Welcome Readers. This site chronicles the process of my writing as well as showcasing some of it. I write novels with a style gained from writing songs and poems. I’ve written five novels: Tardy Son, Joe Island, Blues Pizza, Borderdance, and Tesora. Please leave me a comment or question.
May 31, 2012
Re-Writing “Tesora” The Final Post
Hello Novel-Eaters,
Have a potato. OK, I stayed up all night, so what. But I got the re-writing of Tesora done at about 4:11 a.m. Thanks to Renée Watanabe and Alexandra Vega for the tough criticism that made it possible. It may not be better now, but I like it. I’ll wait a few days or a few hours and edit the whole thing together like a crazy quilt turned into a Grandma’s delight . . . or something. Now I hope some agent will enjoy reading it. That’s the big project next. Thanks for reading all the silly poetry I use to take a break from the speeding 80,000-word train in my life. Keep in touch.
— David
Like this:
May 29, 2012
Bassafuka, a poem in one word
Bassafuka, A Word
Bassafuka, I say.
It’s my aunt’s name.
She’s from Romania
and she knows the secret
language they speak there.
Bassafuka, says Toots.
It’s a deep ocean fish
found only in the Marianas
Trench. My brother’s an
ichthyologist at Berkeley.
Bassafuka, says Tim.
It’s Indian, Pomo tribe.
It means I’ll sit on your
face if you sit on mine,
or something like that—
the exact meaning has been
lost since Mexicans invaded
Gualala, Mendocino in 1846.
Nonsense, says Mrs. Larson,
it’s all a bunch of nonsense.
Of course, it’s nonsense,
says Toots, but it’s nonsense
you can’t spell because
we boiled it down from
every bad word
ever invented, but
it’s not bad now.
Like this:
May 27, 2012
For Alexandra , a memory to dance to
For Alexandra
It’s as if I knew before you
knew yourself—as if you were
my seat mate in Plato’s cave
as we pretended to understand
all those shadows on the wall.
You directed no shadows and
I wrote no stories for them,
but I saw a light beyond
my shadow and
I saw yours.
The purest gold in a life
is often hidden by the dust
from lumps of coal that lurk
in the suffering any person carries.
If you thought no one noticed
your gold, you were wrong—
its shine has helped lead my way.
I’ve always learned from
your I-see-you wink and
your I-got-you laugh.
Like oxygen, that gold
is meant to be shared.
So, now that the school,
built on the swamp
downhill of Dana Farm,
certifies that gold as well,
how do you think I feel?
Since love defines
all metaphors, how
do you think I feel?
Like this:
May 23, 2012
Gown of Thorns (a song in D major)
Gown of Thorns
(a song in D major)
She was born a white slave in Virginia,
hitch-hiked north, caught a plane, Air Italia—
by and by; bye, bye.
Then she learned to sing of death in church each Sunday,
and to call the Holy Father by his name.
She changed that feathered dress for a gown of thorns,
now she wears that pink in Rome
and she calls it home. Yes she calls it home.
When the moon’s full she dreams of Virginia.
As her tears fall she calls to Virginia—
by and by; bye, bye.
Then she strokes her dirty needle with her finger
and hugs the only warm thing that she’s known.
She’s found a bed where they can’t find her now
but it seems so all alone, it seems so all alone,
but she calls it home. Yes, she calls it home.
There’s his face in a dream of Virginia.
That face it stabs like a knife from Virginia . . .
Now she rises from her bed to greet the sunlight
and phones to tell the Father she’ll be gone.
She packs the gun she knows will set her free.
Virginia, coming home; Virginia, coming home.
Yes, she calls it home. Yes, she calls it home.
In that sweet by and by,
we shall meet on that beautiful shore.
Like this:
May 22, 2012
Redwood Hospital Hotel, A True Story—a poem of my birthplace
Redwood Hospital Hotel, A True Story
Look at this room, Love. I was born here.
It’s now converted from hospital to hotel:
New England chest of drawers, surgical light,
salty California fog in our coffee cups.
Nothing of my birth remains here now
except me and this curse of poetry. On the
day of my birth, Mom sang like a lumberjack
and hauled like a fisherman. Father held
out his hands, softer than a painter’s,
grinned at my cry, and spanked my bottom.
Father and I never hit it off after that.
I never learned why he loved to tell
stories of his battle with diphtheria but
not of his battle with his mother’s voice—or
why he fought in Nagasaki with a notepad.
You don’t laugh when I tell of Dangerous Dave
and his last schoolbus ride before polio hit his legs,
and I learn nothing from your laughter at my story
of the stoning of an abandoned schoolbus—
when the sharpness in the eyes of my innocence
was lost somewhere near the top of Bald Hill.
Yet we both know I still carry it in my chest,
hoping I won’t have to sell it for food.
The first time I stayed here I had
a soft arm around my head, and
a soft breast full of breakfast in bed,
so this morning I bring it to you.
Like this:
May 20, 2012
Full Awareness of Softball, a poem with game
Full Awareness of Softball
Ten men and two women under
baseball caps face one man with a bat.
I breathe in waiting for the pitch.
He swings, the bat hits the ball, ping!
A tree’s leaves spin in the wind.
The ball flies out to right field.
I breathe out. I shuffle my feet.
The infield dirt is the color of rust.
The pitcher holds three balls
in her mitt as she lobs underhand.
I breathe in waiting for the pitch
and the bat hits the ball, ping!
The ball rolls out to third base
Evan stabs it backhanded and
wheels a throw to first base.
I breathe out, say “Hum, Babe.”
My cap is loose. I tug its bill.
A cloud dims the sun over the backstop.
I breathe in waiting for the pitch.
I haven’t found work this month.
I wish I had money to pay the rent.
The ball skips towards second base
and my mitt stabs at it—
I stumble as I wing the ball to first.
I breathe out, scratch my knee.
Nice pick, says Woody.
I see the clouds drown in blue.
I shuffle my feet, scratch my knee.
I breathe out. I love the game.
Like this:
May 17, 2012
Un-Friended Guitar, a poem
Un-Friended Guitar
That pinch in the corner
of your smile once reached
under my shirt to squeeze
my injured blood muscle.
My lungs dove into dumpsters
for roomfuls of oxygen and
my stomach laughed to think
a supermarket could fill it up.
My brain craved the healing
others find in bar liquids,
but my body thought alcohol
was the same as turpentine, so
perhaps my bloody pump was
better at fertilizing tomatoes
than beating a path
towards tomorrow.
No job gives me time like no job so I
sit and sing to my body with a guitar.
I know my love was not your love
so I embrace the sweetness in me I
once gave you—it will always be mine.
My country-music song sings this:
Your lips were only an excuse
for me to plant strawberries in
a garden that never bloomed.
Because your voice no longer fools
my fingers, I listen for every beat
my guitar picks for me.
Like this:
May 12, 2012
A Mother’s Hand Memorized, a poem
A Mother’s Hand Memorized
At three years old
I heard my mother’s hands
touch the fingers of Bach
with the strings of her cello.
They played three songs at once
with ten fingers on four strings—
a miracle greater than the mystery
of Heffalump and Winnie-the-Pooh.
She tied those strings to me by
showing me how notes are words
made from the prayers of angels,
and that songs are hugs from God.
At age four I crawled at her feet
below keyboards of a pipe organ,
and sounds like monster lungs growled
through my knees and into my spine.
She called them fugues, but I knew
them as the songs of a god called Mom.
At age eight I paused between pages
of Mysterious Island to hear her cello
elevate a song called The Swan
up the stairs into my patch of ocean
to teach me how graceful birds
could sing songs of life after death.
By age thirty I read Notes from Underground
as I faced the author’s home across the Atlantic,
while she tossed a Beethoven sonata
into the clouds over the Pacific Ocean.
I don’t need a recording to hear that again.
Now, as I scratch
my way into this poem,
something in me remembers
every tone from her fingers.
No distance is too far
if you know it by heart.
Like this:
May 11, 2012
A Family Paints Its Face, a poem
A Family Paints Its Face
Momma throws a rose for Jesus and
cries out from arthritis in her arm—
I miss the flower but catch the thorns.
Dad tightens his jaw like
a professor during final exams,
says internal combustion engines
and the Erie Canal were invented
to cure New York of browns.
She says, I so loved church today—
the choir sang so sad, so lovely.
“Whose sins must we know?” asks Joni.
I poke at the scratch on my arm
and wish I had a sailboat.
John ducks as Momma
pitches a St. Paul story to him
of the man with two eyes
in the back of his head.
Mary spits into her hand
to laugh into wet cheeks
at a joke that is a secret.
Like this:
May 8, 2012
Fossils of Paint (for George Teshu)
Here’s link to George’s Website where many of his paintings and drawings are available.
This posting is a prelude to a review of George’s recent art show and a review of his Website. The poem is not directly related to his painting.
Fossils of Paint
(for George Teshu)
I was born to scratch lines
on these walls—to tell the stories behind
the three-claw scar given me by a lioness, and
the bones of the lungfish who ate my spear
at the end of the last full-moon drought.
Was I too bold to paint you naked
balanced on a limb over Spring Lake:
happy as a berry on a spring vine?
My fingertips bled into sweat
to create your favorite pink color.
The depth of my stroke I once earned
by finding sharp flint and staying young.
I’ve spent thirty winters and ten fingers
creating piles of dust, staring at our wall,
but my hands are frozen now, so I know
I will die before I scratch my last vision
on the wall. I’m happy my love is young
enough to paint blue moon circles
over my red oak branches. Together
our signs are ashes in a fire.
Someday you may share fire
with other hands, but for now
a flame of moonlight
slides down our wall
to touch us both.
