Returning to beginnings to start anew.  Here is the mix, the tantarella, the chilled strong brew.  The land of Oak sits calm while mammals dart and scurry, dig and fly, fling flesh and soil through time toward the great gamble.  We gambol when we can, as we do, and in the stew a sleek frisson floats to head – the apting and anxiety of new.  Break the clouds, clods, rake the clew, for if you follow fancy it may ravel well for you.  And if they eyes are fertile, if the scent is true, we might be come a sight untouched, unskewed.  I wait my flight.

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ANNOUNCE  ::  If you’re in New York, don’t miss the release party for my new chapbook just out from Exot Books on Wednesday, October 2 at the fab Cornelia Street Cafe.  I’ll read all six poems from this mini-book, which also includes reproductions of the six pieces of calligraphic art by SF poet/artist/musician Bill Mercer, to which the poems were written in response.  Also reading will be Dorothea Lasky, Lonely Christopher, Jane Ormerod, R. Nemo Hill, and John Marcus Powell.  I couldn’t be more excited, and just hope that I don’t pee myself on stage like I did last time.  Okay, maybe not exactly like that.  See the Events page for more details.

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A walk by the sea takes all the eeeeeeeee out of need.

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ANNOUNCE  ::  I’ve just spent a couple weeks visiting my folks in South Jersey, with a little sidetrip to PA and now a few days in New York, and I’m taking off on Thursday, October 3 for a much anticipated wander across northern Europe, so I’ll be unphoneable from then till about the 26th or so, and gladly so.  Flying into Heathrow, then heading first for a weekend in the village of Sway in the New Forest by the central south coast of the U.K.  Then a week in London, a couple days in Amsterdam, and five days each in Berlin and Prague.  Far too brief on all counts, I’m sure, but I plan to make it an excellent stroll.  I’ll be checking out poetry, art, and performance venues throughout, and whatever else my feet fall into, taking jobs when I get them (all hail the internet), and generally breathing air and looking at trees and buildings.  You can expect a thorough travelog in this space next month, with deets of all the beauty and terrain, dark and light.

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A far cry from gulls, the intricacies of human or supposedly human endeavors – or quite close?  Can a screech in the ear sum the worlds of art and politics, romance and deception, cantilevers and the whip?  Of course!  Because a screech is not simple, but a billion years of evolution packed into a phoneme.  And how do we show a billion years evolved?  Hairdryers.  Piles of trash.  Overpop and under-ed.  I spent the day trying to connect with another country through points of light and intuition.  And whereas it felt like evolution, it also felt like drive.  Can we separate?  Duh.  All the tones in a gull’s cry sound at once, a message both singular and multiple in the woven strain.  And not a message at all, but a stone tossed by the tide, grass whipping in breeze, a scree.

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ANNOUNCE / REFLECT  ::  Attended the opening of a very cool and unusual art exhibit in mid-Sept:  that’s Temescal InSitu, a series of outdoor poetry installations throughout the Temescal neighborhood in North Oakland.  This project was primarily conceived and initiated by Sara Biel, Temescal resident and writer, with no small amount of work.  I have to admit that I had an in to this project early on, when Sara called me early in 2012 to bat the idea around.  Basically, she wanted to fill the neighborhood with outdoor poetry that would please and surprise passers-by.  I made a few suggestions, including the name, and offered to help and take part; unfortunately the project didn’t get off the ground until this year, when I was unable to participate.  But let me tell you, it turned out GRAND, with fifteen plus installations all over the neighborhood.  There was an opening on September 14 that met at the Temescal Library, and split into a couple of walking tours to cover about half the pieces each.  With over fifteen poems and sculptures by all kinds of folks, skilled, renowned, and new to the media, from ages 6 to 70+, the diversity of the show is remarkable, and the neighborhood is beautiful to begin with.  So if yer in the area, definitely check this out.  The pieces will be up until the end of October, but DON’T WAIT.  Find a pleasant mid-autumn day for a stroll, and find yourself enormously pleased.  You can find out all about it on their website by clicking here.

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Such clear air today could see the coast of Delaware across the Bay, 17 miles eye-level sea-level straight through open air.  Thought it was an island at first, an impossible island, walking the Cape May promenade toward a fantasy sea.  But true it was, even with trees and buildings rising from the horizon, unlikely, immediate, righteous.

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REFLECT  ::  Was thrilled to perform at a rockin reading on September 30 at the Parkside Lounge in NYC’s East Village.  Hosted by George Wallace of great weather for MEDIA, the event featured myself and local poet Lori Desrosiers, and a crew of ricocheting open readers.  At the top of the awesome meter were Wallace himself, who can emcee like no other, along with NY poet and chanteuse Puma Perl, who told a gripping and improbable love story, and Philly poet Joe Roarty, who kicked the evening off by ripping himself apart.  In attendance, my sis and parents, who had an evening they’ll likely not soon forget, and a fab coagulation of stellar NY poets.  The series runs every Sunday from 4-6 at the Parkside, so if you’re in town, don’t think twice, just go check it out.

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Days fly filled with thunder.  Geese overhead and a mantis on the wall, and all the while this animal toils at the many things, thinking the things are fire.  Are they fire?  Words in the air and deer in the road.  Sun glinting off sea surface, blinding a mind full of clouds.  Or full of point, on purpose, peakward.  Several instances of not seeing, in flashes, bright and black, each a glimpse of the other side, the pale, the retinal shade.  And what there seen?  Days flying like thunder, because days are just a boom in atmosphere, minute crests in a waving sheet.  Un-du-lar.  Of a flag.  And when the twilight comes, are things less aflame, or is the darkness full and burning?  Perhaps fullest.  As we dart from shade to shade, meager matadors, we welcome all the light, but only insofar as it can lighten us.  Beyond that, it is but reflected pain impeding the sweep of arm, and should upon a pedestal be flung so it can do no further harm.

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LOOKING AHEAD  ::  Coming up in November:  a release party for the two collections of poetry by Joie Cook that I recently edited for Zeitgeist Press.  We should have a release date soon, hopefully in the first week of November, so check back here for updates and details.  PLUS the Fall 2013 great weather for MEDIA West Coast tour, which will scour the Pacific Coast from LA to Seattle with adamant words and truthtelling.  No one will be safe, so you might as well stop by one of the readings (see my Events page for the schedule) and have your DNA lovingly altered.

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A prelude of sea and sand, of salt and sky, of granules and microscopic droplets, of the past struggling to enter the day.  Or falling into it.  A verge of grass between meaning and experience, standing barefoot in the verge, in the chill dew.  The sun rises, burns, and sets in a breathless rush, each breath an opening door, a chest full of next.  We stand on soil, or a semblance thereof, survey the area, take the current air, watch the day wake.  Creatures scurry and stroll, tangle and writhe in the mute machinations of drive; somewhere an odd anthem plays, essaying to bind us to place.  We shake it off, and let the buildings speak, the streets and weeds debate, the history of land oversing the regime and receive it as a minor sixth refrain.  The spree awaits, and clamors us to tear the veil we’ve stubbornly remade.  Let’s walk into the purescape of the fray, and caper in the limitless melee.  And have a day.

Sincerely,
Richard