sheet
of snow

it’s winter now,
another season passed,
another season born,
and still the same old
sleepy eyes
wandering down the valley
with a million names

my home; my people;
my constant change
of heart
still lingering
in the breeze,
in the songs
of birds,
in the puddles left
on the ground
from yesterday’s rain

the old still
new, and the new
holds still
in the swaying
fabric of this
particular reality

I just had to walk
outside, barefoot,
tank-topped, torn long-johns
barely protecting
the legs
that would carry me
forward
into the rest
of forever

and sure, it was
cold, the going
was difficult,
but I
just had to laugh
for all that I
didn’t realize
I had,
I guess I’m just
thankful
to have made it
this far

Morning Glory

Morning glory breathe
your sunlight unto me
as I step between
barren rows
of grape vine
under a chilly field
of unobstructed blue

let your organic rays
blind my eyes
for a moment
and dew shimmering diamonds
soak me
to the soul

rich is the man
who wakes to crisp echoes
of frost melting over
the wild meadow
to the songs of birds
who stuck around
for the season
away from highways
and airstrips
flooding ears until
the spell has been broken

morning glory catch
the skipped beats
in the sunshine,
the breaths held
in the cold breeze,
warm these frozen bones
with your love, you have found me
again, eyes widened with thanks

wandering behind
old wooden fences
draped with moss,
through naked trees
and slippery stone,
you found me
yet again, holding your
love against corruption,
facing the day with
the boldness
of my riches

 

your body is the missing season

Yes, I admit
I miss your skin
grafting to mine

I miss the summer
between your legs
where I raised
an army of snowmen
in little lines

in winter I would throw back
the blankets
to find the next season
tattooed on your naval

I admit
that the memory stops
here

but I miss
the humid weather–
warm autumn days like this
remind me of the skin

 

her ocean

The curve of her spine
is the horizon,
like the ocean, pure,
uncharted, a shroud
hiding wonder
and quite possibly
demise for those
who seek
without understanding

I’ve never walked
this beach before.
I let the universe
wrap itself
around my ankles
first, then my knees
fell under
and I sat
in her wake,
hands full of sand,
to me those grains
made up the soft flesh

and I could feel
the breathing
through my fingers
as my palms came
to embrace the endless curve,
her body, an ocean
her heart, the vibrating
contrast between water and sky,
her eyes, the life
that transcends those layers,
and I, a part
of it all,
suspended in awe
at the vastness
in and around
our bodies

 

Sam Burks is from the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, and can be reached at srburks@gmail.com

Hearing Beyond Sound

New & collected poems by Elaine Starkman

(dvs publishing, October 2012)

This is not a book that shouts at you. Rather, it starts as a pleasant low hum, almost in the background, as the poet puts down her pen to savor a quiet moment. Gradually, as one strolls through the poems, it becomes a soft song: a song of leaving with no regret, gratitude for the present moment, wistful curiosity about what still lies ahead.

Starkman is an older poet, and this is not a book easily accessible for the young; it speaks of the careful appreciation of the latter half of life as one meanders toward its finish. There are moments of dread: in “Traveling Toward Dawn” Starkman writes that she must pick up my broken pencil/and ride a dark omnibus/until dawn. There are moments of wry acceptance, the author saying, Go right ahead–/Pain makes/the poem (“Outside, August 2006”). I am especially enamored of “A Cousin Called Simone,” in which the author encounters a seamstress with the same last name and fantasizes hopefully on how they might be related. This is especially poignant since the effects of the Holocaust have apparently left Starkman with not as much family as she would like.

But most of the poems reflect a growing understanding of life and one’s place in it. As she says in “Apricots for Isaac,” Only now do I know/what I’ve mistaken for wisdom. She speaks of weeping not for Mother Death/whom I agreed to meet/but for Sister Life/whose face I’d/forgotten (“Spirit Rock, 1999”).

Ms. Starkman has taught writing for 30 years at Diablo Valley College, UC Berkeley Extension, St. Mary’s College, and currently for Osher Life Long Learning Institute. She was the recipient of a Pen West award in 1999. Previous poetry books include a collection with 5 other poets, My Dreaming Waking Life (2009). Her short stories are represented in two Seal Press offerings: Things That Divide Us and Family: Views from the Interior, the Use of Personal Narratives in the Helping Professions. Her prose also appears in Learning to Sit in Silence: A Journal of Caretaking (1993).

If you believe in supporting poetry and indie publishing, Hearing Beyond Sound (available at Amazon) is a good book for quiet, contemplative moments.

The Secret of the Portals:

The Adventures of Bruten and Tommy: A Review

As a boy, I loved adventure books. The Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, White Fang, The Call of the Wild—all could keep me awake nights with a flashlight, hating to put the book down.  Later I loved swashbucklers, such as Scaramouche, Captain Blood, Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers, Homer’s Odyssey.  Defeating villains and monsters thrilled me. Like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, if I’d had a bb gun, I’d have heroically shot my eye out.

The Secret of the Portals, by Brant Waldeck, is a kids’ adventure book in much the same vein. Bruten and Tommy are best friends, and love to take off on their own. At the urging of Tommy’s Uncle Ron, reputedly a great explorer himself, they set off into the nearby national forest. What they find there has all the right stuff to keep kids turning those pages.

How could a young reader resist secret and magic portals that open into alien worlds?  A world of squirrels, of mini-people, of a world made entirely of stone—people, trees, everything. And in all these worlds, vast wealth is taken for granted. Emeralds, diamonds, gold galore—and ignored!  Through one portal, diamonds are even eaten—for food!

All stories need conflict, of course, and this one is no exception.  Marauding Coyote gangs, ninja chipmunks, confusing cave passages, a monster beast, huge and hostile stone warriors, a beautiful stone girl with evil intent—the right ingredients to keep a young reader’s imagination well-fed.  And rising above all these, emerging as the chief villain of all, an antagonist that no one suspected—until the end.

Is this a great book? No. The writing, the plot, the characters—all need work. The writing is not horrible, but not masterful either. It carries the plot, but deserves no notice for its quality. The plot is convoluted and seems awkward. The author tries to develop the characters, but they wind up shallowly done. Readers barely even know what they look like.

However, Bruten and Tommy are eleven year olds– sixth graders, in other words. And none of the problems mentioned above would be noticed by a sixth grader who needs to read, read, read. In its own clumsy way, this book holds together well enough to keep a sixth grader turning pages. And since I—an aging reviewer—am not the target audience here, and sixth grade kids are, no teacher should have any qualms about including it in the classroom library. For the right audience, it is well-done.

Bruce Roberts

January, 2013

Bruce Roberts, who may be reached at brobe60491@sbcglobal.net, is an accomplished sculptor and schoolteacher from Hayward, California. 

Ascension

Vestige

Revelry

Geocentric

Copper Veil

Aqueduct

 

“From Country”

 

Did you know there’s an Academy of Country and

Western Music?  Its admission’s policy is not Open Door.

 

Consider “Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life,”

Paul Craft, writer, Bobby Bare, singer.  CMA was not a

 

foundling, though mysteries abound:  1964:  “country” stood for

America, “western,” mostly for the western states, the gimmick,

 

since Genesis, to create a kingdom on earth, Eve

looking at Adam, duo, singing “You Go On and Eat a

 

Bite, Too”:  the Red Barrel Club in L.A. was a treat:

awards started in the RBC-LA:  Hollywood Palladium

 

got in on the act, plus the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills,

all this, C & W fans, before the “Beverly Hillbillies Show”

 

on television.  “It’s Such a Pretty World Today,” song of the

year, 1967, sung by Wynn Stewart, written by Dale Noe:  Nin

 

and I, newlyweds, lived near a pawn shop in Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, preparing for academia, instead of

 

buying a Ph.D − post-hole digger − for $29.99, at Lowe’s

Home Improvement.  Why Roy Acuff’s The Crazy

 

Tennesseans placed musicians in Tennessee:  the state

jarred with  Smoky Mountain Boys eventually,

 

Roy Acuff savoring his businesses − Hickory Records,

Dunbar Cave Park Recreational Center, Acuff-Rose

 

Publications:  “Don’t Make Me Go to Bed and I’ll be Good,”

“Wabash Cannonball,” “Beautiful Brown Eyes,” “Streamline

 

Cannonball,” “All Alone Beneath That Lonely Mound of Clay,”

“The Precious Jewel,” “The “Great Speckled Bird,” and

 

“Branded Wherever I Go”:  Roy Acuff was different

from Rex Allen, the Arizona Cowboy, Allen’s biggest

 

hit, 1953, “Crying in the Chapel”:  “On Top of Old Smoky”

everybody loves:  Rosalie Allen recorded with Elton Britt

 

“Tennessee Yodel Polka,” a whitewash parge upon the

wall of the country music business:  what warbles a yodeler

 

brings to falsetto and voices − natural as I feel − mostly

good about the C & W industry, for the real thing

 

loses amusement among the beer and sequins.

I am at the G-Y-N with Nin:  laughter bounds the halls:

 

among all these women, their chatter, galaxies − mirror-mints,

cloud-soups the receptionist sneezes:  Nin says,

 

“Good-bye, Penny.”  Pete Seeger might never stop to say

Farewell, since he’s been going strong before musicians and

 

Want-to-B’s flooded Nashville, Tennessee,

like a “lightered-knot floater” at my homeplace on Paul’s Hill;

 

meanwhile, Pete Seeger (went by Pete Bower),

Woody Guthrie, and Burl Ives crossed America,

 

Josh White, Bess Lomax, too, singing their songs

for unions, chanting anti-war, their chore to rout out

 

Hitler and war, too, if they could; yet Folk Music could

really score a scare.  The Almanac Singers pre-dated and

 

fore-ran the post-war group, The Weavers.  Once upon a time

I knew the South Turkey Creek Minstrel, Bascom Lamar Lunsford.

 

My brother and I went to the North Carolina State Fair,

Raleigh:  since I am a year and seven days younger than

 

Marshall (I call him “Brown”) I am a tag-along, though,

truth be known, maybe taller than most trees except pines:

 

Holly (brother-in-law, married to sister Maytle Rose)

dropped us off.  Our instruments in our hands we saw

 

our first waterfall.  Brown signed up to play his banjo in the

contest on the stage of the Mountain Dance and Folk

 

 

Festival which Mr. Lunsford started in Asheville in 1928.

When my voice changed, falling into my socks, I

 

felt like my underwear might be the yellowy bloomers

dandelions spring; I started singing “country”:

 

Bluegrass singers may have “higher” voices, though

some, like Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Del McCoury,

 

Dolly Parton, Laurie Lewis, Rhonda Vincent, and

Bobby Osborne, sing − any-thang!  Marshall could get by

 

his invasion into Mr. Lunsford’s “baby”:  he played the

five-string.  Me?  I was not asked to perform at the festival

 

at the fair in Raleigh:  that’s why we got lost and called

Holly to come get us − “We’ll be at the waterfall”:  Brown

 

won the banjo-contest:  I listened to George Pegram sing

and pick his banjo and I saw Mr. Lunsford’s hat

 

roll across the stage in a windy seizure the size of a defunct

Six-String Café in Cary, North Carolina:  I did not know

 

that Mr. Lunsford and his son and Carl Sandburg, John Jacob Niles,

Harry Golden, Alan Lomax, and Paul Green made the original

 

board whose purpose was to promote this Festival, growing from a

gathering to become the folk festivals of the 1960’s and 70’s;

 

mainly, though they are touted as Bluegrass Festivals:

major artists once minor become plentiful:  the public just

 

eats up the idea of FESTIVAL.   By the way, Paul Green grew

up near Lillington, within an hour of Paul’s Hill.

 

Truth, meanwhile, shapes a gyrating boy from Tupelo,

Mississippi.  What am to do?  Stay with old-time music and

 

risk stardom, studying Folklore at Indiana University,

Bloomington (I did get into grad school there):  maybe

 

those 50’s hooked me:  I got me a continental jacket and peg-

legged pants in the manner of the catty-times:  didn’t every

 

boy in the country want to MEOW?  Like Elvis or Jerry Lee

or Chuck or Little Richard or that Perkins boy, Carl?

 

Let’s not forget John R.  My shirt pink-flecked black

ingrained my sequins:  so when I made the

 

speech at the Pythian Home for Children in Clayton,

North Carolina, a child myself, listening to Faron Young −

 

Hank having died at twenty-nine, leaving me to hear

outside my bedroom window that whippoorwill of his song −

 

I sang “I Want to Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young, and Leave a

Beautiful Memory”:  it swamped my talk on “How To

 

Be A Successful Farmer,” my Future Farmer of America

pin obvious on my belt-buckle, scratching the back of my Martin,

 

my metaphor a ladder I must climb, growing the tobacco and

shortening the lives of every one of us smokers,

 

softly and tenderly, until our bodies comfort

oxygen to breathe no more:  in that audience

 

sat Mr. Huggins, owner of Huggins Hardware, Chapel Hill.

I write my ode from Paul’s Hill not too far from Mary Vance’s near

 

Four Oaks where my father and I used to turn out the

thirty-five dogs on the fox’s tail.  Mr. Huggins said,

 

“Shelby, come to Chapel Hill, Memorial Hall, and

sing a song; Mr. Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s the emcee”:

 

I said, Sure, taking my 00018 Martin.  I had seen Elvis Presley

at Raleigh’s Memorial Auditorium, performing the

 

first song I ever heard him sing, “I Got a Woman

Way Cross Town, She’s Good to Me”:  he brought up the

 

tail-end of the Ferlin Husky Show:  when Mr. Lunsford introduced

me, he left my knees knocking and my white bucks

 

buckling, my blue-bird blue jacket flecked in musical clefts,

my peg-legged trousers shimmying off my continental

 

jacket:  why, you could not get over me:  I sang with

all my heart and soul the Ivory Joe Hunter song,

 

“When I Lost My Baby, I Almost Lost My Mind”:

Mr. Lunsford never even mumbled a word, went

 

right on with his work:  I might have sung the song

he’s credited with writing, “Oh They Call It That Old

 

Mountain Dew,” but no:  I held my father’s stumphole

handy:  Primitive Baptist I am, hearing Sister Bernetta Quinn

 

tell me, as she backs her big white car into a dumpster in the

parking lot at St. Andrews Presbyterian College, “Shelby, if you

 

were not an Old Baptist, you would make a Good Catholic.”

I sang silently as the tree frogs croak in a voice

 

the Solemn Old Judge might endorse:  “I don’t care if it

rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus,

 

dancing on my dashboard upside-down.”  Asheville today’s

got big roads and condos and festivals:  string

 

dusters keep their fingers from rusting when their voices crack

“pop” in folk music’s changing Americana:

 

go figure:  Hank was already ensconced in the scene:

Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison.

 

Shelby Stephenson’s Family Matters:  Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge.

 

THE PAIN

I take a nap and IT HURTS,

I fall asleep, wake up

IT HURTS

I think about something else

I feel THE PAIN

I look for myself,

I lie to myself,

I get drunk,

and IT HURTS,

and IT HURTS.

To die in the arms of someone who does not trust you

IT HURTS.

*****

EYES

In them you will find

What I really am – the eternity.

Wishes of my non-being,

Face full of wrinkles,

Light souls and spring happiness.

No remorse in the core of reason.

Let go of me, without saying my name!

I do not count on you anymore.

You were not ready to

Exist carelessly,

Glitter unintentionally and

Reign unnoticed.

With this love we are fighting for loneliness.

You are imposing new forms to the wind.

How complicated is this simple love …

The thought, legitimate or silly,

Strengthens the games of boredom through you!

Memory is suicide of the oblivion.

Withered lie warns imagination with the fresh truth.

Out of the mere deception,

Starry nights I offer in my eyes.

 

THERE IS

Someone is cracking the branch?!

Hang on till morning.

Here it is inside of me,

Innocent, thirsty

Still waiting for the bread and milk,

Sipping the mint tea.

Bring the peace without the aim

And the flowers for the vase.

Doesn’t know that her soul is freezing, so she takes her time.

Every now and then she sees her but never anything happens.

Starting to believe in miracles.

Is there the heavenly love  and

Such a flame

That it never turns into ashes?

Always ripe like an apple!

Eh, my quest for the fire…

I’m intoxicated by the poem, not wine!

Your words are the wind

Blowing my love

Away!!!

 

SCRUFFY HIM AND SCRUFFY HER

They put you on Psychiatry!

They feed you with antideporessants.

Wooden hags are rejoicing.

They walk on strada,

Mother in law with the cane,

Daughter in the mirror

Fixing her lipstick.

Badass forgive me

If I were a bird

Never to land

On the ground.

Living in that flight,

Could I take you with me?

Probably those birds flew by!

SCRUFFY HIM WITH SCRUFFY HER

When the season of roses pass by

And they wither,

And the birds stop flying.

It is temporary

Washing the faces of lovers.

 

Tatjana Debeljacki writes poetry, short stories, stories and haiku. She is a Member of Association of Writers of Serbia -UKS since 2004. She is Haiku Society of Serbia- Deputy editor of Diogen. She also is the editor of the magazine Poeta. She has four books of poetry published.
Email/Websites/Blogs Debeljacki & follow her on Twitter.