Myth of Arrival

This is an image I made of a Star Lily, the lilium auratum, which gets used interchangeably throughout both this story and histories of the Himeyuri.

When I started writing this poem I was fascinated with the Okinawa word kusa-nu-nuii; grass roots. Grass isn't as beautiful as lilies, of course, but the lilies are gone from this life for now and forever; it is you and I, the grass, that remains. Then I stumbled upon the phrase kaamii kee-sun; literally translated as “to forcefully flip a turtle over or on its back.”

That seemed more appropriate to the story, though I couldn't work the turtle and the grass into a 3-line haiku. As I understand it, the phrase can have several meanings; to commit an act of violation or rape, to brutally maim or, (perhaps my translation is poor but it is closer to the spirit of the poem I am working on) to annihilate completely.

Star Lilies all gone …
… so let our sleeping grass roots
have long memories.

"cleaning the wounded" ZJC (2008)

This is Yukio, a 10 year-old girl from the story I am trying to tell of the Himeyuri nurses of Okinawa. The goal of this movie is not to judge one side or another but to tell a story; however, being an American born many years after all this happened, it is much harder to be non-biased than I ever thought. Perhaps it is impossible.

I chose to make an animated movie based on the events surrounding these girls for the simple fact that the medium known as anime, that is, animated movies from Japan, has the potential to be astounding. It is true that in the last twenty years or so American cartoons have been created with messages so simplistic that even ape creatures with sub-par intelligence cannot fail to get the meaning (“Teasing hurts!” “God is good!” “Lying to Homeland Security is bad!”) but the beauty and craft being used today in Japan rivals anything Hollywood has produced; and because it is a drawing anime can do things live-action movies simply cannot … plus the more obvious fact that I can get this project done on a shoe-string budget, poverty having its limitations.

However, having said all that, I find it frustrating that Japanese anime, much like some modern American poetry, has shown the tendency over the years to reach for the lowest common denominator again and again. I find it rather pathetic that, when boiled down to its roots, most stories being told in anime appear content to revolve around only a couple of themes — most of which are geared at 12 year-old male fantasies of big-breasted girls with big guns causing big explosions in one form or another. Much like our current instance that poetry needs to confuse to be deemed deep (“It all has to mean something!”); I am sure there are plenty of consumers who feel that animated porn-brain-candy is as far as the art needs to go, thank you very much.

But there are real stories out there that need to be told; I write this at a time of scandal within the Japanese public school system concerning textbooks (i.e., the histories currently being taught to the next generation) that rewrite the Imperial Army's role and actions not only on Okinawa but all during the first half of the century leading up to WWII as almost benign:

“Reflecting [on] Japanese tendency towards self-favoring historical revisionism, historian Stephen Ambrose noted that the Japanese presentation of the war to its children runs something like this: 'One day, for no reason we ever understood, the Americans started dropping atomic bombs on us.'”

This is, of course, not an isolated event — as Winston Churchill noted, “History is rewritten by the victors” … or at least their children. I live in a country that prides itself on the democratic ease of our collective amnesia over things we just did (“What? We allowed our President to invade Iraq? I thought my edgy bumper sticker put an end to war! Say, let's pull out!”) but instead of allowing our institutions to gloss over, dumb down or simply rewrite activities that have occurred in our country's name, wouldn't it be better to bring these issues into the spotlight for discussion and discourse?

That leads to a problem, however; it is frightfully easy to make a bold claim like I don't want to judge other people when trying to tell a story such as this … but actually doing it is another thing. Perhaps I am incapable of being non-biased? I do not know.

To tell the stories of the Himeyuri nurses is to tell of teenage girls willing to sacrifice themselves for such issues as patriotism, their families and Okinawa homes, as well as a deep fear of what the invading army would do to them if they were caught. It is a story of the Japanese Imperial Army that exploited these fears and the local population, using them as cheap labor, indentured soldiers, human shields against an enemy it had no hopes of defeating. It is also a story of an American army that carpet-bombed the civilian Okinawa population with missiles and rockets; that had no qualms about going cave to cave across the island, burning alive anyone — solider, civilian, mother, father and child — who didn't immediately surrender. “The Battle of Okinawa has one of the highest casualties rates throughout World War II: the Japanese lost over 90,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) lost over 50,000 men in combat. It is unknown the exact number but conservative estimates put the number of civilians wounded or killed in the 'hundreds of thousands.'”

Perhaps I won't be able to be as nonjudgmental as I hope; coming as I am from the safety of a life in Michigan, United States, in the year 2008. Even though all of this takes place twenty-five years before I was even born it is a story I don't want to forget; even if cartoons and poetry seem a simple way of telling it, it is better than not telling it at all.

Since this is a cartoon and I'm not good
drawing and it is a history and
it is not mine, yet; I would, if I could,
draw the last Army Medic Unit – bland
and blank – right before our bombs start falling.
I love color so right before fire claimed
them, I'd show you the young nurses picking
maggots from the bandages of the maimed.
The job of ten year-old girls; every grand
image that words protect you from seeing.
Since this is a cartoon full of unnamed
lives, full of childlike morals that demand
nothing from us; only that once hurting
others made us both humble and ashamed.

In the poem The Golden Legend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow talks about the maritime belief concerning a capful of wind:

Only a little hour ago
I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,
And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale.

Literally the term means a sudden light breeze (enough to fit inside a sailor's cap); but the term is also applied to one who, in myth, could control the ocean's winds and weather. In the Dark Ages it was a common belief that witches could do just that. With all knowledge comes sacrifice; I wonder what a person needed to do to discover the wind's secrets? Something terrible, no doubt, something terrible.

She did not take it. I gave up that eye
to her. Yes. I let her draw the sickle
toothed-shark bone across me. Screamed as the sky
went out and the waves rushed in. All that gruel
meat of an eyeball. Gone. She packed it full
of spiced tide weeds, sewed it shut. My poor skull
shattered. My spine burned. Now with my capful
of wind I have become a sea jackal.
My scar remains. The way it crisscrosses
across my right cheekbone, like a ripple,
a fate, something lost while the sea rages.
Even now it binds me. Something hateful.
Spiteful. Something I could not hear clearly
but a thing I'll always have to carry.

Earlier this morning I was thinking about the problem with writing a haiku. The easy part is figuring out the form (three lines; the first and third line have five beats and the middle has seven beats to it). What I find difficult is the idea of having to have a twist to the poem, something that illustrates the interconnectedness of ourselves and our natural world but with a surprise, something new (which, now I come to think about it, is the challenge of all poetry).

All of this started as I worked on a poem about an ayakashi; a Japanese word for a ghost appearing at sea during a shipwreck. My first draft of a haiku looked like this:

even the soft crabs
avoid the dead girl's bright eyes
in the snarled rigging

Then I thought about it and wondered if I placed the "surprise" (such as it is) too much in the middle of the poem, so I decided to re-write it. I am not sure if there is a huge amount of difference in the two, but I find it an interesting question regardless; this sentimentality I have over the dead.

even the soft crabs
in the snarled rigging avoid
the dead girl's bright eyes

It is curious we live in an era where sentimentality in art is frowned upon as being trite or unnecessary. For my part it is sentiment that connects me to this terrible and beautiful world. Why, then, do so many people act like they are disconnected? I tend to end up worrying about the dead more than I probably should. Especially when it comes to folklore about the ghosts of children. After all, that inability to feel connected to the rest of the world creates a sense of alienation while we are alive; who knows what it would do to a person who, once dead, is expected to be a literal part of this cosmos? Why are we caught up doing the same thing over and over? Is it simply a lack of imagination or something deeper? Will sentiment, in the end, be our saving grace? It is not the sort of question I expect answered; still, all those poor lost children does bothers me.

The waves at dawn have secrets to tell you
and all the pickle-black weeds washed ashore
worry about you. The sea groans, you knew
that. I can hear it too. I am so sure
it will be there – all the pain the waves tell,
the hurt the beach has – but still, you ignore
that. On the other side where the wave fell
and drew back – in that narrow space before
it falls back – that's me; because I can't leave.
I can't wander or sleep or say goodbye.
I am stuck there with all the roar and hiss
of waves. Blurred. Lost. Because I can't conceive
any other world than this. Because I
cannot conceive another world than this.

My friend, Diane T. Sands, is a "a naturalist, cartoonist, librarian, and free-lance scientific illustrator, who also uses the sketchbook as a medium for recording the natural movements of the world around her." She is also the California president of Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.

I woke up this groggy Monday morning (deep snow, all dark outside) and found, waiting in my gmail in-box, that she had drawn this illustration for me. I was so amazed by it I wanted to share it with all of you. What a wonderful way to start a week! Diane, your visions are amazing!

Does it bother anyone
in ballads when the dead
maid sings from the grave
after courtly love
and suicide:

"with the long, green grass
growin' over me"?
And she is in
the grass
and she is
the grass
and that grass is in
my parent's
backyard.

I planted fox fur
near its roots today
from a clutchful
of glorious red,
that with a tug,
came loose
in my hand,
tail and all,
from the scraps
on the highway.

I had some scraps left
in my pocket. I bring
back bits of dead stuff
to feed to the grass
stems, as if grass eats;
as if a dead girl could use
a fox as a companion.

[please click on image for closer view]

It was that rancid smell that made me drive
her off. Damn! What a foul stench! Of course she
fought and cried. Of course. How would she survive
on her own? Who would take in a dirty
thing like her? No one, I am sure. That smell
of hers just wouldn't wash off. No. Call me
a beast, if you will. Say that there's a hell
for bad parents who desert their needy
children. I'm sure there is but I don't care.
What was I going to do with her? Me!
I am no believer in myths. A prayer
only works if someone hears it. And we
are deaf. Abandoned down by the river;
she is human now, a fox no longer.

The legend of a fox taking on human form to live among us is a curious idea. I was interested in just how a fox comes around to wanting to put on our skins and put up with our odd smells and customs? Why? In some stories the fox just does; s/he is a trickster and thus nothing is impossible. That uncomplicated answer might be fine for some; but nothing in life is that simplistic, I believe. Perhaps it has something to do with grief? Perhaps it simply happens at puberty for certain foxes; some fey fox child that always felt different and one day wakes up and their whole world has been changed forever? Perhaps.

Earlier today (instead of studying my anatomy terms for the test on Monday) I worked on a translation of a waka by the legendary poet Ono no Komachi (小野 小町), who lived around 825 - 900 A.D. As one of Japan's Thirty-six Immortal Poets her poetry focused both on the erotic nature of life and the grief that life can also hold.

The poem I worked on, number 938, reads in Japanese as follows:

wabinureba mi wo ukikusa no ne wo taete sasou mizu araba inantozo omou

わびぬれば 身をうき草の ねをたへて さそふみづあらば いなんとぞ思ふ

I translated it as:

My body, miserable,
drifting as aimless as a water weed.
If the stream called me
I would follow, I do believe.

Grief, in any world, is still grief. The poem echoed the sentiment of my poor fox-girl lost along the river bank. Here are several alternative translations:

Misery holds me fixed,
And I would eagerly cut loose those roots
To become a floating plant –
I shall yield myself up utterly
If the inviting stream might be relied upon.
(Brower & Miner)

This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots…
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.
(Hirshfield & Aratami)

Wretched that I am –
A floating water weed
Broken from its roots –
If a stream should beckon,
I would follow it, I think.
(Keene)

In my desolation
I am as duckweed:
Cut my roots and
Take me away — would the water do it,
I should go, I think.
(McAuley)

In the oldest poem, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the warlord of the city Uruk, the part-man part-god Gilgamesh, has become a tyrant. His people suffer and cry to Heaven for justice and Anu, father of all, hears them and instructs Aruru, mother of creation, to:

“go and create
a double for Gilgamesh, his second self,
a man who equals his strength and courage,
a man who equals his stormy heart.
Create a new hero, let them balance each other
perfectly, so that Uruk has peace” (Mitchell, 75)

Soon rumors are heard of a wild man with hair down to his waist, some shadowy twin of Gilgamesh running with gazelles and lions, running naked through the forests. So a high temple priestess, Shamhat, the holy daughter of Ishtar, is sent out into the forest to tame the beast, to bring the god-beast Enkidu to face Gilgamesh.

Shamhat

I grow tired of their gossip. They condemn
me. What fool would listen to such stories
told by men? What did you think? None of them
have had to offer up their own bodies.
Men change so little. You hear “temple whore”
and grin. Enough. Already you displease.
The truth is this: when I walk through that door
I am not I. She claims me. Her furies
and her passions are mine. Just how many
of you are connected to the Divine?
Just how many of you even believe?
Not one? At least I have that dignity
to be her daughter. I know what is mine;
a faith deeper than what you can conceive.

Enkidu

I – and all the animals fled from me –
am – I became all because that woman
in her red corset kissed me. Suddenly
I was human. Now. I know. Now. Human.
She kissed me and all the animals fled.
She named me, gave me a name. She even
taught me love. I love – I loved her. I bled
for her. I did all this for her. Passion,
hunger, desire – all my first. Who can
say no? Now. I know. Now. Blissful. I was
hers. Bound to her. Blissful to hers. Spirit.
Hers. Soul. She was Shamhat. My love. I am
this. All because – I became all because
of that high priestess in her red corset.

Gilgamesh

O soul. O friend. O one true friend. I wait.
We will go into the cedar forest.
We will know both joy and grief. All my hate
shall calm like the sea after a tempest.
My one true friend. I wait for you. Hurry.
Your love waits. Deeper than any dim lust.
You said I was arrogant. I humbly
agree. And you said I was the crudest
of men. Yes. Let us go now. Hand in hand.
The world is ours. The gods love us. Dearly
I love you. How can love ever offend?
I will follow you down into the land
of death if I have to. Never leave me.
My soul. My dearest friend. My one true friend.

***

Work Cited:

Mitchell, Stephen. Gilgamesh. New York: Free Press. (2004)

"i'd make a great crow" ZJC (2008)

Have you ever searched for a friend on mydeathspace? Not to be morbid but I have a history of people disappearing from my life suddenly, without notice. What has happened? One day you're chatting like normal and all of a sudden you realize it has been three weeks and you're still waiting for a letter, a phone call, a knock on the door. I'd go look for you if I knew which direction to turn.

There are so many ways to disappear and so few ways to tell anyone once you are gone.

I will not count the days I want to echo those last lines of Bette Midler's in The Rose (1979) … "Where you going…? Where's everybody going …?" No, I will not.

Morning and nightfall. One more day is done.
If I could come back I'd want wings. To look
for you. All of you. Gone from me. Famine
is at my gate. Enough! I will unhook
the sky. It is enough to miss you all.
Tell me: will you look for me? Only fair.
Go out, look around. Morning and nightfall
and one more day is done. Look for me where
we have been. Look for me where the crows
gather to caw. Watch for me high above
you – a heartbeat brilliant with pitch-black comb
and wing. I would make a great crow. Who knows?
I might find you. Hunt until all I love
are found, yes, until we all make it home.

"goat of my soul" ZJC (2008)

I have been working on this sonnet during the long night (tomorrow classes start and my sleep schedule is all thrown off, whaa!) and wanted to share it with you. It is a rough draft. Very rough. But life is like that in the wee hours of the morning before my second cup of coffee, liquid goodness. Cheers!

Now cup your hands. Hold them out like begging
or prayer. In that space where your palms do not
touch think of something decaying, something
live. Breathe in the goatish air of swamps, what
others call “swamp pussy.” Now cup your hands.
Hold them out to implore, pray. All the rot
of your swamplands is burning. Your swamplands
on fire in your poor, cupped hands. You cannot
let go. I'll pray for you and your goatish,
dim soul; a beast led to slaughter. Don't hope
the goat knows the end of the rope. When prayer
stops. When the goat is pulled forward. I wish
I will never see that. The knife, the rope
and that terrible motion in the air.

I can understand my poetic grandparents of the 1920s and 1930s wanting to throw off the mantle of Formal poetry; let's face it, after Romanticism the idea that perhaps rhyming poetry had gotten a bit stale, that forms for forms sake did not make the best verse was, I am sure, a revolutionary idea. Why not chuck the whole thing out the window and start over again? Why bother rhyming at all? World War II was looming in Europe and perhaps the poets of West had good reason to believe no one was going to survive. Why not break a few rules before it was too late?

I suppose doomsayers, like many types of poetry, get their day in the sun, become popular and then are shunted aside for the next depressing thing when whatever it is they claimed failed to materialize. I bring this up because there are people out in our world who have been making rather outrageous claims right now — “the Death of Irony,” “the End of Postmodernism,” “Kill the Villanelle” — and perhaps from their point of view all that might be true, regardless of any validity found among the rest of us.

In his Introduction to the anthology, American Sonnets, David Bromwich illustrates this by pointing out that just because a handful of people say it's the end of a form (or the world) does not necessarily make it so. Musing about the giant explosion in creativity seen in the beginning of the 20th Century, he writes:

… Early in the last century, there was a crisis of belief in conventional forms, which made poets and critics think hard about why a tradition like the sonnet should persist. Responding to this situation in “Reflections on Vers Libre” (1917), T. S. Eliot observed that modern poets could renew old genres such as mock-epic even as they burned through more recently favored modes like the naturalist novel. His prognosis was uncertain. “We only need the coming of a satirist,” Eliot guessed, “to prove that the heroic couplet has lost none of its edge since Dryden and Pope laid it down,” but other forms were in direr straits: “As for the sonnet I am not so sure.” Newness was not the determiner of value, for Eliot; of vers libre he remarked “it is the battle cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art.” But with his well-earned skepticism, he almost persuaded himself that the sonnet was dead. (xxxvii - xxxiix)

And for some time Eliot has appeared correct. Vers libre, also known as Free verse, has held sway in American academia for many years now. It is not necessarily a bad thing when something once seen as radical, a fresh idea, is now canonized by the establishment, I suppose. But, in the same way that once the dominate culture finds out about something — be it hip hop, jazz, Abstract art or Robert Mapplethorpe — whatever sting that Avant-garde idea possessed tends to disappear rather quickly.

Again, just because the sting is gone now does not mean we should get rid of it. Why suggest, as Eliot did, that we need to get rid of a whole form simply because the artists of our time might not have the creative skills to do right by it? To make a claim that any form — regardless of the banal work turned out by a thousand years of talentless hacks — should be considered “dead” is either asinine or egotistical. Perhaps you, Mr. Eliot, do not have the skill to breath new life into a certain form, but why ruin it for the rest of us?

I write sonnets for one reason only; they are a lot of fun. So is Free verse. So are Villenelles. A form of poetry is just that; a shape that allows a poet to do certain things. To blame a form for those who curse or champion it is just as silly as dismissing once edgy poets like Ginsberg or Bukowski simply because they are being taught in academia now. Perhaps right now the sting in certain forms is gone, but given enough time and creativity it will be back.

First I bought a shoot of red bamboo, less
than a foot, and took down the eel-like blade
with the gap jaw handbone. I must confess
it took a day to carve them. I'm afraid
three was all I could master. Then I found
the old clay pot fashioned out of nightshade
and blood. I filled it and then lit a round
fire down low. I carved a question and laid
it on a wood scrap, set it to blaze: who
is out there? The fires crackled until
A.M.E.X.Q. was spelled. What blithesome
spirit are you, love? Next: I wait for you.
My last bamboo cutting was prayer: when will
you come? Hurry spirit – when will you come?

…

Work Cited

Bromwich, David (ed.) American Sonnets. New York: Library of America. (2007)

"old woman & cat" (2007)

Did I mention last Monday I was involved in a head-on collision that destroyed my car and banged up my knee? I didn't? The good news is no one was hurt, not even the person who ran a stop sign on the icy road as I was entering the intersection … well, no one was hurt except for the knee.

Who knows what one feels right before impact?
Black Bliss? Dullest lust? The Devil's anguish
at the Crossroads? Laughter? Rubbish to act
like I know – that is not my job. Rubbish
to write that I know. That is not my job.
I work with the living. With this mawkish
world I've named into being. This macabre
task to name all the part. Why would I wish
to know how I might perish? Could I claim
it won't be quick? brutal? Who can say less?
Who can tell how I'll feel? Who can say more?
Will I will rise, dying, wild hair a flame?
Will I leave my soul lost in a pathless
wilderness? a place we have no name for?

Imagine my dismay at finding out that the paws of a new born red fox are not yellow after all but black. I learned this after I had spent all day trying to get the colors in the fingers just so. I played around with the ideas that maybe I could get finger tips to look black but all that ended up happening was I looked like I had big blobs for fingers. Not exactly the effect I was hoping for.

Rise up. Rise up. Rise up, my desire.
Tell me your sad, bad woes. This love expands
like a slow burst. Flame. I am all fox fire.
All flesh oracle. Desire commands
that I divine soft-line grooves in your flesh.
Let me touch your woes. Let these fox-pup hands
read you; melted fat like crushed horseflesh fresh
from the tanner. Mad; the tale of Swamplands
Gal at the Crossroad with the White Devil.
Sad; dune grass piercing skulls in the black sands
of a beach. Gospel. We all have gospel
hymns to tell. There is no truth that demands
this, but still, what the hell — let these fox-pup
hands touch you. Rise up. Rise up, hell! Rise up!

Of what I will miss the most – wings. Graceful
fits a winged boy on a high rock above
fields and towns; taking only a handful
of what is. The hedge sparrow and street dove
are a narrow valley; their movements all
benign. Finches cannot trust in olive
orchards and doves, mid-summer grass. Rainfall
for the finch is – here I recall – a love
of a world gone green, gold, black; embodied
words in a fluid tree rich with speed. Within
faith that is all that is. Let the finches
mock this bullfinch-legged boy, any crossbreed
between bent wing is a demon. As in:
someone who can take exactly what is.

I live across the street from the Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Over the weekend we had an ice storm and by Sunday the whole neighborhood was wreathed in fog. My parents came to visit that day and I asked my father to take a couple of photos of me in the mist.

The grounds of the cemetery are about three acres (four city blocks), roughly. Both Byron Root Pierce and Stephen Gardner Champlin, Civil War heroes, are buried here. As my neighbor put it, in the summer, "it's a good place to take a book and get away from city life."

The metaphor of friendship being like a plant (a night blooming rose, let us say) is not new but I think it will work nicely. Two people agree to combine their energies and fortunes. A plant roots itself in the ground. To break that connection, for whatever reasons, will have dire results. For the plant. For the friends.

A friend goes through chemotherapy. She keeps her long hair in a box next to the bed. The ghost of the hair recalls what it was like to be brushed. "This too shall pass," Solomon writes. Yes, but I was hoping not so soon. Not now. With no answer anyone would want or be able to use. We are all hoping for a little more.

The song I wrote for this poem ("drink you dry") was inspired by a line in a poem by Amy Gerstler, "… The throat is a road. Speech is its pilgrim" (from Hymn to the Neck). Perhaps the song is, in itself, an answer to the "why?" no one will give me. The poem below is another attempt to make sense out of the senseless. It is still a sonnet, I simply broke the lines at every 5th beat instead of 10th (more or less, but who is counting?) … Viva sonnets!

And we are physical
shape; to give voice,
to feel, to give pause,
I brush out your hair
(no, there was no hair
brush; only a choice

to comb my fingers
through the empty air
where your hair might once
have been). So tonight
I hope you will not
be disappointed.

And since I've drunk from
the gash of sunlight
I think I've become sad
at your wasted
beauty. I have a purple
bruise on one

ankle. True. I don't
know you as keenly
as I thought I did.
I have grown remote
under my skin. No
frenzy. Please listen.

Once I drank you
dry but now I simply
gag on the rose left
blooming in my throat.

"i've been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots" — nora zeale hurston

Why write of potato soup when a sudden
scowl means the folly of blind jealousy?
Why praise what others lack? Perhaps someone
else will get these words flowing. But not me.
Not now. What is this line I am writing?
Please, let me commit no stupidity
today, great or small and let no huffing
ill wind make me pray. Since other's mercy
is just that: other's. Just like food: other's
that we all praise with parsley, cream and meat.
We who so causally praise without doubt,
with big fat words all about the splendors
of that common root everyone must eat.
The one I've never had to do without.

The Chinese Baiji Dolphin was declared extinct this week. The Week Magazine briefly noted:

"Goddess goes extinct" (Yangtze River, China) The Baiji, a freshwater dolphin know as the "goddess of the Yangtze," is extinct, scientists said this week. The latest search of the river produced no sightings of the species, which lived in the Yangtze for 20 million years. Even if a few survive, researchers said, there are not enough to perpetuate the species. The demise is blamed on overfishing, which left the dolphins with little food, and construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which caused environmental devastation across the watershed. (page 9)

I had been working on a song lately, not necessarily a lament but when I read this story I changed everything. Earlier this week, after much complaining to friends, I finally was able to make the music editor Audacity work in way that I felt I could use. All the music I sampled I found at Open Source Music; a home of copyright-free songs various artists post and allow the rest of the world to use. From all of that I created this.

"We are stranded on shore, watching the bountiful sea life disappear before our uncomprehending eyes. For many species, what we do — or don't do — in the coming years will make the difference between existence and extinction … [in the] words of William Beebe. 'The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconstructed, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again" (Richard Ellis, 2000).

Forgive us, Baiji, I hope to see you in the next world if you shall have us.

None shall put you back together again.
Damn the Three Gorges Dam. Damn the jaunty
oars, the boat's grunt, the mirth of fishermen.
She is gone. The Goddess of the Yangtze
is gone. Baiji! Baiji! Baiji! Baiji!
Stupid prophet. Stupid cup of wine. You
are too late; for twenty million years She
swam now not even a headstone, bamboo
or wave, will mark where the last, in sickness,
fell. The waters are empty where She swam.
The wine of my heart bitter. I am no
prophet; I could not see this. The Goddess
of the Yangtze is dead. Damn all I am.
Damn all we claim to be, to love, to know.

I wrote this poem back on December 19, 2006 under the title "a pretty piece of flesh, i." The title really had nothing to do with the poem except that it came from a line in Romeo and Juliet I liked and probably had hopes of using it somehow in the poem. Oh well. I had been thinking about Saharan camel trains, desert caravans, at the time, camping "out under the terrible full moon by myself on a wind-swept sand dune, calling the lonely spirits of the wilderness to me." For those who do not know the references, a "night ghast" is taken from the Anglo-Saxon word for ghost, "gāst." Ben Hur is the lead character from a 1959 movie. I use the word "consort" in the poem. At one point in Romeo and Juliet Tybalt slanders Mercutio by telling him, "Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo" (3.I.39), which causes Mercutio to explode into rage. As it turns out, the word "consort" means both to "keep company with" but was an ancient slang term to also imply "having carnal relations with."

This video is a bit different than others I have tried in that it has background music to it. I understand that sampling a sound to create a beat (versus being able to play an instrument to create the same sound) is still frowned on these days by the establishment, so, in an act of full disclosure, here is where I got the music. The bass line is actually a nano-second of J.S. Bach's Suite No. 1, BWV 1007, G major (Prelude) (as performed by Yo Yo Ma) repeated over and over for a full minute. The cymbals are taken from the end of a Beastie Boys tune I found on a free, open source website, Triple Trouble (the Leo Nevilo remix). Finally, the trumpet is a riff I lifted off a Charles Mingus jam, Better Get It Hit In Your Soul, played backwards and distorted through a Wahwah special effect.

I have been consorting with the desert's
demons, things of air, lately. I know their
tastes, their humors and woes. Let the experts
scoff at these pale dreams, figments borne on air,
laughter at the eye's corner. Asleep I
am more grand than any phantasy. They
come; a few at a time, across sand, sky,
dune and under moon. They please me, they lay
down by my body. Passion is in birds'
breath, bat's wing; not in another lover's
words. Words! I am sick of all these words! True
delight is not a single word but herds
of night ghasts. Go. I'm the last of Ben Hur's
blood kin and I have no more use for you.

This is a repost of an older sonnet I wrote in the beginning of the summer. My friend Stephanie Dominique, from Las Vegas, wrote to me saying she enjoyed it. I tried tightening up some lines and added music in the background, I don't know if it worked (earlier experimenting with music drowned out my voice), so I hope she enjoys it a second time too. Cheers!

Today you sing, “I love you! I love you!
I love you!” And what of it? Did it keep
love at your side? Did any fat ghost who
wanders your whispered landscape stop to weep
or laugh or speak to you? We all possess
secrets. We all possess passions that sleep.
Who does not have the wild urge to caress
or be caressed? When you think of the deep
green roots you have thrust into me, moist dirt
of my heart, the tenderness, the distress,
all the subtle feelings of the desert
that run violent in me, did you once guess
who would pluck you from this moist soil and why?
Who would watch you wither and fade and die?

Here is a forest and you should linger.
The sun is bright and I am a forest,
river, a creature of August. Offer
me green sap, gold leaf, say the word, “August.”
I give you myself freely. The queerest
things happen in forests. Do you
know that? I am the blue August witch; lust,
tempests, transit. In my green kingdoms, blue
scars, red runes; I love you all. Wait for me.
Will you do that? Walking and talking through
winter, will you wait for me? I stumble
along, I look everywhere. You must be
here. You who will wait for me. You who
are a memory lost in this dazzle.

This is a drawing of the sorceress, Circe, painted by my friend Shelley. I love it! She actually looks like she might come from Italy or Greece, which is more than I can say for other Circe portraits. I am thinking of John Waterhouse’s exquisitely done painting, Circe Invidiosa. In it we see the woman from the island of Aeaea appear as a pale, upper class British lass. I suppose it's no surprise coming from a Victorian, but a little disappointing; especially when it turns out that Aeaea isn’t really a mythical island but lies on the western coast of Italy (it turns out it was connected to the mainland by a small, sandy peninsula and at high tide still turns into an island). So Circe is Italian, not Gaelic.

What she is really famous for is turning Odysseus' sailors into pigs for having vulgar table manners. In the sort of logic that only works in fairy tales and classical mythology, when her magic failed to work on Odysseus, Circe fell in love with him. Odysseus had no problems being her lover for a year but then left her so he could return to his wife. Oi vey! Later in the story Odysseus goes berserk and kills everyone he finds hanging out in his house, eating his food, when he returns from his year spent on Aeaea. He feels aggrieved, he tells his wife. But when I think of reprehensible behavior I think of girls in certain parts of the world who are sold for cash. This happens everyday and for the same hundred dollars I spend a month on coffee I could probably rescue another human life out of bondage. As the Bengali poet Anuradha Mahapatra put it, "… when I see an image worshiped/ I think about the daughter of the house/ being sold for cash". There's reprehensible behavior for you.

As for Circe, accounts vary on her reaction to the news her lover was leaving her. This is one of them.

Thanks Shelley! You rock (again)!

Don't talk to me of betrayal; each day
one more daughter will get sold for money.
If they had my art, darling, you would pray
to be swine. Look at me. My long, tawny
hair is black with ash, with sorrow from you.
Such a fire and the black earth rages in me.
Fire and honey flower. Who turned? and who
kissed me? Tell me, was that love? I lay, only
in my anklets, all night. I remember
all of your anger, all of your contempt.
You crave what you crave. I am such a toy.
You crave to be fed. Your cravings beggar
me; they are of all who you'll lure and tempt;
comfort and console; betray and destroy.

The era of classic women blues singers spanned roughly from 1920 to 1930 and was dominated by such giants Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Sippie Wallace and Alberta Hunter, to name just a few. Without a doubt, my favorite singer of that era is Ida Cox; a fiercely lyrical and independent woman who penned such classic blues songs as "Wild Woman Don't Have the Blues;" as well as making famous one of the greatest songs of all times, "One Hour Mama."

"I'm a one hour Mama/ so no one minute Papa/ ain't the kind of man for me …"

(Of the many covers of this song I adore, Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, do a fabulous job).

Between these four lips and this kiss. Between
these toes and the rain. Between wild sumac
and the grapevine. Between the clear morphine
drip and the radio I would come back
as Ms. Ida Cox. Spreading blue dog booze
on “My Mean Man Blues,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Black
Crepe Blues” and “Wild Woman Don't Have the Blues.”
To make laughter sigh. To make a wisecrack
out of death and loss and love. I say, get
up. I say, get up. I say, sing “Gypsy
Glass Blues.” I say, rise from the dead, shadow
sigh “no more, no more.” You are alive, wet
with song, Ida. Scat, burn, sing. You carry
the scent of the grave everywhere you go.

Ms. Ida Cox

This is a shout out to my friend, The Absinthe Review Network, a fellow Michigan resident who probably knows more about the French poet Charles Baudelaire and his love affair with absinthe than I do. However, my first exposure to Baudelaire was via Liam Clancy (of Clancy Brothers fame), when he read Charles' famous prose poem during a live performance on In Concert by Makem & Clancy. It did what Emily Dickinson said good poetry should do, blow the top of your head off … at least it to so with me. I was thirteen at the time and let's just say I was easily impressionable.

The translation here is my own (though I must admit it is hard to not hear Liam's voice in my head as I worked on it) so any errors you might find here — my French is worse than my Spanish — are all mine. Enjoy:

One should always be drunk. That is all that matters; that is our great urgent need. So as not to feel Time's horrid burden that breaks your shoulders and grinds you down, you must get drunk without resting.

But on what? On wine or poetry or virtue as you please, but get drunk!

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace, or in the green grass of a ditch, or in the bleak loneliness of your room, as you wake and find your drunkenness already dying away, ask the wind, ask the waves, ask the stars, ask the clock — all that which runs, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks — ask them, what time is it? and the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, and the clock, will all reply: “It's time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, get drunk and never pause for rest on wine or poetry or virtue as you please.”

Il faut être toujours ivre, tout est là ; c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.

Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu à votre guise, mais enivrez-vous!

Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge; à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est. Et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront, il est l'heure de s'enivrer ; pour ne pas être les esclaves martyrisés du temps, enivrez-vous, enivrez-vous sans cesse de vin, de poésie, de vertu, à votre guise.

I tried recording this poem in several locations, none of them really getting the energy I was hoping for. In one my cat Haiku began chirping in the background and in another the dehumidifier kicked in, drowning out half the poem. However, on this hot and humid day, being downstairs in my basement was a treat (though it does look a lot like an abattoir). Maybe I could do a series of poems in friends' basements? If you have a really dire and dreary looking basement drop me a line … it might be worth the road trip.

Listen. I'll be sober. In time. But not
today. No. Not today. I'll be – listen!
Sober, but not today. Often I thought
to be. Yes. Often. Listen. I often
thought to be. With the buckle and the boot.
With the whip and cutouts. All this passion
means so little sober. Listen. This brute
does not forgive. This lush life – this drunken
brute and painted raw silk and my brutal
henna hands – passion gobbling away
like silk, muslin, silk. Often silk is sour
to my tongue. And sober? inedible.
I'll be sober. In time. But not today.
No. Not today. In time. I'll be sober.

Green Baudelaire

The cafe I am at right now has been playing a Patsy Cline CD on their old-fashioned speakers. Her song, Walking After Midnight, keeps repeating itself in my head: "and as the skies turn gloomy/ night blooms will whisper to me/ I'm lonesome as I can be" … and I think about that strange muscle we call love and how strong and weak it can become depending on our health and vitality and still it is as necessary as blood.

Like Patsy Cline, the Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik wandered as well. She, though, wandered through words, followed sentences helter-skelter everywhere; since for her love and self-respect, identity and desire, were all bound up in words combinations, in her sentences. In the end, as her words failed her (much like the German-French poet Paul Celan) she took her own life. Here is the title poem to her 1965 collection, Los Trabajos y Las Noches (the translation and all its errors are my own):

Los Trabajos y Las Noches

para reconocer en la sed mi emblema
para significar el único sueño
para no sustentarme nunca de nuevo en el amor

he sido toda ofrenda
un puro errar
de loba en el bosque
en la noche de los cuerpos

para decir la palabra inocente

Works and Nights

in order to recognize in my thirst this design
it means this single dream
will never sustain me in love again

I have been offering everything
a thing so pure
it will be mistaken
by the she-wolf in the forest
the night of the bodies

in order to say this innocent word

Innocent word. Innocent kiss. This brought me back to the Patsy Cline song that has now been played at least three times since I sat down this morning and the idea of how many kisses a person might actually possess in their bodies. The romantic in me says kisses are limitless, but the realist points out that if you were somehow able to keep track by the end of a person's life there would have been a finite number of kisses, an actual number we could write down, that a person gave out during their lifetime. If you knew you were only going to kiss 12,987 times while alive would you save them all for the end? Get them over in the beginning and save onto that very last kiss to stretch your lifespan out a little longer? And in the end, who would you give your last kiss to?

Playing havoc starts with the first cut. Deep
notes. Deep notes. A sound someone will mistake
as pure need. The way our brief hungers creep
from each other's lips pressed together. Ache
and a C-note in a horn's bell. Deep notes.
You can't tell the difference. A fine earthquake
that says, “come here, my darlin'.” In our throats
are all the kisses we will ever make.
Come now. Anguish, like Patsy Cline, walkin'
after midnight; an old movie that creeps
after us. I wish you, friend, that movie.
I wish you that road. Those willows, weepin'
for pure need. And our last kiss that sleeps
in our throat. Come now, darling friend, kiss me.

Where will I go with such thin wrists? Often
I watch snails crawl through bogs. I'm unable
to find such narrow roads, compass. Drunken
in the devastated paddies, scornful
of dried beans and mulberry. Silly bean!
You do not taste of clouds or caramel
or rain. I'm drunk on rain. Salt, milk between
my teeth. O love, be my road, my little
dirt trail. I want to feel you everywhere
I go. In my mouth, on my skin, about
my feet. Like gross dust, do not rise above
me. Do not leave my behind. It's unfair
I am lost. Where am I going without
your well-worn path? without your tipsy love?

"Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

The hard rain and the wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us." — Jala al-Din Rumi (149)

We cry for so many different reason. This is a cry of joy. Omavi Mafuju Ndoto has posted a wonderful interview I did for Chaotic Dreams Online. It show cases a book I co-authored with several friends some years ago, 4 Against the Wall. I think the interview went off wonderfully (this time I hit spell-check before I sent it off)! Thanks everyone, this is a delight!

This sonnet here is a cry too, but of a different sort:

The stones have blown themselves dry. Fire of men
grows small. Look at me, now. This cannot do.
Let me grow small, too. Let me make my den
in the soft, green earth under a statue
grown wild with vine. Remember me. Will you
try to remember me? so you too might
come to my graveside; pray with a make-do
shrine, with red paper, with song, with moonlight.
I loved moonlight in the trees, the ocean,
the tall cliffs. Think of me grown small beneath
the soft, green earth. A fox in the greenest
of graves. I am a thing of corrosion
and lust. A pathetic ghost who put teeth
into your flame; the child who sleeps with dust.

Work Cited

Barks, Coleman. A Year with Rumi. San Francisco: Harper (2006)

I took this video down by the river that runs through the center of Grand Rapids, MI. Of course, in order to get me in the shot all you can see if a tree in the background … so I guess I could claim I was anywhere. Hmmm … ok, this is a video of me, on the moon, next to one of the few surviving moon trees. Notice how blue the moon's sky is? How lovely!

Color is for lovers. You have given
that up. Possession, self-will, surrender
are not used in here. Green is love, lemon
the vast sea, purple a ring of amber
and red all my worth. After a drawn-out
illness we sip poison, laugh away our
many weaknesses. Famine passes, drought
ends. Will passion return? We wait and your
body goes blind. The ash trees all knit you
a gown, the ghost of dead sand. What happened?
Your thirst was once unquenchable, now blue
is a myth, legend; as if blue poisoned
all this and more. As if blue was taunting
you, all that's left; bones wiped clean, flesh starving.

“friends part/ forever — wild geese/ lost in cloud” Basho.

Not all poems need explanations. Like this one. I recorded it outside the Children's Museum in Grand Rapids, MI. The two gentlemen in the very last shot walking behind me turned and began to heckle me a bit after I switched off the camera. Later I tried to re-record the poem but felt that this version was stronger, even if it was nearly ruined by jerks.

I'm not a velvet ant. Unlike the bee
my sting is smooth. It's as pointless to talk
about sin as it's to say “I'm sorry”
for all this pain. I am changing, I lock
myself up in prayer, I am in the air,
I am everywhere. There is a hive
outside my window. Wasps are a prayer
of sorts, they're as empty as me. We thrive
the way your gods and devils thrive. Devils
are our aftermath outside the window.
Look at what I am. These private evils
you speak of are trite. Watch me rise, hollow
inside; feel my rage-grown wings, my moan
debased, I am a blur, all sting and drone.

I am trying out a new experiment. As soon as I write a sonnet I also video tape myself reading it out loud so there is a visual to go along with the poem. The downside of this is that I am not actually familiar enough with the poem to read it right from memory, so I hold the paper it is written on just belong the camera. As a result it looks like I am reading from cue cards, which is exactly what I am doing.

It is another sweltering night. Some
thing is moving on this page. You who can
not be the sun's right hand or the left thumb
of the goat god Pan, the sun's blood goat Pan,
you must then be love. The bad love the stars
give, all glitter eyeliner. What began
as a sort of hunger, like the guitar's
riddle, ended here. A love that is ours
must be a myth. No love is too foreign
to trust. Think of Pan in the woods, singing
the earth alive; and his song is moonlight
and sun. Think of him now, the violent one,
the one you want to be, the one rising
out of this myth to become the hot night.

Pan is, for those who don't remember their Greek mythology, a goat-footed god, one of the lesser gods, who lived in the forests of Arcadia and spent his time fooling around with nymphs and making up songs on his pan-pipes (thus the name). Plutarch is said to have written that those aboard a sailing ship, passing near the islands of Echinades, suddenly heard a mysterious voice calling out from the distant shore. It cried three times, "when you reach Palodes proclaim that the great god Pan is dead."

One epoch after another and we find the ancient gods never die, they simply get footnoted in poetry.

I am looking for a home for Ma Cat. Technically she is ex-Ma Cat since I took her to the Humane Shelter a year ago and had her fixed. Since I could not keep her (and still can't) I released her back into the wild. She disappeared during wintertime but come spring and now summer she has reappeared and desperately wants to be loved. She waits for me outside my door, has no fear of others and wants nothing more than to sit on my lap and be petted (contrary to the poem she is not bony and doesn't yowl like a turkey and is actually very quiet). I do not know if she is litter trained but I will pay for all her shots; my only concern is that she finds a nice home with someone who loves cats. I would certainly take her back if it didn't work out, she is too loving a soul for someone to take to the shelter to be destroyed … a fate I am afraid of when I finally sell my house and move to Grand Rapids.

If anyone is interested or knows someone who is interested please contact me at: zachary [dot] jean [@] gmail [dot] com. Thank you!

There is a cat with my noisy stutter.
There is a cat with my bony body.
There is a cat I will steal all her fur.
There is a cat yowling like a turkey.

No, muse of poets and daemons, your purr
is the song of comment. Your caterwaul
made my Orpheus weep blood. No, lesser
godling, you come when called. Rain and nightfall
made you slim. The sun fattened you. Yes, squint
as if to say, “I am so brief; are you
mine?” As if to say, “do not go away.”

There is a cat with a callused paw print.
There is a cat that coughs, a stonewall mew.
There is a cat; a stray, a stray, a stray.

Did part of you miss all the attention?
All that time; the urge to kindness that bent
my knees before you. Later, will someone
ask you, now that I am back, just what sent
me from you? and why did you let me go?
You fed me; let me grow lush on misspent
rain. Now my strength is growing, my shadow
long and lewd. Memory is a torment.
Let drought take memory from my yellow
heart. Tell them all I came to you naked.
For you I even sang. Tell them, also,
that once cut all my sad petals faded
from bloom. Let all these blossoms, love, again
blush pink in your deliriously hard rain.

"circe" by Shelley 2007

My dear friend Shelley drew this for me. Originally it was for a different poem about the goddess Circe, but Shelley said she still wanted to work on it. So I am putting this with the sonnet I just wrote. When I get the new version of the drawing I will put it with the original poem. Thanks Shelley, you rock!

Today you sing, “I love you! I love you!
I love you!” And what of it? Did it keep
love at your side? Did any fat ghost who
wanders your whispered landscape stop to weep
or laugh or speak to you? We all possess
secrets. We all possess passions that sleep.
Who does not have the wild urge to caress
or be caressed? When you think of the deep
green roots you have thrust into me, moist dirt
of my heart, the tenderness, the distress,
all the subtle feelings of the desert
that run violent in me, did you once guess
who would pluck you from this moist soil and why?
Who would watch you wither and fade and die?

Love gets a bad rap in this life. I feel sorry for it at times, but then I think of all the poems people have written about it and guess it can't be doing too badly for itself … even if it is so amazingly ugly.

Nighttime, more time; let love be a fact
like the sun or math or evolution.
Let it be bow-legged, its hairy swayback
form seen sleeping in the woods and bracken.
We come from the first gods: Earth (Gaea), Love
(Eros), Irony (Hermes). And often
there are jokes and none of us laugh. Above
the jokes there floats, often, a small caption
for the viewing impaired but no one reads
them. No wonder we deny love like we
deny logic and science; we cast it
out to go howling among the milkweeds
and dunes, beating it with sticks. Small, ugly
love, how we all hate you; dolt, fool, halfwit.

What can I say? I dig primates … except poo flinging monkeys. No poo flinging, please.

The murky bottom primates
begin their migration a flock
of white scars breaching
the skin their silent babies all
painted in bright colors and
the blackberry bushes, swampy
ground diving, all that asphalt-
black glass and copper, tongues
of fire, villages and their
tables, darkness and
grass and all the vines
gleaming and blooming
and remaining private.

Ekaterina is an amazing photographer. I hope my poem does her photograph justice.

Do not be a child of Sylvia Plath
with gas and all or denied rank and fame
and locked away from your science and math
because of your biology. Reclaim
that which I wished for you but lost; the same
passion to laugh your mother has. The glow
of your aunt at politics. The nickname
your young sister was given in judo:
“Walking Death.” Live in solitude and play
rough. Go to parties. There will be whispers
when the host finds you under the tables
playing “peek-a-boo” in your hide-away
mask. So what? Be open to visitors,
to the wind, to the presence that trembles.

And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul? — Walt Whitman.

I have friends who worry about the state of their souls. I understand their worry because if their souls are anything like the filthiness of their homes, their terrible physical health and their lack of a sense of humor over all this then probably whatever spiritual world they cling to isn't doing much better either. I try to tell them to go look at the koi fish but they don't seem to get it.

I have always been fascinated with koi fish, perhaps because they remind me how wonderful it is to spend a life doing what you enjoy and live without regrets … in the koi fishes' case mucking about in the water and looking at the underside of water lilies, very close up. Maybe when I die I will come back as a koi? We shall see.

My great uncle on my father's side, the mad monk Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, probably did not take the advice of the koi fish and died with regrets, too. If I had hair that greasy I know I would die with regrets. I have friends who point out that technically Rasputin, who came from Siberia, was probably not related to any Ukrainian Jews. But this is the sort of closed-minded thinking we sonnet writers are faced with and I have found it better to ignore my friends' concerns when it comes to the "murky" origins of my family. Some people will spend their energies worried about almost anything, it seems.

She bends to the river to wash her hair.
My great uncle, Rasputin, flops body
and soul to the edge of the bank. What bare
skin does not leave this ghost always hungry?
But how can the vague dead come back ready
for more worldly pleasures? It is in their
grim eyes, sensual fingers; knowing we
waste our time concerned about the welfare
of our souls when our souls are our bodies.
Pleasure is truth; it's the one divine wish
we have in this world and even then we're
fearful we shall somehow always displease.
She wrings her hair, sees my uncle, a fish
beyond hunger, flop once and disappear.

Today I see the importance of friends. It is good to have them and it is even better when a friend puts up with your pestering to have your poem translated into his or her language. So today's Shout of Joy and Thanks goes out to my wonderful pen pal who goes by the pen name of Calmfeeler, translating "Narcissus' Lament" into Chinese, all the way from Beijing, China.

水仙的挽歌

看不见
自己 在
这波里 一切
都如此匆匆
海浪花漂来流去
消损了的 是
我的面容

Whenever I start speaking of friends it brings up in my mind one of the great Friends, that is, Shams of Tabriz, the mystic poet Rumi's Beloved. I have heard different versions of the account of how they met, different people will always say what suits them the most, but just know this:

In the 13th Century, in what is now Turkey, Shams of Tabriz stops Rumi one day and asks him a question that rattles his entire world. "Who is greater? Mohammed or Bestami¹?" According to Coleman Barks, "Rumi is reported to have chosen Mohammed as his answer, reasoning that because of him God's greatness was always unfolding, whereas Bestami had 'taken one gulp of the divine and stopped there.'"

Barks continues: "After his initial meeting with Shams, Rumi became a mystic, cupping one hand about a pillar in mosque and speaking in poetry. His followers wrote down his poems - and copied his movements, which today survive in the Mevlevi order of 'whirling dervishes' they eventually founded."

Shams! Shams of Tabriz! If Rumi was the poet, it was Shams who became his key. Rumi says of Shams in Ode 3097: "I won't try to talk about Shams./ Language cannot touch that Presence." But the story ends terribly. Rumi and Shams are inseparable; they discuss theology until all hours, needing no one but themselves. And then one night Shams is called to the door, cries out and … disappears.

It was thought that one of Rumi's sons, or a jealous follower, murdered him. Either way, Rumi's Beloved vanishes from his life, forever. Rumi will spend the rest of his life reciting ode after ode for his Shams; his grief at separation from the divine. And every time I pick up one of his books I ask myself: "how can I say these simple words without their emotional force making me cry? … knowing that they are a prayer for that which will never happen again, rather than a mundane observation about what is to come?"

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us

Like this.

Yes, just like this.

1. Mohammed, the founder of Islam; and Bestami, a Muslim scholar and teacher [back]

Certain things will never save you again.
Poems about loss should end. Change their verbs
to ones of joy, remind us how passion
is still our birthright; that nothing disturbs
grief more than passion. Ask any widow
left in Palestine, Israel, any
who can mourn, who can see the sun, follow
its long arch but feel no heat; ask why we
need one more poem about grief? Loving
grief is easy. Owning passion is hard.
Tonight let us celebrate our dismay
and grief. Say, mabrook, you are a blessing
to me. Laugh with grief. Dance in the courtyard
with it. Kiss it, then send it on its way.

The space to be at peace with oneself comes in different forms. Today I am happily studying my amphibians. Omakakii is the Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) word for frog. I am not yet at a point where I can construct anything more than baby-talk sentences (and I have my doubts with that), but I think a simple sentence like, “I see a frog,” would go: “Omakakii waakaa'igan.” (lit.: A frog. I see it.)

Frogs make me sad; especially now as spring time rolls around and I can hear them peeping and hooting in the darkness. Maybe not all frogs have an air of melancholy to them, singing about all they have lost, but I know if I were a frog that’s what I would sing about. Perhaps little omakakiig (frogs, plural) are the souls of dead poets? It must be a downhearted feeling to sing so loud and only have the big, dark night sky answer as a reply.

Last, it is a spring night, notes plucked alive
from still violent heartbeats and frog's mimicked
crippled cries. Yes, there is bee and beehive,
perhaps, cricket and pond, in that perfect
tune, but the deep colors? Water-green picked
from the lily? Sand-red from a young oak's
bark? Blue stolen from a beach stone licked
by the far sea? Those are the moans and croaks
only a frog can give. A wetlands accent.
Tadpole's sorrow. The bullfrog's perverted
caterwaul is the mournful ho-ho June
and May bring us. Why bother with torment
when frogs are weeping? Frogs, little squalid
things, love only this: our missing dark moon.

It's amazing to think, in the year 2007, we are still rather primitive and barbaric when it comes to certain subjects, say, human biology, and how we deal with it. For example, we have things in us called hormones, and also we know that all multicellular organisms (that means you and me) produce them. So, if we know that hormones do things in us like control our reproductive cycles, regulate metabolism and causes us to do things like fight, flight or mate, and everyone in the world has them, wouldn't it make sense to teach everyone about them so when strange changes happen in us we know what exactly is happening and can act accordingly so we don't screw things up?

After all, if a person knows how their body works and why it is doing things, like ovulating, then that person is free to make informed choices for themselves. Freedom to choose for oneself; I think it is one of the things that makes us human. But we don't do that. For example, in schools we actually lie to children about their bodies and what is happening to them under the idea that this is somehow protecting them. Shocking? Yes. Crude? Yes. Vulgar? Yes. In an article by George Monbiot, America's virgin soldiers are on their way — ignoring the dangers of abstinence for teenagers he has this to say about our school's failing (or failed depending where you are) sex education programs:

In the United States in particular, sex education raises much contentious debate. Chief among controversial points is whether covering child sexuality is valuable or detrimental; the use of birth control such as condoms and hormonal contraception; and the impact of such use on pregnancy outside marriage, teenage pregnancy, and the transmission of STDs. Increasing support for abstinence-only sex education by conservative groups has been one the primary cause of this controversy. Countries with more conservative attitudes towards sex education (including the UK and the U.S.) have a higher incidence of STDs and teenage pregnancy.

And abstinence as a practical, workable idea to teach children. Bravo! Mary E. Williams, in Sex: Opposing Viewpoints (Detroit: Greenhaven. 2006) writes: In a 2004 analysis of 13 abstinence-only curricula which received United States government funding found that 11 contained factual errors. The errors included: misrepresenting the failure rates of contraceptives; misrepresenting the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission; false claims that abortion increases the risk of infertility; treating stereotypes about gender roles as scientific fact. Good! I am glad to see we are preparing our children for the real world and hurrah for abstinence-only sex education that our churches and government promotes!

I think about earlier times in European culture when other people had similar brilliant ideas; like the Victorians and their healthy attitude towards women. Of course I can explain away bizarre, harmful and even hateful ideas by saying "those were dark times when people did not have the information to be enlightened and their crass and idiotic behavior was due to inbreeding and not just crassness and idiocy." But today? Today we do the same bizarre, backwards things the Victorians were doing 150 years ago! The Victorians believed sexuality was sinful and dirty; so do we! The Victorians believed you could somehow purge desire from the body, even transfer it onto inanimate objects; so do we! The Victorians hated girls so much their daughters' only worth was with their maidenhead and thus abstinence was the only solution; so do we! We are still a culture hating our children.

I'll say it again: it's amazing to think, in the year 2007, we have gone to the moon, built computers to communicate all over the world, have medicines to cure so much and we are still terribly primitive and barbaric when it comes to certain subjects, say, how we value ourselves and our children.

It was that cult of chastity. A vow.
Victorian. Families spent fortunes
to get their child a fox. All her passions
would be transfered to that beast, somehow.
Made it better, they said. Sinful to be
without a fox, proof you were no virgin.
A girl would sit for days in her garden
wishing upon her fox; wildly, madly.
Foxes, though, shouldn't really be trusted.
They have a naked hunger just like yours.
Soon word came that wicked things in the moors,
glens, heath were happening, odd and wicked.
Back then, when we placed so little value
on girls. Like we do now. Yes, we still do.

While I was up at Sault Ste. Marie I discovered the art work of Anny Hubbard, a traditional artist working with birch bark cutouts. It was from her I discovered the water spirit of Lake Superior, Michii Biijou.

Actually, there are lots of different spelling of the water spirit's name. This is probably due to the fact that the Ojibwe language, Anishinaabemowin, is an orally based one (though I am starting out with a book, but that is more due to lack of a proper teacher just now than anything else) and there are many dialects so spellings vary. Regardless, I discovered this information at Mishipizhiw: Spirit of the Water:

Among the pictographs at Fairy Point, at the west end of Missinaibi Lake [Ontario, Canada] are spine-tingling portrayals of Mishipizhiw (also known as Mishipizheu or Gitche-anahmi-bezheu), an animal Manitou associated with the underwater realm, and sometimes regarded as an evil spirit of rapids and troubled waters.

In Cree and Ojibway cultures of the region Mishipizhiw was both feared and revered as a demi-god of the water. Sometimes taking the form of a menacing, snake-like creature with sharp teeth, horns, and "power lines" emanating from its body, Mishipizhiw was also pictured as fiercely feline (the "Great Lynx", "great underwater wildcat," "underwater panther," or "fabulous night panther"). Like other Manitous, Mishipizhiw had the power to shape-change into various animal forms.

The Mishipizhiw Manitou is a dominant theme in Cree-Ojibway spirituality, and appears not only in pictographs, but also in traditional stories and legends. The Mishipizhiw water spirit has been portrayed by noted aboriginal artists such as Norval Morrisseau.

Personally, I think the author does a disservice to Mishipizhiw by using terms like "evil," which would be like calling a thunderstorm evil. Mishipizhiw is a force of nature. When people disrespect nature bad things can happen, but it has less to do with intent than cause and effect. Perhaps I am not understanding Mishipizhiw that well, perhaps someone will correct me. I am just beginning to learn.

In Louise Erdrich's wonderful travel story, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, she explains many things about Ojibwe pictographs. For example, the "power lines" noted above are signs of communication from the human world to the spirit lands. They indicate important teaching given by that particular spirit, lessons people should learn from. The horns are a sign of spirituality as well. Seen in this manner there is nothing threatening or "evil" about Mishipizhiw. In my art piece I made here I did not want to include those symbols she talks about, however, since I felt it was not my place to use (co-opt, some might say) Ojibwe symbols into art, things I only barely understand. So I decided to use the glow and halo of light I enjoy which symbolizes spiritual power to me. The figure of Mishipizhiw came from a design of an actual rock pictographs, though I darkened in the shape to give Mishipizhiw a more animal-like appearance. Enjoy!

***

Invoke my name, friend. Friend, invoke my name.
Sailors steer according to my copper
scales and trackers all fall silent in shame
at the sound of my voice. Let the healer
and the nurse find what they are looking for
as I pass by. I know why ants dream, crows
despair, chipmunks plot. Every pink lakeshore
rock is my prayer to you. When the torsos
and the legs of the wicked all wash up
on the lakeshore, yes, that is my prayer too.
Call me in. Invoke my name, my dearest
friend. Have trust in me and share your first cup
of tea with me. But there is no tea. You
do not call me in. You do not have trust.