Hafiz

∮≈

Hafiz of Shiraz

(1320 - 1389)

Original Language
Persian/Farsi

English version by
Rober Bly

We have turned the face of our dawn studies toward the drunkard's road.
The harvest of our prayers we've turned toward the granary of the ecstatic soul.


The fire toward which we have turned our face is so intense
It would set fire to the straw harvest of a hundred reasonable men.


The Sultan of Pre-Eternity gave us the casket of love's grief as a gift;
Therefore we have turned our sorrow toward this dilapidated traveller's cabin that we call "the world."


From now on I will leave no doors in my heart open for love of beautiful creatures;
I have turned and set the seal of divine lips on the door of this house.


It's time to turn away from make-believe under our robes patched so many times.
The foundation for our work is an intelligence that sees through all these games.


We have turned our face to the pearl lying on the ocean floor.
So why then should we worry if this wobbly old boat keeps going or not?


We turn to the intellectuals and call them parasites of reason;
Thank God they are like true lovers faithless and without heart.


The Sufis have settled for a fantasy, and Hafez is no different.
How far out of reach our goals, and how weak our wills are!


♣


English version by
Thomas Rain Crowe


Hey you, parrot! speaking in riddles,
Sugar wouldn't melt in your mouth!


Clear your head so your heart will be happy,
And then mimic the words of the Beloved!


To everyone who walks by, you have given mixed messages;
For God's sake, tell us something we don't know.


O Winebringer, throw some of Your best wine in our face,
For it is time to wake up!


What chord was it last night that the Minstrel played
That caused the drunk and the pious both to dance?


What drug did You put in their cups
That caused them to lose both their hats and their heads?


Not even to Alexander the Great would Your lovers give the Wine of Life;
He hadn't the power or the gold for that price.


Today, treason is the currency of the world,
But compared with Love, even alchemy has lost its flash.


Come, and listen to our stories of pain;
Even with few words, the truth is still there.


O Lord, don't tell our secrets to those who don't drink;
One cannot give a picture on the wall Your enlightened touch.


To a millionaire, money is the standard of the world;
Hafiz says: O beggars, I have exchanged all my money for these poems!


♣


English version by
Rober Bly


The garden is breathing out the air of Paradise today,
Toward me, a friend with a sweet nature, and this wine.


It's all right for the beggar to brag that he is a King today.
His royal tent is a shadow thrown by a cloud; his throne room is a sown field.


This meadow is composing a tale of a spring day in May;
The serious man lets the future go and accepts the cash now.


Do you really believe your enemy will be faithful to you?
The candle the hermit lights goes out in the worldly church.


Make your soul strong then by feeding it the secret wine.
When we have turned to dust, this rotten world will press our dust into bricks.


My life is a black book. But don't rebuke me too much.
No person can ever read the words written on his own forehead.


When Hafez's coffin comes by, it'll be all right to follow behind.
Although he is a captive of sin, he is on his way to the Garden of Paradise.


♣




English version by
David and Sabrineh Fideler


Where have you taken your sweet song?
Come back and play me a tune.


I never really cared for the things of this world.
It was the glow of your presence
that filled it with beauty.



♣

mambo jambo jittery poo

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Dave Ellison and David Shepherd

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.
.

2 Melbourne Writers . . .

photo by dave ellison

DAVE ELLISON el deva

photo by vera di campli san vito

DAVID SHEPHERD el snoddograssi

photo by Yonni Andre

杏

≈ ≈

DAVE ELLISON

To Thee Azure Skye

WHO SHOOK THE FOREST?

Who moved a stormwind

to stir the trees

who scattered blossom

through centuries

who shook the forest

who stole through golden leaves?

Who drew from bamboo

a hollow moan

who kissed the headstones

of empires gone

who shook the forest

who stole through golden leaves?

Throughout the greenwood

the golden leaves

throughout the power

that moved our destiny

all the forest echoed

Eternity, Eternity

Who brought the wild geese

till time must sleep

who dried the teardrop

on history’s cheek

who shook the forest

who stole through golden leaves?

Throughout the greenwood

the golden leaves

throughout the power

that moved our destiny

who shook the forest

who stole through golden leaves?

our Eternity

=

One kite

Stuck

In winter branches

One soul

Trapped

Inside the overcoat

=

YOUR PRECIOUS LOVE WILL SET ME FREE

Down ruined hallways

Of manic dreams

Through earthly prisons

That bring me to my knees

The night is long

Too long for worry

Your precious love

Will set me free

By shadowed townscapes

Where captors prowl

In timeworn caverns

As crying tries the hours

Uncommon nightmares

And darkened stars

But you still whisper

Of life beyond these bars

The night is long

Too long for worry

Your precious love

Will set me free

=

Shadows pass

Along the wall

Along the wall

They pass

The shadows

Of us all

=

AND TERRIBLE IS THIS

I am in exile from the love

For love I surely miss

I am in exile from the love

Too far to know her kiss

I am in exile from the one

The one of heaven’s bliss

I am in exile from the one

For there my brother is

I am in exile from my soul

So trapped inside the mist

I am in exile from my soul

And terrible is this

=

FOR YOU

You go

to greet the moment

may the Moment

be a friend

You walk

the way so windblown

may the Way

help you bend

You live

and bring compassion

may Compassion

let you mend

You move

towards an answer

may the Answer

greet you then.

Dave Ellison

 ≈ ≒ §

DAVID SHEPHERD

Love Sick Fool

Whenever I drink

From the creek

Which flows down the valley

From up there

Where you are now

I dream the tricklings

Cupped in my cracked hands

May have caressed

Your bare bathing body

And I savour every drop

Like mad nectar.

Whenever I see a gilded leaf

Glittering on the gliding current

I imagine

It may have been tangled

In your tossed hair

Up there

When you are now

And I covet it

Like Cortez did the Aztec’s gold.

Whenever the north wind

Strokes my fractured face

As it blows down

From up there

Where you are now

I smell the perfume

Of your secretly scented skin

And I inhale deeply

Like an obsessed Opium addict.

Whenever I lie in bed

Silently staring

At the moon’s sullen glow

I know

You are too

And I wish I was

Up there

Where you are now

To see its real splendour

Reflected in your night-time

Brown mirror eyes

Like Diana’s dazzling disc

Suspended in amber

Forever.

2004

Abracadabra Mist

I climbed that precarious

Red rock clay staircase

Shrouded tunnel of green

Like a pessimistic peon pilgrim

Lumbering up the path to Delphi

Just to have a gig

At the Oracle.

She lives like a lone sadhu

In her ethereal abode

Surrounded by Shiva’s sacred serpents

Like some minor avataric incarnation

Perhaps of Durgha

Brandishing a dangerous and deadly weapon

In each of her ten hands

Anxiously awaiting to smote

The immanent demons

Or Kali

The Dark One

Her Moorish skin

Burning black as night

Without moon

Flame red pointed tongue

Protruding

Stabbing the air

And anything else

That happens to be there.

She doesn’t wear

The severed skulls of her vanquished

Around her Nubile neck

She bleaches

And arranges them

In her inner sanctum

To admire later

At her leisure

In private semi-darkness.

As the doubtful Delphine

She inhales the fumes

From her mystic pit

Through an Onyx pipe

A cancer catching catheter tube

Hanging from her crooked grin

Like a lost licorice stick.

Sez she’s an old Crone

But this Gorgon turns men into mud

Not stone

And she’s still not sure why

Her spurious spells go awry

Simultaneously spitting

Barbs and regards

Smiling and scowling

With the odd menacing grimace

Her Obsidian eyes

Cut like dull Aztec razor blades

Yet radiate dark gentle secrets.

Reclining on smooth silk

She oozes

An invisible Abracadabra mist

An ancient pheromone

Cunningly concocted

With something smuggled in from the East

Designed to melt the marrow

Of mere men’s malleable bones.

Now I climb

That steep incline

Again and again

Not to have a gig at the Oracle

She ain’t there

Only that moot minor Devi

Her Lila

Her magic mumble

And that intoxicating Abracadabra mist

She wears

Around her.

april. 2005.

Terania In Black

In the late dark night

As black as the grave

I sat

On the stone cold

Creeping crypt slab

Stencilled across Terania Creek.

The haunted shadows

Of dead silhouetted trees

Pointed their cadaver fingers

At the black new moon

And the stars hid their splendour

In the funereal folds

Of the leaden sky’s

Vast velvet shroud.

Within the thick Indian ink ether

The sound of gushing water

Rushing through the murky vault

Below me

Chattering and guttering

Conjured up the harmony

Of an unknown esoteric cannon

In the blackness

My blind eye

Caught the culprits

Responsible for this arcane spell

An Onyx petrified pyre

Of a thousand Bunjulung bodies

A concealed chorus

Of discarnate voices

Babbling and blathering

A mesmerizing magical hymn

Of endless ecstatic rhyme

Continually chanted

Since time immemorial

Mere syllables cannot imitate

This sacred secret song

It’s as if the ancient tongue of Babel

Was being uttered for the very first time

Only to be confounded

By the occult dialect

Of El Shaddai’s

Eternally staunch stones

Their bare bloated bolder bellies

Worn and washed away

By the immortal embrace

Pressing their porus porcelain skins

Into this soulful swirling soup

Roiling and bubbling through the glad gloom

In a liturgy of selfless love

This vibrant vital liquid

Echoing the very essence

Of the relentless rain

The long lost sap tears

Of the tallest trees

Their rotting rusty roots

Sliding into the absinthe abyss

Incessantly singing

The perfect poetry

Of time passing

And the clock stopped

In the late dark night

As black as the grave

And I still sat

On the stone cold crypt slab

Stencilled across Terania Creek

Like a cancelled crustacean.

◈

That Screaming Silence

That screaming silence

in a barbed-wire cage

when someone pulls a shiv

sinking it in

with quiet rage.

That screaming silence

after ringing a familiar door bell

of a house which seems empty

but you really can't tell.

That screaming silence

at night

across an empty back lot

after the crack and echo

of an unwarranted pistol shot.

That screaming silence

after the last death rattle

when your mate gives up

his life verses death battle.

That screaming silence

after the final bell's toll

at the funeral in the rain

feeling fucked and fucking cold.

That screaming silence

alone in bed at night

wide awake after the nightmare

sweating in fright.

That screaming silence

in my own bottomless ears

when I ponder my precarious life

and the soundtrack just disappears…

winter. 2002

The Saints of Sloth

We pass the time

in the lazy afternoon

in June

waiting for the monsoon

chasing ancient wisps

with silver tubes

gathering the sacred slithers

of soft, grey smoke

behind blue Bombay walls

under black plastic

bicycle-tyred roofs

surrounded by brown match-stick men

peddling their rickshaws in circles

creating rings of soft brown dust

soft, sweet brown

brown, red horned cows

brown trunked, red-circled trees

replete with fresh orange garlands

brown crumbling temples

Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles

still guarding the front steps

painted red

glowing red

in the sunset

like the match

burning my thumb

under the foil

of this selfish Arti tray

burning brown incense

offered to self

by self

for self

and the soft grey clouds

scatter across the warm sky

like the halos of soft grey smoke

now lingering above us

canonising us

the saints of sloth

yet,

we pass the time

in the lazy afternoon

in June

waiting for the monsoon.

2002

◈◈

BIOGRAPHIC

DAVE ELLISON
My earthly events and inner happenings? I only know part of what’s really going on. But some of the script goes like this: I was born in 1953 and have lived near the Maribyrnong River since then (with only brief travels, and holidays by Port Phillip Bay). David Stewart, the great Melbourne devotional poet, once told me, ‘It’s your homeland.’ People who grow up in this area are notoriously reluctant to leave. There’s an inner connection with the land that’s partly conscious, but definitely felt. There’s no substitute for walking through the autumn leaves of your homeland.

One very important event occurred in 1966. I was given a Gideons International New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (with Psalms and Proverbs), 1965 edition. I still have it, with my pencil annotations. I was a teenage mystic, and drawn to creativity. Loved surrealism, Samuel Beckett etc. I thought, this is the stuff for me. Thankfully, I was in the high school jug band, which planted musical seeds in my imagination. Shine On Harvest Moon, up inna skyyyy! The high school crew split to the four winds.

Headed off to study Arts at university in 1972, during the student rebellion. Experienced many inner challenges. Probably learnt more from poking around the bookshop and library than from my studies. I wasn’t too flash a student, although I had some success. Seemed to spend more time playing my saxophone and reading the Tao Te Ching / Lao Tzu (in the Penguin edition, c1963). Read some of the Beats.

Joined local band Atilla and the Panelbeaters, and played the pubs and clubs from 1979-1984. We had a faithful audience of characters who were our deepest inspiration. (A couple of Atilla and the Panelbeaters songs can be found on YouTube. Craig Horne currently sings in The Hornets, and is the author of two novels: Bureaucracy Blues, 1995 and Alpha Jerk, 1999).

I work in libraries, partly because, according to legend, Lao Tzu was a librarian. If it was good enough for him …

Went out with a goddess. Broke my will, but what a thrill! Read more of the Beats.

I was invited to a poetry reading in Fitzroy at the Provincial Hotel in 1987. It was a revelation. Subsequently attended readings in various Fitzroy ‘watering-holes’. Experienced Fitzroy as a zone where the screen of the material world cracked a little, and the heart glimpsed a pervasive spirit. Met many poets in love with voice and page. Was drawn to the devotional poets who provided my real education. Read Burning Illusion / David Stewart, 1988, and the scriptures of Meher Baba, including Stay With God / Francis Brabazon with illustrations by John Parry (in the Paul Smith edition, 1990). Was inspired to travel overseas by the call of the spirit. Did a couple of chap-books of my writings: Urbane Mysticism, 1990 (with illustrations by Karl Gallagher and calligraphy by David Stewart. UM is about my homeland). And: Full Moon, King Tide, 1997. Only made a few dozen photocopies, but felt as if I’d had my say!

My friend, the poet Barry Scott, edited and published New and Rediscovered / Vicki Viidikas, 2010. A review in The Age (Melbourne) described her as, ‘our Kerouac.’ I feel the echoes of Vicki’s passing, and David Stewart’s mysterious absence. Once had the privilege of assisting Vicki with editing some of David’s work. She was the only person I saw him defer to, such was her artistic wisdom and prodigious intellect. Both were prophets of a new dispensation of spirit.

I’ve been privileged to be a carer since 1995.

I miss a lot of people: those still alive here, as well as those on the other side. They have enriched my life and maybe knocked a few rough edges off me. Bless the whole scurvy crew. Thanks to Vera Di Campli San Vito for assistance with editing.

∽ ≈ ≒ § δ∮

DAVID SHEPHERD.

I was born in 1949 above my ole man’s Aquarist’s shop in between Liverpool and Manchester on the River Mersey, the dirtiest river in England.

In 1961 I was sailing through the Suez Canal aboard the S.S. Fairsea with five thousand other emigrants to Australia. When we finally arrived in Melbourne it was January, 100 degrees in the shade with blow flies the size of lobsters.

I won a scholorship to Christian Brothers College, St Kilda , which had the highest Matriculation rate in Melb - more than Melbourne Grammer. I bribed my parents into letting me leave school to go to work when I was 16 on the proviso I continued to study at night school. I bought a guitar and went to Brash’s Music School. I formed a band playing 3 chord R & B covers. We did a couple of gigs and I left after one too many ‘battle of the egos’. The band went on to become ‘The Last Straws’ and had a couple of top 40 hits. I started full time at the clothing factory I’d been working at after school, on week-ends and during holidays for years. To keep my side of the night school bargain with my parents I enrolled at Taylor’s Business College in Flinders Lane. Across the road was ‘The Star Theatrette’ - the only cinema in Melbourne that showed 16mm European films with subtitles. I spent more time at ‘The Star’ than at Taylor’s and learned a lot about French and Italian New Wave films.

A friend of the ole mans offered me a job at his Lithographic plate-making firm I jumped at it. After about 12 months I was Camera-operating, developing and re-touching photos and burning plates. Along with some friends I moved into an old house in Carlton just up the road from The Prince Alfred Hotel and every night after the bar closed we’d go back to our place and continue drinking. The only real drugs we took were ‘Purple Hearts’, ‘Dexies’ and ‘Bennies’ (amphetamines) which enabled us to stay awake all week-end and drink. We listened to The Fugs (first time I’d ever heard of Ginsberg), The Mothers of Invention, Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix and all the good English R&B. In 1970, I went to Australia’s first outdoor music festival at Ourimbah in N.S.W. where I first smoked pot, which probably saved my liver (and my life). If one smoked pot - one didn’t drink - it was uncool. Music festivals became a regular thing and where I met a whole new crew and we dropped acid and started shooting up Morphine. I fell in love with Rae, a young cocaine blonde with blue kaleidoscope eyes. Just a little over 9 months later (we calculated it as a particular lunch-hour quickie) we had a baby, Zoë. I went to my first poetry reading in Fitzroy one night and someone read ‘Howl’ I remembered Ginsberg from the Fugs but ‘Howl’ blew me away. It was the first time a poem had done that to me and I started writing.

In prison I read ’Naked Lunch’ more times than I care to remember in the bluestone winter of 1975. I was freezing to death in the ‘D’ Division yards of ‘Pentridge’ doing cold turkey waiting to be classified to somewhere or other to begin serving an 18 month sentence for breaking into a few chemist shops and stealing their narcotics. Enough opiates to last for months. If I’d known then that ‘Naked Lunch’ was randomly edited it might have made it a little easier to read! At that time there weren’t many junkies in prison and the few there were treated like paedophiles. It was shear masochism reading and rereading a book about drugs but I figured for an old, queer junkie, probably the same age as my ole man this guy was cool. When I got out I read ’Junkie’ and ‘Nova Express’ and some Jean Genet stuff and it just vindicated my lifestyle. The reasoning went – if Stones and Bob Dylan and Burroughs are using it, it must be a cool drug obviously conductive to creativity. Even Edgar Allen Poe was a laudanum addict! I started writing and burning poetry with a vengeance.

Before my incarceration I had been a ‘client’ of a drug referral centre in Carlton called Buoyancy. It was more of a meeting place for junkies and other deadbeats. A place where transients could have their mail sent to, see the doctor or get legal advice. It operated on the pretext that drug addiction was a medical problem and that crime was just a side effect. June Bryant ran the place and she got to hear so many humorous anecdotes and stories she posed the idea of making a film about our nefarious activities in the Melbourne narcotics scene. A friend of mine, John Hooper, whose sister was married to film director Bert Deling, got him interested. John and I wrote the whole story, based on fact, in 3 days. Bert liked it, submitted it to the A.F.I. (Australian Film Institute) for a development grant and the cult classic ’Pure Shit’ was born.

We went to The Pram Factory and La Mama in Carlton to see plays and eyeball actors. We saw ‘The Year of Lacertis’ a play directed by Phil Motherwell, at La Mama and almost the whole cast were junkies! We’d hit pay dirt! Gallagher was in the play but we didn’t use him because he didn’t shoot junk – we wanted real junkies who would take real drugs in the movie!

I met people like Lindzee Smith and Barry Dickins and Helen Garner whose book ‘Monkey Grip’ was written during and about that period. I discovered a whole new world of people who were, to my mind, real bohemians. Many in the Carlton scene used junk and were in the film (some now wish they hadn’t been) the title was banned by the censors and was released as Pure S***! We thought that was pretty ridiculous but good publicity. I worked on the film from script to mix. I was enthralled by the film-making process and wanted to make more movies so I applied for a place in the most avant guard art school in Melbourne at the time (and for ever after), Preston Institute of Technology. I got in on the strength of a poem and my involvement in ‘Pure Shit’. Bert Deling was the new film lecturer! Motherwell and Gallagher were already there as ‘mature age students.’ Carlton/Fitzroy was the centre of the universe back then. Theatre, music, writing, painting & drugs - the joint was really pumping!

I had just finished the script for a short 16mm experimental film, ‘The Edge’ which was going to be my directorial debut. Instead, I got the 18 month sentence on the morning of my first production meeting. On account of my dark room experience I was classified directly to the Print Shop in ‘A’ Division developing and printing mug shots. It was arguably the best job in Pentridge. When that red light was on not even the Governor himself could enter MY dark room! After another court case I got 4 years with an 18 month minimum which wasn’t bad for a stick-up. With good behaviour and remission I was out in 2 years and back at Art School with a brand new script, ‘Mike’s Blood’ the story of a guy who goes to bed one night and wakes up next morning as a woman. It was based on my bizarre gaol experience of becoming a sex object (I WAS only 26 and a damn fine looking young man at that). But I was very lucky in Pentridge, and although I knew only a few heavies they were the right ones. They protected me and once I started doing B&W blow-ups of their kids from ratty snapshots - I was SWEET. It was also highly illegal which meant I had DASH! I was untouchable by proxy. With my job and my connections I led a charmed life.

Then, I directed Terror Lostralis which was nominated for best short film in the 1980 A.F.I. Film Awards. Mitchell Faircloth wrote the script and acted in it. Mitchell and I created a cabaret act called ‘Dr Cloth, The Most Intelligent Man On Earth and Douglas, The Living Experiment.’ It was completely different from anything anyone else was doing. We were even on ‘The Mike Walsh Show” and ‘Night-Moves’ I started a stand-up comedy routine, a character called Yonny Stone, a knockabout crim, just out of gaol who spoke in rhyming slang. Then a group of us formed ‘Punter 2 Punter’ a comedy racing/tipping radio show on 3RRR. We were the top rating show for years then we got snapped up by 3XY where we actually made MONEY! We did Melbourne Cup Specials on A.B.C. 2 for a few years. I made some small films/videos for a one man show I directed for Tony Rickards at the Universal Theatre. I was also acting in plays with Motherwell and Lindzee Smith and doing lights and sound for cabaret shows, plays and bands. I was still writing poetry (and burning most of it) and film scripts that would never be made. I gave up comedy and read poetry instead.

Late 1994 I travelled around India for 12 months which completely changed my life. Back in Melbourne I was offered a job as a Disability Students Tutor at a technical college for about 8 years (unqualified but bullshitted my way through).

In 2003 I left Melbourne to get away from the junk scene. I stopped using. I fell in love with a bush-babe in northern N.S.W. and lived in a Tee Pee in the rainforest for 3 amazing years. Seven years later I’m back in Melbourne. My daughter, Zoë has her own six year old daughter, Lily, which makes me a gramme-pah.

My blogsite: 

http://www.terrorlostralis.blogspot.com/

the original movie poster

= ∽ ≈ ≒ ≈

An outstanding Australian writer
Vicki Viidikas born 1948 died 1998

Published by Transit Lounge 2010

http://www.transitlounge.com.au/

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American Catfish McDaris's latest chapbook.

cover painting by karl gallagher.

Published by leah angstman's propaganda press.

http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#making_love_to_the_rain

= = =

Richard Krech

♣


Berkeley, California - late 60s

          reading at Shakespeare's 1966, photo by Harold Adler

Richard Krech
was born in 1946 and grew up in Berkeley. He still lives in Califonia. The sixties were an exciting time to be around and engaged with creative activities. In 1966 he started a poetry magazine, Avalanche, and sponsored open poetry readings on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.


Then the shit hit bigtime . . .



 VIETNAM  -

STUDENT REBELLION -  


Berkeley 

 

ARMIES OF THE NIGHT . . .

After several years of involvement in direct action in an increasingly more violent situation, it was time to take a break. In 1971 Krech travelled overland across North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.


He gradually stopped writing in the early 70s. In 1976 he enrolled in law school and on graduation in 1980 practiced criminal defense in Oakland. In recent years, due to a degenerative spinal condition he no longer engages in the physically demanding work of criminal trials and now concentrates on appellant work. Along the way he was drawn to Buddhism and over time this has deepened. His energies began to focus on service to others, via law as a defense attorney. Decades later, in 2001 he began to write and publish again. Krech has many books published, and appears in a bundle of anthologies.






THE SCORE POEM #1


walking down cold dark tenement eastside
newyork winterevening street,
bundled-up dark haired girl boots clattering
arm hugging mine whispering secrets
of trip fantasia & half-hidden fears.
Passing lighted street corner kids playing
tough kids playing stoop ball with a vengeance
& innocence - slam rubber ball into stark sky,
passing grocery stores & drunks “I’m the big wheel
on 6th street” in hallways,
climbing up the tumble-down stairs
paint peeling & gaudy wooden trim
dusty & forgotten as we walk down the hallway
on floor six to a dim lit corner
shrouded by darkness & surrounded by the glow
of a naked dangling cord bulb
at a note scribbled in crayon on the door:


                THE Winston BROOKS is Out

                taking His Mind for a walk

                through The UNIVERSE


December, 1965


=



even the time in the motel


even the time in the motel
when we tried to wake the sleeper
from his Overdose, the blank walls
bare of color excepting a poor print hung
upside-down,

         no furniture, just a path
around the bed, & coke bottles & dead cigarette butts,
hot, stuffy, the windows closed on this summer day
to keep the wind
from blowing the curtains open 
                                 Exposing
the scene,
            even that drab bleak room
has a richness
           about it contained
on the heads
           of those that are there. ‘surely
there is a beautiful place what
                are we looking out of?
The tapestry
Need Not Be Before Your Eyes!
                        to have seen it once
is enough
            to always hold it closer to you
                                      than if
it fell from your very hands.
                                     A Blank Room
is filled with all the delicacies and delights which
                                     have been 
part of the life of those that stare at the (seemingly
                                     blank walls.


5/8/67


=

White Man’s Song for Huey Newton


There is no danger,
really.


Revolution to the fullest!
Black Power
shows me no threat.


I find the spades on the corner,
the hippies in the street,
both getting the same shit
from the heat.


The same turn of the head
(they have no necks -
these Oakland policemen
drive around
with a rifle


between their legs.


We both realize the common enemy
our common fight.


Black people, the first
people to reject
assimilation into
the great plastic
        universe.




America,
you created a culture so sick
your ex-slaves
couldn’t dig it.


The children
of your great ‘middle class’
are leaving in droves.


Your cities are burning.


I call for
the destruction
of law & order.


And the beginning
of the time
of man.


2/20/68


= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

the travels

travel notebook sketch by richard krech

1971

push on out

past time & space.

the acquisition

of a ticket

enables you to travel
more than

           geo graphically.

walking along a path

the sand colored walls

of Fez on the right.

the turrets, the mosque

crying in the distance.

a gauche-the caravan
entering behind some walls.


the timelessness.
the people moving steadily
along. growing smaller
in the distance. larger
as they approach.


the old man in Marrakech
in the café. pointed yellow shoes
& jalava. asked me if I like to smoke.
I said yes. we smoked kif
from a sebsi.
He said: "je ne fume trop.
seulement cent pipes par jour."


we could see the mosque
from the café, against the night sky.
the inch long bugs
crawling the blue walls
in back of the table.


returned to the hotel
to watch the tile walls.


Fez, Morocco
May 12, 1971


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travel notebook sketch by richard krech

Chahar Square


He came up towards me
to exchange greetings.


A young boy
perhaps 13, 14 years.


His back arched, pinched jacket
turban, the flowing white tail
blowing in the Afghani wind.


His long delicate nose
& green eyes burning
with the wisdom & mystery of the East.


"Hello, Hello" he said.
I replied "Salaam."


We shook hands, touching
our hands to our chest
afterwards.


"Hello" he said again
& we parted.


I walking towards the Citadel of Herat
the wind carrying much dust with it
in this most ancient of Asian cities.


Herat, Afghanistan


June 26, 1971

travel notebook sketch by richard krech

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the return to writing

The Gudgeon Fishermen

The gudgeon fishermen

send faxes from Lagos

offering partnerships in Bank

of Nigeria fraud schemes,

or befriend confused elderly

gentlemen sitting on mall benches

in the California twilight.

One practitioner

had crayons the same green

as his nice car

with a dent in the fender.

In a parking lot

he would mark the front corner

of the elderly pigeon’s empty car

w/ the green crayon,

and confront them

upon their return.

Threatening to call the police

and have their license confiscated

because they were too old

and confused to drive;

unless monetary payment

for the “damage” they had done

to the fisherman’s car

was immediately forthcoming.

II

He repaired the next day

to the gudgeon’s house (as noted

on the check received in payment)

to “return” part of the money

because the repairs cost less

than had been anticipated.

While there

his children entered the bedroom

and took money and jewelry.

The gudgeon fishermen

rarely engage in physical violence.

Their victims

often too confused or ashamed

to report the crimes.

The gudgeon fishermen

have no shame.

Their confusion

is colossal.

9/16/03

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Premeditated Deliberated & Intentional

After three days the jury came back

with its verdict: guilty of murder

w/ special circumstances.

A month later

we sit here again,

waiting for the penalty phase verdict.

The jury not only deliberating

my client’s fate this time,

but their own as well:

will they too be guilty of murder?

Premeditated murder this time.

Not the rash impulsive act of a teenager
but the sober calculated decision
of 12 adults:
a teacher, a fireman, a nurse...
Not my client’s peers
by any stretch of the imagination.


The prosecutor having removed all blacks
from the jury
over my objection
and w/ the court’s blessing.


Will they cast the second stone?

6/14/03
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Evolution of Landscape


Evolution of landscape
on a daily basis. [There is no reference
to “Intelligent Design” in this poem.]
Former ranch lands fenced off,
roads created, plots...
Hundreds of homes, a school, minimal
infrastructure.


In the City, disappearance
of a corner building creates
a momentary new awareness
of the intersecting streets
- a different horizon
soon to be replaced with a new
slab architecture larger structure.


Changing bit by bit,
day by day, like you see the young face
of an old friend or family member
in a way people meeting them anew
cannot.


Dan told me about riding his horse
down Fruitvale Avenue
at the end of World War One.


I recall the structures
of my childhood. The empty lot next door
and brick ruins from the great fire
of 1923.


No more empty lots. Suburbia sprawls
cities “infill.”


I remember Allen coming over
one day in 1967 saying
“handcrafted is more pleasing to the eye.”


And we move on
simultaneously having greater and fewer
options than before.



Stepping through
a changing landscape


our footprints remembered selectively.


Our path lies ahead.


7/11/05
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Kandahar Hotel


From my window
in the Kandahar Hotel
overlooking the courtyard
of the police station


I saw bearded uniformed men
praying
at the appropriate times of day,
brewing tea,
coming and going
the rest.


A calmer time.
Fewer bandits
and those confined
to the rural areas.


A weak King in Kabul,
traditions and tribal ties
going back beyond memory
keeping order.




The horse
has way left the barn
on this one.


8/19/06
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Poem for my Father on Father’s Day, 2006


I use your cane now,
humbled by the vicissitudes
of injury and age.


I see the small brass plaque
with your name on it
and a date: DEC 1959


You were 50 years old in 1959
but your birthday was March 27th.


No one alive today
remembers the occasion.


Was it a Christmas gift?


Commemorative of your undertaking
5-mile Sunday walks
up Euclid Avenue
and along Grizzly Peak?


Did you just like having a cane?


I, being 13 in 1959,
couldn’t possibly have related
to a cane;
assistance to the infirm.


I was big, I was fast...
I could climb up the drain spout
to the roof of the Kindergarten Building
and smoke cigarettes, the ends
staining my fingers a cool orange color,
the grey smoke rising slowly forever
into the Summer afternoon
of youth.


6/18/06
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I feel you in me.


This is not
a love song.
Like a second
skin,
a pair of pajamas
worn under my Levis,


the structure grows
within me,


strangling
my spinal cord.


Abusing me
in various
ways.




I know you cannot kill me.




The only problem
is that you may make
life so miserable
I kill myself.




I meditate.




Listen to music.




Try to take
each moment
as a jewel worth holding



in my hand
at sunset




light from a thousand fires
bursting from its center,




refracted thru angles
into the brilliance
of emptiness.




[time]




Pure Land




[more time]

 

I hope this can sustain me.


7/23/08


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I want to ride the Grand Trunk Line


again!



I am not content to read my old books


and go quietly into the garden


to escape the world.




I need my refuge.


But as a place to come out of,


invigorated


w/ new ideas


of mischief and grandeur


to bring understanding to the world.


6/10/07

           reading at the Art House 2009, photo by Al Young

            reading at Yod Space 2007, photo by Byron Coley

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THE SCORE POEM #1 previously published in Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal #9, Thurston Moore, editor.
even the time in the motel previously published in COPKILLER #1, Rbt. Head, editor, 1968
White Man’s Song for Huey Newton first appeared in Mythology for the People’s Liberation, 1968
The Gudgeon Fishermen previously published in In Chambers, sunnyoutside press, 2008.
Premeditated Deliberated & Intentional previously published in In Chambers, sunnyoutside press, 2008.
Kandahar Hotel first appeared in Zygote In My Coffee, 2008
I feel you in me will appear in At the End of Time; the Incomplete Works of Richard Krech, Volume II, Poems 2001-2009, sunnyoutside press, 2010

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Some sites on Richard Krech with links to more:

http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/lp-2001/krech.html
http://www.verdantpress.com/krech.html
http://www.bigbridge.org/BD-RK.HTM
http://www.bigbridge.org/LEV-KRE.HTM
http://www.sunnyoutside.com/releases/025/chambers_r.html

poster artwork by Briana Miller

poster artwork by Briana Miller

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Six bullet hit ... .. .  blog site about Bill Burroughs, 

but with many others. in French and English
 http://interzone-news.blogspot.com/

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