Not So Easy

I watch my cat limp across the living room
try to jump on the once so easy chair

My mind leaps to an article I read
about a 6 year old child locked

in a basement for years
eating only junk food

and pissing on his mattress.
I wonder how many others 

aren't discovered at all and just
live out their lives that way.

I wonder how many people
and animals

are unnecessarily being
brutalized

Right now

And then  my mind leaps to Putin
and the Ukraine

Palestine and Israel.
The downing of planes.

The taking of lives.
The stopping of oil and gas.

And I wonder why
I haven't responded to my last

email.  Or text message
I watch my cat limp across the living room

try to jump on the chair
once so easy.

- Debbie Calverley

I Knew the Selfie was old news......

http://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/

No compromise.  Love it.  Nothing is new under the sun and so more creative.

Cheers, Darling - Watermelon Vodka St. John's

St. John's Nfld - charming harbour homes

St. John's - Whale!

St. John's Nfld - sunset in harbour

Poem

Do I write about you?
Have you gone? Or

are you perched on your throne
in my head pocket full of
beeswax -

faintly humming
your favourite song.

Debbie Calverley

Pride (In the Name of Love) Cover

Allen Grossman - The Ballad of the Bone Boat

The Ballad of the Bone Boat
(Meditation Three)
Allen Grossman (1932-2014)

I dreamed I sailed alone
In a long boat, a white bone;
Like a strong thought, or a right name
The sail had no seam.

The mast, and its shadow on the sea,
Fled like one high lonely tree
Bent with the weight of the wind-fruit sown
By the cold storm.

It was a dream of dignity
When I steered on that plated sea
With a seamless sail, and a boat like a bone,
In a fair time of the moon.

There was no rudder in the long bone boat,
The compass was a stone –
The air was empty of the deep sea gull,
And gone was the cry of the loon.

The sea and the sky were one dark thing,
The eye and the hand as cold.
Unbound was my hair, unbound was my dress;
Nothing beckoned or called

But the words of a song
That had death in its tune
And death in its changes and close –
A song which I sang in the eye of the moon,
And a secret name that I chose.

And this is the song: “Straight is the way
When the compass is a stone,
And the sail has no seam, and the boat is a bone,
And the mast is bent like a tree that bears
The wind-fruit of the moon.”

And now I sing, O come with me,
And be at last alone;
For straight is the way in the dream of the boat
That is a long white bone.

Happy Canada Day!!

Bobby Womack RIP a man with true emotion

Those were the days..... or maybe not but I still remember them

http://s205.photobucket.com/user/mpadawer/media/U2-ElevationLiveonSNL.mp4.html

Yay Summer Lilacs! (Lilac Wine)

Equinoctiial Honey Sonnet

Hold ceremony in the everyday
Suspend in equinoctial honey

Drink your potion with intention—
a poem can be descriptive medicine

you concoct for yourself
and others in ever-widening spirals

Seen and unseen, couplets
circle into DNA ladders

Eat Something Wild Every Day
and You Will become Wild

Wild on the horizon, circular, the plants
sing their songs of glee all round

So let us sing—equally in night and day to hold
mountains, time, balance deeper into the year 

LEE ANN BROWN

Thank You

Here's to June 11th - Chicago

Application For A Driving License - Michael Ondaatje

Two birds loved
in a flurry of red feathers
like a burst cottonball,
continuing while I drove over them.
I am a good driver, nothing shocks me.

MICHAEL ONDAATJE

RIP Maya Angelou

MEN

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
See them. Men are always
Going somewhere.
They knew I was there. Fifteen
Years old and starving for them.
Under my window, they would pause,
Their shoulders high like the
Breasts of a young girl,
Jacket tails slapping over
Those behinds,
Men.

One day they hold you in the
Palms of their hands, gentle, as if you
Were the last raw egg in the world. Then
They tighten up. Just a little. The
First squeeze is nice. A quick hug.
Soft into your defenselessness. A little
More. The hurt begins. Wrench out a
Smile that slides around the fear. When the
Air disappears,
Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,
Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.
It is your juice
That runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.
When the earth rights itself again,
And taste tries to return to the tongue,
Your body has slammed shut. Forever.
No keys exist.

Then the window draws full upon
Your mind. There, just beyond
The sway of curtains, men walk.
Knowing something.
Going someplace.
But this time, I will simply
Stand and watch.

Maybe. 

Maya Angelou

Theodore Roethke

The Dance

Is that dance slowing in the mind of man

That made him think the universe could hum?

The great wheel turns its axle when it can;

I need a place to sing, and dancing-room,

And I have made a promise to my ears

I'll sing and whistle romping with the bears.

For they are all my friends: I saw one slide

Down a steep hillside on a cake of ice, —

Or was that in a book? I think with pride:

A caged bear rarely does the same thing twice

In the same way: O watch his body sway! mdash;

This animal remembering to be gay.

I tried to fling my shadow at the moon,

The while my blood leaped with a wordless song.

Though dancing needs a master, I had none

To teach my toes to listen to my tongue.

But what I learned there, dancing all alone,

Was not the joyless motion of a stone.

I take this cadence from a man named Yeats;

I take it, and I give it back again:

For other tunes and other wanton beats

Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.

Yes, I was dancing-mad, and how

That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.

Theodore Roethke

Czelaw Milosz

In The Middle Of Life (translation: Czeslaw Milosz)

After the end of the world
after my death
I found myself in the middle of life
I created myself
constructed life
people animals landscapes

this is a table I was saying
this is a table
on the table are lying bread a knife
the knife serves to cut the bread

people nourish themselves with bread

one should love man

I was learning by night and day
what one should love
I answered man

this is a window I was saying
this is a window
beyond the window is a garden
in the garden I see an apple tree
the apple tree blossoms
the blossoms fall off
the fruits take form
they ripen my father is picking up an apple
that man who is picking up an apple
is my father
I was sitting on the threshold of the house

that old woman who
is pulling a goat on a rope
is more necessary
and more precious
than the seven wonders of the world
whoever thinks and feels
that she is not necessary
he is guilty of genocide

this is a man
this is a tree this is bread

people nourish themselves in order to live
I was repeating to myself
human life is important
human life has great importance
the value of life
surpasses the value of all the objects
which man has made
man is a great treasure
I was repeating stubbornly

this water I was saying
I was stroking the waves with my hand
and conversing with the river
water I said
good water
this is I

the man talked to the water
talked to the moon
to the flowers to the rain
he talked to the earth
to the birds
to the sky
the sky was silent
the earth was silent
if he heard a voice
which flowed
from the earth from the water from the sky
it was the voice of another man

How Blue

The world is blue -
depressed valleys
surrounded by
rings of hills
the sky
wind and weather
the shiver of little leaves
over a tepid brook.

All lies 
as he leaned in for the kiss
all lies and eyes

she thought -
How blue.

-Debbie Calverley

Yaaaaaaaay Arsenal!!

Sting

Phantom Limb

Pain where I stepped on a pine 
cone

Pang from a 10 year old 
scar

Sometimes I think my left arm is
gone

Until I realize I'm still
attached

-Debbie Calverley

Poem by Spencer Reece

At Thomas Merton's Grave

We can never be with loss too long.
Behind the warped door that sticks,
the wood thrush calls to the monks,
pausing atop the stone crucifix,
singing: "I am marvelous alone!"
Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:
rows of marrow and bone undone.
The horizon's flashing fastens tight,
sealing the blue hills with vermilion.
Moss dyes a squirrel's skull green.
The cemetery expands its borders—
little milky crosses grow like teeth.
How kind time is, altering space
so nothing stays wrong: and light,
more new light, always arrives.

SPENCER REECE

Poem by Martha Silano

The Poet Is the Priest of the Invisible

                        —Wallace Stevens

Dark-eyed, mysterious Meadowhawk,
the poet is the rabbi of the diaphanous,

scribe of the sheer, the barely-there
brief, pungi of the five o'clock shadow,

hint of rosewood and ghost. The poet
preaches a thin-barked willow sermon;

what she labors over is always prone
to sunscald, to scrutiny, its veins

visible through the skin. Gossamer
goddess, translucent muse, she lofts

a gauzy lug wrench toward the shadowy
freeway, where the alphabet—each of its

limpid clauses, each hyaline verb—
has once again broken down, needs a lift.

MARTHA SILANO

Claire by Rheostatics

RIP Farley Mowat

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/farley-mowat-dead-92-published-reports-173202001.html

Quote

Sometimes you can spend too long on a one sided love.

Downton Abby

Sandpipers!

Seasonality

The look on your face read wistful

on that gelid November morning.

“Could have beens should have beens” 
spun around the corners of your eyes, 
mouth mute with stories never told.

Bits of ice tapped at the window

a chilly day for resolution of the heart.

Only 3 months before everything had been

infinitely green, now even the sun

had turned its back to circle on.

I felt you leave slowly

ghost-like

a white bag  danced

strangely in the wind.

-Debbie Calverley

Passenger - Scare Away the Dark

Red Light

in the middle of nowhere

a guy on the street

holding 2 litres of minute maid

orange juice with pulp

I wondered when the bus
would come

-Debbie Calverley

Octavio Paz

As One Listens To The Rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it's raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt's shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page. 

Octavio Paz

Bill Knott

Dream Amid Bed-Woods
Bill Knott

You must pull down sheets from these linen trees,
Blankets too, a pillowcase in full leaf,
But can’t: to snooze amidst their fruits, beneath
The sheath of that composite canopy’s

Roost, you must raise yourself past hammock heights—
Up where its deepest roots feel doubly sapped,
The dormitory orchard might lie wrapped
And ripe with you, whose foliage still invites

More lure of surface sleep. But must you trust
The ease in these boughs, the sway of whose loft
So often now wakes vows to never rest,

To somehow remain alow, to resist
All berth above: you must push off this soft
Palleted grove, this tall, forest mattress.

Just a poetry page

http://conjunctions.com/archives/c62-mc.htm

NO!!!!!!

Not Again, Never.  Stop it NOW!  In total shock over this, it may seem small but it isn't.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/someones-handing-leaflets-eastern-ukraine-telling-jews-register-173828220.html

http://time.com/67272/ukraine-jew-register-donetsk/

Going Back

Now and then I think about them

the shadow people, those ones

I never really knew

I relive the love, hate, dramatic

fever bubbling just below

that surface we called reality.

The stuff of consumption

sucked stars right out

out of a velvet sky

blew them back out

into milky ways nowhere

close to what we knew before.

The madness of it all

the endless pits into which to fall

the devil with his cold hands

welcomed any quick descent

until something else

at the surface tugged

and I clung

eyes focused toward

stars distorted upside-down

in a sea of glass.

Debbie Calverley

Two Poems by Maureen McLane

What's the Matter

Why the low mood,
the picking at food?
Maybe it's the weather.

Maybe it's hormones.
Explanation's cheap
but sometimes hits the mark.

I am the target
of mysterious arrows
I myself let sling.

O that's your fantasy
of omnipotence.
You make everything 

your thing.
All day I stayed in bed.
It seemed someone else
must have been alive

have done what I did.
Failed to do
what I failed to.

It's still in my head
those things I did
and said and cared for

doing but it's all gone
white like green hills
in certain light

as Dante says the hillsides
can go white
in the middle of a new life.
 

Even Those

Even the places
the sun doesn't reach
in the deepest woods
are hot. Even the places

that never dry—the mosses
creeping everywhere
a damp carpet underfoot—
are dry. Even the quietest

places you've never been
are disquieted by your cry.
Even those places.

MAUREEN MCLANE

This Blue 

Open Book

Open Book

Time was, your hands were on me night and day.
(The thrill along my spine!) Of course I flipped
for you, from A to Z and back to A,
not once suspecting our romantic script
was doomed (and how), you fickle, shallow fool.
You've traded everything you shared with me—
defining moments, leisurely, old school—
for quickies with your laptop, your PC, 
your iPad, iPhone, iDon't-Give-a-Damn:
amid their breathless litany of news,
blogs, tweets, directions, recipes and spam,
they will, at any moment that you choose,
look up a word (or dozens!) in a flash.
Well, here's a definition I find merry:
Comeuppance (noun): when all your gadgets crash,
and you crawl back to me—your dictionary.

MELISSA BALMAIN
Walking in on People

Proof

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/citys-worst-winter-since-98----1898-254004961.html

Spring? Worst winter in Manitoba since 1898 - so ready...

Snow Bank of the Year - March 28, 2014

at my parents place

Collect Call - Ash Bowen

Somewhere out there, an operator plugged in
            the wire of your voice to the switchboard

of Arkansas where I am
            happy to accept the charges—an act so antique

                         I think of Sputnik beeping
overhead, lovers petting in Buicks

            and glowing with the green of radium dials.
Bur what you've called to say is lost

            in the line's wreckage of crackle and static.
The night you went away

            the interstate glowed red beneath the flaring
                         fins of your father's Cadillac.

Now this collect call
            from outer space & what you've called to say
                         is clear at last: Among stars

lovers come and go easy as you please. It's the gravity
            of Earth that makes letting go so hard.

ASH BOWEN

Politicians discussing global warming Sculpture: Issac Cordal

Immunity (an older poem of mine)

                             That night the Poets declared

                                   we were no longer free to dream;

                                   I dreamt of you 

                                   even though I knew

                                   I would die for it.

                                   _____________

                                   Debbie Calverley

It's Raining Inside James Schuyler

Not tearing the umbrellas inside out
not even blowing them side to side
just getting wetness wetter
and then the rain dwindles
but the sun has a shimmer
like it's missing the rain
and every once in a while
the trees in the park let down
a drenching
like they have to admit:
Oh I almost forgot about the rain.
So many Aprils.
And then the rain is back
in strings
like hair from a horse's tail.
Oh good. Weather everywhere.
Inescapable weather.
Even in everybody's
buttonholes: weather.
And someone has put an umbrella over
Gertrude Stein
in Bryant Park
where she squats
like a toad.
Blossoms drift past and cigarette
ash in the rain
and somewhere in a pond
koi swirl against koi like
they're rehearsing
to be a kimono.
The koi look
like they've been scrubbed
by a brick
which is why I won't leave
this little metal table
with its legs
modeled on insects
among insects.
And now it's raining
in the sunlight.
And the afternoon has a new
nip in it.
Chill April.
Rain lands on my neck
and slips further,
little geraniums of rain.
That's all right.
Long ago a rain drop
fell from a leaky ceiling
into my eye
and I lived for that.
And then walking not slow
there is my friend
decades since we've seen each other
and he knows me instantly.
The same raincoat, he says.

LEE UPTON

Now this is cake.....

River - Forrest Gander

River

     from Eiko & Koma

Taut current, throughstricken
with night, starlit,

and both of them
facing off. En-
igma tipped to
distortion— *

She floats on swirled
obsidian current. Their
sightlines swim across
each other. Stars
don't look away
from the unfolding,

the going alluvial,
she against his
tenderness.
 
*cutaway:
          to the blanks in her face-slots

FORREST GANDER

A Blast from the Past!

For instance - The Chandelier Lounge - Cosmo

La la las veeeeeegas

Ok, this place is over the top, you just have to close your eyes and pretend it's not real because it isn't!  Madness I say, madness!  Love the orange bits though....

February Blues

The city is a tired eye

swaddled scarf

a pulled down hat

Wind an unchained mongrel

its relentless grip

clamped onto bones

Snow banks form a frozen surf

car exhaust fog low hung

over a sea of yellow headlights

We are the cave people

dark and gutteral

in search of hibernation

in wait for that morning

when the sun outstretched

extends the evening

Debbie Calverley

Track

Track

Tomas Tranströmer

translated by Robert Bly

2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped

out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,

flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream

he will never remember he was there

when he returns again to his view.

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness

that his days all become some flickering sparks, a swarm,

feeble and cold on the horizon

The train is entirely motionless.
2 o’clock: strong moonlight, few stars.

Lisa Ampleman

Mouth: To Say

To say a word, we put it in our mouths.
       It may roll between the teeth
or hum on the palate. Love, after all, starts
       on tongue against teeth and ends on lips.
To communicate once meant to take communion.
       I take the wafer into my mouth:
speech. Silence as it melts on my tongue.
       Your speaking hums in your chest
when my ear is to it. There's a wasp nest
       under my porch. They fly home at dusk,
but you know how to suss them out.
       And in my kitchen, plaster cracks on
one discolored wall. Is it water damage?
       Is the house settling? You put your hand
on my wall, say It doesn't look like water—
       (water, which begins on pursed lips).
The cracked pipe in the wall seals up.
       The glass of water we share is cold.
You kiss my mouth, which tastes like your mouth.

LISA AMPLEMAN

Full Cry 

Quote

"When writers die they become books, which is, after all,
not too bad an incarnation."                                           —Jorge Luis Borges

A Sacred Unhappiness

There’s a few things I want to say

about the un in happiness

and why it’s sacred to be.

His love came boiling up like

like the sea rolling and boiling

up until I noticed him there

I just hadn’t before.  Only sand

no footprints, a sharp breeze

out of the north-west -

that was it.  I had walked there

forever next to the rolling

boiling sea thinking

nothing of the whole thing or

what might come out of it

until he emerged all covered

with sea-weed and barnacles

a short stint on the shore he

said I never walk here.

That was a happy day and

the wind shifted to southerly

no bite at all only that switch

and bait over skin an awareness

that all is somehow right not wrong

until that moonless night

when he slipped away

I awoke to see the curtains

blowing in the wind

distinctly north-west

shivering I again became

un, a little waif in the world

sacred, nevertheless.

The passionate are immobilized.

The case-hardened undulate over walls

of the library, in more or less expressive poses.

The equinox again, not knowing

whether to put the car in reverse

or slam on the brakes at the entrance

to the little alley. Seasons belong

to others than us. Our work keeps us

up late nights; there is no more joy

or sorrow than in what work gives.

A little boy thought the raven on the bluff

was a winged instrument; there is so little

that gives and says it gives. Others

felt themselves ostracized by the moon.

The pure joy of daily living became impacted

with the blood of fate and battles.

There’s no turning back the man says,

the one waiting to take tickets at the top

of the gangplank. Still, in the past

we could always wait a little. Indeed,

we are waiting now. That’s what happens.

from Where Shall I wander:  New Poems, by John Ashbery

Jose Emilio Pacheco RIP

http://ca.omg.yahoo.com/news/jose-emilio-pacheco-one-mexico-39-foremost-poets-015849976.html

For S

Things by Their Name . . .

And if they do not have one?
What is the name of this sadness
you get from the three ascending notes
of The Death of Ase, in this music?

Careful, it is not called The Sadness.
You will have to go the long way
to name it
because it does not exist outside the notes
but nevertheless
the notes are not it. 

Circe Maia

translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Deb & Jane - Barbados 2014

I hear Winnipeg is colder than Mars……..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-deep-freeze-as-cold-as-uninhabited-planet-1.2479967

Question to the Audience ….

Is someone out there translating my entire blog into Russian??  I happened to follow the url trail and there it was, completely in Russian.  If so, let me know.

Thanks
Deb

Happy New Year!