POETRY READING MONDAY, APRIL 15, NOON

April 15, NOON

UC Davis Bookstore Lounge

on campus UC Davis

Davis, CA

I'll be reading from my new book

97 POEMS

There will be a book signing afterwards.

Please attend if you are able.

These campus readings are usually not

very well attended.

I could use your support.

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

FFireflies at Ochanomizu, 1880 - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Here is one of mine.

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

The hard songs come through

Holes in the night sky,

An impending electricity of purpose

Gathers into patterns, constellations

Remembered from dares we took

As children, stories around 

The night time fires,

The stars, reminders of our bone

Dust congealed within our sorry bodies.

Touched with grace for a moment,

They are able to form a mouth,

Then a music, then a welter of instruments.

We hear them as animal voices,

Frogs and loons, crow talk,

The coughing of a cat,

Slap of fish on quiet water.

Oh let us sing the hard songs.

Songs of goodbye and of parting,

Of winds on the moors and

Mists moving across bogs

where plants eat meat,

Dreaming they are gods,

Where love flees a room

Dense with violins and clarinet

Laments.  Pieces of loves across

Ages of time, dead ancestors

And friends turn from our embrace

To ride the night sky forever,

To pour through shining holes in the night sky.

The Rio Vista bridge, Sacramento River, 2012

photo: D. R. Wagner

Clouds Above Elk Grove, 2013

Photo:  D.R. Wagner

Another one by me.

A PROPOSAL

But I’m walking in the labyrinth 

And the labyrinth begins to wander

Away from me.  I have heard

About a ancient moon from Chaldea

That can decipher the climates

Of the heart and yet refuses

To do so until only the legend of its existence

Remains and even this is confined in a room

So silent it is said to exist only in a mirror.

I will go there and you may go with me

If you would like to see the

Kingdoms conquered, to learn to

Regret that the infinite can exist

In simple stories and uncountable

Rivers that flow through everything

We give meaning to every day

We forget or do not wish to name.

And there you may want to ask this same

Kind of question. Here is a personal souvenir. 

It is a footprint toward the center.

I no longer recall where

I acquired it and since I am going

Out to sea again, I have no use for it

At all.  Perhaps you will make something

Truly memorable of this day without

Getting lost in it.  It is not so easy to do. 

Night Light

COMING BACK TO D.R.'S SPOON

TIME TO GET BACK TO THIS BLOG AND START POSTING ITEMS AND POETRY AGAIN
It has been too long and I keep finding I discovered too many images and good poems to use on Face Book.  I also want to open up another blog for my students from last quarter at UCD.  Details to follow.

MUEDUSA'S KITCHEN at http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com has been featuring my poetry and photography now every Saturday for some time.  I generally only publish my work at MEDUSA'S KITCHEN.  So if you enjoy reading, it MEDUSA'S KITCHEN is a good place to find it.

The year is a banner year for me.  Cold River Press. org has published my 97 POEMS in a truly beautiful edition of 240 + pages, perfect bound, with cover and inside illustrations by Bodhi.  I also have some photographic illustrations in the book.

The book is available for $24.95 plus $5.00 shipping from www: COLD RIVER PRESS.ORG.

I also have a very limited edition chapbook published by wwwbospress.net.  The book is named: PRIVATE ARCHAEOLOGY. This  book was designed, printed and hand bound by Bill Roberts in Dover, Delaware.  The text is set in Adobe Garamond Pro and printed on an HPCP2025dn.  The cover is printed letterpress on a Vandercook SP15 on 160gram Fabriano Tiziano paper from copper plate and handset metal type.  the first edition is limited to 126 copies.  100 sewn in wraps and 26 lettered copies, hand bound in boards and signed by the author.
The book is 40 pages, 5.5 inches x 8.5 inches.  The cover is by Tom Kryss.
Paperback Edition is $8.00
Signed Hardcover Edition is $30.00
It is available now.
I feel BOTTLE OF SMOKE PRESS produces the best looking and most cared for books of poetry on the planet.  I am honored to have them do a book of my work.

This summer LUMMOX PRESS, www.lummoxpress.com will publish a collection of 100 of my poems in a 148+ page perfect bound book called BREAKING AND ENTERING.  The book will sell for $15.00 and may be pre-ordered at the above address.  The cover is my Michael Robert Pollard, a wonderful artist currently living in Chicago.  It also features photographs by myself throughout the book.  Price is $15.00 plus postage.  It is a very nice collection of my work.

I could not be more pleased to have this much work all published within the same year.  Please order a copy for yourself.

Michael Robert Pollard painted this portrait of me almost ten years ago when he was living and working in Davis, California at the University there.

Here is a self-portrait by me more recent

than Michael Robert Pollard's painting.

Here is a poem from

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

KING LEAR ON THE HEATH

The swarms are moving in.  They pass

Through our breath and fog the glass of days

Completely.  If they have bones, they use

Them to make music, a curious dry, music,

The sound of grasshopper wings in a still field.

We begin to write the opera they contain.

“I am more alive that you.”, wail the flutes,

Lugging their way through storms and broken

Reed to light upon the quick scarves of the 

Tongue and burst into colorful flame, capes

Unfurled, as if they were not paying attention 

To how the story might go.  They eat heroes

And heroines alike, spitting out the small bits,

Extinct and irrelevant but always catching us,

Making us regret their actions, passing us

With thick arms and buckets filled with fascinating

Treasures from the deepest parts of the sea.

Finally we are asked to walk among them,

Suspend belief, give ourselves over to their

Crackling displays that take language out

Of the senses violently, pulling our hair

To direct us in the direction they will have us

Go.  We become weary meeting other people.

Looking for the light in their eyes that allows

Us to understand they have seen what we 

Have seen, heard what they have heard.

From on high we can watch the doors of perception

Swing open and closed, millenniums of behavior,

Always similar to our own but finally crouching

Behind one another, As flies to wanton boys, 

Are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.

We will leave the room quickly, dress without

Caring, only to be warm, find our way into the snow.

We will get into our automobiles, humming to ourselves

To keep some sanity and drive off into  music finally

Done with it, lucky to be alive.