The Kitchen ran this photo of plastic frogs today.

The singers were placed in the market as shoppers and merchants. This is what happened when the music started to play

Some new work Medusa published Wednesday, January 20, 2010

FOR JO JO

At night
when the
when the
paintings
are quiet

I come
I come
I come out
to dance
in front
of them

bent body
bent in the
in the dark
in the paintings
lights lights
lights lights
go on lights
go on and off
as cars pass
pass in the night
I come I come
out to dance when
the paintings are quiet

I am the pattern
I am the pattern
I am the pattern
turning in the dance
bent in the dance
the night is full
of me the night
is full of the
painting the paintings
look out at the
pattern dancing
dancing dancing
dancing patterns

I come out
I come out
out in the night
to dance in front
of the paintings.

Robin Williamson doing what he does best. A lovely song.

Some new work posted by Medusa's Kitchen today.

ON FINDING AN OLD DREAM ON HANDEL’S BIRTHDAY

The paper was a brilliant blue,

Though ragged, torn and pushed through

With holes that let the words unfold

themselves, full of summer and enclosing

Scene upon scene, each described and beamed,

Like coffered ceilings nooks full of such

Affairs that, when undone, set reeling

Long gazes of longer yet, such feeling,

That, when splayed out upon neglected pages

Of blue like this, have songs, bound to each

word and sing on and on as to some fictive muse,

Until it has consumed itself, mere ashes of a dream

That once breathed names and real dragons,

Dancing on forgotten plains, and steam;

Valley after valley dressed to half-conceal, all in steam.

January 14, Medus'a Kitchen

LE MAL DU PAYS
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

We find evening wandering among
The trees of the park: taking
His name slowly from the late
Afternoon as she slips into
Shadow, stretching a bit, easing
Her language of birds and insect sounds
Toward evening, offering them as gifts.

Lights begin to blink on
Across the valley. From here
They could be angels who, having
Heard the vespers bell, hurry
So not to be late for the last hour.

We can want no more than
To be here together, a witness.
Perhaps it is only that we have
Chanced to find ourselves surrounded
By the hour that moves this feeling
Through us and into the landscape.

Perhaps it is a knowledge of something
We had not anticipated understanding
Quite yet and so are still unable to
Name it properly that does this.

We stand together here a long
Time. Finally it becomes so dark
I can no longer see you clearly.
Stars begin to blow across the sky.

_____

On January 12 Medus'a Kitchen published the following

WINTER IN THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY

(For Joyce Odam)

The winters here are mostly damp.

The days are grey. They form a camp.

A great and endless fog commands,

All thick and dense, a gauzy stamp.

This weather makes its own demands.

The days are ghosts with oak tree hands.

The morning and the evening change

Without a sound, their cold, white plans.

There is no landscape. All is strange,

Fog cattle grazing shadow range.

There is little here of any sun

To make a mark or rearrange.

A cloistered time. Each day a nun.

A silent time. A seamless one.

We speak another language; one

That quiets time, as days pass, stunned.