Poetic Discourse
the Current Policitcal process and other writings
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Excerpts from a new work
News of the Day
by John Peterson
that draws, as the title says, from what
has gone on daily in the life of the poet
and the life of the world about us.
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Dedication
On the Passing of Alan Ginsburg, Poet, Bodhisattva, Reincarnation
of William Blake and Walt Whitman, April 6, 1997
Great connector of the poetic voice, life giver, recording, living,
and sharing, in darkness and light, one who travels. Water cast
across space, we travel Buddha field upon Buddha field.
Your mother languishing in a strange world, my mother combing
long dark hair in a world of uncommon shapes and signs,
steely foreign life, a world inhabited during war and fear.
I am a casualty of the war of my time, you and I travel on Buddha
path of peace searching for love in the time of destruction, the time
of death taken over by violence and false grandfathers.
A lifeline that sits across many worlds, we walk a not deciphered path yet
a common thread of love, soul connection of human, animal, rock, trees,
the Buddha's feet, god who could feel, breath of human and the other, leads us on.
Jazz of life, Whitman and Blake, song/voice of recollection crossing space,
human and the other inhabitants of this earth. You the incarnated voice, me the voice
that could not speak, feeling the groan of the unloved in the middle night.
Water of this world, sound of many voices, you the strong storyteller, me of murmur
and silence occasionally speaking to some stranger you may have missed.
You the lion who took on the world, me a light that shone darkly.
But we the Buddha's noise in the time of uncollected sighs, travelers on a path
taken many times, we say it because it is what is said by us. We speak
our voice or it is choked like the rattle of the dead who did not speak.
Tonight my voice is caught in my chest, the water will not come
to carry it out into the night here on the mountain where truth
surrounds me like granite falling off high valley walls.
Communist redemption in the days of Hale (Be) Bop comet in the night sky,
floating to the dark night, balance of day and dark. The redemption of words in
voice and sound, rhythmical scraps of paper floating in a watery quivering chest,
Sailing out across a youthful time and on into the old and the graying
morning. Your hair of the beast long and full of lightening, coat
of color wrapped skin, luminous soft pools of brown eyes glimmering.
Buddha destruction, flowing long line of reincarnated poets and lovers,
peace walkers on the road traveled by love, incarnated into the body
of god's multitude of daughters and sons, crossed and crisscrossing the land
Absconded by Moloch who drowns the meek and the strong at the same time.
We are caught in the web of the same old misapprehension of good and ill,
forgetful that this is the life of our world and we are the million fingers of god,
The finger nails of the Buddha. Words are floating evidence of our body,
circulating essence of soul in communion with the mind that is empty, they fall
to earth and grow into the shadow of our longing, we inhabit them
With our sisters of the other, our dead brothers sailing out. We are the concrete
mass body waiting to flee into the discorporal night, the discorporal spirit
waiting to stretch into the body of desire. We bless our creation and
Evaporate into the empty mind of the universal void, into the grace of god,
the Tao, the Buddha field, into the comet's light leaving the April night sky.
Now and then Alan, we find you hidden in the lines of your poems,
Speaking out to us, urging us to do what poets and artists must do. And, as you said,
even if all of this comes to nothing in 100 or 200 years, make this a better place
for all we meet, on this love path of uncommon shapes and signs,
traveling through this strange world.
To Miles Davis
-Kind of Blue
Inside of different lights, a new born reverie,
black caped and wing’ed, crossing like memory
on teal-darkened rooftops touching vague ladies
with eyes the color of sorcerer dreams.
Walking in the cool, steel, vacuous night, buried
in a feelingless hum, pressed inside a castled space
with long, low, lean towers. Bowling alley sounds at two a.m.,
Greyhound Bus to the Blackhawk bitter end.
Climbing into brass horns and intimately sheathed embraces.
Smoothness Miles, smoothness, gliding in on ribs and lungs
and long sighs, speaking with inner friends
animating worlds unseen.
Dragons rear inside of orange lights before
the sacrificial revolution. Death is walled inside of schools
and homes between the Shoreview workers
ghetto and the Cadillacs of Hillsborough.
Who ever heard of tacos or knew a Tarasco face
and we live as white folks live and black man
never would be black and we danced
as tears and rage bound his ribs to ours.
Bodies of rare substance, crashing images
of suburban war burning fears
leaping Zen poem sung by the war dead
bathing nerves somewhere in North Beach
Sprayed with sooty jazz in the Blackhawk sewer
where the drapes hung like rags and the music stung
like love and Miles Davis blew warm hellish feelings,
cageless as the fog on the damp, damp
coastal hills.
Le Ly Hayslip
You spoke of bare feet on the ground of your village,
feet touching earth.
Seventeen years and you wore no shoes,
feet touching earth.
How that connection gave you your world,
earth coming though the soles of your feet.
Hips deep.
Mud of rice fields,
mud of your life.
Your ancestors walked with you,
feet touching earth.
You said how
shoes and pavement stop the connection
roots cannot penetrate,
we skim the top unbalanced,
no anchors, no place
down.
Energy builds in the belly like steel helmets of war.
For a time I wore no shoes, my feet spread on asphalt,
hot
in 105 degree Valley heat,
breaking up concrete, coils moving like mud
through sidewalk cracks,
head coming off.
I ran like a deer one time near the grottos on the Fresno river,
grass green with sweat, feet cut bloody marking granite.
Each foot finding the right place on a narrow deer path above the
diving pool.
For a time I knew how your feet moved over village ground.
I knew when the earth comes up a dark dark rose how my body
follows contour of hills bending as feet touch the earth
running.
Ben Webster
Letting go of shady images, smoky
bars and rain soaked streets,
Mike Hammer lost in the night.
Tall downtown buildings--
street light shadow image,
smoky place on ribs and long sighs--
piano string before the felt hammer hits.
I remember a night long ago,
sitting in the dark looking out the bay window,
sound of a moving baseline--
neighborhood reachin' in.
Old gray man--
piano riff rising easy off of blue pavement.
I'd never seen this middle class suburb
like it had a rhythm
'til I got inside the breath sound
soft and cool,
Ben Webster sax
beatin' out a dark place,
no matter where it sits--
Behind us
all.
Voice
-for Brandon
I look to Nicaragua and see the poet
Ernesto Cardenal
Rigoberto Lopez Perez
he is a poet
I am a poet
Dark soil, canopy of dark, dark green
I know now the protection of the word
Why the Nicaraguan's sing
Why the poets speak the word
wrap the people in a cover
of words to hold
the dead
who died by Somoza who
died
by the Contra's bullets again
House with Mayan rooms,
room of the Catholic, Indian, African--
women who speak the Caribbean lilt--
Spanish walls and the gold
House of Sandino, communista,
Ché, Fidel, Fonséca--revolucionario
who loves the people and gives blood
in the life of sisters and brothers
I know why the people sing,
cover the children in a love song of words
Poetry is not only a literary discipline
It is myriad pulsing
in the night time of lovers
A mother's breath sound
in her child's heart
Rhythm of nerves
dancing in space
The word before there was voice
to transmit the word
Truth talking to truth
glowing bodies in the gold light of morning
Poetry is the earth covering her own
in a green and gold mantle of love
Falling in love
I know how wonderfully easy it is for me to fall in love.
I think it is beauty that does it. Not that I fall in love
with beauty but that beauty is the entrance to love.
Mostly I think it is when a woman has stood in her beauty
on purpose or not. There was a morning one time when
Kate was in this glowing luminous place of beauty,
she said in innocence, “I won’t be here long” and we
both knew. She was there both innocent and purposeful.
Some stand unknowing in beauty and I am graced with
knowing. Others like the young women in the Greeting Card
section at Barnes and Noble in Montgomery, simple and
elegant in a gray floor length dress cut up high in the back,
visible on a Sunday morning. Standing in her beauty,
purposeful but innocent of her effect. One hip drawn up,
the light from the large window illuminating from the outside.
I am in love, not so much with her and we will not meet,
but with her purpose, her willingness to bring beauty
into the world, to be the carrier of the goddess, purposeful
and innocent. And I have found beauty again so that I can
make my way, purposeful and innocent and enhance the world
in love.
Moulin Rouge Garden Grove
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
They come with grace down on us like the enchanted tears of a goddess.
They come from the divine incantations of gods made into beings of flesh
and light. They are the momentary dripping after winter has conceded
the storm. String them together, remember them, the rest is what occurs when
someone forgets, pretend it has not entered your realm – memory is contagious
when it is the liquor of these droplets raining on the earth through invisible light,
through the glittering leaves of the yellow sycamore across the wet road.
So many love filled drops of rain that there is no counting them but they leave
us soaked in the deep fibers and crevices. We are this whether we know it or not,
we love and are loved in return, so we may as well make it our life’s work
and our own reality and call our life by its true name. Soak it in beauty, speak
it in truth, travel in freedom, now we are always and have always been in love.
They haven't put up barricades, yet,
the streets still alive with faces,
lovely men & women still walking there,
still lovely creatures everywhere,
in the eyes of all the secrets of all
still buried there,
Whitman's wild children still sleeping
there,
Awake and walk in the open air.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
from Populist Manifesto: Endless life: Selected Poems