comments are welcome

comments? i am open to comments and appreciate them as long as they are civil, which does not mean they have to be patronizing or flattering. since i don't have a stat counter, or hit counter, it is one of the ways i can see if anyone is reading this blog and what they are thinking.

todays offering is the opening poem from a manuscript - Humbly I Offer These Awkward Poems, currently unpulsihed, though it was "accepted" and i was told it was headed off to the printer and was to be the next "major release". But that was a few years ago and obviously never happened - for whatever reasons .... The manuscript has been scrapped and reworked (twice) and is now part of a larger project that very patiently gathers dust and an idle promise i will get back to it someday.



THE LANGUAGE USED
-after Lawson Fusao Indada

here they speak of Clackamus
& Calapooya Rivers. Chinook winds.
it is language as topography,
of dreams no longer valid,
yet vibrant.

here asphalt & concrete remain
in the lexicon of curses.
Cascade Mountains, Siuslaw River -
the language of land & people
in transition.

here, the immigrants & flunkies
mistake the midnight wind
as credit, payment due by the 1st.

if your language does not tell me something important
of yourself, your history, perhaps it is best
to speak of something other than dreams.

sidewinder. diamondback - honesty
is before you: lethal, beautiful
& misunderstood. Cloverleaf -
the highway that goes nowhere on its own,
but intersects with one that may.
pimp. pusher. priest - all equal:
eternity in different forms.

3 Fingered Jack, Tillamook cheese -
language as topography -
dreams no longer valid,
yet unwilling to die.