วีดีโอ

Thanks kindly for these insights. I also adore this poem. I recently learned that this poem was directly inspired by a traditional story of a Native American Elder in the Pacific Northwest. It feels important to honour this origin.

Extraordinary poem of truth

"Love's austere and lonely offices" is a line of a lifetime.

Well done 👍

Role on

She reads it soo beautifully

🙏🏼🇨🇦🌹♥️🌸🌺🌻🌼♥️🙏🏼

It actually means Young Daniel. Donal is the Irish for Daniel while Donald is the Scots Gaelic for Daniel.

Nicely done Paige. I wonder if you have taken up writing. it is a good way to be alone.

Can you please do a poetry appreciation on ode to the walking women

Clearly enunciated but far too angry in its reading. This is a lament, an anguished cry ,not an opportunity to admonish.

Interesting. 09:00

A truly beautiful reading of the poem. Thank you.

I enjoyed he reading. Did you get a chance to watch the video of the poem?

I love this poem & others by Ms. Clifton. Nice job giving insight about the poem.

Interesting! Two days ago I saw Real Phonies And Genuine Fakes on the shelf at the Louisville, Kentucky, library. Never heard of the poet before, but took the book home to read. It's great reading, I like the visions.

"I remember. My color's green. I'm spring." Ross Gay

Amazing, authentic, transparent sharing... AND I loved the poem, too! Thank You! Love the "appreciating the sweet things" focus. And... "that paying attention can be a part of bringing Life and Beauty into your world." :)

Stumbled into this again. Bloody sublime.

Cool.

𝕡𝕣𝕠𝕞𝕠𝕤𝕞

Brief Bio: I’m Al Fogel born in 1945 and at an early age began writing poems. In 1962 I was introduced to a neighbor who just returned from Avatar Meher Baba’s “ East west” gathering and handed me a book titled “The Everything and the Nothing” that included brief but powerful passages by Meher Baba that touched me deeply and i became a “ Baba Lover” In 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese man who helped me perfect my Senryu and Haibun. I am now considered one of the nations leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun. Here are some examples of each of my specialties. They are all from the contemporary American format. Senryu ( senryu is the humorous human side of haiku. Usually 3 lines but can be 2 or 1 line so long as it is 17 syllables or less). It is considered the humorous human side of haiku. For example, the following two of mine are horrific and heartbreaking dealing with the Holocaust): cattle cars - between the slats human eyes ~ Stutthof - the stench of burnt smoke from the chimneys (And here are some more examples): thrift store purchase inside the leather jacket a tarnished half-heart ~ dentist chair the hygienist removes my Bluetooth ~ Internet argument all his words in CAPS hers in EMOTICONS ~ personal trainer I grunt sweat strain and HE gets paid ~ after the divorce he spends more time at the dollar store ~ damsel in distress Clarke Kent still searching for a phone booth ~ cauliflower ears once a contender now boxing vegetables ~ under the influence - moonshine ~ Audubon sale all variety of seeds. . . early birds welcome ~ Buddhist fortune cookie the unfolded paper reads “ better luck next birth!” ~ sudden downpour. . . adults run for shelter ~ sidewalk cafe birds and people tweeting ~ Crowded crosswalk the “seeing eye” dog leads the way ~ deserted train depot a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~~ return to my youth lit by the tracks of Lionel trains. ~ Tanka: (Tanka is comprised of 5 lines of 31 syllables or less. Usually there are far less syllables) Here are 3 examples: returning home from a Jackson pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and morph into art ~ crowded bus a young lady offers me her seat it seems like only yesterday I was offering mine ~ deserted train depot a conductor shouting “ All Aboard!” now a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~ Haibun: ( the haibun consists of a prose section with one or more haiku that must in some way relate to the prose. All Haibun have titles Here are some examples: The Mathematics of Retribution “Karma is unfathomable,” I inform her It’s late and our conversation turns heavy “ Seems simple to me, “my girlfriend responds. “If I murder you, then it’s reasonable that I will be murdered in this or another life to balance the ledger.” “ Not necessarily so” I’m quick to rejoin. “What if you murdered me in this life because I murdered you in a prior life karmic debts and dues are now equalized.” “But what if I get caught and I go to jail for life. Where’s the equal payback in that?” “As I said, karma is unfathomable.” We continue discussing reincarnation and then add the possibilities of “group karma” to the mix Finally, at about midnight, we fall asleep Stutthof - the stench of burnt hair from the chimneys ~~ Mama There were days when I pretended to be too sick to go to school - - just for mamas loving embrace -her arms the heat of home Even with the onset of dementia, her cheerfulness was so contagious it was a joy being around her despite the illness. She made everyone laugh with her spontaneous unpredictable behavior. nursing home bumper wheelchair her favorite pastime Once a week I would whisk her away from the assisted-living facility and we would spend several hours together -grabbing a meal or frequenting some of her favorite second-hand stores where she loved to shop and donate clothes. When we drove to her favorite thrift in November, her dementia worsened. thrift store the dress mama donated she wants to buy On a cold December morn mama passed. The funeral was simple. There was a light drizzle as the family gathered at the gravesite. One by one, with eyes full of rain, we said our last goodbyes. autumn twilight - oh mama tuck me under hug me one more time ~ ‘Round Midnight It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way. My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough. But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night. Harlem The A-train replaced by the Bullet ~ Atlantic City New Jersey I had just graduated from high school I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in... first “french kiss” under the boardwalk “over the moon!” ~~ All love, Al

A quality small press journal that you might consider submitting to is “Rattle” Each issue features a section on prize winning and runner-up poems. I would like to share the following runner-up poem that when I read it, I fell madly in love with it. It was written by Diana Goetsch and published in Rattle’s Issue #32 in 2009. The name of the poem is “Writer In Residence, Central State” After reading it, it has become one of my all-time favorite poems! I’ve read and re-read it numerous times. All my poet friends agree. The journal is still going strong and accepting submissions. If you care to enter a contest, the entry fee is $20 but the prize money is worth taking a chance. I believe in the thousands for the winning poem and hundreds for runner-up. But email the editor for precise details and good luck if someone decides to submit. Here’s the Poem: ~~ WRITER IN RESIDENCE, CENTRAL STATE I’m writing this from nowhere. Oklahoma if you care. It’s not south, not west, not really Midwest. Think of a hairless Chihuahua on the shoulder of Texas, make an X, I’m in the middle, in an apartment above the dumpsters on a parking lot across from a football stadium. The shriveled leaves of what passes for autumn scuttle across the blacktop. Prairie Striders stand under cars saying Hey fuck you to French pluperfects in the pines. I’ve renamed the birds. They don’t seem to mind. In Oklahoma when you say a word like pluperfect, somehow you’re certain no one in the state has used it that day. Sometimes the parking lot feels like a lake, a lake with light towers and cars on top of it. Sometimes I see an Indian burial ground under there. You don’t think of asphalt as earth, but if they paved the entire prairie-which seems to be the plan-it would still curve with the horizon and shine in the sun. And no matter where you are, if you let the world quiet down you’ll start to hear the most terrible things about yourself. But then, like a teenager, it’ll tire of cursing and deliver you into the silence of graves. You’ll look out on the world and see yourself looking out. Now I know when monks retreat to the charnel ground and stay there long enough, the demons tire of shouting. No battles, no spells: you wait for them to cry themselves to sleep. If everyone were healed and well and all neuroses gone, would there be anything left to write about? Maybe just weather and death. I’d like to die on a mountain in winter in New Hampshire, the one the old man climbed, having decided his natural time was done. How alive he must have been during that short series of lasts-last step, last look around, bend of the waist, head on the ground, the soundless closing of his lids. How easy to be in love with the earth, breathing the crystalline air as he shivered and yawned and let the night take him home. Back in New York City there’s a book of Freud high on a shelf that presided over far too much. The past, it kept insisting, the past. There was also a mouse, who came out whenever I was still and quiet for long enough. She’d sniff my foot, go to the floor-length mirror, then drag her long tail into the kitchen. At first I set a trap. Then I knew her to be the secret life of my apartment, witness to everything without comment, her visit my reward for keeping still, for praying in a closet as Jesus advised. Don’t worry, said a woman last winter. I can see you’re worried. She had the wrinkled eyes of an old Cherokee, and spoke of past lives without a trace of contrivance. The silence here on weekends is so total it holds me. Even when the stadium is full, I don’t hear the people, just the PA telling who tackled who-who in Oklahoma was born and raised and fed and coached to deliver a game-saving hit. I don’t know where I will be or what I will do next year, but five miles underground in the womb of the earth there is no money, no lack of money, no decisions about dinner or weekends, friends or enemies, no stacks of unanswered mail. I’m trying to live there, so I can live here. -from Rattle #32, Winter 2009 2009 Poetry Prize Honorable Mention __________ Diana Goetsch: “I’m basically a love poet. I’ve started to understand that after all these years. No matter the subject, I think my mission has something to do with redemption. And I just go for the hardest thing to redeem.”

I hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites. It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self. ~~ Suibhne Gheilt 1 He has haunted me now for over a year that madman Suibhne Gheilt who in the middle of a battle looked up and saw something that made him leap up and fly over swords and trees - a poet gifted above all others - 11 How could a proud loud mouth who yelled KILL KILL KILL as he plowed done the enemy - heads rolling off of his sword - be so lifted up ( or fly up as those below saw it - wings beating) be so suddenly gifted with poetry and nest so high in Ireland’s tall trees? Is there a point where all paths cross? And why am I so drawn to him that all my questions seem shot in his direction? “And they ran into the woods and threw their lances and shot their arrows up through the branches” What parallels could I ever hope to find - my refusal to fight ( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)? my leaving my country behind? my poetry? “and my wife wept on the path below. . . Oh memory is sweet but sweeter is the sorrel in the pool in the path below” I fly down every night to eat 111 Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women. But the point of it lies hidden in a pool of milk in a pile of shit for you to see when a milkmaid smiles Sweeney like the rest of us flies down and when she pours the milk into the hole her heel made in the cowdung Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it. So before you have anything to do with women remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland lying on his back in the middle of that path in the moonlight. 1V And on my way home this morning ( my wife waiting) my shadow racing up the path ahead of me I saw something ( a black stone?) thrown at the back of its head ducked and spun around so fast I almost fell down - it was a bird flying up into a tree V No good could come out of this war out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame - the villagers streaming like tears towards the forest cover his helicopter’s blades blow the leaves off and and the flame towards. . . as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president ( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s sitting on the bubble having a bubble movement) and first lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of their own bubbles, crawls in between - “ Mah daddy has so many troubles turning the world into a bubble and sick of crossfire - the cries of the women and children flying over his head - he stumbled down to the riverbank and found, the wreckage twisted around the tree behind, his skull. . . Noises, there are noises, noises that can of themselves drive a man mad -NOISES! But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling and thought until all that was left was something the size of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone in the middle of an infinite space. . . -Howard Dull ~~ ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level. All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

Enjoyed very much your poems and unique cadence and word choices that had an emotional impact and kept me engaged throughout. I, too, am a poet ( I write mostly Japanese format poems i.e. haiku , senryu, tanka/kyoka, haibun etc. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a Tanka and a haiku dedicated to Matshuo Bashō’s frog with added insightful commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my haiku among her 10 favorite haiku of all time! What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem with Jane Reichhold’s insightful commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us that we are ripples and our lives ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ Now the tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear paint on my face and morph into art. ~~

Brief Bio: I’m Al Fogel born in 1945 and at an early age began writing poems. In 1962 I was introduced to a neighbor who just returned from Avatar Meher Baba’s “ East west” gathering and handed me a book titled “The Everything and the Nothing” that included brief but powerful passages by Meher Baba that touched me deeply and i became a “ Baba Lover” In 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese man who helped me perfect my Senryu and Haibun. I am now considered one of the nations leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun. Here are some examples of each of my specialties. They are all from the contemporary American format. Senryu ( senryu is the humorous human side of haiku. Usually 3 lines but can be 2 or 1 line so long as it is 17 syllables or less). It is considered the humorous human side of haiku. For example, the following two of mine are horrific and heartbreaking dealing with the Holocaust): cattle cars - between the slats human eyes ~ Stutthof - the stench of burnt smoke from the chimneys (And here are some more examples): thrift store purchase inside the leather jacket a tarnished half-heart ~ dentist chair the hygienist removes my Bluetooth ~ Internet argument all his words in CAPS hers in EMOTICONS ~ personal trainer I grunt sweat strain and HE gets paid ~ after the divorce he spends more time at the dollar store ~ damsel in distress Clarke Kent still searching for a phone booth ~ cauliflower ears once a contender now boxing vegetables ~ under the influence - moonshine ~ Audubon sale all variety of seeds. . . early birds welcome ~ Buddhist fortune cookie the unfolded paper reads “ better luck next birth!” ~ sudden downpour. . . adults run for shelter ~ sidewalk cafe birds and people tweeting ~ Crowded crosswalk the “seeing eye” dog leads the way ~ deserted train depot a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~~ return to my youth lit by the tracks of Lionel trains. ~ Tanka: (Tanka is comprised of 5 lines of 31 syllables or less. Usually there are far less syllables) Here are 3 examples: returning home from a Jackson pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and morph into art ~ crowded bus a young lady offers me her seat it seems like only yesterday I was offering mine ~ deserted train depot a conductor shouting “ All Aboard!” now a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~ Haibun: ( the haibun consists of a prose section with one or more haiku that must in some way relate to the prose. All Haibun have titles Here are some examples: The Mathematics of Retribution “Karma is unfathomable,” I inform her It’s late and our conversation turns heavy “ Seems simple to me, “my girlfriend responds. “If I murder you, then it’s reasonable that I will be murdered in this or another life to balance the ledger.” “ Not necessarily so” I’m quick to rejoin. “What if you murdered me in this life because I murdered you in a prior life karmic debts and dues are now equalized.” “But what if I get caught and I go to jail for life. Where’s the equal payback in that?” “As I said, karma is unfathomable.” We continue discussing reincarnation and then add the possibilities of “group karma” to the mix Finally, at about midnight, we fall asleep Stutthof - the stench of burnt hair from the chimneys ~~ Mama There were days when I pretended to be too sick to go to school - - just for mamas loving embrace -her arms the heat of home Even with the onset of dementia, her cheerfulness was so contagious it was a joy being around her despite the illness. She made everyone laugh with her spontaneous unpredictable behavior. nursing home bumper wheelchair her favorite pastime Once a week I would whisk her away from the assisted-living facility and we would spend several hours together -grabbing a meal or frequenting some of her favorite second-hand stores where she loved to shop and donate clothes. When we drove to her favorite thrift in November, her dementia worsened. thrift store the dress mama donated she wants to buy On a cold December morn mama passed. The funeral was simple. There was a light drizzle as the family gathered at the gravesite. One by one, with eyes full of rain, we said our last goodbyes. autumn twilight - oh mama tuck me under hug me one more time ~ ‘Round Midnight It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way. My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough. But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night. Harlem The A-train replaced by the Bullet ~ Atlantic City New Jersey I had just graduated from high school I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in... first “french kiss” under the boardwalk “over the moon!” ~~ All love, Al

A quality small press journal that you might consider submitting to is “Rattle” Each issue features a section on prize winning and runner-up poems. I would like to share the following runner-up poem that when I read it, I fell madly in love with it. It was written by Diana Goetsch and published in Rattle’s Issue #32 in 2009. The name of the poem is “Writer In Residence, Central State” After reading it, it has become one of my all-time favorite poems! I’ve read and re-read it numerous times. All my poet friends agree. The journal is still going strong and accepting submissions. If you care to enter a contest, the entry fee is $20 but the prize money is worth taking a chance. I believe in the thousands for the winning poem and hundreds for runner-up. But email the editor for precise details and good luck if someone decides to submit. Here’s the Poem: ~~ WRITER IN RESIDENCE, CENTRAL STATE I’m writing this from nowhere. Oklahoma if you care. It’s not south, not west, not really Midwest. Think of a hairless Chihuahua on the shoulder of Texas, make an X, I’m in the middle, in an apartment above the dumpsters on a parking lot across from a football stadium. The shriveled leaves of what passes for autumn scuttle across the blacktop. Prairie Striders stand under cars saying Hey fuck you to French pluperfects in the pines. I’ve renamed the birds. They don’t seem to mind. In Oklahoma when you say a word like pluperfect, somehow you’re certain no one in the state has used it that day. Sometimes the parking lot feels like a lake, a lake with light towers and cars on top of it. Sometimes I see an Indian burial ground under there. You don’t think of asphalt as earth, but if they paved the entire prairie-which seems to be the plan-it would still curve with the horizon and shine in the sun. And no matter where you are, if you let the world quiet down you’ll start to hear the most terrible things about yourself. But then, like a teenager, it’ll tire of cursing and deliver you into the silence of graves. You’ll look out on the world and see yourself looking out. Now I know when monks retreat to the charnel ground and stay there long enough, the demons tire of shouting. No battles, no spells: you wait for them to cry themselves to sleep. If everyone were healed and well and all neuroses gone, would there be anything left to write about? Maybe just weather and death. I’d like to die on a mountain in winter in New Hampshire, the one the old man climbed, having decided his natural time was done. How alive he must have been during that short series of lasts-last step, last look around, bend of the waist, head on the ground, the soundless closing of his lids. How easy to be in love with the earth, breathing the crystalline air as he shivered and yawned and let the night take him home. Back in New York City there’s a book of Freud high on a shelf that presided over far too much. The past, it kept insisting, the past. There was also a mouse, who came out whenever I was still and quiet for long enough. She’d sniff my foot, go to the floor-length mirror, then drag her long tail into the kitchen. At first I set a trap. Then I knew her to be the secret life of my apartment, witness to everything without comment, her visit my reward for keeping still, for praying in a closet as Jesus advised. Don’t worry, said a woman last winter. I can see you’re worried. She had the wrinkled eyes of an old Cherokee, and spoke of past lives without a trace of contrivance. The silence here on weekends is so total it holds me. Even when the stadium is full, I don’t hear the people, just the PA telling who tackled who-who in Oklahoma was born and raised and fed and coached to deliver a game-saving hit. I don’t know where I will be or what I will do next year, but five miles underground in the womb of the earth there is no money, no lack of money, no decisions about dinner or weekends, friends or enemies, no stacks of unanswered mail. I’m trying to live there, so I can live here. -from Rattle #32, Winter 2009 2009 Poetry Prize Honorable Mention __________ Diana Goetsch: “I’m basically a love poet. I’ve started to understand that after all these years. No matter the subject, I think my mission has something to do with redemption. And I just go for the hardest thing to redeem.”

Brief Bio: I’m Al Fogel born in 1945 and at an early age began writing poems. In 1962 I was introduced to a neighbor who just returned from Avatar Meher Baba’s “ East west” gathering and handed me a book titled “The Everything and the Nothing” that included brief but powerful passages by Meher Baba that touched me deeply and i became a “ Baba Lover” In 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese man who helped me perfect my Senryu and Haibun. I am now considered one of the nations leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun. Here are some examples of each of my specialties. They are all from the contemporary American format. Senryu ( senryu is the humorous human side of haiku. Usually 3 lines but can be 2 or 1 line so long as it is 17 syllables or less). It is considered the humorous human side of haiku. For example, the following two of mine are horrific and heartbreaking dealing with the Holocaust): cattle cars - between the slats human eyes ~ Stutthof - the stench of burnt smoke from the chimneys (And here are some more examples): thrift store purchase inside the leather jacket a tarnished half-heart ~ dentist chair the hygienist removes my Bluetooth ~ Internet argument all his words in CAPS hers in EMOTICONS ~ personal trainer I grunt sweat strain and HE gets paid ~ after the divorce he spends more time at the dollar store ~ damsel in distress Clarke Kent still searching for a phone booth ~ cauliflower ears once a contender now boxing vegetables ~ under the influence - moonshine ~ Audubon sale all variety of seeds. . . early birds welcome ~ Buddhist fortune cookie the unfolded paper reads “ better luck next birth!” ~ sudden downpour. . . adults run for shelter ~ sidewalk cafe birds and people tweeting ~ Crowded crosswalk the “seeing eye” dog leads the way ~ deserted train depot a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~~ return to my youth lit by the tracks of Lionel trains. ~ Tanka: (Tanka is comprised of 5 lines of 31 syllables or less. Usually there are far less syllables) Here are 3 examples: returning home from a Jackson pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and morph into art ~ crowded bus a young lady offers me her seat it seems like only yesterday I was offering mine ~ deserted train depot a conductor shouting “ All Aboard!” now a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~ Haibun: ( the haibun consists of a prose section with one or more haiku that must in some way relate to the prose. All Haibun have titles Here are some examples: The Mathematics of Retribution “Karma is unfathomable,” I inform her It’s late and our conversation turns heavy “ Seems simple to me, “my girlfriend responds. “If I murder you, then it’s reasonable that I will be murdered in this or another life to balance the ledger.” “ Not necessarily so” I’m quick to rejoin. “What if you murdered me in this life because I murdered you in a prior life karmic debts and dues are now equalized.” “But what if I get caught and I go to jail for life. Where’s the equal payback in that?” “As I said, karma is unfathomable.” We continue discussing reincarnation and then add the possibilities of “group karma” to the mix Finally, at about midnight, we fall asleep Stutthof - the stench of burnt hair from the chimneys ~~ Mama There were days when I pretended to be too sick to go to school - - just for mamas loving embrace -her arms the heat of home Even with the onset of dementia, her cheerfulness was so contagious it was a joy being around her despite the illness. She made everyone laugh with her spontaneous unpredictable behavior. nursing home bumper wheelchair her favorite pastime Once a week I would whisk her away from the assisted-living facility and we would spend several hours together -grabbing a meal or frequenting some of her favorite second-hand stores where she loved to shop and donate clothes. When we drove to her favorite thrift in November, her dementia worsened. thrift store the dress mama donated she wants to buy On a cold December morn mama passed. The funeral was simple. There was a light drizzle as the family gathered at the gravesite. One by one, with eyes full of rain, we said our last goodbyes. autumn twilight - oh mama tuck me under hug me one more time ~ ‘Round Midnight It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way. My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough. But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night. Harlem The A-train replaced by the Bullet ~ Atlantic City New Jersey I had just graduated from high school I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in... first “french kiss” under the boardwalk “over the moon!” ~~ All love, Al

A quality small press journal that you might consider submitting to is “Rattle” Each issue features a section on prize winning and runner-up poems. I would like to share the following runner-up poem that when I read it, I fell madly in love with it. It was written by Diana Goetsch and published in Rattle’s Issue #32 in 2009. The name of the poem is “Writer In Residence, Central State” After reading it, it has become one of my all-time favorite poems! I’ve read and re-read it numerous times. All my poet friends agree. The journal is still going strong and accepting submissions. If you care to enter a contest, the entry fee is $20 but the prize money is worth taking a chance. I believe in the thousands for the winning poem and hundreds for runner-up. But email the editor for precise details and good luck if someone decides to submit. Here’s the Poem: ~~ WRITER IN RESIDENCE, CENTRAL STATE I’m writing this from nowhere. Oklahoma if you care. It’s not south, not west, not really Midwest. Think of a hairless Chihuahua on the shoulder of Texas, make an X, I’m in the middle, in an apartment above the dumpsters on a parking lot across from a football stadium. The shriveled leaves of what passes for autumn scuttle across the blacktop. Prairie Striders stand under cars saying Hey fuck you to French pluperfects in the pines. I’ve renamed the birds. They don’t seem to mind. In Oklahoma when you say a word like pluperfect, somehow you’re certain no one in the state has used it that day. Sometimes the parking lot feels like a lake, a lake with light towers and cars on top of it. Sometimes I see an Indian burial ground under there. You don’t think of asphalt as earth, but if they paved the entire prairie-which seems to be the plan-it would still curve with the horizon and shine in the sun. And no matter where you are, if you let the world quiet down you’ll start to hear the most terrible things about yourself. But then, like a teenager, it’ll tire of cursing and deliver you into the silence of graves. You’ll look out on the world and see yourself looking out. Now I know when monks retreat to the charnel ground and stay there long enough, the demons tire of shouting. No battles, no spells: you wait for them to cry themselves to sleep. If everyone were healed and well and all neuroses gone, would there be anything left to write about? Maybe just weather and death. I’d like to die on a mountain in winter in New Hampshire, the one the old man climbed, having decided his natural time was done. How alive he must have been during that short series of lasts-last step, last look around, bend of the waist, head on the ground, the soundless closing of his lids. How easy to be in love with the earth, breathing the crystalline air as he shivered and yawned and let the night take him home. Back in New York City there’s a book of Freud high on a shelf that presided over far too much. The past, it kept insisting, the past. There was also a mouse, who came out whenever I was still and quiet for long enough. She’d sniff my foot, go to the floor-length mirror, then drag her long tail into the kitchen. At first I set a trap. Then I knew her to be the secret life of my apartment, witness to everything without comment, her visit my reward for keeping still, for praying in a closet as Jesus advised. Don’t worry, said a woman last winter. I can see you’re worried. She had the wrinkled eyes of an old Cherokee, and spoke of past lives without a trace of contrivance. The silence here on weekends is so total it holds me. Even when the stadium is full, I don’t hear the people, just the PA telling who tackled who-who in Oklahoma was born and raised and fed and coached to deliver a game-saving hit. I don’t know where I will be or what I will do next year, but five miles underground in the womb of the earth there is no money, no lack of money, no decisions about dinner or weekends, friends or enemies, no stacks of unanswered mail. I’m trying to live there, so I can live here. -from Rattle #32, Winter 2009 2009 Poetry Prize Honorable Mention __________ Diana Goetsch: “I’m basically a love poet. I’ve started to understand that after all these years. No matter the subject, I think my mission has something to do with redemption. And I just go for the hardest thing to redeem.”

I hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites. It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self. ~~ Suibhne Gheilt 1 He has haunted me now for over a year that madman Suibhne Gheilt who in the middle of a battle looked up and saw something that made him leap up and fly over swords and trees - a poet gifted above all others - 11 How could a proud loud mouth who yelled KILL KILL KILL as he plowed done the enemy - heads rolling off of his sword - be so lifted up ( or fly up as those below saw it - wings beating) be so suddenly gifted with poetry and nest so high in Ireland’s tall trees? Is there a point where all paths cross? And why am I so drawn to him that all my questions seem shot in his direction? “And they ran into the woods and threw their lances and shot their arrows up through the branches” What parallels could I ever hope to find - my refusal to fight ( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)? my leaving my country behind? my poetry? “and my wife wept on the path below. . . Oh memory is sweet but sweeter is the sorrel in the pool in the path below” I fly down every night to eat 111 Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women. But the point of it lies hidden in a pool of milk in a pile of shit for you to see when a milkmaid smiles Sweeney like the rest of us flies down and when she pours the milk into the hole her heel made in the cowdung Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it. So before you have anything to do with women remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland lying on his back in the middle of that path in the moonlight. 1V And on my way home this morning ( my wife waiting) my shadow racing up the path ahead of me I saw something ( a black stone?) thrown at the back of its head ducked and spun around so fast I almost fell down - it was a bird flying up into a tree V No good could come out of this war out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame - the villagers streaming like tears towards the forest cover his helicopter’s blades blow the leaves off and and the flame towards. . . as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president ( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s sitting on the bubble having a bubble movement) and first lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of their own bubbles, crawls in between - “ Mah daddy has so many troubles turning the world into a bubble and sick of crossfire - the cries of the women and children flying over his head - he stumbled down to the riverbank and found, the wreckage twisted around the tree behind, his skull. . . Noises, there are noises, noises that can of themselves drive a man mad -NOISES! But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling and thought until all that was left was something the size of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone in the middle of an infinite space. . . -Howard Dull ~~ ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level. All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

Enjoyed very much your poems and unique cadence andcword choices that had an emotional impact and kept me engaged throughout. I, too, am a poet ( I write mostly Japanese format poems i.e. haiku , senryu, tanka/kyoka, haibun etc. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a Tanka and a haiku dedicated to Matshuo Bashō’s frog with added insightful commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my haiku among her 10 favorite haiku of all time! What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem with Jane Reichhold’s insightful commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us that we are ripples and our lives ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ Now the tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear paint on my face and morph into art. ~~

Brief Bio: I’m Al Fogel born in 1945 and at an early age began writing poems. In 1962 I was introduced to a neighbor who just returned from Avatar Meher Baba’s “ East west” gathering and handed me a book titled “The Everything and the Nothing” that included brief but powerful passages by Meher Baba that touched me deeply and i became a “ Baba Lover” In 2010 while on Jane Reichhold’s AHA website workshopping poems I befriended a Chinese man who helped me perfect my Senryu and Haibun. I am now considered one of the nations leading authorities on Tanka , Senryu, and Haibun. Here are some examples of each of my specialties. They are all from the contemporary American format. Senryu ( senryu is the humorous human side of haiku. Usually 3 lines but can be 2 or 1 line so long as it is 17 syllables or less). It is considered the humorous human side of haiku. For example, the following two of mine are horrific and heartbreaking dealing with the Holocaust): cattle cars - between the slats human eyes ~ Stutthof - the stench of burnt smoke from the chimneys (And here are some more examples): thrift store purchase inside the leather jacket a tarnished half-heart ~ dentist chair the hygienist removes my Bluetooth ~ Internet argument all his words in CAPS hers in EMOTICONS ~ personal trainer I grunt sweat strain and HE gets paid ~ after the divorce he spends more time at the dollar store ~ damsel in distress Clarke Kent still searching for a phone booth ~ cauliflower ears once a contender now boxing vegetables ~ under the influence - moonshine ~ Audubon sale all variety of seeds. . . early birds welcome ~ Buddhist fortune cookie the unfolded paper reads “ better luck next birth!” ~ sudden downpour. . . adults run for shelter ~ sidewalk cafe birds and people tweeting ~ Crowded crosswalk the “seeing eye” dog leads the way ~ deserted train depot a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~~ return to my youth lit by the tracks of Lionel trains. ~ Tanka: (Tanka is comprised of 5 lines of 31 syllables or less. Usually there are far less syllables) Here are 3 examples: returning home from a Jackson pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and morph into art ~ crowded bus a young lady offers me her seat it seems like only yesterday I was offering mine ~ deserted train depot a conductor shouting “ All Aboard!” now a long line of tracks leading nowhere ~ Haibun: ( the haibun consists of a prose section with one or more haiku that must in some way relate to the prose. All Haibun have titles Here are some examples: The Mathematics of Retribution “Karma is unfathomable,” I inform her It’s late and our conversation turns heavy “ Seems simple to me, “my girlfriend responds. “If I murder you, then it’s reasonable that I will be murdered in this or another life to balance the ledger.” “ Not necessarily so” I’m quick to rejoin. “What if you murdered me in this life because I murdered you in a prior life karmic debts and dues are now equalized.” “But what if I get caught and I go to jail for life. Where’s the equal payback in that?” “As I said, karma is unfathomable.” We continue discussing reincarnation and then add the possibilities of “group karma” to the mix Finally, at about midnight, we fall asleep Stutthof - the stench of burnt hair from the chimneys ~~ Mama There were days when I pretended to be too sick to go to school - - just for mamas loving embrace -her arms the heat of home Even with the onset of dementia, her cheerfulness was so contagious it was a joy being around her despite the illness. She made everyone laugh with her spontaneous unpredictable behavior. nursing home bumper wheelchair her favorite pastime Once a week I would whisk her away from the assisted-living facility and we would spend several hours together -grabbing a meal or frequenting some of her favorite second-hand stores where she loved to shop and donate clothes. When we drove to her favorite thrift in November, her dementia worsened. thrift store the dress mama donated she wants to buy On a cold December morn mama passed. The funeral was simple. There was a light drizzle as the family gathered at the gravesite. One by one, with eyes full of rain, we said our last goodbyes. autumn twilight - oh mama tuck me under hug me one more time ~ ‘Round Midnight It was a huge ballroom on the top floor of a building on Broadway --an important midtown crossroads in the heart of the Great White Way. My uncle still talks with reverence about how -in his heyday -he would travel by rail to the corner of Lenox and walk inside to the beat of jungle music. Who knew what to expect? One night you might be listening with rapt attention to Theloneous Monk and Dizzy Gillespie the godfathers of bebop in their signature beret caps, or the Nicholas Brothers flashing their wild acrobatic spins and splits, or enchanted by the sweet taste of Brown Sugar -with Bojangles out front. And when the Bird was in flight, even the moon was not high enough. But in 1940 the ballroom closed its doors to make way for a commercial housing development and another kind of night. Harlem The A-train replaced by the Bullet ~ Atlantic City New Jersey I had just graduated from high school I remember stopping for saltwater taffy -as evening journeyed slowly into night. Nearing curfew, we sat on a protruded sandy enclave--holding hands, looking out at the ocean, not saying much. In the distance the lights from an ocean liner flickered as the night kept coming on in... first “french kiss” under the boardwalk “over the moon!” ~~ All love, Al

I hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites. It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self. ~~ Suibhne Gheilt 1 He has haunted me now for over a year that madman Suibhne Gheilt who in the middle of a battle looked up and saw something that made him leap up and fly over swords and trees - a poet gifted above all others - 11 How could a proud loud mouth who yelled KILL KILL KILL as he plowed done the enemy - heads rolling off of his sword - be so lifted up ( or fly up as those below saw it - wings beating) be so suddenly gifted with poetry and nest so high in Ireland’s tall trees? Is there a point where all paths cross? And why am I so drawn to him that all my questions seem shot in his direction? “And they ran into the woods and threw their lances and shot their arrows up through the branches” What parallels could I ever hope to find - my refusal to fight ( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)? my leaving my country behind? my poetry? “and my wife wept on the path below. . . Oh memory is sweet but sweeter is the sorrel in the pool in the path below” I fly down every night to eat 111 Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women. But the point of it lies hidden in a pool of milk in a pile of shit for you to see when a milkmaid smiles Sweeney like the rest of us flies down and when she pours the milk into the hole her heel made in the cowdung Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it. So before you have anything to do with women remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland lying on his back in the middle of that path in the moonlight. 1V And on my way home this morning ( my wife waiting) my shadow racing up the path ahead of me I saw something ( a black stone?) thrown at the back of its head ducked and spun around so fast I almost fell down - it was a bird flying up into a tree V No good could come out of this war out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame - the villagers streaming like tears towards the forest cover his helicopter’s blades blow the leaves off and and the flame towards. . . as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president ( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s sitting on the bubble having a bubble movement) and first lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of their own bubbles, crawls in between - “ Mah daddy has so many troubles turning the world into a bubble and sick of crossfire - the cries of the women and children flying over his head - he stumbled down to the riverbank and found, the wreckage twisted around the tree behind, his skull. . . Noises, there are noises, noises that can of themselves drive a man mad -NOISES! But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling and thought until all that was left was something the size of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone in the middle of an infinite space. . . -Howard Dull ~~ ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level. All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

I hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites. It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self. ~~ Suibhne Gheilt 1 He has haunted me now for over a year that madman Suibhne Gheilt who in the middle of a battle looked up and saw something that made him leap up and fly over swords and trees - a poet gifted above all others - 11 How could a proud loud mouth who yelled KILL KILL KILL as he plowed done the enemy - heads rolling off of his sword - be so lifted up ( or fly up as those below saw it - wings beating) be so suddenly gifted with poetry and nest so high in Ireland’s tall trees? Is there a point where all paths cross? And why am I so drawn to him that all my questions seem shot in his direction? “And they ran into the woods and threw their lances and shot their arrows up through the branches” What parallels could I ever hope to find - my refusal to fight ( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)? my leaving my country behind? my poetry? “and my wife wept on the path below. . . Oh memory is sweet but sweeter is the sorrel in the pool in the path below” I fly down every night to eat 111 Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women. But the point of it lies hidden in a pool of milk in a pile of shit for you to see when a milkmaid smiles Sweeney like the rest of us flies down and when she pours the milk into the hole her heel made in the cowdung Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it. So before you have anything to do with women remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland lying on his back in the middle of that path in the moonlight. 1V And on my way home this morning ( my wife waiting) my shadow racing up the path ahead of me I saw something ( a black stone?) thrown at the back of its head ducked and spun around so fast I almost fell down - it was a bird flying up into a tree V No good could come out of this war out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame - the villagers streaming like tears towards the forest cover his helicopter’s blades blow the leaves off and and the flame towards. . . as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president ( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s sitting on the bubble having a bubble movement) and first lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of their own bubbles, crawls in between - “ Mah daddy has so many troubles turning the world into a bubble and sick of crossfire - the cries of the women and children flying over his head - he stumbled down to the riverbank and found, the wreckage twisted around the tree behind, his skull. . . Noises, there are noises, noises that can of themselves drive a man mad -NOISES! But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling and thought until all that was left was something the size of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone in the middle of an infinite space. . . -Howard Dull ~~ ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level. All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

Enjoyed very much your poems and unique word choices that had an emotional impact and kept me engaged throughout. I, too, am a poet ( I write mostly Japanese format poems i.e. haiku , senryu, tanka/kyoka, haibun etc. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a Tanka and a haiku dedicated to Matshuo Bashō’s frog with added insightful commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my haiku among her 10 favorite haiku of all time! What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem with Jane Reichhold’s insightful commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us that we are ripples and our lives ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ Now the tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear paint on my face and morph into art. ~~

Tina, wonderful, heart-felt... reflections-connections to your life and your reading the same. And you told about the poem itself before you read it. Please consider not doing that.

Meg Day thank you for posting this. Right there just what you said is a poem, spoken feeling word from you soul. Peace

Wonderful.

Wanda why aren't you alive?

Last line

this is very good, very informative, and very cool!

This is a very beautiful and important post. Thank you for sharing your story as it relates to the poem. Your song is as heartfelt and deep as the poem.

What a poem to read and compare your personal poems. That is a standard. That is art. Great reading.

Love this! Thank you for sharing!

Dude, I love spades.

How amazingly you read and spoke of this poem! How important that poem is to me, and to you -- and how it was at the beginning and laid down the depth of our friendship!