Poems: from "Selected Poems 1972-1992"/ ChamberFo

Honoring Norman Mallory (Zlatko Waterman) RIP 3/26/13
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Zlatko Waterman
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Poems: from "Selected Poems 1972-1992"/ ChamberFo

Post by Zlatko Waterman » November 19th, 2004, 4:57 pm

( from ChamberFolk Press/ London and Zagreb 2003)



Sun Village Donuts


The last of the morning
remain here
the lord of the laundromat
and his flannel lady
smoke over coffee
the final butt screwed
into the ruby jelly
when they finish

the Koreans blend silently
with the pale oven glass
they know enough English
to deflect the skateboard cowboy
menace of the Mall
while they work their grease paddles
rowing the morning donut batch

oil bubbles under parked tires
the sun treats the crumpled
napkin faces brusquely
the Sun Village group
works its jaws as a team
around the silvered sugar
while the washers churn
up the sheets
spotted with last night’s love










Cry


the bite of lust toothing samurai terrycloth
while my hand sinks an inch into your buttercup back







Slate Town/ Snowdonia



A forge in which hammered
brass dumbs down slinky tin
all that bronzes grief black
bypassing green patinas of smoke on cindered pillows
ashy hair flung down on slate town
where workers water armoire-dry shoes
wading toward the next wave of ruin
chipping no funeral stones, not tiles
cast for roofs
whatever comes down the sky
will do
microchips, grey gruel, Christ’s picketed sheepsgate

today we chose their road
puddled off to their red thumbs
sawing rock pages scribbled with ice
but just beside the road
green paradise
vines up cozy to its grey lip









Epistemes

1.

Learn every trick you can
you will always trip on
the bruied stone
of your father’s crimes
he leans into a far wind
smiling
rise up and follow me, he says
in spite of his punishment
you still want him

2.
Like a white flower
mudded
on peatbrine-black Celtic rock
all these pictures count
less than the first grain of my forgiveness
carried in the gannet’s beak

3.

Being less than it is
my request dossed down
my last chance to save our mutual life
should sluice like mercury
but spirals up instead
like a lesser messenger god





4.

With the care of someone
removing a needle-small bone
from a mouthful of boeuf forestiere
you declined our last time
even our touch glaciates
your last amen over a gold plate
strangers on a train
getting off at last

5.

Only when it’s official
will every animal
in mute disarray surrender
their heaven
hooves and feathers alike
thundering, beating
our breath short for our crimes
we invented forgiveness but
it is a crude invention, a flapwinged windmill
walking away is their only politics
but instead they come

6.

Birds eat from my feeder
dripping utopian rain
seed-fever
like commas in sentences by
H.G. Wells
Rebecca
West lying in the enseamed
bed rank sweat and dream jets
of perfect sarcasm in the Surrey air



--ZW


( Amazon.com link:


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books )

barry9393
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nice one

Post by barry9393 » November 19th, 2004, 5:55 pm

liked the one
about LLanberis
used to
climb
around
there
in the
60's
stoned on
Cloggie
sausages
&
bitter
memories
brings
it all
back
Have poems will travel

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stilltrucking
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thanks

Post by stilltrucking » November 19th, 2004, 8:39 pm

Learn every trick you can
you will always trip on
the bruied stone
of your father’s crimes
he leans into a far wind
smiling
rise up and follow me, he says
in spite of his punishment
you still want him

that one touched a nerve,

I will spare you my doggerel but I wish I could tell you what it meant to me.
thanks

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abcrystcats
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Post by abcrystcats » November 21st, 2004, 2:15 pm

Don't know how I missed this. "Slatetown/Snowdonia" is new to me. Thanks for posting it. I always admire your poetry ...

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judih
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Post by judih » November 21st, 2004, 2:21 pm

thanks, cat, for bringing this back.
excellent shock to my brain - fresh words and an amazon link to cherry this ice cream read.

judih

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stilltrucking
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I may get around to checking this for typo's maybe not

Post by stilltrucking » November 24th, 2004, 9:47 am

Dupont Circle was a very interesting place to be in DC during the nineteen hundred and sixties. One night I heard an angry brother talk about how the white man had killed Malcolm. I thought that was ridiculous typical black racist talk we all knew that black men had murdered him. Now I understand that the FBI knew all about it but let it happen because it was a convenient way to silence him.


"It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country." February 19, 1965 (2 days before he was murdered by Nation of Islam followers)
and he knew it was coming soon

fuckit why should I cut you any slack
with my doggone scribbling
just because you may be the best writer on litkicks
i hate to say thiat because that place is a poisoned well for me
so I will try to connect the dots
no you try and connect them if you want
I suppose that is why I am worried about billelectric
i suppose i should write him one of those private emails that levi was always harangging me with
I been thinking about jota too
me always the stumbling block for him and me always with myh obsidian words
BTW thise is spontaneous, do remember surfer mike another old friend i miss from litkicks and here is the guy i miss the most
email to a friend:
toe be contiues...

**** ***** "88888" *****
....dots to connect to your poem about a father's punishment
and cecils sunday stream about freedom and a sound byte about the gordian knot.


In 1952 there was a three story brick house with a large store front window, at the east end of the Orleans St viaduct in Mobtown.

At night after the lamplighter had made his rounds, the light from a gas street light shone through the window and cast a paralellagram of light on the wooden floor illuminating a iron ring embedded in a trap door. When the trapdoor was open it appeared to be a (yawning/(open) grave. a black rectangle with stairs leading down into a cellar a black

freedom from fear years about fifty two years later I think about the mman who locked me in that cellar I try to feel a fathers love, and what he might have been trying to teach me, now if I could just figure out his insanity with my baby sister......still working on that one, me the momma's boy thank god.
so like i said before thanks for jposting that

i wasn't just whistling dixie when I said thanks

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Zlatko Waterman
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Post by Zlatko Waterman » November 24th, 2004, 10:14 am

Dear Still:

Thanks for your comment and personal story.

You have a sound apocalyptic vision about the Sixties. Things did change then, but I'm not sure whether or not it was for the better.

By that I mean that the "peace and love revolution" seems to have devolved from the Civil Rights movement, Woodstock and "free love" down to DUBCO and his Christian legions being baptized in bomb casings before they rush into battle and "slaughter towelheads."

I am 59 and remember 1965 and Malcolm's death well; I was twenty years old and freshly drafted for Vietnam.

My father and I lived with each other in an armed truce until I was 19 when I left home permanently.


Peace,


Zlatko

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stilltrucking
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email from a friend

Post by stilltrucking » November 24th, 2004, 11:55 am

email from a friend:
i meant to include this

888 *** 888 ***

'We definately need some kind of renewing process no doubt. Connecting is one kind of way. I got at least a couple of vets connected with Claude's trip.Pneumatic sucks as a word.
I am again feeling my old self, beholden to neither major political party.
I have come into contact with some lately and also some good rum.
I am learning how to cultivate energy when I feel like sleeping most of the time.
My warm and fuxxy vanished the next morning on waking. My friend John fust recently left the Episscopaealian Church for a street church with friends....he had been ordained, walked through the schisms from last year, got pissed at me for calling him prejudiced, then changed his mind and decided he could not stay in the church. So he joined the street church affiliated with the Mid-Pinellas coalition for the Homeless. We know folk there the guy who scripted that pictorial essay about the fallen is one of them
I probably won't get up to see Claude whilst on his book tour, tho, he will be in north Florida and over by Ft
http://www.zaltho.org/special_events/se.html Claude Thomas is a Zen Peacemaker priest.
Good dude.

*** ***** 8888
I caught a sound byte about PEST, post election syndrome or something. I can't help but wonder why John Kerry picked Edwards, as a running mate. I don't fault kerry but I do think he had some bad advice during the campaign. I heard they were mostly Kennedy people. I am thinking Nixon in 1972, how fast it fell apart for him, I have hopes that lightning could strike again. I hope Dan rather devotes himself to digging out the truth, I think he was set up with those documents. I been thinking about Malcolm X and his comment after JFK was murdered, 'the chickens have come home to roost' this after the CIA engineered murder of Diem. I got a feeling those chickens are going to shit all over Junior.
 I don't know if you read Band of Brothers, there was a bit in their about a captain and some unarmed German prisoners, he gives them all cigarettes and then shots them. I wonder about the reporter who broke the story about the marine who shot the wounded prisoner in Iraq, it seems he would have some second thoughts about putting that on the air, what did it help? . 
The longer it goes on the more I wish we would just get the fuck out of Iraq.
I am working on a walking meditation.
again thank you for pointing me towards Buddhism, Buddha and Christ sit in my heart and mind with no conflict, reminds me of those gory catholic icons of Christ with his chest open and his blood red heart showing, to me it is a Buddha heart.
 'There sits no higher court
Than man's red heart' -Sylvia Plath
if we can just reach the next graduating high school class we might be able to

thank you for your time masked meanderer

short timer I think that was my last incarnation on litchicks





http://www.zaltho.org/special_events/se.html
 Claude Thomas is a Zen Peacemaker priest.
Good dude.



I probably won't get up to see Claude whilst on his book tour, tho, he will be in north Florida and over by Ft

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Zlatko Waterman
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Post by Zlatko Waterman » November 24th, 2004, 12:51 pm

Dear Still:


I looked at the website and the picture galleries therein. Thanks for the link.

My wife is a reader of Thich Nhat Hanh, whom I firmly believe is a force for good on this benighted planet.

I worked ( and wrote) for the Bruderhof momentarily. They are a good sort.


http://www.bruderhof.com/

My wife is a mystical Catholic who factors in plenty of Buddhism, particularly Zen.

After reading all of Merton and many, many others, I was baptized a catholic in 1990, at age 44. I had met, through one of my wife's organizations, some genuine Christians, not the "Nuke the towelheads" DUBCO variety of Bible-thumpers. Then, of course came the child-buggering scandal in the Church. I grew weary of being ideologically flogged by the anti-abortion crerw, and of the hateful ( and code-of-silence tight) male chauvinism in the Catholic Church ( capital "c" this time).

I returned to reading Roshi Philip Kapleau:

http://www.rzc.org/html/abc/roshi_kapleau.shtml


In "The Day the earth Stood Still", one of my favorite moralistic science fiction films of the 50's, the visitor from space, Klatuu, wishes to speak to the earthmen about the possibility of their extinction if they do not manage themselves better.

He tours Washington, D. C. with a small boy, and when they approach the Lincoln monument, the boy tells him about Lincoln's presidency.

"That's the kind of man I need to speak with . . ." the spaceman murmurs.


The recently slaughtered Margaret Hassan is a woman I "need to speak with . . ." and closely resembles the people I met in the church in 1990.

Anyone who actually peruses the life of Jesus learns that he was a communist, a rabble-rouser, and extremist in every sense, advising the populace to forsake even their families to join his cause.

He was what we would call a wacko today.

But not because he threatened people with nuclear weapons and sent "people of color" from lower income groups to fight and die in Iraq. Not because he used his power to lie to the populace . Not because he brain-connected them to television and sowed a gospel of hate in the name of "security" and "fighting terrorism."


Nice to hear from you.


Zlatko

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mnaz
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Post by mnaz » November 24th, 2004, 1:26 pm

Yes. Jesus never did too well in the "polls". He never declared himself a "War President", or anything like that.

Here's how I tend to think of it: The love, compassion, and forgiveness of Christ has been lost on so many strains of the Christian church. The self-serving weight of the church has crushed its own foundation, in so many cases.

Funny you mention Merton. I am just into "Zen and the Birds of Appetite"..... a fascinating read so far.

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stilltrucking
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jimbo

Post by stilltrucking » November 24th, 2004, 5:58 pm

the link was courtesy of jimboloco,
I wish I could be a catholic, I joined a Quaker meeting in 1975,

"eat a lot of peaches and try to find Jesus on your own" John Prine

I grew up with the fears of a Jewish immigrant family during the war (well I suppose I should say which one because there have been about a half a dozen since the last world war.) I am trying to imagine what fears the children of today are living with, what if I was five years old in 2001 would I recognize what those black things falling from the WTC were?

I am not saying that there is a connection between Junior and Usama, just I find similarities in their religion.



When you talk about Bush and the president in the Heinlein novel I don't remember which one, I am guessing Stranger in A strange land? The bit about the religious zealots. I am doing my best to suck it up but I am all puckered up when I think of the next four years, pissed at them democrats for trying to play politics as usual during the campaign. I been watching as much God TV as I can stand as a basis for my attempt to love my enemy, they make a big deal about those prayer meetings that the soldiers are having over in Iraq, I heard a bit on NPR this morning about a marine who died this week, he was one of those soldiers cunducting the revivals overthere, he wrote his mom "if you hear about any casualties in Falujah don't worry it won't be me, I am surrounded by angels"
souunds like he thought he was wearing a Ghost Shirt, what are they telling them Marines in boot camp these days "if you die in Iraq you will get 76 virgins"

hey man thanks for that poem one more time, I have to make a peace with crazy mike before I check out. it would be a lot better for me to find that love I know he had for me.

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