Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    I would personally encourage those who have entered favorite
    poems in v-2 to move them here. �Help freely given to those
    not familiar with how to do so.
    
    Bonnie

    Science Fiction
         by Nancy Willard
          from The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry
    
    
    Here, said the spirit,
    is the Diamond Planet.
    Shall I change you into a diamond?
    No? Then let us proceed
    to the Red Planet,
    desert star,
    rocks too young to know
    lichens.  There's plenty
    of room.  Stay as long
    as you like.  You don't like?
    Then let us go forth to
    the Planet of Mists,
    the veiled bride,
    the pleasures of losing and finding,
    the refinement of symbols.
    She's all yours.
    
    I see you looking at that blue planet.
    It's mostly water.
    The land's crowded with
    creatures.  You have mists
    but they rain, diamonds
    but they cost.  You have
    only one moon.
    You have camels and babies and cigars
    but everything grows up
    or wears out.
    And on clear nights
    you have the stars
    without having them.
    

    In the rain in the morning,
    When I think of him in bed,
    In that strong and silent solitude,
    Except for what we've said,
    I could blindly pour the coffee,
    I could settle down to read,
    And discover I'm caressing,
    Such a private greed.
    
    My mind becomes my lover,
    And then my enemy,
    And then at last,
    Cold indifference,
    Through which I fail to see,
    The softness and the sweetness
    That has him wanting me,
    And missing, almost craving,
    Sweet mediocrity.
    
    But deeper into panic,
    Then up to ecstacy,
    I'm paralyzed in passing,
    By this passivity.
    Slipping from the zenith,
    Headlong into hell,
    From loathing into loving,
    Oh, I knew me once so well!
    
    But now the feeling is the fire,
    And that mandatory dread,
    Is just a flicker in the distance,
    When I think of what we've said.
    And the gentle mist sedates me,
    When I see where this has led,
    In the rain in the morning,
    When I think of him in bed.
    
                             September 1984

    Human Affection
          by Stevie Smith
          from Collected Poems
    
    Mother, I love you so.
    Said the child, I love you more than I know,
    She laid her head on her mother's arm,
    And the love between them kept them warm.
    

    The Sad Heart
          by Stevie Smith
          from Collected Poems
    
    I never learnt to attract, you see,
    And so I might as well not be,
    A dreary future I see before me,
    Tis pity that ever my mother bore me.
    

    Distractions and the Human Crowd
                  by Stevie Smith
                  from Collected Poems
    
    Ormerod was deeply troubled
    When he read in philosophy and religion
    Of man's lust after God,
    And the knowledge of God,
    And the experience of God
    In the achievement of solitary communion and the loss of self.
    For he said that he had known this knowledge,
    And experienced this experience,
    Before life and after death;
    But that here in temporal life, and in temporal life only, was
        permitted,
    (As in a flaw of divine government, a voluntary recession),
    A place where man might impinge upon man,
    And be subject to a thousand and one idiotic distractions.
    And thus it was that he found himself
    Ever at issue with the Schools,
    For ever more and more he pursued distractions,
    Knowing them to be ephemeral, under time, peculiar,
    And in eternity, without place or puff.
    Then, ah then, he said, following the tea-parties,
    (And the innumerable conferences for social rearrangement),
    I knew, and shall know again, the name of God, closer than
        close;
    But now I know a stranger thing,
    That never can I study too closely, for never will it come
        again, -
    Distractions and the human crowd.
    

I shall not allure you
   with dangling adornments
Nor entice you
   with painted face
Nor dazzle you
   with natty garments
I shall not please you
   with a veneer belying my thoughts
No, I shall not come to you cloaked in false beauty
   only to disillusion you later
I shall come bald.

						- Janet Russo

	Beyond the church spire
	curve the ancient wooded slopes
	of the Great Mother.

  

	She's an Amazon,
	her arrow aimed at what comes
	of breathing this air.

	She notches a bone
	to record the moon's phases:
	thus is knowledge born.

    These are excerpts from a workbook I kept as I was getting trained to
    facilitate women's discussion groups.  It was an intense experience in
    womanspace.
    

    
	Workbook II

    
	To be a woman
	wanting to help, to share
	to be strong, to be fearless
	to shine in their eyes
	
	To be responsible
	for myself
	was once too much
	now I must reach out

	But to reach
	I must crystallize
	must become strong
	must be rigid enough
	to span the chasm
	between self and other women
	must be flexible enough
	to accept that I can't
	fill everyone's spaces
	not even my own
	
	To become enough
	to myself
	so I can spill over
	and contain enough
	to give to others
	seems such a tremendous effort
	
	Perhaps I can
	I hope
	I tremble
	my insides shrink
	I am less than enough
	I am hearing all the old voices
	I must quiet them
	and replace their ancient mutterings
	with a new and whispered song
	
	jb - 1/16/90


    
	Workbook III

    
	Reticent
	I watch myself, hold the reins
	steady, chafing under the restraint
    
	To control myself
	to mold and shape myself
	to hold myself up to the light
	and see what I contain
	
	Security
	lies in seeing their nods
	hearing echoes of myself
	in their shared experience
	
	Wonder
	at the newness of this time
	at the fear I feel
	in this room of mirrors
	where I hold myself up
	for their introspection
	afraid I will break
	amazed when our interreflection
	shines forth a light
	soft and warm and safe
	a light I can take within me
	and kindle new visions of myself
	
	jb - 1/16/90



	Workbook IV
	
    
	Self disclosure
	to unlock my life before another
	a woman yet, party to all my flaws
	aware of my own shortcomings
	I beg absolution
	comprehension, a nod
	a validation that I am okay

	It is almost too easy
	once the trust is there
	to give my soft gems away
	to share their small glitterings
	to hope others sparkle
	from similar facets
	
	Success, I cry
	when contact is made
	when our lives echo
	in response to one another
	
	The rewards are great
	so are the risks
	should her eyes be vacant
	her stare elsewhere
	should she not have heard
	who I am....
	
	jb - 1/30/90




	Workbook VI
	
    
	And so she spoke
	this stranger
	and told me tales of her life
	could've been my life
	and I nodded
	and smiled
	and her story fit me
	where I was
	and it was good.
	
	Then she said more
	and it came so close I winced
	cried inside
	she stepped on my shadow
	told me things about us
	I didn't want to hear
	
	And she spoke on
	and it was as if
	a curtain had fallen between us
	I could not connect
	could not bridge the gap
	so I nodded
	not quite understanding
	but wanting desperately
	to support her
	whether she was same
	or other
	she was woman
	she was me
	and that made all the difference
	
	jb - 1/30/90



	Workbook VII
	
    
	To reveal
	what was cloaked
	what seemed unimportant
	what seemed best left unnoticed
	would be impossible
	
	But for their words
	their gentleness
	their tears
	their tentative acknowledgement
	that we might share our fears
	that what we hold inside
	is unremarkable
	and in the same breath
	that we share our collections
	share our innerworks
	
	We nod to one another
	declaring mutual value
	and mutual support
	declaring we are connected
	and the long, arid isolation
	has come to an end
	
	In their smiles
	is a taste of salvation
	from my bleak belief
	that I am less than I should be
	
	We echo and enhance
	harmonizing at last
	into the lost chord we all seek to hear
	
	jb - 2/13/90
	

    
	Workbook VIII

    
    	Women here
	ought to be heard
	ought to be seen
	as what they are
	and what they can become
	
	Too many have been nodded
	and petted into oblivion
	
	Too few have asked
	for what they need
	
	Too few know
	what wonders they can do
	
	Too many swim upstream
	without the help of others
	
	But with time and energy
	I will help create
	a haven, a heaven
	a workshop, a playroom
	where they can explore
	and taste potential
	and become...
	
	jb - 2/27/90

    
	Great Mother,
	creator of all things,
	at last we have found you
	after long millennia
	of suppression.

	Grant us your insight,
	that we may understand
	what has been lost:
	wise voices slain
	by the envious spear;
	fallen Goddess,
	shamed passion
	and burning flesh.

	We have come to heal
	what we can,
	if there is still time
	now with the sun's blade
	poised at the moon's
	white throat.

	Great Mother,
	help us.
	We offer as token
	an alder leaf,
	sacred work
	of your own hand.
	Help us restore
	your sick earth.
	Help us mend
	the terrible split
	when spirit was torn
	from your warm body
	and flung into sky.

	As evening comes
	we put on robes
	ancient yet new,
	seeking your wisdom
	in peace and equality.
	Where your crescent light
	silvers the hills,
	we link arms
	to gather power
	for the task.

		-- Dorian Brooks Kottler
    		reprinted from "Awakening: An Interhelp Quarterly," June 1990

    When did I ever deny, though this was fleeting,
    That this was love? When did I ever, I say,
    With iron thumb put out the eyes of day
    In this cold world where charity lies bleating
    Under a thorn, and none to give him greeting,
    And all that lights endeavour on its way
    Is the teased lamp of loving, the torn ray
    Of the least kind, the most clandestine meeting?
    As God's my judge, I do cry holy, holy,
    Upon the name of love however brief,
    For want of whose ill-trimmed, aspiring wick
    More days than one I have gone forward slowly
    In utter dark, scuffling the drifted leaf,
    Tapping the road before me with a stick.


    Collected Sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay
    Harper & Row, New York, 1988

			     What the Spirit Seeks

				  Alison Stone


				       I

	      Peter scrubs the sticky redness from my scalp.
	      ``I am tired of this life,''
	      He says, ``Especially hair.''
	      Daily he chants I am the Alpha and Omega,
	      Says soon he will transform to white light and ascend.
	      I think about the boy I watched
	      Struck by a car.  I saw no soul,
	      Saw nothing leave his body but the blood, the shiny
		   bits of brain.
	      I take off my glasses so Peter can cut;
	      The room blurs, edges dissolving.
	      I wonder what is true, what is possible.
	      The mirror sends us back as we will both end up,
		   regardless,
	      The molecules of our bodies spinning, breaking apart.


				       II

	      My mailman channels angels.
	      ``It's a gift,'' he tells me.  ``Most people only get
		   prophets.''
	      I see grooves beneath his eyes,
	      Notice he still reads my father's Playboy before
		   delivering it.
	      What good are angels?
	      Then a late November day he leads me to one hardy,
		   perfect tulip,
	      The flame of its petals defying the season.


				      III

	      When my Reiki Master touches me, stars fall
	      From the sky of my third eye.
	      They swirl while she closes my palms.
	      I press my feet to the floor, she traces symbols on my
		   toes.
	      ``Usually I do this only for people with no hands.
	      What do you not have?''
	      Later she huffs, pushes her aura toward me.
	      When she goes to feel mine, I am afraid,
	      Afraid I have no aura, that my life stops with my
		   skin.


				       IV

	      Someone I have met twice and do not know
	      Dreams of me.
	      I have a summer camp
	      For goddesses.  Fertile and squat,
	      We sing in a line, wave clay arms above our heads,
	      I begin to fly--
	      Over the lake with its sharp, thin canoes,
	      Over stalks, grass, groping trees,
	      In each arm I cradle the statue of my mother.


				       V

	      In my own dream, I am the lake.
	      Fish polish my skin with their scales.
	      I stroke the roots of trees.
	      When I laugh, men drown.
	      Like a woman, I swallow what I love.


				       VI

	      After dreams, our deepest voice says:
	      There is a problem.
	      Feel it softly with your toe.  And then your foot.
	      Rest your weight on it.


				      VII

	      It is not death I fear
	      But now, these days with nothing
	      For my spirit but its own inadequate company.
	      It is not the books I need, not Zen riddles, not a
		   smooth voice on a tape.
	      I speak the true need to myself.  ``Love,'' I say.
	      I cannot act, or bring the word out loud.
	      I lie wrapped and silenced in the gauze of my fear.


				      VIII

	      Some afternoons I walk and walk.
	      I need at last the comfort of cement beneath my feet.
	      I will not look at the buildings
	      With their high, available roofs,
	      Their ticket to a dream leap upward or across,
	      Before the final truth of gravity.


				       IX

	      I am tired of this life
	      That binds me like wire,
	      A life that is often denial of life.


				       X

	      What my spirit craves stands before me.
	      I am afraid to step forward.
	      I know I can embrace nothing without its shadow.
	      In the dark I see my parents' hands,
	      See the hospitals and scars.  I see stolen money,
	      Bloody needles, a woman's naked body arched in
		   pain.
	      I also see the telephone, the amethyst on my sill,
	      The sunlight entering with purple fire.
	      I see my future lover, the open window of his eyes.


				       XI

	      I stand in one place for a long time.
	      Sporadic breezes lift my hair,
	      A robin sucks worms from the earth.
	      I begin to dig, enter the earth with my toes.
	      The memory of soil is lodged in my bones.
	      I want more than this, want to fight to have more.  I
		   stare at the sky.
	      ``Help me,'' I say.  ``Show me what I need.''
	      Only clouds hover overhead,
	      Luminous and distant as angels.

Earth, my bone, my body,
Mountain my breast
Green grass and leafy tree
My trailing hair
Rich dark dust, oozing mud
Seed sending white root deep,
Carpet of molding leaves,
Be our bed!
By the earth that is Her body,
Powers of the North, send forth your strength.

Air, my breath, breeze of morning,
Stallion of the dawn star,
Whirlwind, bearing all that soars in flight,
Bee and bird,
Sweet fragrance,
Wailing storm's voice,
Carry us!
By the air that is Her breath,
Powers of the East, send forth your light.

Fire, my heart, burn bright!
My spirit is a flame,
My eye misses nothing.
A blaze leaps from nerve to nerve
Spark of the solar fire,
An answering heat rises, unbearable delight,
The flames sing, consume us!
By the fire that is Her spirit,
Powers of the South, send forth your flame.

Water, my womb, my blood,
Wash over us, cool us.
Waves sweep ashore on white wings,
The rush, hiss, the rumble of stones
As the tide recedes,
That rhythm, my pulse,
Flood, gushing fountain,
We pour ourselves out,
Sweep us away!
By the waters of Her living womb,
Powers of the West, send forth your flow.

  - Starhawk

    Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,
	Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
    Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,
	Not to partake thy passion, my humility.



    
    "Selected poems of Emily Dickinson"
    edited by Robert N. Linscott
    Doubleday 1959

    Drowning is not so pitiful
	As the attempt to rise,
    Three times, 'tis said, a sinking man
	Comes up to face the skies,
    And then declines forever
	To that abhorred abode.

    Where hope and he part company,-
	For he is grasped of God.
    The Maker's cordial visage,
	However good to see,
    Is shunned, we must admit it,
	Like an adversity.


    
    "Selected poems of Emily Dickinson"
    edited by Robert N. Linscott
    Doubleday 1959

	She tucks it under
	the robe of her husband's name
	like a broken wing.

    
    
    	When she skips across the road
    	in front of your car, pause
    	for you are blessed.
    

	Now the spotted owl
	is gone from the forest where
	money grows on trees.

      Women have loved before as I love now;
      At least, in lively chronicles of the past -
      Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
      Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
      Much to their cost invaded - here and there,
      Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
      I find some woman bearing as I bear
      Love like a burning city in the breast.
      I think however that of all alive
      I only in such utter, ancient way
      Do suffer love; in me alone survive
      The unregenerate passions of a day
      When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread,
      Heedless and willful, took their knights to bed.

    Collected Sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay
    Harper & Row, New York, 1988

Come maiden fresh, come swift into our hearts.
Come Mother strong, give birth to all the world.
Matriarch come to us impart wisdom.

  - Judith Laura

    Talkers in a dream doorway
             by Judy Grahn
    
    You leaned your body in the doorway
    (it was a dim NY hall)
    I was leaving as usual - on my way.
    You had your head cocked to the side
    in your most intelligent manner
    eyes glistening    with provocation,
    gaze direct as always,
    and more, as though wanting something,
    as though I could have bent and kissed you
    like a lover
    and nothing social would have changed,
    no one minded, no one bothered.
    I can't testify to your intention.
    
    I can only admit to my temptation.
    
    Your intensity dazed me, so matter of fact
    as though I could have leaned my denser body into yours,
    in that moment while the cab waited
    traffic roaring nine flights down
    as well as in my ears,
    both of us with lovers of our own
    and living on each end of a large continent.
    We were raised in vastly different places,
    yet speak this uncanny similar tongue.
    Some times we're different races,
    certainly we're different classes,
    yet our common bonds and common graces,
    common wounds and destinations
    keep us closer than some married folks.
    
    I admit I have wanted to touch your face, intimately.
    
    Supposing that I were to do this awful
    act, this breach of all our lovers' promises - in reality -
    this tiny, cosmic infidelity: I believe our lips would first be
    tentative, then hardened in a rush of feeling, unity
    such as we thought could render up the constellations and our
    daily lives, justice, equality and freedom,
    give us worldly definition
    and the bread of belonging.  In the eye of my imagination
    I see my fingers curled round the back of your head
    as though it were your breast
    and I were pulling it to me.
    As though your head were your breast
    and I were pulling it to me.
    
    I admit, I have wanted to possess your mind.
    
    I leaned forward to say goodbye,
    aware of your knuckle possibly digging a tunnel
    through my thigh, of the whole shape of your body as
    an opening, a doorway to the heart.
    Both of us with other lives to lead
    still sure why we need so much to join,
    and do join with our eyes on every
    socially possible occasion.
    More than friends, even girl friends.
    more than comrades, surely,
    more than workers with the same bent,
    and more than fellow magicians
    exchanging recipes for a modern brand of golden spit.
    
    I admit we have already joined more than physically.
    
    The cab's horn roars.
    You smile, or part your lips as if to welcome how I'd just
    slip in there, our tongues nodding together,
    talking inside each other's mouth for a change,
    as our upper bodies talked that night we danced together.
    Your face was wine-flushed, and foolish; my desire was selfish.
    pushing you beyond your strength.
    You paid for it later, in pain, you said.
    I forget that you are older, more fragile.  I forget your arthritis.
    I paid later in guilt, though not very much.
    I loved holding you so close, your ear pressed to my ear.
    I wanted to kiss you then but I didn't dare
    lest I spoil the real bonding we were doing there.
    
    I admit I have wanted to possess my own life.
    
    Our desire is that we want to talk of really important things,
    and words come so slowly, eons of movement
    squirt them against our gums.  Maybe once in ten years a sentence
    actually flashes out, altering everything in its path.
    Flexing our tongues into each other's dreams, we want to
    suck a new language, strike a thought into being, out of the old
    fleshpot.  That rotten old body of our long submersion.  We sense
    the new idea can be a dance of all kinds of women,
    one we seek with depair and desire
    and exaltation; are willing to pay for
    with all consuming passion, and those tiny boring paper cuts.
    I never did lean down to you that day.
    I said goodbye with longing and some confusion.
    
    I admit to wanting a sword and a vision.
    
    I doubt I will ever kiss you in that manner.
    I doubt I will ever stop following you around, wanting to.
    This is our love, this stuff
    pouring out of us, and if this mutual desire is
    some peculiar either-marriage
    among queens, made of the longing of women
    to really love each other, made of dreams
    and needs larger than all of us,
    we may not know what to do
    with it yet but at least
    we've got it,
    we're in the doorway.
    We've got it right here, between us,
    
    (admit it) on the tip of our tongues.
    
    
    (from: Early Ripening, American Women's Poetry Now, Edited by
            Marge Piercy, Pandora Press, 1987)
    
    

    "I Am Married to Myself"
            by Melinda Goodman
    
    I got married on the great lawn
    one day after work
    it was a beautiful affair
    I wore beads around my neck   my ankles
    beads around my waist   coming down my back
    green, purple, blue   red and yellow   beads
    I was nervous     wondering
    would I run out on me at the last minute?
    Not show up or refuse to take the vows?
    I looked at my mother
    standing to the left of me
    I saw tears in the corners
    of her eyes and mouth
    She had on the lavendar print dress
    the one she wore at my sixth grade graduation
    when I played the clarinet
    I looked at my father
    standing to the right of me
    and my brother and sisters all around me
    I looked at my friends   it was the last time
    I saw any of them    before we cut the ice
    cream cake with a little statue of me    on top
    
    The dancers and poets were warming up
    in a circle on the grass
    near the caravan they had arrived in
    Tents and flowers were pitched
    all around the field
    There was a sixteen piece salsa band
    and nobody else came down
    to the lake that day because coyotes
    were stationed at all the roadways
    within a mile circumference of the land
    which belonged to my great aunt    the sky
    was blue    hoo hoo
    and I saw you   whoa
    standing against a pine tree
    off to the side
    there to watch your old girlfriend
    give herself away   I could've laughed
    but it was my day    hey
    I wasn't about      to break
    the seriosity of the occasion
    just because you saw fit to stumble
    into my per-if-feral vision
    I kept my eyes on the lake
    and my hand turning my new gold
    ring around and around
    in the palm of my hand
    I chose one with an amethyst
    the tranquil gem    cool and clear
    swallow of water whenever I want it
    
    But now for the ceremony
    I wrote the vows myself
    all about how I will never leave me
    I will love    cherish     and obey
    and if it comes down to that
    from dust to dust      dirt to dirt
    water to water         mud to blood
    thicker than water     thicker than wood
    thicker than flowers, thorns, and scissors
    paper around rock     rock crushes scissors
    scissors cut match     match burns paper
    rock   scissors     paper      match
    
    I will always love me    I will never leave me
    they're gonna have to work
    to get         me
    
    
    
    
    
    (from Early Ripening, American Women's Poetry Now, edited by
     Marge Piercy, Pandora Press, 1987)
    

    "Why My Mother Made Me"
              by Sharon Olds
    
    Maybe I am what she always wanted,
    my father as a woman,
    maybe I am what she wanted to be
    when she first saw him, tall and smart,
    standing there in the college yard with the
    hard male light of 1937
    shining on his black hair.  She wanted that
    power.  She wanted that size.  She pulled and 
    pulled through him as if he were dark
    bourbon taffy, she pulled and pulled and 
    pulled through his body until she drew me out,
    amber and gleaming, her life after her life.
    Maybe I am the way I am
    because she wanted exactly that,
    wanted there to be a woman
    a lot like her, but who would not hold back, so she
    pressed herself hard against him,
    pressed and pressed the clear soft
    ball of herself like a stick of beaten cream
    against his stained sour steel grater
    until I came out on the other side of his body,
    a big woman, stained, sour, sharp,
    but with that milk at the center of my nature.
    I lie here now as I once lay
    in the crook of her arm, her creature,
    and I feel her looking down into me the way the
    maker of a sword gazes at his face in the
    steel of the blade.
    
    
    (from Early Ripening, American Women's Poetry Now, Edited by Marge
     Piercy, Pandora Press, 1987)
    

	   SOME QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT ASK



	Is the soul solid, like iron?
	Or is it tender and breakable, like
	the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
	Who has it, and who doesn't?
	I keep looking around me.
	The face of the moose is as sad
	as the face of Jesus.
	The swan opens her white wings slowly.
	In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
	One question leads to another.
	Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
	Like the eye of a hummingbird?
	Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
	Why should I have it, and not the anteater
	who loves her children?
	Why should I have it, and not the camel?
	Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
	What about the blue iris?
	What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
	What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
	What about the grass?

		-- Mary Oliver, from her new book House of Light, 1990

	I envy Seas, whereon He rides --
	I envy Spokes of Wheels
	Of Chariots, that Him convey --
	I envy Crooked Hills

	That gaze upon His journey --
	How easy All can see
	What is forbidden utterly
	As Heaven -- unto me!

	I envy Nests of Sparrows
	That dot His distant Eaves --
	The wealthy Fly, upon His Pane --
	The happy -- happy Leaves --

	That just abroad His Window
	Have Summer's leave to play --
	The Ear Rings of Pizarro
	Could not obtain for me --

	I envy Light -- that wakes Him --
	And Bells -- that boldly ring
	To tell Him it is Noon, abroad --
	Myself -- be Noon to Him --

	Yet interdict -- my Blossom --
	And abrogate -- my Bee --
	Lest Noon in Everlasting Night --
	Drop Gabriel -- and Me --

		-- Emily Dickinson, from Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson's 
		Poems, selected by Thomas H. Johnson.

    
    Everytime the manwind blows
    Through my matchstick frontier
    I weep a little, even as I promise
    Not to give in, then do
    
    Every time I am told and told
    How selfish - how dare I - can't I see
    How I contribute to such anguish
    I scourge myself, even as I close my ears
    
    I am infinitely conditioned
    To weep for all the world's wounds
    Before I tend to my own
    Which, though deep, remain untended
    
    So I ask myself - who should I care for?
    The universe which I did not invoke
    Or the self I have just begun to find
    - which takes precedence?
    
    And, perfectly trained, I stumble again
    Falling further into the empathic trap
    Even as I promise again
    To champion myself alone
    
    So close to the bone right and wrong grow gray
    And the Pavlovian response must stop
    Even if only to show I can break free
    And claim myself as worthy of my attentions...
    
    
    		jb - 

    Alice Cary 1820-1871

    Nobility

    True worth is in *being*, not *seeming*-
      In doing, each day that goes by,
    Some little good -not in dreaming
      Of great things to do by and by.
    For whatever men say in their blindness,
      And spite of the fancies of youth,
    There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
      And nothing so royal as truth.

    We get back our mete as we measure-
      We cannot do wrong and feel right,
    Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
      For justice avenges each slight.
    The air for the wing of the sparrow,
      The bush for the robin and wren,
    But always the path that is narrow
      And straight, for the children of men.

    'Tis not in the pages of story
      The heart of its ills to beguile,
    Though he who makes courtship to glory
      Gives all that he hath for her smile.
    For when from her heights he has won her,
      Alas! it is only to prove
    That nothing's so sacred as honor,
      And nothing so loyal as love!

    We cannot make bargains for bliss,
      Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
    And sometimes the thing our life misses
      Helps more than the thing which it gets.
    For good lieth not in pursuing,
      Nor gaining of great nor of small,
    But just in the doing, and doing
      As we would be done by, is all.

    Though envy, through malice, through hating,
      Against the world, early and late,
    No jot of our courage abating-
      Our part is to work and to wait.
    And slight is the sting of his trouble
      Whose winnings are less than his worth;
    For he who is honest is noble,
      Whatever his fortunes or birth.

    /jack

    
    
    
	   WHEN PEOPLE LEAVE



	When people leave
	what can the spirit do
	but kneel by a hidden
	forest pool,
	lost in the echo
	of farewell laughter.

	Then she wanders
	from tree to tree,
	trailing her filmy garments.

	Night cannot measure
	the depth of her loss.
	If she dances now,
	it is for no one
	but the stars.

	They offer her
	a cold comfort,
	till the light comes
	and they too fade
	and disappear.


	    DBK (c) 1990

    Beyond What
            by Alice Walker
    
    
    We reach for destinies beyond
    what we have come to know
    and in the romantic hush
    of promises
    perceive each
    the other's life
    as known mystery.
    Shared. But inviolate.
    No melting.  No squeezing
    into One.
    We swing our eyes around
    as well as side to side
    to see the world.
    
    To choose, renounce,
    this, or that -
    call it a council between equals
    call it love.
    

    I Told You When We Started This Relationship What To Expect
                                      by Stephanie Smolensky
    
    
    ...I've got this very bad problem.
    You see
    I can't feel anything
    oh except
    maybe down there from time to time.
    
    I had a pretty ropy adolescence -
    I had you know this really oppressive demanding mother
    I had acne; I wanked all the time;
    I was scared of girls, no confidence...
    (no you really don't have to reassure me
    I haven't worried about that sort of thing
    for years)
    anyway
    I had a kind of nervous breakdown
    when I was eighteen...
    - and since then?
    well, ups and down you know, like everyone else -
    
    except, once or twice (no don't ask me about it I
    don't want to be more specific)
    I actually got hurt
    (no don't put your arm around me, I'm fine now
    nobody can hurt me now
    you can't, for one)
    
    But I do want some understanding
    sometimes I get a bit
    well, down - 
    but you're not to take advantage, play any silly
    games...
    
    on those days, I might like to go to bed a bit earlier
    and stay a bit later the next morning
    but you won't actually remind me about it
    afterwards
    if you're wise...
    
    Anyway, I got sidetracked -
    the main point is
    don't expect too much in the way of feelings.  That's
    how I am
    We can sleep together from time to time
    Whenever I want to
    
    and talking -
    yes of course we'll talk
    interesting talks about things like
    your poetry and my work
    and yes gossip about friends
    
    and we'll do interesting things too -
    When I'm free, and not too tired.
    we can eat out sometimes
           where they have
    Candles, chrysanths and soy sauce bottles
    on the tables -
    and go to late night films and meet
    our other friends shivering in the queue
                   even turn up at
    the odd meeting together
               walks perhaps
                           parties...
    if your behavior's not too primitive...
    
    ...sex with other people?  Well, of course!
    Look, you're quite free -
    I do not go in for
    petty-bourgeouis couple restrictions...I mean
    isn't that what I've just been saying?
    
    Sometimes you surprise me you know
    for a feminist you have some really weird ideas...
    
    And that reminds me:
    Independence.  I'll tell you straight.
    I'm not into women
    who don't lead their own lives
    strongly, from their own centre.
    I want someone who's got no fears about being
    alone -
    (What do you mean, I'm here now and have been
    the last few nights?  Well?  Well...you can explain
    that one later.)
    I want you to be independent
    and available (within reason of course
    you'll have to do other things from time to time).
    
    ...What the f**k do you mean, contradictory?
    I'm perfectly reasonable!  You must never
    never let anybody dictate your life to you -
    I mean
    I respect your inner life,
    I respect that you're different from me...
    I read your poems, don't I?
    
    All I want is for you to do the same...
    Mutual respect.
    Well, I can't do it for you,
    no, that's something you've got to do by yourself.
    I can only be your friend.
    
    - What do you mean, a millstone?
    Me?  I run a f**king creche two days a week -
    I practically founded the Men's Group round here,
    I've been into women's problems for years.
    - No, I don't find that funny, are you drunk?
    Well stop laughing then.  What was that?
    I make up the rules?
    You're f**king jealous, that's your trouble,
    and hysterical and insecure;
    colonising, possessive -
    
    No, no that would be stupid.  No, look...
    You're not being at all reasonable...
    Listen, why don't I put the kettle on?  Eh?
    
    ...Oh and, er
    look there's just one thing I did want to ask
    - er, about..um...coming, are you...
    Well, is it...um..just difficult with me
    Or do you actually...have orgasms
    with other people?  I mean, more easily...
    
    Well, it's not pleasant for a man, is it
    to have to ask.
    
    Oh.
    
    Well, I'll just make the tea.
    
    
    (from Hard Feelings, Fiction & Poetry from Spare Rib, edited by
     Alison Fell, published by The Women's Press Ltd., London 1979)
    
    

    
    RE -1
    
    Brilliant!
    Sadly pretty familiar......
    I'm gonna go buy the book.....any excuse ;-)
    Thanks Lorna.
    

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson
 
I.
 
I walk down the street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I fall in
     I am lost ... I am helpless

         It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
 
II.
 
I walk down the same street,  
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I pretent I don't see it
     I fall in again.
I can't believe I amin the same place.
         But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
 
III.
 
I walk down the same street
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I see it there.
     I still fall in ... it's a habit
            My eyes are open.
            I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
 
IV.
 
I walk down the same street.
     There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
     I walk around it.
 
V.
 
I walk down another street.
 

Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen
            by Irene Javors

Mamushka,
it has been so long
since we have spoken,
Remember,
how we sat in air cooled
movie houses
on warm summer afternoons
in July.
I would translate
the dialogue
so that
you would understand
the story.
Often,
you would mumble
to me
in Russian-Yiddish
of cossacks
and
pogroms,
and tears would well up
in your eyes.
I would take hold
of
your hand
and
say, "let's have a Good Humor,"
and 
off we'd go
in search of
popsicle sticks.
In the morning,
you always
read
The Forward
and
argued with the
ghosts
of your comrades.
I'd hear you speak,
with great conviction,
of how Czar Nicholas
deserved everything
that happened to him.
At the table, you would sip tea
out of a glass
that you held
in your right hand
while
simultaneously
taking a bite
from a small sugar cube
that sat poised between
thumb and forefinger
of your left hand.
This delicate balance between
glass and cube
seemed quite
an
achievement to me.
a greater mystery involved
your ability to hold such
a hot glass without getting burned.
You'd laugh and say,
  "It was so cold in Russia
    that I learned to hold
    fire in my palms."
Sometimes, you'd forget to speak to me
in English
and you'd talk in Russian,
expecting me to answer you.
I would say, "I don't understand."
You would answer, "No you are the only one who does
   understand."
Then, you'd get a strange look
in your dark eyes
and
hold me close to you.
When you semed to see things
that I did not,
you would speak of distant places
with exotic names,
Baku,
Ararat,
Rostov on the Don,
and
of mysterious doings
in the dark of the night,
You smelled of farina
and old newspapers.
You had an ivory comb
that you delicately ran
through your wavy
white hair.
You'd tell me secrets
about
Russia,
the Revolution,
and
your brother whom you loved so very much.
You'd curse at Stanlin
and warn me
about 
tyrants
who would steal our souls
if they could.
I would imitate your accent
and
pretend that I was a bohemian
who
presided over a salon
in Brighton Beach.

Grandma,
I'm all grown up now,
I don't sing your labor songs
and
I have forgotten the words to your
beloved Internationale.
At night,
As I fall asleep,
I hear you
singing a lullaby
of raisins and almonds.
I imagine you sitting
by the window
watching for signs of spring.
So many years have passed,
all that remains is memory
and your familiar voice
that speaks to me
in dreams,
Remember our promise to each other.
We agreed
that
when the Revolution comes
we will make certain
that
everyone eats strawberries
and
dances in the moonlight.
In this paradise
    of
freedom,
we will rejoice
in our reunion.
Until then,
I say,
to you,
with love,
das vedonya, tovarish,
Goodbye, dear friend.


(from Sarah's Daughters Sing, A Sampler of Poems by Jewish Women
   edited by Henny Wenkart, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1990)

    RE .38
    
    Oh, that's lovely.  Thank you for posting it Lorna.
    
    What, indeed, is a revolution without strawberries and dancing?
    And what is a life without a grandmother to remember?
      
        Margaret

    Sunday
       by Marcia G. Rosen
    
    
    Alone on Sunday,
    I envy you
    with your families, with
    tables set,
    newspapers on the floor,
    children waiting,
    husbands,
    I envy the intimacy,
    the sharing,
    talking,
    planning,
    family afternoons,
    together.
    Then I remember,
    the whistle of suburban trains
    flashing to the city,
    children with friends,
    a face silent
    in front of the television,
    laundry tumbling,
    something for me to do
    because I felt so lonely
    with you.
    
    
    (from Sarah's Daughters Sing, A Sampler of Poems by Jewish Women)
    (edited by Henny Wenkart, KTAV Publishing House, 1990)
    

    
			A Creed For Free Women
			    by Elsa Gidlow
    
 
I am.
I am from and of The Mother.
I am as I am.
Willfully harming none, none may question me.
 
As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.
As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,
No plant or blade of grass nor ocean fish,
So am I not here to serve or be served.
 
I am Child of every Mother,
Mother of every doughter,
Sister of every woman,
And lover of whom I choose or chooses me.
 
Together or alone we dance Her Dance,
We do the work of The Mother,
She we have called Goddess for human comprehension.
She the Source, never-to-be-grasped Mystery,
Terrible Cauldron, Womb,
Spinning out of her the unimaginably small
And the immeasurably vast
Galaxies, worlds, flaming suns
And our Earth, fertile with her benificence,
Here, offering tenderest flowers.
(Yet flowers whose roots may split rock.)
 
I, we, Mothers, Sisters, Lovers,
Infinitely small out of her vastness,
Yet our roots too may split rock,
Rock of the rigid, the oppressive
In human affairs.
 
Thus is She
And being of Her
Thus am I.
Powered by Her,
As she gives, I may give,
Even of my blood and breath
But none may require it;
And none may question me.
 
I am.
I am That I am.
 
    
(from _She Rises Like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by
Contemporary American Women Poets_)
    

    
    You know the place:then
    
    Leave Crete and come to us
    waiting where the grove is
    pleasantest,by precincts
    
    sacred to you;incense
    smokes on the altar,cold
    streams murmur through the
    
    apple branches,a young
    rose thicket shades the ground
    and quivering leaves pour
    
    down deep sleep;in meadows
    where horses have grown sleek
    among spring flowers,dill
    
    scents the air.Queen!Cyprian!
    Fill our gold cups with love
    stirred into clear nectar

    by Sappho
    (translation by Mary Barnard)

    
    He is more than a hero
    
    He is a god in my eyes-
    the man who is allowed
    to sit beside you-he
    
    who listens intimately
    to the sweet murmur of
    your voice,the enticing
    
    laughter that makes my own
    heart beat fast.If I meet
    you suddenly,I can't
    
    speak-my tongue is broken;
    a thin flame runs under
    my skin;seeing nothing,
    
    hearing only my own ears
    drumming,I drip with sweat;
    trembling shakes my body
    
    and I turn paler than
    dry grass.At such times
    death isn't far from me

    It was you,Atthis,who said
    
    "Sappho,if you will not get
    up and let us look at you
    I shall never love you again!
    
    "Get up and unleash your suppleness,
    lift of your Chian nightdress
    and,like a lily leaning into
    
    "a spring,bathe in the water.
    Cleis is bringing your best
    purple frock and the yellow
    
    "tunic down from the clothes chest;
    you will have a cloak thrown over
    you and flowers crowning your hair...
    
    "Praxinoa,my child,will you please
    roast nuts for our breakfast? One
    of the gods is being good to us:
    
    "today we are going at last
    into Mitylene, our favorite
    city,with Sappho,loveliest
    
    "of its women;she will walk
    among us like a mother with
    all her daughters around her
    
    "when she comes home from exile ..."
    
    But you forget everything

    		Lament for a maidenhead
    
    1st 	Like a quince-apple
    voice	ripening on a top
    		branch in a tree top
    
    		not once noticed by
    		harvesters or if 
    		not unnoticed,not reached
    
    2nd		Like a hyacinth in
    voice  	the mountains,trampled
    		by shepherds until
    		only a purple stain
    		remains on the ground

    		by Sappho

    
    Beautiful!  Thank you!
    
    

    
    .47 - thanks, I'm glad you liked it. However, I guess it's really out
    of place in here, since some might find it offensive, so I've deleted
    it.
    
    D.

    From "The Speed of Darkness"
                      by Muriel Rukeyser
    
    My night awake
    staring at the broad rough jewel
    the copper roof across the way
    thinking of the poet
    yet unborn in this dark
    who will be the throat of these hours.
    No.  Of those hours.
    Who will speak these days,
    if not I,
    if not you?
    
    
    (from We Become New, Poems by Contemporary American Women,
     Bantum Books, 1975)
    

	Our energies gathered
	For a time
	Compounded by our passion
	To learn, to know
	To share

	The light that is us
	Brightens
	Then dims
	Collects
	Then scatters
	In some unknown cycle

	It has happened before
	It may happen again
	
	We are candles...
	
	Sitting calmly
	In the twilight...
	
	Flaring up
	In the bleakness...
	
	Fluttering out
	In the harshest wind....
	
	Can we rekindle one another?
	Can we return to our sources?
	
	Can we seek solace in our light
	And chase the darknesses
	From our souls?
	

			jb - 11/3/90

                I Can't 

          And they told me
            if I loved something
              to set it free.
          What they didn't realize
            was
              I never held you
                captive.
    

    from The Sabbath of Mutual Respect
                          by Marge Piercy
    
    
    
                                     In another
    life, dear sister, I too would bear six fat
    children.  In another life, my sister, I too
    would love another woman and raise one child
    together as if that pushed from both our wombs.
    In another life, sister, I too would dwell
    solitary and splendid as a lighthouse on the rocks
    or be born to mate for life like the faithful goose.
    Praise all our choices.  Praise any woman
    who chooses, and make safe her choice.
    
    ......
    
    Praise our choices, sisters, for each doorway
    open to us was taken by squads of fighting
    women who paid years of trouble and struggle,
    who paid their wombs, their sleep, their lives
    that we might walk through these gates upright.
    Doorways are sacred to women for we
    are the doorways of life and we must choose
    what comes in and what goes out.  Freedom
    is our real abundance.
    
    
    
    ("Circles On The Water" Selected Poems of Marge Piercy, Alfred A.
    Knopf, NY 1982)
    

    
        LADY LAZARUS
    


    I have done it again.
    One year in every ten
    I manage it --
    
    A sort of walking miracle, my skin
    Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
    My right foot
    
    A paperweight,
    My face a featureless, fine
    Jew linen.
    
    Peel off the napkin
    O my enemy.
    Do I terrify? --
    
    The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
    The sour breath
    Will vanish in a day.
    
    Soon, soon my flesh
    The great cave ate will be
    At home on me
    
    And I a smiling woman.
    I am only thirty.
    And like a cat I have nine times to die.
    
    This is Number Three.
    What a trash 
    To annihilate each decade.
    
    What a million filaments.
    The peanut crunching crowd
    Shoves in to see
    
    Them unwrap me hand and foot --
    The big strip tease.
    Gentlemen, ladies,
    
    These are my hands,
    My knees.
    I may be skin and bone,
    
    Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
    The first time it happened I was ten.
    It was an accident.
    
    The second time I meant
    To last it out and not come back at all.
    I rocked shut
    
    As a seashell.
    They had to call and call
    And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
    
    Dying
    Is an art, like everything else.
    I do it exceptionally well.
    
    I do it so it feels like hell.
    I do it so it feels real.
    I guess you could say I've a call.
    
    It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
    It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
    It's the theatrical
    
    Comeback in broad day
    To the same place, the same face, the same brute
    Amused shut:
    
    "A miracle!"
    That knocks me out.
    There is a charge
    
    For the eying of my scars, there is a charge
    For the hearing of my heart --
    It really goes.
    
    And there is a charge, a very large charge,
    For a word or a touch
    Or a bit of blood
    
    Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
    So, so, Herr Doktor.
    So, Herr Enemy.
    
    I am your opus,
    I am your valuable,
    The pure gold baby
    
    That melts to a shriek.
    I turn and burn.
    Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
    
    Ash, ash --
    You poke and stir.
    Flesh, bone, there is nothing there --
    
    A cake of soap,
    A wedding ring,
    A gold filling.
    
    Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
    Beware,
    Beware.
    
    Out of the ash
    I rise with my read hair
    And I eat men like air.
    
    	-- Sylvia Plath
    

    Ah, nothing like a little Sylvia Plath for the holiday season!
    
    In a kindler gentler spirit, may I offer a poem about being a nerd, by
    Judith Baumel, who also wrote one of my favorite poems about the
    loathesomeness of visits to the country:
    
    
    
    	Led by the Hebrew School Rabbi
    
    
    Those good students, who only loved working
    through pages of exercises,
    but were too good to object to the philanthropy
    of physical recreation, took a bus
    to the Grand Concourse and another one down it,
    modelled after the Champs Elys�es in Paris France,
    to the aging YMHA by Yankee Stadium.
    
    We stumbled on the basketball court
    of that cavernous decrepit building
    flapping like ducks, but outran the Yeshiva boys
    whose tzitzis, even to us, were ridiculous,
    a sign of obvious distress and incompetence.
    
    In the pool, girls and boys segregated
    across the olympic length,
    we didn't know what to do.
    Nothing we could figure out.
    Confused.  Nothing we could read.
    In rubber caps we floated and ducked,
    white knots of feathers drifting in the musty stream.
    

    
re .60 -

>    Ah, nothing like a little Sylvia Plath for the holiday season!
    
Yes, I thought it was appropriate. Glad you liked it!


>    In a kindler gentler spirit,

Well you know, Plath tried being a "smiling woman," for a long time. It didn't
work though. 

D.

�Well you know, Plath tried being a "smiling woman," for a long time. It didn't
�work though. 
    
    Being married to Ted Hughes probably didn't help _that_ programme
    along...
    
    Continuing in the same vein (ouch), here's a little study of male and
    female pathologies by Carrie Bradley, of the great loony folk band,
    Ed's Redeeming Qualities.  Since she's a grad of UNH's creative writing
    program and since Ed's hangs out with poets all the time, I guess it
    can count as a poem, but it has the pertiest little eery tune to go
    along with it -- check it out on the band's "More Bad Things" LP/CD or
    "Ed's Day" EP.
    
    
    	The Boy I Work With
    
    The boy I work with told me about 
      the pigeon he killed in an outdoor bar.
    The pigeon landed on his brand-new beer
      so he throttled it and threw it down.
    
    The boy I work with told me about
      the rats in the storeroom at his last job.
    He waged a bloody genocide
      in revenge upon the rat which almost took him down.
    
    The boy I worked with told me he'd take care of me.
    Somehow I believed him.
    
    The boy I work with told me about
      the pigeons he fed Alka-Seltzer (TM).
    Their insides blew out
      and they dropped in a straight line into the Atlantic.
    
    The boy I worked with is the man I live with now
      and sometimes I don't sleep well at night.
    He always kills his demons.
      If he can kill his demons, he can kill anything.
    
    The man I live with tells me he'll take care of me.
    Somehow I believe him.
    

    
    Heck Dorian,
    It's years since I read "Lady L." - it was the first poem that ever
    really shook me up, and it still does.
    
    I used to live near where Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes lived - I used
    to sit on Primrose Hill and read her poetry and other's biographies
    of her - read the "Bell Jar" there too.....
    
    Thanks for the memory.
    A remarkable woman.
    
    'gail

    
the ired one cries for passion
in a world wrapped with black cellophane
she speaks of her sold soul, the tower,
nightmares, honor, transformation
and her only sanctuary is a blue room
where the window sometimes opens
and lost children encircle a mirror
that reflects immortality

the ired one cries for love
in a humanity wrapped with clear intolerance
she believes she's found something precious
in a stillwater corner, the feather,
spiderwatch, candlemas, moon goddess
she pours her soul into a bronzed vessel
and ships it across the barewaves
that inspect impurities

the ired one cries alone
among unknit men in knitted wares
she tries to capture sunlight in a jar
delights at the punctures providing air
and when the ired one remembers
an angel calls collect, will you accept
the charges of boxcar promises
that protect reverence

the ired one cries for peace
as missiles aim to destroy more than her heart
she mourns the terror of babies and women
and squints at the glare of reality
for the ired one is only ired
because she can't be crucified to right the wrongs
of the black cellophane world
she hates to love

- clb
  1/19/91
    

	excerpts from Renascence (for those of us who support the war but still
                                  feel the pain)


	All sin was of my sinning, all
	Atoning mine, and mine the gall
	Of all regret. Mine was the weight
	Of every brooded wrong, the hate
	That stood behind each envious thrust,
	Mine every greed, mine every lust.

	And all the while, for every grief,
	Each suffering, I craved relief
	With individual desire;
	Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
	About a thousand people crawl;
	Perished with each,-then mourned for all!

	    January 1991


	On Lexington Green
	the Minuteman stands near the space
	where the cr�che was.

    My body turned a cold back on me, at less than forty-three
    It started a war
    whatever for
    in the middle of the middle of my life
    it rose a black dividing mass
    in my ovaries, alas
    what was the point
    a childish attempt
    to eat me alive and wreck the count
    my spirit strives to hold the fort
    shaking a fist at each report
    this is a shame, days
    spending my life in bed on my back
    in the middle of my life.
    I can see roses in front of my hedge
    with doctors pinned on their petal ledges
    and nurses too and you and love and "alive" scribbled
    not far above
    
    Gilda Radner
    from "It's Always Something"

    The QPP
          by Alice Walker
    
    
    The quietly pacifist peaceful
    always die
    to make room for men
    who shout.  Who tell lies to
    children, and crush the corners
    off of old men's dreams.
    And now I find your name,
    scrawled large in someone's
    blood, on this survival
    list.
    
    
    (from Revolutionary Petunias by Alice Walker, Harcourt Brace
    Jovanovich, 1973)
    

		EUROPEAN SECURITY



	Mornings they fan out through the streets,
	middle-aged women with firm treads
	holding the fate of nations
	in their hands. They are not distracted
	as they head down the sidewalks,
	solid as tanks in their shapeless dresses,
	their market bags bulging.
	Nothing can deter them. When the F�hrer's army
	imposed a curfew on Paris
	they would hide in doorways until dawn
	to be the first on line for bread.
	When the Allies pounded Germany,
	they would step through the rubble, squeeze
	onto the roofs of trains to scour the countryside
	for potatoes, a gram of butter.
	In Poland, forty-three years after the War,
	they are still on maneuver, these frontliners,
	these foot soldiers of the world.
	At noon, all over Europe,
	they make the sun pause above the horizon
	as the onions and cabbages, the potatoes and leeks
	engulf stairways and corridors,
	as whole cities are enveloped in a pungent cloud of soup.

		-- Marguerite Bouvard, from her book Of Light and Silence, 1990

    from The Desert As Garden of Paradise
                          by Adrienne Rich
    
    
    Every drought-resistant plant has its own story
    each had to learn to live
    with less and less water, each would have loved
    
    to laze in long soft rains, in the quiet drip
    after the thunderstorm
    each could do without deprivation
    
    but where drought is the epic then there must be some
    who persist, not by species-betrayal
    but by changing themselves
    
    minutely, by a constant study
    of the price of continuity
    a steady bargain with the way things are
    
    (from Time's Power by Adrienne Rich, W.W. Norton & Co., 1989)
    

[I came across this yesterday - as Mr Bush and Mr Hussein both claim
    God for Their Side.]
    

    
    
Lamentation of the Spirit of the Universe

			by Carolyn Weathers

	All my sweeping work,
	too rich, too vast,
	too damn big
	for them.
	Men have built
	little boxes of theology.
	They have nailed
	ceilings on the boxes
	and glued sequins 
	on the tiny windows.
	They sit in the boxes
	with rulebooks.
	They read out loud
	what they have written:
	"God is wrath, god has gonads
	and favorites." They say,
	god says: "Hup, two, three, four,
	left foot, right foot."
	They stamp back and forth
	inside the tiny boxes.
	They bruise people's heads
	with their artful boots.
	They are looking for me
	under their rulebooks.
	They are mistaking me
	for someone else.

    
    from "My Story's On!  Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives"
    	 Common Differences Press  Berkeley, CA
    
    

	   In Distant Lands


	Leaders who can't face
	problems at home, love to start wars
	in distant lands.




	     Victory


	U.S. victory:
	recession, scandal, homeless, poor
	all forgotten.




	      Imperialism


	What we can't control
	in ourselves, we must control 
	in the dark Other.




	      Missile


	Now with pin-point aim,
	we project our shadow self
	on Saddam Hussein.

    
    
    		Love's Shattered Pieces
    
    
    
    		Love, so fragile,
    		shattered pieces glitter in my hand.
    		Tears, so useless,
    		fall unnoticed, swiftly absorbed by the sand.
    
    		Cries go unanswered,
    		lost in the deafening roar of the waves.
    		Lonely, so tired,
    		as always, endless nights become endless days.
    
    		Wind blowing harshly,
    		clawing madly at the frayed edges of the soul.
    		Silence, screaming wildly,
    		as thoughts rush by with nowhere to go.
    
    		Love's shattered pieces,
    		held tightly in hand, tear through to the bone.
    		Blood flowing freely,
    		dark stains on the sand as I stand here, alone.
    
    
    		HJA (c) 1982

	  FRIENDLY FIRE



	I wonder if
	a victim of

	friendly fire
	is any less

	dead -- his eyes
	so blank and

	a breeze riffling
	his matted hair --

	is it more
	like a dream?

	Perhaps when fire's
	friendly, the body

	stirs slightly in
	the flag-draped dark

	as if to rise
	and say, "Hold it!

	Who're ya firin' at?"
	before "Taps" sounds.

	And I think the woman
	whose hand touches

	the photo in 
	its polished frame

	and then covers
	her face, must know

	he can't really be
	gone -- so friendly

	do his boots look
	under his bed.


	     -- (c) 1991 Dorian Brooks Kottler

    On Stripping Bark from Myself
       (for Jane, who said trees die from it)
      
      by Alice Walker
    
    
    because women are expected to keep silent about
    their close escapes I will not keep silent
    and if I am destroyed (naked tree!) someone will
        please
    mark the spot
    where I fall and know I could not live
    silent in my own lies
    hearing their "how *nice* she is!"
    whose adoration of the retouched image
    I so despise.
    
    No.  I am finished with living
    for what my mother believes
    for what my brother and father defend
    for what my lover elevates
    for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes
    to embrace.
    
    I find my own 
    small person
    a standing self
    against the world
    an equality of wills
    I finally understand.
    
    Besides:
    
    My struggle was always against
    an inner darkness: I carry within myself
    the only known keys
    to my death - to unlock life, or close it shut
    forever.  A woman who loves wood grains, the color
          yellow
    and the sun, I am happy to fight
    all outside murderers
    as I see I must.
    
    
    
    (from Goodnight, Willie Lee, I'll See You In The Morning, Poems by
    Alice Walker, The Dial Press, NY, 1980)
    
    

Red Blood Moon
--------------

vivid red
vital force
red is for passion
for action
for faith
red is the color of the heart

I bleed in the east
where the yellow flicker comes
where the Earth is warm
where my love is open
like a red rose petal
our waters mingle
I spill my blood for love

I bleed in the south
where the red hawk comes
I warm the rain-soaked Earth
like a brooding hen
I incubate the Earth
the embryo potential
   I am alone
   I am naked
I bleed in the south for life

I bleed in the west
where the black crow comes
red berry juices
sweet ripe offering
red stained body
against the green summer grasses
I give my blood for war no more
I shed my blood in peace

I bleed in the north
where the white dove comes
where the Earth is cold
I surrender rites
I mark the Earth
and She remembers
I pour my blood
like holy wine
I nourish the Earth
who has nourished me
I bleed in the north
   in Thanksgiving

- Colleen Redman (intriguing last name in light of this poem)

          *********OH TO BE A DAFFODIL********

 	Oh to be a Daffodil on a sunny day
	in the breeze i would gently sway.

	Oh if a daffodil i could be
	would you come and pick me?

	Oh i wish i were a daffodil in full bloom
        in a vase in your living room.

	Oh to be a daffodil it would be nice
	i would grow again so you could pick me twice.

                     By Katrina. 10/2/91

	      SPRING



	From that muddy old
	rain-ditch, what celestial
	choir do I hear?

                                               
    
    
    
    				Realization
    
    
    			I woke up one day
    				And realized
    			I didn't love you any longer.
    				It was a time I thought
    			Could never come,
    				A feeling I could never lose,
    			Yet today I wonder
    				Why I saw so much
    			When there really wasn't,
    				Felt so deeply
    			Even when you didn't.
    				And where did never go
    			When I said I would 
    				Never stop loving you
    			Or when I said I could 
    				Never love another?
    			Is it just a word replaced
    				By something else?
    			And if so 
    				Make the other
    						"Hope".

    
    
    
    				On Second Thought
    
    
    			Last night's warm inspiration
    			write an erotic poem
    			So I sit here
    			cold early morning light
    			hard chair
    
    
    			Your body, familiar as my own
    			passes the window
    			working the garden
    			funky in sweaty
    			earth stained garb
    			old flop-brimmed hat
    
    
    			You are no help
    			conjure no visions
    			of flame-tongued nights
    			mad paroxysms of lust
    			or sutrian delights
    
    
    			Right now a second cup of coffee
    			a ripe and succulent peach
    			tempt me to leave this task
    			luring my senses with a pull
    			stronger than your proximity
    
    
    			On second thought
    			this is all that need be said
    			If you came in, touched,
    			took me to our bed
    			my breasts would swell
    			my nipples rise as they do now
    
    
    			The hell with peaches
    			there is sweeter juice
    			let someone else wrie poems
    			Come in
    			there's better planting to be done
    
    
                                                By
    						Maude Meehan
    						From
    						"Touching Fire-Erotic
    						Writings by Women"
                                                  

    From the "Annie Poems"
    by Anne Cameron
    
    "Without Prejudice" and it's continuation poem "Sea Fair Powell River"
    
    
    Without Prejudice
    -----------------
    
    It isn't easy to try to convince yourself you're sane
    when what everybody knows
    is what nobody will investigate
    Everybody knows there's an elementary school
    	principal
    who got himself into one of his students
    and got her pregnant. She was fourteen, everybody
    	knows that
    Or at least everybody says everybody knows
    Fourteen, still in elementary school
    and hustled by the principal.  She got pregnant.  Her
    	family
    was old-world, everybody knows that, and so ashamed
    they left town
    Everybody knows he's still here, still principal
    Everybody knows nothing was done
    Everybody talks about it over coffee and gingerbread,
    over tea and banana loaf, over beer in the pub, at craft
    	fairs
    and blackberry festivals, at bus stops and in coffee
    	shops
    Sooner or later, usually sooner, someone talks about
    	what everybody knows
    
    But if you write a letter to a school district official
    asking why it is everybody knows this
    but nothing has been done
    you'll get a letter back
    explaining the laws of libel and slander
    
    Everybody knows that what everybody knows
    is what nobody will investigate.  Which makes
    	everybody
    feel baffled, frustrated, and very fatalistic
    My darling knows.  Tells me it might even be a good
    	thing
    After all, he sure teaching the kids reality
    
    
    
    Sea Fair, Powell River
    ----------------------
    
    You don't get many chances to see heroism first hand
    It's not as if there were knights chasing dragons or
    crusaders fighting infidels or brave stands to be taken
    in defence of freedom, god, flag, motherhood, and 
    	blackberry pie
    All the mountains around here have been climbed,
    	clear-cut logged,
    eroded, wasted,raped, and desecrated.  There are no
    	Everests
    or Kilimanjaros here, no Alps to ski or anything like
    	that
    We live under a pall of mill scung, the rain more acid
    	every year
    and the biggest stand we've taken in years
    is to declare this a nuclear weapons free zone. And hope
    the idea spreads to include Washington and Lenningrad
    You don't get many chances to see heroism first hand
    
    So there we were, in line for food, and all round us
    are kids with balloons, hot dogs, corn on the cob
    kids with smiles, kids with greasy faces, kids laughing
    and over there the loggers sports are unwinding
    chain saws howling, sawdust flying
    some guy  is racing up a peeled pole, spurs digging
    arm straining to ring the bell,
    over here chokermen are racing to set the beads
    out on the water the dozerboats are warming up
    and in front of us
    Two women, two kids, and a man, waiting for food
    Two normal ordinary everyday-looking women
    Two boys in training to patriarchs
    And the smiling self-contented role model of
    uppermiddleclass pillar of the community
    socially acceptable respectability
    and suddenly
    my love, at the top of her voice, is going on about
    something, body rigid, and I don't have a clue
    not even the beginning of a clue
    what it is she's saying
    -Makes you wonder-she shouts-why anybody
    would DO a thing like that!  I mean, name of heaven, a
    grown man?  Messing around with a KID?  A person
    couldn't do a disgusting thing like that and be
    NORMAL, would do you think?-
    
    	the two women in front of me stiffen
    	the older one turns and glares fiercely
    	the kids walk off quickly
    	the balding blond in the rainbow teeshirt gets
    	  redder
    	  and redder and redder until you'd think his ears
    	  would explode
    
    
    -I understand-my beloved hollers-that the guys
    who fuck children have penises so small only a kid
    would be impressed.  No intelligent adult woman-she
    roars-would do anything but bust out laughing-
    
    Someone in the lineup behind us clears her throat
    	hesitantly
    Clears her throat again, then, in a voice nearly choked
    	silent by conditioning
    manages, "I heard that, too. About their dicks being so
    	small I mean"
    A man in the lineup laughs, his laugh is smothered by
    	an older woman
    who begins to explain loudly, how it was back on the 
    	farm
    in Saskatchewan, you took a tom cat and shoved him
    	head first
    into an old gumboot, until only his tail and his testicles
    	showed
    "Doesn't take much," she bellows to nobody in 
    	particular
    "You can use an old razor blade if that's all you've got"
    
    -The thing I REALLY  cannot understand-my
    darling screeches-is how any woman could possibly
    continue to live with any man when she knew he
    diddled little girls.  You'd think-she finishes-you'd
    think she'd have more self respect than to live with a
    pervert-
    
    
    You don't get many chances to see heroism first hand
    but when you do, you recognize it
    you know it for what it really is when five foot three
    stands up to six foot two and names what everyone
    	knows
    and nobody discusses
    
    Sometimes I look at her
    and all I can think is
    "more guts than a slaughterhouse"
    
    but I don't suppose
    she'll ever get a medal
    
    Did you know the word  "hero"
    was stolen from us?  It used to be
    "Hera," just like the goddess Hera
    "the holy one" "the Earth"
    "the mother of the gods" the ruler
    of the apple-orchard of immortality
    
    And so instead of giving her a medal
    I planted apple trees.  I prune them
    I fuss over them, I fertilize them
    and every spring there will be blossoms
    
    I mean you don't see Heraism first hand very often
    so when you do, you should give it some importance
    validate it
    
    Even small Heraisms
    are a big deal. Or ought to be 
    

    
    	   April Goddess


	Here She comes in Her
	spring robe -- tassels of chartreuse 
	on sugar maples.

    
D.

	Not only underground are the brains of men
	Eaten by maggots.
	Life in itself
	Is nothing,
	An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
	It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
	April
	Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

    There are many paths to the center
    and many names for the One who guards the paths.
    We persist in judging which is holier,
    as though it makes any difference in the end,
    if some choose prayer as the way, and I choose loving you.
    
    Lynn Haroutian (c)1991

    
    
                Mozart
    
    
    	   Not even Mozart
    	   can drown out this dirge I hear
           for silenced women.
    
    
    D.	
    

    Rosie
      by Nicole Lieberman
    
    
    She tosses bread to them
    and like the pigeons
    she doesn't know
    if Monday breaks with dawn
    or Saturday.
    She thinks she's sixty-two
    or maybe older.
    She knows for certain
    her brown hair turned gray.
    
    Her world is stacked
    inside a cart
    from the Red Apple.
    She wears a plastic bag
    and lost her comb.
    When people stare
    she holds her hand out, yelling:
    "You gonna give me change
    or take me home?"
    
    She found a watch and
    traded it for men's shoes.
    Too big, she stuffed them
    with the Times
    to make them fit.
    They make her shuffle
    and they give her blisters;
    at night she puts on bandages
    of spit.
    
    Sometimes she thinks of
    when she had pajamas -
    clean sheets -
    and pillows -
    and a bed.
    And when her husband left her
    she was glad:
    he beat her with his fists.
    One time she bled.
    
    Maybe she saw it in the movies -
    maybe she dreamt it -
    did she have a husband?
    Was he dead?
    She likes the guy who
    works the night-shift
    at the deli;
    he gives her ends
    from cold-cuts.  And stale bread.
    
    
    (from Sarah's Daughters Sing, A Sampler of Poems by Jewish Women, KTAV
    Publishing House, Inc., Hoboken, NJ)
    

    Subway Song
       by Lucy Cohen Schmeidler
    
    
    big black man hugging the subway pole
    sings to himself, not loud but audibly,
    parts of a song
    and then just humming -
    crazy or not, it makes no difference -
    melody from his soul
    that settles into my bones
    until I want to harmonize
    
    (but I, small white woman,
    keep my mouth closed
    and my eyes elsewhere)
    
    
    (from Sarah's Daughters Sing)
    

    from Arabesque:
    Five Poems for women without children
    
    First Position
       by Mary Mackey
    
    
    don't make so much
    noise dear
    the nurses say to the woman
    three days in labor
    white scum on her lips
    
    outside the streets are hot
    and flat and infinite
    and time is only marked
    by the dilation of pain
    
    you're acting like a little girl
    the doctor tells her
    you don't hurt
    hips like a cow
    you were born to bear
    
    his own stomach 
    is pegged across his thighs
    like a well-tanned skin
    he catches the little bloody
    head in his hands
    
    love this
    he tells her
    even the bones
    were made from your teeth
    
    (from Early Ripening, American Women's Poetry Now, Edited by Marge
    Piercy, Pandora Press)
    

			The Rose
			
    			by Erica Jong

			I gave you a rose
			last time we met.

			I told myself
			if it bloomed
			our love would bloom,
			& if it died --

			Oh I did not
			consider
			the possibility.

			It died.

			Though I cut 
			the stem
			on a slant
			as my mother
			taught me,
			though I dropped
			an aspirin
			in the water.

			It stands
			on your desk now --
			straight green stalk,
			blood red clot
			of bud
			drooping
			like a hanged man's
			head.

			Does this mean
			we are doomed?
			Does this mean
			all lovers
			are doomed?

			Oh my love --
			I have not read roses
			as amulets.

			Which doom 
			is worse?
			To love
			& lose?

			Or to lose
			love
			altogether
			& not care
			whether roses

			live or die?
    

    
    It was the night I spoke my mind
    Spoke my peace
    The edge of becoming heavy in my voice
    
    In the company 
    Of these gruff, gutsy, growing
    Soft, sensible, scared, sacred women
    
    Off beat, out of step
    Hackles rising in disbelief
    That I was heard
    An awkward tangle
    Among their smooth sculptures
    
    And there was music
    Revering, recovering
    Reaching, wrenching music
    
    Finding what I'd forgotten
    Aching to be remembered
    To be known
    
    Throat full, heart rasped raw
    By the ripped removal
    Of the veneer I'd applied
    With such infinite patience
    
    Tonight
    I alight from myself
    The ride is over
    I am home
    
    
    jb - 5/11/91
    

	So that's what was scribbled.  Beautiful, Jody.

	>*<

    
    
    		THE GODDESS AS CATALPA TREE
    
    
    	       She's in a June mood,
    	       in her frock of frilly white
    	       sexual flowers.
    
    

    
in the flashing
turquoise and yellow neon
where black and white
porcelain eyes peer with
renewed interest at these
two chattanooga tracks
and fugitive ice escapes
its cylindrical glass prison
a suicide on vinyl
I melted too
tumbling, stumbling, crumbling
and sliding to the floor
to be (or not to be)
swept in a dustbin with
flintstruck damp matches
a straw poised and bent like a
highway between floodland and the
concrete jungle, to a mouth
whose words caress, ease, and I
gargle on my marvel that I
sit with you with waves crashing
below our feet against rocks that beg
to be dampened by the bold, un-shy sea

sing it, chant it, explode in
its faith face, dream of serenity
beneath hidden caves with ancient 
hieroglyphics I drew for you
and I came for you
and I don't ask how
and we wrote it together
and the bottom of the dream reflects
eleven secret passageways and all of them
say hey, hey love, dominion

- clb
  6/20/91
    

    
    This is the poem I wrote specifically for the fifth, and read aloud at
    the party on Friday...
    
    ---------------------------------------------------------------
    
	I sing praise to the faces
	That belong to the hearts
	That drive the blood
	That runs hot and cold
	That fuels the fingers
	Of the thousand hands
	That create womannotes
	
	I sing praise to the spirits
	That keep the faith
	That spin the tales
	That span the days
	That weave the web
	Of courage, of life
	That wraps me in its gossamer thrall
	
	I sing praise to the thoughts
	That lead to the words
	That change my life
	That drive me to excel
	That keep me spellbound
	Wondering what I will see
	When next I open my eyes.......
	

    
		jb - 6/14/91

		NOTA MAGGIE



	Hail to Maggie, our Creatrix!
	Who a full five years ago
	Took a break from math and matrix
	For a purpose we all know:

	Looking round at every forum
	For discussion here at DEC,
	Though she didn't quite deplore 'em,
	She did wonder, "What the heck!

	"Under patriarchy's tissues
	Of onesidedness, there blaze
	Something known as 'women's issues'
	That we women want to raise.

	"Let's discuss 'em like they mattered!
	Let's go round the room in votes!
	Not in person -- we're too scattered --
	But online, in WOMANNOTES!"

	Thus was born this space for women,
	And our Maggie was its Mom;	
	Yes, she did it -- and, by jimin-
	Y, she did it with aplomb!

	(She'd created, we should note, a
	Prior version -- just as brave -- 
	When she was at Minnesota
	Casting forms in Plato's cave.)

	The name "WOMANNOTES" -- she coined it
	For all women, not just feminists;
	Men as well as women joined it
	(Even a few male hegemonists!).

	Topics covered the full range, from
	Hysterectomies to hems;
	And if some notes sounded strange (from
	Some perspectives), some were gems!

	It was hard to keep the lid on
	Certain subjects; one might "flame"
	And then find one's note "set hidden"
	In the noters' Hall of Shame.

	Mods applied the rules with fairness;
	Every single note they checked,
	Raising women's new awareness,
	Helping women to connect.

	WOMANNOTES just grew and grew, and
	Became special -- many boasted it;
	Became ValDif -- a real coup; and
	Through it all, our Maggie hosted it.

	Symbolizing women's manner
	Of rejoining broken strands
	Flies the bright WOMANNOTES banner,
	Ringed with women touching hands.

	To conclude this story shaggy,
	Though she left -- alas, alack -- 
	WOMANNOTES lives on! Thanks, Maggie;
	Happy Fifth, and Welcome Back!

    
	    (read aloud at the party on June 21)
    

    An exquisite use of feminine rhyme!
    
    (: >,)
    
    Youahs vehwy twuly,
    Notah Benny

    
	        IF


	If you are a woman
	you know the meaning
	of water cupped

	in the hands. 
	If you are a woman
	you have felt the world

	pass through you, clean
	as a shadow. You
	may also remember

	your body -- how it once
	was yours, before
	hostile creeds

	were erected on it.
	Still you keep
	the wisdom of the changing

	moon, since you are
	a woman. Tell them
	so, the Fathers

	who now once again
	would kill that in you.
	March. Fight. Bleed.


	  -- copyright 1991 Dorian Brooks

    from Solstice Poem by Margaret Atwood
    
    ii
    Beyond the white hill which maroons us,
    out of sight of the white
    eyes of the pond, geography
    
    is crumbling, the nation
    splits like an iceberg, factions
    shouting Good riddance from the floes
    as they all melt south,
    
    with politics the usual
    rats' breakfast.
    
    All politicians are amateurs:
    wars bloom in their heads like flowers
    on wallpaper, pins strut on their maps.
    Power is wine with lunch
    and the right pinstripes.
    
    There are no amateur soldiers.
    The soldiers grease their holsters,
    strap on everything
    they need to strap, gobble their dinners.
    They travel quickly and light.
    
    The fighting will be local,
    they know, and lethal.
    Their eyes flick from target
    to target: window, belly, child.
    The goal is not to get killed.
    
    iii
    As for the women, who did not
    want to be involved, they are involved.
    
    It's that blood on the snow
    which turns out to be not
    some bludgeoned or machine-gunned
    animal's, but your own
    that does it.
    
    Each has a knitting needle
    stuck in her abdomen, a red pincushion
    heart complete with pins,
    a numbed body
    with one more entrance than the world finds safe,
    and not much money.
    
    Each fears her children sprout
    from the killed children of others.
    Each is right.
    
    Each has a father.
    Each has a mad mother
    and a necklace of lightblue tears.
    Each has a mirror
    which when asked replies Not you.
    
    iv
    My daughter crackles paper, blows
    on the tree to make it live, festoons
    herself with silver.
    So far she has no use
    for gifts.
    
         What can I give her,
    what armor, invincible
    sword or magic trick, when that year comes?
    
    How can I teach her
    some way of being human
    that won't destroy her?
    
    I would like to tell her, Love
    is enough, I would like to say,
    Find shelter in another skin.
    
    I would like to say, Dance
    and be happy.  Instead I will say
    in my crone's voice, Be
    ruthless when you have to, tell
    the truth when you can,
    when you can see it.
    
    Iron talismans, and ugly, but
    more loyal than mirrors.
    
    
    (from Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New,
    1976-1986, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1987)
     

    from Five Poems For Grandmothers
                         by Margaret Atwood
    
    
    iii
    How little I know
    about you finally:
    
    The time you stood
    in the nineteenth century
    on Yonge Street, a thousand
    miles from home, with a brown purse
    and a man stole it.
    
    Six children, five who lived.
    She never said anything
    about those births and the one death;
    her mouth closed on a pain
    that could neither be told nor ignored.
    
    She used to have such a sense of fun.
    Now girls, she would say
    when we would tease her.
    Her anger though, why
    that would curl your hair,
    though she never swore.
    The worst thing she could say was:
    Don't be foolish.
    
    At eighty she had two teeth pulled out
    and walked the four miles home
    in the noon sun, placing her feet
    in her own hunched shadow.
    
    The bibbed print aprons, the shock
    of the red lace dress, the pin
    I found at six in your second drawer,
    made of white beads, the shape of a star.
    What did we ever talk about
    but food, health and the weather?
    
    Sons branch out, but
    one woman leads to another.
    Finally I know you
    through your daughters,
    my mother, her sisters,
    and through myself:
    
    Is this you, this edgy joke
    I make, are these your long fingers,
    your hair of an untidy bird,
    is this your outraged
    eye, this grip
    that will not give up?
    
    v
    Goodbye, mother
    of my mother, old bone
    tunnel through which I came.
    
    You are sinking down into
    your own veins, fingers
    folding back into the hand,
    
    day by day a slow retreat
    behind the disk of your face
    which is hard and netted like an ancient plate.
    
    You will flicker in these words
    and in the words of others
    for a while and then go out.
    
    Even if I send them,
    you will never get these letters.
    Even if I see you again,
    
    I will never see you again.
    
    
               (from Selected Poems II, Houghton Mifflin Co)
    

    (written about two years ago for/about Garrick, who is now my fiance.)
    
    
    
    
    
    Today,
    I am the sea.
    
    Every part of me is restless,
    Alive.
    I move and cling,
    As the sea with the shore.
    
    The sun rises gently,
    Gradually, tickling the ripples,
    Making it impatient for its warmth.
    He, too, makes me impatient.
    His
    Heat
    Rises,
    But, at a gentle pace, and he,
    Teases, with his cavalier attitude,
    Like an easy breeze, which
    Strokes the sea, then
    Leaves.
    
    Now, the wind heightens,
    Gains strength, force,
    Vitality.
    The sea responds,
    Its movements becoming
    Faster,
    Reaching farther,
    Its waves becoming larger,
    More audible, more
    Powerful, and more
    Beautiful
    
    Mouths
    Come down upon the water,
    Searching for food deep
    Within.
    
    His mouth comes upon me. He
    Searches
    Within
    Me.
    Like the sea which has what birds need,
    I have what
    He
    Needs.
    
    The wind passes.
    I cannot take any more.
    The sea has been tossed about
    Enough.
    But the wind did not bring clouds;
    The sun will remain unhidden today.
    I feel
    Sunny,
    Bright, and
    Euphoric.
    But calm.
                                                    
    The sea is at last
    Subdued.
    
    
    
    
    
    Alice T.

		 Tokens of What She Is



	The golden lady seven feet tall dies in the mind.
	I hear bells and then make out the silvery-gray
	backs of sheep grazing in the moonlight.
	Stone under feet and beauty under tall pines.
	All of it held sadly in my heart with awe.
	Neither day nor night can I find Her.
	What I find in pieces on plowed land and sea wall
	of hand, breast and skirt does not come alive again.
	Comes not out of the distance, is only the product
	of my longing. A breeze billows the doorway
	curtain into the dark lower room of my house.
	I continue on female with the small wind
	in the almond leaves. Some would call it tenderness,
	but part of me calls it pale. Wants the trees to be
	leg-warmers to Her giant standing. Joy reigning.
	She giving, knowing we are tokens of what She is.
	What comes to flower and bears. Lovers, poets, fools
	like singers for that world which will not come to me.
	The lack which I am. Which gives me speech.
	My voice as clues to Her absent grace.

		-- Linda Gregg, from *Sacraments of Desire,* 1991
	

    
    I HAVE A QUESTION...I HAVE A POEM THAT I THINK IS ACTUALLY VERY GOOD,
    AND I HAVE BEEN TOLD IT IS GOOD BY OTHERS AS WELL.  I WAS WONDERING HOW
    TO GO ABOUT GETTING IT PUBLISHED OR AT LEAST COPYRIGHTED(sp?).  IF
    ANYONE KNOWS, LET ME KNOW.  THANK YOU MUCHLY!!!
    
    				--RAQUEL--
    

    It's copyrighted if you wrote it.  In generally, things aren't
    *registered* copy-righted unless the copy-right is infringed upon and
    you chose to take legal action, then you register it.  In the meantime,
    just put a copy-right notice on it and that's it, it's yours.
    
    No clue about publishing
    
    D!

    
    Raquel,  where do you want to have it published?  Some magazines
    publish poems.  You could look in a book titled "Writer's Market" --
    I'm sure your local library would have a copy.
    
    CQ

    Let's see, it was right here in my desk drawer (shuffle, shuffle)
    ahah:
    
    Oh, this may not apply to you, it's under "How to secure
    stutory copyright in a book" [on the back of a "Certificate
    Registration of a Claim to Copyright in a published book
    manufactured in the U. S. of A] Oh, well, it says:
    
    Promptly after publication, mail to the Register of Copyrights, Library
    of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559, two copies of the work as
    publisheed with notice an application on Form A, properly completed and
    notarized and a fee of $6 [maybe more by now]
    
    ...
    in a box farther down the page:
    
    NOTE: It is the act of publication with notice that actually secures
    copyright protection.  If copies are published without the required
    notice, the right to secure copyright is lost, and cannot be restored.

Here's the most current US copyright info - the addres in .108 is
correct, and I won't repeat it.  THis stuff was established by a new
copyright law enacted in 1978.  I have published literary works; I got
a copy of the US guidelines before doing so.

The US fee is currently $10.00.

When you mail two copies to the US Register of Copyrights, you must mail
the whole book or magazine your work appears in, not just the pages in
question.

Copyright endures for 75 years after the death of the author.

Copyright protection inheres in the work from the moment of creation.
To ensure statutory protection, the required copyright notice must be
attached iff* the work is published.  Publishing includes distributing
copies to anyone for any "public" purpose.  (For a play, publication
would be performing publicly or selling copies.)  It is not necessary to
register the copyright upon publication; should cause for litigation
arise, then you must register, and you must be able to prove that your
right to the work predates the right of defendant.  Such proof can be
created by mailing yourself a REGISTERED letter containing the work
and keeping that letter UNOPENED.  Of course, if you register the
copyright before anyone plagiarizes it, there is no need for the letter.
There is a great deal of pleasure to be had from getting that official
government envelope with *your* copyright certificate in it!

The following is an unusual but absolutely unbreakable notice of
copyright; it even protects against transmission by laser beam or
storage on a CD.  The first sentence fragment is the internationally
mandatory wording.  The remainder is my own.

	All rights reserved under Pan-American and International
	Copyright Conventions.  No portion of this work may be
 	reproduced or represented in any form, including but not
	limited to optical, mechanical, electronic, or magnetic
	copying, storage, or transmission, without the prior written
	consent of the copyright holder.

-d

* iff == "if and only if"

    dinosaurs are always out of date, just struggling to avoid extinction. 
    :-)

    
	Triumph
		by Lea Deschenes
    
    
	You and me, sister,
	we are going to beat this thing,
	this water-tight conspiracy
	to keep us down and humble,
	begging for scraps of love and acceptance.
    
	We will claw our way 
	through this mired bullshit
	that stays the voice in anger
	and the hand to action.
    
	We will love beyond this razor borderline
	of what we knew 
	to be empty and barren:
	all-consuming obsession 
	with those who can't repay a favor
	or return a call,
	and rise in sunlight and poetry.
    
	We will breathe whole air
	that does not stifle and constrict
	or bind with rough jute ties,
	or slice like lemon in a cut
	and consort with the dawn muses,
	flowing and green in springtime.
	
    	Together, we will stand upright
	comforted by undemanding support,
	no longer journeyman carpenters
	of broken souls.
    
	They will scoff
	as we leave our nametags on the table
	and search for better fare,
	filling and complete,
	renouncing our assigned places
	and condemed condition.

	You and me, sister,
	we can go anywhere 
	that fancy takes us--
	shout our brazen sonnets
	filled with wealth and healing
	to the world that creeps
	just beyond this one-way glass
	that only mocks our own reflections,
	finding imaginary faults
	where truth and power lie.
    
	We will be witches, you and I,
	to conjure and create.
	We shall tint our eyes with
	belladonna visions
	of hope and future,
	wield this newfound strength
	to grasp, velvet-pawed
	and fertile each moment as it appears.
    
	When they reek their jealousy
	like old sewage from their backwash minds
	the sting will miss its aim,
	pointed at empty shells
	where we once stood
	in anger and anguish.
    
	Smooth as ivory,
	their teeth will taste our flesh 
	and chip,
	finding no purchase to incise.
    
	Strolling, we shall tend each vine
	to fruit and prosper,
	having survived the rigors
	of withering winter
	and emerged immortal mistresses
	of time, whose waiting
	is now over.

	You and me, sister,
	we will find our freedom
	in ourselves,
	to cherish each honey-laden victory
	of unity.
    
	With solidarity we stride
	steps too big for marked paths,
	endless as the universe.
    
	Stars will land in our eyes
	and shine our loads to ether,
	until we soar, stretch
	our sight beyond this small, dank room
	of experience,
	and learn to take as we have given,
	and give all to today
	overflowing with our bounty,
	loving without sorrow,
	pleasing without bearing pain.
    
	We shall pulverize this past
	until it is but dust beneath our feet,
	shaking our sandals clean
	at the threshold
	of our triumph.

    
        

    That was beautiful, Jody!  Thanks for sharing it.
    
    -Janice
    

    To be forbidden direct action. The Callahan Tunnel
    to Logan airport feels like inappropriate longing
    we are each afflicted with. From there
    you can go anywhere on the ground, leaving behind
    Boston Harbor, Chelsea, Brookline and the dull
    gray Boston days passed among the enraged & ambitious
    whom you love. To go west... Not to... Denial's body
    in the ruins of Tremont Street is unable to listen
    anymore to any subject outside theology, comedy
    and true experience -- but tries to remain dignified.
    
    
    . . . .
    
    
    There's no politics in weather,
    or in the starched and laundered
    
    blossoms haunting May.
    Overall there's a smoky haze
    
    as if a woman hung
    some steaming out to dry,
    
    and biking to work, later,
    beside the listless river,
    
    she really forgets infirmity, war,
    affliction, and sees the laws
    
    of wood and petal, enacted
    without the spirited friction
    
    I know alot about.
    
    
      -- both from "In The Spirit There Are No Accidents"

    
            When the person you love
            Doesn't love you
            In your heart you know it
            And the pain is deep
            But you love them anyway
            When the somebody you care about
            Can't be the one for you
            You adjust, you go on
            But silently you scream
            When the one your soul cries out for
            Never sees you as anything but a friend
            Your soul will cry the tears of hurt
            And the sobs of anguish
            And yet you can't stop loving them
            But when the person you love
            Doesn't love you
            You will not cease to exist
            Your heart will not stop beating
            In time your pain will lighten
            Your screams will become whimpers
            And your soul will stop crying
            One day you will find the person you love
            Who will love you back
            And there will be no tears, no screams
            And your soul will be full of joy
            And you will think back
            With a funny, sad little smile
            To the one who couldn't love you
            And you will love them still.

                             Jennifer Lust
    

	The True Encounter

	"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
	At every sheep it spied,
	And roused the countryside.

	"Wolf! Wolf!" - and up would start
	Good neighboors, bringing spade
	And pitchfork to my aid.

	At length my cry was known:
	Therein lay my release.
	I met the wolf alone
	And was devoured in peace.

    
	       FOREST WOMAN

	(after the movie "Sorceress")



	Elda walks to the forest
	humming, a basket
	under her arm.
	She's the village healer; 

	she knows the trees and herbs
	and how to gather berries
	and bark for medicines
	when the season's right. 

	If a mother's child
	is sick, she carries him 
	with Elda to the grove 
	at midnight so the forest

	spirits can cure him
	or take him peacefully.
	One morning a wolf 
	limps near; even as a hunter

	draws his bow, Elda
	sets down her basket
	and stoops to pull a thorn
	from the wolf's paw. This

	is Elda's whole life. So
	when the Inquisitor
	who's come to excise heresy
	singles Elda out 

	for suspicion, it's only
	because he must, so wrong
	are the ways of wisdom
	in a woman. When he locks her

	in a cell and shouts,
	"Burn the grove! Burn it all!"
	it's only because he sees
	the evil in himself

	in her dark eyes. Thus
	is God's will done
	by both His servants: one
	prone before the altar

	stammering Latin, one
	who can't write her own name,
	fluent in the language
	of life, tree, star.
	  
		-- (c) 1990 Dorian Brooks

    Seeds
    Scattered in the wind
      find fertile ground
        in unexpected places
        and in unexpected ways.
    
    Words
    Once scattered
      are received
        in places that would seem
        beyond their reach.
    
    It takes a faithful wind
      believing in the worthiness
          of ground
        to scatter seeds
    And likewise faithful people 
        to scatter words.
    
    [Have] the faith
      to set words free
        and help them grow. 
    
    --Anonymous

    
	    PICTURE BRIDE



	She was a year younger
	than I,
	twenty-three when she left Korea.
	Did she simply close
	the door of her father's house
	and walk away? And
	was it a long way
	through the tailor shops of Pusan
	to the wharf where the boat
	waited to take her to an island
	whose name she had
	only recently learned,
	on whose shore
	a man waited,
	turning her photograph
	to the light when the lanterns
	in the camp outside
	Waialua Sugar Mill were lit
	and the inside of his room
	grew luminous
	from the wings of moths
	migrating out of the cane stalks?
	What things did my grandmother
	take with her? And when
	she arrived to look
	into the face of the stranger
	who was her husband,
	thirteen years older than she, 
	did she politely untie
	the silk bow of her jacket,
	her tent-shaped dress
	filling with the dry wind
	that blew from the surrounding fields
	where the men were burning the cane?

		-- Cathy Song, from her book Picture Bride

    
    Adrienne Rich is reading her poems tonight (October 15th) at 8:00 in 
    Cambridge at the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, corner of Harvard St.
    and Prescott St. near Harvard Square. Admission is $5. Marge Piercy is
    introducing her.
     

     
    i certainly would reccommend anyone going to this reading. i, very
    fortunately, stumbled across her reading last sunday at new words while
    i was visiting.  it is _very_ impressive listening to adrienne read her
    own work.
    
    ~r

	A bulldozer slams
	through the forest, just missing
	a white violet.

    re .121, I love it.