tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55161457756537382182024-02-20T16:04:24.013-08:00Difficult SnowNotes and poems by David CheezemDavid Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-61499071728887682592009-10-03T09:37:00.000-07:002009-10-03T11:12:08.506-07:00Live in the moment - but what is a moment?<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41061492@N08/3977788172/" title="DSC_2573_054 by David Cheezem, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2467/3977788172_ea97541f85.jpg" width="402" height="500" alt="DSC_2573_054" /></a><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41061492@N08/3976942357/" title="DSC_0972_102 by David Cheezem, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2421/3976942357_df62936221.jpg" width="332" height="500" alt="DSC_0972_102" /></a><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.longnow.org/">The Long Now Foundation</a> wants to stretch our definition of 'now' beyond the taste of a madeleine, or even the span of a lifetime. They've designed a clock that should record time for 10,000 years. I can't find it now, but when I first visited their website, there was a discussion of the variety of ways to record the passage of time. The most interesting to me didn't involve gears or a clock face at all. The concept was simply materials decay. Design a monument with a predictable rate of decay, and create some sort of key. I suppose that idea was dropped because it wasn't practical. We can only guess when a column will fall or a rusted plate will open up to the passage of air. And there's a difference between recording time and recording history. You might be able to predict how stone and steel dissolve, but you can't predict the raiders who plunder the stone in an act of war, or the changes in the average temperature -- or the advanced preservation groups who, in the future, might decide to slow the act of time.</div><div><br /></div><div>So face-and-gears is the way to go. But our trip to southern France made me appreciate the visible records of time.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41061492@N08/3971384849/" title="passage_and_light by David Cheezem, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2477/3971384849_b4e9585a7c.jpg" width="332" height="500" alt="passage_and_light" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>We saw cave paintings from 14,000 years ago, alongside 17th century graffiti. We saw the church in Bezier where 7,000 Cathars were exterminated by Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Citeux in 1209, the stone still blackened from the fire. We saw smaller rural structures in various stages of decay.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41061492@N08/3976959945/" title="DSC_2434_080 by David Cheezem, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2497/3976959945_ee1d870149.jpg" width="332" height="500" alt="DSC_2434_080" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Long time provides a different shade of humility than the Christian notion that one trades humility in this life for glory in another. It's the humility of smallness, where the narratives of our lives become meaningful in less grandiose ways. But it places more weight, more responsibility on our personal histories.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41061492@N08/3977720472/" title="DSC_2328_121 by David Cheezem, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2464/3977720472_cefca2c658.jpg" width="332" height="500" alt="DSC_2328_121" /></a><br /></div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41061492@N08/3971394289/" title="DSC_1914_106 by David Cheezem, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2655/3971394289_aba0e2cee5.jpg" width="332" height="500" alt="DSC_1914_106" /></a>David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-86995906549326497962009-07-03T00:39:00.000-07:002009-07-03T08:14:33.759-07:00TehranThe memory of Neda and the memory<br />of Michael are sitting together on a cloud<br />of fog, of peppergas, unseen and unheard<br />on the streets of Tehran. Neda says<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I can never forgive you</span>. I’m sorry<br />Michael Jackson says.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I can never forgive you</span> Neda says<br />for stealing from us the world’s fickle eyes.<br /><br />I’m sorry, Michael Jackson says.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Shut up</span> says Neda. <span style="font-style:italic;">Listen. Just shut up.</span><br />Michael Jackson shuts up.<br />They watch the Bajiis beat their drums,<br /><br />breaking bones. The demonstrators run<br />from the clouds of fog, of pepper.<br />They bend at the waist, they raise their<br />heels, crouch, standing on their toes<br /><br />until, worldly again, they hack and cough.<br />Neda’s scold floats across her cheeks:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Don’t you dare turn this into a dance,</span><br />she says, but it’s too late.<br /><br />They are singing now <span style="font-style:italic;">Ahmadinejad<br />is not my leader. Mousavi is the one</span>.<br />What was once a duststorm is now<br />a swarm of bees dancing, backward,<br /><br />peering ahead into the eyes of Bajjis<br />with their clubs and guns and motorcycles,<br />until the foglights and the peppergas fades.<br />Somewhere on Twitter a silly poet rubs<br /><br />his fickle eyes.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-12671704195687777272009-04-22T11:42:00.001-07:002009-04-22T16:43:47.369-07:00The Mountain Outhouse: 1996(with apologies to Hayden Carruth)<br /><br />Doing everything right<br />was easier on the first nights,<br />choosing the site least attractive<br />to bears, hanging the food<br /><br />over a tree, digging a small latrine.<br />By the third night it wore on me,<br />sweating and aching, the younger,<br />more outdoorsy hikers passing me by,<br /><br />their colors competing with the<br />mountain flowers. I camped close<br />to a state parks cabin, introduced<br />myself to the renters, asked if, at night,<br /><br />in the rain, would they mind my using<br />the outhouse? They said don't. Might<br />frighten them to hear me out there.<br />And that was fine. I camped<br /><br />where I camped, went where<br />I went. I’d been lonely<br />since that terrible day<br />Ronald Reagan got elected.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-82263171688986721482009-04-21T08:53:00.000-07:002009-04-22T07:00:41.657-07:00Acting PoetryWe sat on the floor of the college’s workshop theater. The acting instructor spoke about mannerisms, filling the room effortlessly with a soothingly quiet voice. He said muscle memories would lock pieces of our faces, our shoulders, our necks -- the way we reach to pick up a phone, a newspaper, a love letter -- into unconscious habits. Acting, he said, is a study of these mannerisms. Good acting starts with the ability to release one’s own mannerisms so the actor can embody the character.<br /><br />I wish I had pursued that training 30 years ago. The stretching, the voice exercises, the tai chi and yoga over a long period – each practice a particle of the whole over time, each exercise accumulating in a basket full of skills so that a body can hobble across the stage as a defeated king one day and answer the phone as a nerdy teenager expecting a call the next. But the lessons of that class didn’t go to waste completely. So much of what I think about poetry, I learned in that class. <br /><br />I don’t want to be limited by my own voice. I want to be open to as many voices as I can be open to. So, like an actor, I practice with different forms as a way to open myself to a variety of voices, different vocabularies, different rhythms and tones and movements. I have written a sestina that is just awful, but the very complicated puzzle of a form loosened up something in my language engine, a discovery that I gladly cannibalized for another poem. I’ve also revised poems into various forms, then combined them, grabbing bits from the sonnet sequence, other bits from a draft written on an obscure Welsh form – all because of the discoveries I made in those exercises. This one, however, came without those exercises.<br /><br />------<br /><br /><br />The Actress<br /><br />She is on her back, knees up,<br />feet on the floor, the house lights up,<br />behind a black steel grid ceiling,<br />and she is pretending to melt.<br /><br />Start at brow. Feel the brow soften<br />like snow-thaw, a puddle forming<br />below, glistening above, now the eyes,<br />yes. Don’t forget to breathe. The jaw…<br /><br />Her habits puddled on the floor, she<br />rolls onto her knees, her feet,<br /><br />tale to the sky, head to the floor,<br />she rises slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae,<br />from the tail-bone to the neck.<br /><br />Because she does this, day after day, year<br />after year, she will release the muscle<br />memory that makes her who she is,<br />the way her throat pinched in on itself,<br /><br />when she squeaked “I’m a little busy now,”<br />or her fingers clenched, then stretched<br />to keep from clenching at her sister’s<br />wedding. All she was is gone now.<br /><br />She is ready to answer the cell like you,<br />on the third “We will we will rock you.”<br />She is ready to roll her eyes and growl, low<br />and smoky: “You focking have a lotta’ nerve<br /><br />you know that? A focking lotta’ nerve.”David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-33436640875493517012009-04-19T10:59:00.000-07:002009-04-20T23:09:35.857-07:00Best Practices for Throwing Stones....Best Practices for Throwing Stones at Women Protesting<br />the Legalization of Marital Rape<br /><br /><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-afghanistan-protest16-2009apr16%2c0%2c7668966.story<br />">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-afghanistan-protest16-2009apr16%2c0%2c7668966.story<br /></a><br />1 Choosing the stone<br /><br />Crouch in the sun. Close<br />your eyes and dream of frying bread.<br />Sweep the ground with your palm.<br />Gather dust.<br />Hold and caress the dust.<br /><br />Repeat.<br /><br />Whatever hardness meets your hand, grasp it.<br />Whatever softness meets your hand, taste it.<br />Spit it out.<br />Do this for 800 years,<br />until you know,<br />and the world also knows,<br />you are stone and dust.<br /><br />Repeat.<br /><br />2 Protecting the stone<br /><br />No one sees the stone but you<br />and those who share your bread.<br /><br />3 Teaching the stone<br /><br />There are three words the stone should know:<br />Dog. Whore. Infidel.<br />The stone should know these words well.<br /><br />4 Aiming the stone<br /><br />Aim for the mouth.<br />Either she will choke and be silent,<br />or she will swallow the stone, vomit bread for you,<br />and be silent.<br /><br /><br />5 Throwing the stone<br /><br />Think of blood, of bread,<br />of shadowy hatred.<br />Think of wind racing<br />over a field of poppies.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-22827257552678174462009-04-16T19:10:00.000-07:002009-04-16T19:11:51.412-07:00Necessary ArtificeFirst time she told the story,<br />how they sent the children<br />to harvest<br />too early <br />after the crop-<br />duster, she spoke<br />in the kitchen<br />to friends. <br />She said, this <br />is where<br />these freckles<br />came from, how <br />my skin peeled. This <br />is how my sister<br />almost died. The<br />tears <br />surprised her<br />then. <br />Her friends<br />signed up<br />for La Causa, and<br />her friends invited<br />five more friends<br />to their own kitchens,<br />each of whom invited<br />five more friends.<br /><br />She knew the tears<br />would come<br />the second time,<br />and the third time.<br /><br />By the time<br />she told the story<br />to the housewives in <br />Los Angeles<br />in their living rooms<br />over coffee<br />and union wine,<br />she wasn’t crying<br />any more<br />so she used<br />a pin<br />hidden <br />in her bandanna<br />and jabbed <br />the tears<br />from her eyes. Over<br />and over, time<br />and time <br />again, her sister <br />almost died: <br />the vomiting<br />and blood told<br />with pin-wet <br />eyes.<br /><br />A necessary artifice,<br />without which nothing <br />gets done.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-74251142923606892222009-04-15T19:18:00.000-07:002009-04-15T19:19:05.689-07:00Ellen’s CatThe cat was last seen in the lot behind the duplex.<br />The cat was missing, could be dead.<br />Probably dead.<br />The lot behind the duplex: summer hot,<br />grass, sourweed, dandelions, broken bottles.<br /><br />Somewhere else a moon ripples in the bay,<br />but the cat is not there, not even remembered there,<br />some time else..<br /><br />No one ever found the cat.<br /><br />Thirty years ago. Long decomposed now, the cat.<br />Long debriefed until the subject changed, the<br />moon covered with clouds and days. Ellen<br /><br />who loved the cat as much because no one else did,<br />only remembers sometimes.<br /><br />I only remember Ellen sometimes.<br /><br />This is how memories decompose:<br /><br />Worms and fleas and bugs wiggle through them,<br />for the nourish-me-now, and the bits wiggle inside<br />them, and the nourish-me-now creates gas<br /><br />outside the worms,<br />inside the memory.<br />The memory swells<br /><br />as if ready to float over the grass and sourweed.<br />Float now, not stalk, not slink.<br /><br />Not hunting. Not hunted.<br /><br />Float.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-60412039602219835942009-04-12T21:39:00.000-07:002009-04-18T15:19:01.303-07:00The Tuning Fork1<br />She holds the tuning fork with thumb and finger,<br />glass of wine, glass of silence, two tines and a stem,<br /><br />lifts it with a flair, eyes the color in the gap,<br />cracks it sharp on the table,<br /><br />holds it so lightly, a living, sleeping thing,<br />gently dares to touch it to the wood.<br /><br />The haunted wood hums an overtone,<br />calls the room to prayer,<br /><br />calls the air to prayer.<br /><br />She plucks the string. I cringe:<br />Wire aspiring for the pitch.<br /><br />2<br />He doesn’t notice<br />her shoulders, <br />or if he does, he doesn’t <br />mention <br />how they hunch, rigid, <br />like her arms. He only shouts <br /><br />“Choking! <br />Your’re choking the neck!” <br />She exchanges the tension in her wrist <br />for a former slackness in her jaw. “Better. <br /><br />Now again.”<br /><br />It is Bach, and he loves his Bach. <br />Is is his daughter.<br /><br />You’ve heard this song before.<br />You know how it ends --<br />how the perfect note can’t be pure again --<br />but a tune has to close once it begins. If<br /><br />I do not complete the tune you’ll gasp for air,<br />your mouth, open and shut, open and shut,<br /><br />spitting: No! No! No! No! Like this! Like this!<br />Your fist will shatter the glass on the table.<br /><br />As far as I know he never hit her.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-71287272347772551342009-04-12T06:37:00.000-07:002009-04-12T06:38:13.717-07:00The seawallThe child runs because<br />a child runs, (“Catch me, catch me<br />before I fall!”) because<br />running is what the child does.<br /><br />The laws<br /><br />of gravity cycle through--<br />and the laws of laughter.<br />The mother,<br />after the child, she runs<br /><br />to catch him before<br />the seawall comes.<br />This is what the mother does<br />again and again<br />until she tires of the routine.<br /><br />Then the mother lets the child to fall,<br />onto the mud near the waves,<br />near the crabs. What the child does:<br /><br />runs and falls, runs and cries.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-7525235873431239252009-04-12T06:34:00.000-07:002009-04-12T18:42:15.948-07:00Blood on those grapesI had a sign. He had a cleaver,<br /><br />and it comes to me now, so large –<br />as big as a head, a big, sweating,<br /><br />sculpted head screaming some<br />distorted sentence --<br /><br />This immigrant butcher<br />could handle it like a scalpel. <br /><br />He spoke<br />in Russian. I did not speak<br /><br />in Russian.<br />My sign said “There’s blood<br /><br />on those grapes,” His knife said<br />“I did not come here for this, for<br /><br />the likes of you.” He was<br />only trying to live. We<br /><br />were only trying to protect<br />the living.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-27163344144664463022009-03-25T13:14:00.000-07:002009-03-25T13:16:42.355-07:00Keep the purple boots dryA woman walks her child to school<br />from the car,<br />takes a call on her mobile phone<br />The ice, desert islands <br />on the sidewalk sea. The boy<br />tries to walk on the islands,<br />keep his boots sidewalk-dry.<br /><br />The boy is too slow. She talks<br />and gently tugs. The boy says<br />I am a god. I am Shiva. I will<br />keep the purple boots dry. The <br />mother says I am Kali and I will keep<br />my nine o’clock appointment, <br /><br />or I will devour the son.<br />Everything is as it is. There is <br />hunger. There are efforts<br />to fight hunger. There is<br />struggle. And this is love.<br /><br />-- David CheezemDavid Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-81049264047260868512009-03-23T12:17:00.000-07:002009-03-23T12:33:20.643-07:00Meditations on ashMount Redoubt blew last night, after so many weeks of holding its breath, and now we wonder where the dry spit will land. So far, if I'm reading the radar right (and that's a big if) it's flowing up a channel to the west of Cook Inlet to Skwentna, where there are already reports of ash, and possibly to Talkeetna.<br /><br />Ash is light and sharp, good for dulling paint on your truck or redecorating your lungs. It hardens when wet, but I've always thought that volcanic ash has some value, that it's part of what makes the soil rich for planting. I don't know this. I'm not a gardener. It's just what I've always thought.<br /><br />The earth is alive today. It is belching and spitting it's sacred innards. It is a good thing that we study this. It is a good thing that we follow the paths and imagine the patterns of this, measuring and tracking the shaking earth. Let's learn what we can.<br /><br />I hope Governor Jindal is listening.<br /><br />http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/volcano.phpDavid Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-28305356522877061662009-03-18T11:22:00.000-07:002009-03-19T11:35:16.779-07:00Sonnet 7Youtube Video:America's Next Top Model Audition Riot<br /><br />There is no single pitch, no single sound.<br />Everything we hear is atomic.<br />Sound as we know it is overtone.<br />Atoms playing pool in the inner ear.<br />All sound is like the sound of ocean waves.<br />All sound comes to us in concert.<br />I never understood how waves make sound --<br />the ocean mass, the rush of waves<br />across wind, the dull, loud multi-pitched<br />throb of the living ocean below,<br />screams torn from their throats,<br />trampling each other.<br />They were beautiful.<br />They were waiting in line for someone to say so.<br /><br /><object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ADfj6FGc7yo&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ADfj6FGc7yo&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364"></embed></object>David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-68787714855200973922009-03-16T13:22:00.000-07:002009-03-16T13:23:12.617-07:00Contagious WellnessChrist got<br />too close<br /><br />to God.<br />Christ caught a<br /><br />contagious<br />wellness.<br /><br />He walked and<br />walked<br /><br />so his<br />feet pained<br /><br />him, from<br />sand-scratched<br /><br />skin, to <br />bone.<br /><br />He walked<br />through seas<br /><br />of thronging<br />bodies<br /><br />and the<br />constant <br /><br />clamor: please<br />touch me,<br /><br />or if<br />you won’t<br /><br />touch <br />me, please <br /><br />let<br />me get<br /><br />close.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-40856182942933499492009-03-08T11:11:00.000-07:002009-03-08T11:13:11.720-07:00GatheringsHow we figured it out, I don’t know: leaves<br />gathered in a depression make a softer bed,<br />a better sleep, fur becomes a pelt,<br />and now I have a mattress and a quilt.<br />Someone scratches marks on a stone:<br />“These are my sheep.” Years pass, thousands, perhaps,<br />and those marks become an alphabet.<br />Now I tap this poem on a laptop.<br />And then there’s fire, not that we invented it,<br />but we learned to feed its hunger slowly. We said<br />you may have only the dry fuel I feed you -- <br />these twigs now, later that branch, gathered safely away.<br />Everything we learn, a room in the brain,<br />and every room the possibility of another.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-67143935846414936552009-03-03T10:44:00.001-08:002009-03-16T13:28:48.859-07:00Balance SheetYou own a home. You own the value<br />of your home. You own a page<br />representing particles in an account.<br />You own chairs, tables, furniture.<br /><br />You have a memory in your muscles,<br />the way you know<br />where to touch her in the dark.<br /><br />You own the fading taste of garlic and carrots, <br />chicken broth, chives. You own these.<br /><br />You have debts. These also belong to you.<br /><br />You owe a mortgage. You owe part-<br />icles to Wells Fargo for your home,<br />and particles to Bank of America<br />for your credit card, the classmate<br />you barely noticed 35 years ago.<br />She could come back to you.<br /><br />Debt is the possession of fear.<br /><br />This is what you own. This is what you owe.<br />This is also who you are: <br />hope, fear, and – oh, yes -- desire: <br />another kiss, another sip of broth.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-47622670005980033412009-01-25T10:50:00.000-08:002009-01-25T10:54:24.224-08:00Late Night Fast Food<span style="font-style:italic;">No one cares, J.J., what you wrote, what you said<br />about chains and birth and freedom</span><br /><br />Joe Hill says, then claws <br />two french fries into the catsup, <br />holds them to his mouth,<br />chews fast at first, then slow.<br /><br />Jean Jacques rather likes the idea<br />of straws -- a plastic straw -- and a cup<br />of diet cola. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I feel so proud, but so<br />unloved,</span> Jean Jacques says.<br /><br />They bask in the cold fast-food lighting. <br /><br />Jean Jacques doesn’t know guillotines.<br /><br />Neither does Joe Hill, although<br />he knows firing squads, clubs, <br />some lynchings, quite.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Any word comes from anybody’s mouth<br />has a spit of truth in it</span> says Joe Hill. <span style="font-style:italic;"> But<br />when a crowd of company goons <br />comes at you bats wooshing <br />you don’t have time to split true <br /><br />from false.</span><br /><br />Rousseau slurps<br /><br />innocently from the bottom<br />of his cup. Then: a ridiculous and shame-<br />full belch. But for the midnight crew<br />and some drive-ups outside, they are alone.<br />Red chairs, yellow tables. How<br /><br />can color be so bright, yet so unclean?<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I wrote my life</span>, says Jean Jacques. <span style="font-style:italic;"> I<br />wrote my father, my mother, my mistress,<br />my dead children – and I was a great man.<br /><br />I wrote my life says Joe Hill in hope,<br />in tenements and strikes, railway cars<br />and songs remembered and forgotten.<br /><br />I wrote my song in blood,<br /><br />and I never tried to be a great man.<br /></span><br />Joe and Jacques could not hear the dog outside<br />in the distance: <span style="font-style:italic;">Woof</span>. Silence. Then again twice:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Woof, Woof</span>. Silence again, for the night.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5516145775653738218.post-83105702628660268952009-01-22T14:00:00.000-08:002009-01-22T14:04:34.116-08:00Difficult SnowI am walking in difficult snow,<br />my boots gnawing the white<br /><br />ground, and everything I know<br />is here. The alders, shivering,<br /><br />are here, and the memory of devil's<br />club stinging last summer<br /><br />is here. I am alone,<br />but Joseph Stalin is talking to me.<br /><br />He is saying, "Why sad?"<br />and I tell him: I am<br /><br />trying to write a good poem<br />about terrible things,<br /><br />and I can't seem to find<br />a place in the language.<br /><br />And Joseph Stalin laughs,<br />wraps the wool-clad arm around<br /><br />my shoulder, and says,<br />"Ahhh, David, why make things<br /><br />so difficult. All I have to do is speak,<br />and twenty thousand people<br /><br />become my imagination,<br />and I don't see them any more."<br /><br />The alders shiver;<br />the trail disappears.<br /><br />I am walking in difficult snow<br />and I am alone,<br /><br />but everything I know is here.David Cheezemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00153790532786085527noreply@blogger.com3