and sing your face
send for
me as you
would grace or
the last plate on
a furious table
send for me like
a quiet fire on
a crowded staircase or
a still life dwarfed
by authentic.
that we’ve
loved shows
only
that we
know no
better.
send for
me as day
sends for
night
and I will
ride across the
globe in your
eyes and
sing your face
heaven
that
to me
is
heaven
a blond
with
a hairy
chest
June 6, 2005
But for the grace …
“That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but
threadbare crepe and tears.”
“0 camerado close! 0 you and me at
last, and us two only.”
Walt Whitman
To whom do we owe the pleasure of freedom
To whom the duty of
dissent
To the children who stand on
milk cartons and watch
the cold rotting
rain or the battle
come home to
threadbare kitchens with
frank explosion on
a mother’s
face as she buries
her son in
small incestuous
towns where the poet
stops to
witness the future
another sad rock in
death’s suitcase.
To whom do we owe
the taste of sand on
a blade of grass
the subway or
a sudden bridge
those unseen
this hour
where still
we rejoice
inside
the pain.
July 4, 2005
Some Thoughts on the Bombings
in London
One day after it was announced that London was chosen to
be the site of the 2012 Olympic games, there were multiple bombings,
and multiple deaths, on subways and buses there. A group
calling itself "the Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe" has
claimed responsibility for this debacle. Increasingly, sadly,
it appears that Al Qaeda of Iraq, and now Al Qaeda of Europe, are
brought to you by Halliburton, and the CIA who trained Bin Laden and
his boys when they were rogue rats back in Afghanistan. They've
since been equipped, educated, and promoted, to be real live, hot wired
terrorists.
Worse still, one fears that the trail of infamy
leads back to the Oval Office, and that even Tony Blair, prime
minister, has blood on his hands. War makes strange
bedfellows; capitalism even stranger. Halliburton growing fatter
by the minute, China eating up our oil supplies, Bill Gates courting
Beijing. The reign of terror surpassed only perhaps by the acid
rain of history.
Just yesterday, we watched Judith Miller being led off to
prison like a good little sacrificial lamb (not unlike Martha Stewart)
while Karl Rove, Bob Novak, and the big boys of Enron get to keep
manufacturing lies, and war toys. Cheney's Halliburton just got a
$5 billion contract for military operations in Iraq. A
beautiful old lady, on the BBC, who was punched, and had
pieces ripped from her during the London subway bombing was
socked by plain old corporate greed, the same corporate greed that
sodomized the Statue of Liberty, and continues to rape the U.S.
Constitution.
Tony Blair, while shaken, had the
presence of mind (unlike his American counterfart) to say that these
dreadful events while devastating will not be used as an excuse to
divest Great Britain of those freedoms they have come to hold near
and dear. Good for him! How sorry for this planet that we
have an empire with a loose cannon as commander-in-chief who has
navigated this nation, and the world, into a nightmare that makes the
apocalypse look like cotton candy.
Perhaps those who revel in
Creationism shall yet have their way, and the Apocalypse will come
sooner rather than later. Possibly, we are witnessing the
coalescing of various elements that make for cosmic catastrophe, but
then catastrophe preceded the dinosaurs and comets. Maybe
these terrible days of innocence bombed, and burned, will show us how
important it is for us all to work together as a world, as a planet,
and not as a collection of half-wit nationalists bent on buffing up
their own bottom line at great peril, carnage, and at the expense of
what generations have seen, and continue to see, as civilization.
Jayne Lyn Stahl
Walnut Creek 94597
7/7/05
chains
I have a chain on
my chest
next to
my heart
and it’s
broken into
as many pieces as
there are
fictions called
love in
other lifetimes.
LAST MEETING WITH ARTIE
My grandfather, Moishe, a part-time cantor, on the lower east side, was
bandleader Artie Shaw's uncle. Artie credits Moishe for his
musical talent. Artie was my mother's first cousin around whom
ambiguous myths often grew up, but the one thing that remained clear,
from the first, was that he was a writer. In my early
teens, I wrote him a letter to say that I, too, was a writer, but he
never responded; not then, anyway.
While living near Century City, a few decades later, I went out with a
reporter who interviewed Artie. He gave me his phone number
which I held on to for months, waiting for just the right moment to
call. In the late 1990's, when poet, and acquaintance, Allen
Ginsberg died, I heard that Artie was going to be at a tribute reading,
in Westwood, so I called him not knowing what to expect. We spoke
for over an hour, thus the friendship began. I was to visit him
several times, over a period of two years, at his home in Newbury Park
and, a few years later, give him a screenplay that I wrote which he
read voraciously, meticulously scribbling suggestions in the margin as
if it were his own. A year or so before he passed, in December,
2004, Artie's sight was going. He knew when he asked to see
it that my screenplay would be among the last things he was able to
read.
I remember calling on a Friday morning, in August, 2002, to tell him
that his cousin, and my aunt, Sally Weisbord, died. He asked when
I was coming to pick up my screenplay which he was finished with.
I suggested I stop by the following day. He said he may not
be home, but not to worry – if he wasn't home, the script would be in
the mailbox next to the front gate.
When I headed out to see him that Saturday morning, I didn't expect to
find him home. When I got to his house, the gate was
locked. As he suggested, I checked the mailbox, but it was
empty. I looked toward the house, and saw a light on, so I
pressed the doorbell, and was buzzed in. The front door was
half-open. I knocked, and heard someone yell out – "come in," and
saw an older woman, Pat, heading out from another room. I asked
"Is Artie in?" She pointed to the living room, and indicated that
I go in.
Artie, in his usual garb – a pair of white tennis shorts, was sitting
erect in his chair, staring motionless in front of him. I
thought immediately of Marlon Brando in "The Godfather," as he stared
straight ahead poker faced. He motioned for me to sit down, and
pointed to the script. "Like I said before, I think you're
wasting your time with this," his voice as tired as his realization
that, appropriately, his efforts to discourage me were futile.
He fumbled for a quote from Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," the same
quote he'd recited to me before how if I feel I "must write," well then
go ahead.
He told me he wants his epitaph to read "Get Out," and laughed. I
felt suddenly like a worm under a microscope being gently prodded by
the needle of a child during a science experiment.
Sometimes, while I told a story, he'd sit back in his chair
with this grin on his face that would light up his eyes. He'd nod
his head back and forth thinking about genetics as I squirmed.
Oddly, it seemed, at times, like Artie was an interloper in his
own life, at one remove from himself, tuning his mind like a wayward
instrument. I wondered how anyone with his enormous gift could
see playing the clarinet as little more than a gig, as just a way to
make a living as he did. He thought of himself first, and
foremost, as a writer, which is one thing that came across loud and
clear, in all our conversations; his admonition, "be judicious," about
deleting this word or that, haunts me even now.
Have I heard from a friend of his who wants to hire a writer, he asks.
I shake my head. He whispers, "I tried."
"I know," I say with the chilling, and pervasive, sense that this would
be the last time we would ever see each other. I ask if I can
give him a hug, a request which surprises even me. He looks at
me quizzically, saying only, "I can't get up." "Don't worry, I'll
come to you;" I rush over to his chair, and hold him with all my might.
He hugs me back – a hug that is heartfelt, genuine, and downright
riveting. It felt as though he waited all his life to give
someone a hug like that. "I got one last thing to say to you,
kid." "What's that, Artie?" I ask in the same tone one
would expect a rookie to use on a mob boss. "Keep on keepin' on…
keep on keepin' on, kid," and he gives me a smile so wide, and big,
that his eyes are absorbed by it, a smile so huge, it upstages even the
hug, the wholehearted one, the one reserved for outlaws and artists,
the one with his name on it.
copyright Jayne Lyn Stahl
6/30/05
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