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Section F: .................................................................. December 15, 1997

Georgia

AFTERNOON ALLITERATION

On a sparkling summer afternoon
nature's alliteration runs free
across the air, over the lawn
and tauntingly throughout the trees.

Lovely lilies linger in sunlight
daffodils dance defiantly till dusk
towering treetops thicken tightly
and animal families build their trust.

Blue-lipped tulips two-step trickily
to the tune of trillions of busy bees
and streams of sunlight dance serenely
through branches and leaves so free.

Prose roses very gently are teased
by mandolinin' chrysanthemums fair
cheers do rise in caladium stadiums
and nasturtium action fills the air.

Few-trip tulips taunt defiant dandelions
who are forging foreign exotic vacations
and cranium geraniums flaunt their genius
to forget-me-nots at carnation station.

Pearl Mitchell
PearlMitch@aol.com

EPIPHANY

On the Monterey Fairgrounds
walking in the rain
on Thanksgiving morning
looking for the caretaker.

A fog smudges low and about,
I wander in languid window curtains
----------------------of rain,
the so still grounds all immediate,
intimate, the boarded stalls
toys of summer.

A jet, invisible in fog,
making a landing approach,
rips a long overhead
seam of sound.
Tons of polished steel,
needle gauges, glowing lights,
all guided by great winking
-----------------machines,
by antennaed men speaking
softly, confidently,
electronically,
landing the plane
tire squeal safe,
all aboard and those
waiting giving thanks.

I walk slow in mission
on the fairgrounds
seeking the caretaker
to unlock a fence
allowing the aged, the beset,
the eternally puzzled,
the so easily exploited,
those that are daily tortured
just enough to make it
to one more night,
to enter and be served.

Walking slow thankful
for a moment alone,
trying to own my step
on a ghosted midway,
to stay within my stride,
thankful for the food,
for the gentle smiling caretaker,
for a few-- two-- slow celebratory
dance steps in the rain,
knowing the essential difference
between me and the waiting
was a locked fence
soon to be opened.

Donald Marsh
marsh@cruzio.com

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Section E: .................................................................. November 12, 1997

Soquel, CA

HOW A POEM HAPPENS

Years ago I read poetry
to a group of stroke patients.
From a wheelchair one asked,
"Where do poems come from?"
I had to tell him I didn't know.


I still don't.

I don't know what it is
I'm trying to write
or even what I'm trying
to think or not think.

I don't know how
to make it happen
and have given up trying.

When it does happen
I don't know how or why.
I'm just busy trying
to catch some of it.
Any of it.

Each thing caught
is only a facsimile.

I don't know where
this particular effort
is going.

In a bakery cafeteria
I saw four women at a table.
It was obvious they liked
one another, for they had
such deepdish laughs
and looking-back smiles.


It's going to them.

OLD MEN WITH PENKNIVES

Old men with penknives
know seedbed things
yet seldom say anything at all.

Rise up dressed practical before dawn
to squint in master patience
at the strut and slump of things,
their dentures aftertasting of coffee,
their clothes smelling of careful closets.

In the windows on the porches in the yards
on streetcorners in apartments
in nursing homes all over the world,
old men with penknives repair,
shape, and carve remembered things
wonderfully important and useless,
handing down their life experience
to eager summer fingers.

In early morning elbows,
flexing their hands,
cracking the sheet ice
of arthritis,
old men with penknives
are ready to be knowing
for any emergency
that may never arise.

Finally, on afternoons
with time in long shadows,
with diligent thumbs,
they whittle death down
to a final intimate thing
they know no one
can give away.

Donald Marsh
marsh@cruzio.com

For many years I was deeply involved with Christianity. It was only a few years ago that I left my tightly held beliefs behind, venturing into the unknown and going through a spiritual awakening of a kind I'd never know before. It has been a difficult journey for me. The first time I entered a New Age book store it felt like I had immersed myself under water... I had to excuse myself after about 20 minutes for air! This analogy fits well, if you imagine the "water" as the unconscious or perhaps the "shadow" as Carl Jung would say.

I started collecting books and sacred objects, often in secret for fear my "Christian" husband would find them and chastise me. I wasn't free to explore in the way my soul wanted me to, but I continued. My heart opened greatly and mystical experiences started happening to me on a daily basis. Some have described this kind of thing as a spiritual emergence. Mine bordered on spiritual emergency; a combination of bliss and terror! Hiding this from my partner became fairly impossible. He has and never will know the full scope of it. Unfortunately I didn't keep a journal, so I can't recall everything either. Needless to say our relationship split apart. We had other issues but it basically came down to his fears that I had become demon possessed. (I imagine I wasn't the easiest person to live with during this time. I was questioning everything, my values, beliefs, the nature of reality... you name it!) The divorce crushed me. The past two years have been torturous... really... and I'll spare you the details.

Now, as I'm beginning to raise my head from the ashes. I feel the fluttering of unused and rather large wings. Hey, I'm free! It's OK, I can follow my heart unfettered by the condemnation of the patriarchs (Father God, father husband) of my old life. The release is not just one of outer freedom, for truly the chains that held me where of my own making, a captivity whose appearance could conveniently be blamed on my partner.

Anyway... with this new freedom, I'm soaking up the wisdom from Mukunda (Yogananda). I'm really wanting to explore eastern philosophies and practices. They feel accessible to me and I'm not afraid. East meets West, the integration occurring in my heart. Of course everything begins with and returns to the Beloved... the Beloved... a thousand times... the Beloved!

Lara Cone

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Section D: .................................................................. October 15, 1997

Seaside, CA

Reflections from my sister Nancy's funeral.

CAROL TO NANCY

we have no time to bury our dead now
in this pressed time when money rules
and all men are slaves
working 15 hour days so that the boss can play around of golf at pebble
and make the payment on the lear jet
in order to send his kids to stanford
and why do you need the day off any way?

we are working so hard here on the beach
in the bahamas fighting off the boredom
you should know your place
and be happy with the nickel an hour that we pay you
you people don't need more and why do you ask
are you being a trouble maker or something
my god i need a cappuccino here
this is so damn hard
we can no longer take the time to bury our dear dead.

NANCY 9-16-97

It was the willow standing beside the river

The river reflecting the clouds the sun and sky

Reflecting the stars and the moon

Beyond the willows

The Corn is standing in murmuring rows of green

It was the willow standing beside the river

The river reflecting the reds and yellows

That shimmer the wind

The corn just now is turning golden

Stacked in perfect sheaves against the wind

It was the willow standing beside the river

The river reflecting the cold blue grey

The leaves long gone

The corn beneath the snow is awaiting

The breath of spring

Steve Brown
SteveArtis@aol.com

I enjoy The Creative Edge on-line. I enjoy thinking about your workshops, the presenters, and wish I were there for all of them! And here I am in Northfield, MN, with the cows, colleges, and corporate farms which want to have a couple of million pigs or turkeys on one farm.

Mary Ruth
dwmr@deskmedia.com

OPEN AND SHUT

Berserk drag queen
puts gun in mouth,
pouts, squeezes
eyes shut, peeks
in mirror, sweeps
back strand of hair,
pulls trigger.

Woman in Rapid City
sits with mother's service,
spoons potato salad,
looks off, has spent
lifetime looking off.
Out in garage
husband tapes
things in boxes.

At the end of a meal
in a four star restaurant
in Provence, man scans
the bill, adds to gratuity,
offers Mastercard, smokes,
wondering, when it ends,
when credit is cut off
and bills are overdue,
will he feel anything?

Successful man
in neo-colonial home,
eighteen years
into alcoholic recovery,
walks past cut glass
whiskey decanters,
in a blink is
gulping contents.
An hour later, high speed,
in a car crash
on his way back
to see someone
he could only remember
by first name.

Cameras record the moment
and words important enough
to remember. A banquet
to recognize a woman
praised in speeches and award.
The woman sits smiling, alone,
bemused. Harbors a secret:
she is not the person
they're talking about.

Old man walks slowly in park,
sits exhausted on bench,
looks around at trees, people.
Has pancreatic cancer
that has metastasized.
Takes out a folded paper,
printout of blood work,
cryptic numbers tell him
he has not long to wait.
Looks around thinks
might be last time in park.
Raises hand flicks fingers
in a salute, a farewell.
Looks again at printout,
slowly raises end of thumb
to tip of nose, wiggles fingers.

As a poet, form has always fascinated me. Haiku is one of several highly disciplined forms. To me, haiku suggest a world in seventeen or fewer syllables. Here is one.

Donald Marsh
marsh@cruzio.com

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Section C: .................................................................. September 15, 1997

Auckland, New Zealand

PHOENIX HEART

Flames whip my
creaking ribs
heart whines
screeches
shrivels
in the howling roar
to
boiling black.

Then barely touched
by healing breath
it rushes red again
alive
with
shining
rivetting
new life.

GLORY

Walking with two dogs in a huge meadow
nearing the dome of sun blasted grass
when the female dog is gone
the male near me and nervous
attenuated in fits all of his attention
focused across the meadow
with only an occasional nervous glance at me.

Then I see the grass parting as the female comes
running leaping high to see around
and ahead of her a red fox intent and assessing
heading right for us until the intelligence of the fox
sees and our male runs low his shoulders bunching
body accordion neck stretching with the fox
veering in the tall grass and me shouting "No!" twice
then watching as the fox with its wonderful full tail
in slipstream a tail that would be a comforter at night
in burrow the fox magnificent in its calculated running
me not calling but knowing something elemental
is happening that the animals are so alive and radiant
in pursuit and fleeing that they know all this in a way
I can only dream that this is their lives and their will
as they come back across the meadow
there is an aura and fleet chess game going not in slow motion
but is happening very fast in images that are motionless
and the fox won't circle because that way they'd cut it off
but instead pretends to circle then sprints straight as they
lose a stride each time and when it has the distance
it heads for the Monterey pines and is gone and the dogs
come back their tongues hanging to one side like Freshmen school ties
and I am astonished to realize I never stopped walking
it was only seconds in which I saw everything
saw the completeness saw the earth speed under
and continue in stride the day ringing glory glory I saw it.

WATCHING WATER

Big dog jacking
up an embankment
from a pond--
water pouring from him
a transparent defining

Whales scrawled
with barnacle graffiti
in a continuing roll--
water sluicing
white puffs
of white water air

Rainwater falling long seconds
sinuous on a mountain backdrop--
bird beating its way
somewhere but there

Battering-ram white waves
exploding against rocks
slow motion
bride throwing back her veil

My wife lifts the water thirsty
I see her freckled buttermilk skin
working through the glass
through the water
I see her drink drink drink
ah drink stop to think
satisfaction

Water waiting a silver dot
on the very blade tip
of a bamboo leaf--
in half a thought
holding a reflected universe
......................i
......................t
......................d
......................r
......................o
......................p
......................s

Donald Marsh
marsh@cruzio.com

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Section B: .................................................................. August 15, 1997

Fairfax, CA

DREAMERS

Where the sea and the river meet
one lays over the other in their earth bed.
Ebbs and floods and downstream currents mingle as
each tracks the cycles in the way it knows, has always known ...
As the circle says, my beginning and ending are one,
and so it is with this sea and this river.
Each reveals the other, conceals the other, becomes the other's
coming and going,
like the wolf,
coming and going through the night,
tracking dreamers.

Marti Spiegelman
tundra@slip.net

I guess the bills get to us all sometimes, and this poem was given birth by that moment in which I weigh Dime and Dream and the consequences of the loss of either. As artists we do what we must do!

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?

There are those in which
The Dream lives so strong
that life is
inadequate consolation.

Inadequate, expendable
yet they live on
respecting the only moral law
which they dare not challenge.

Gasping for indulgences
of art
and nature
of true experience
mystical experience
if only the most fleeting kind.

Breathing every moment
a ceaseless prayer
of abject request
for tolerance
warmth
an apple
and please
Please
enough of
The Dream.

Kim Schuette
shanti@net-link.net

GALAPAGOS LAS ENCANTADAS

At sunset
on the first day

The ocean is a copper meadow
ringed with clouds
of make-believe forest and mountains.
Shearwaters, petrels
and flying fish
skim its gleaming surface.
The outer rim of the world
is our destination.

The full moon blossoms
like an iris,
blooms all night long.

At 4 A. M.
clouds pile up on the horizon,
slip and tumble
into the sea,
reflected icebergs.
The tropical night
is warmed silver,
the air, heavy, wet,
and the Southern Cross
hangs over our heads,
a kite tipped with gold.

Just before sunrise
a school of
sleek black and white dolphins
rise up at our bow,
carve a path for us into a Bay.

They leap
though the dark waters
toward the pale ghost
of the day moon.

Anne Dewees

This is a poem written from a flashback I had.

MEMORIES

I lay alone bruised, crying in my bed of shame
beaten, dripping wet, shaking from the pain
clutching my torn nightie, giving god all the blame
whispering, desperate prayers, in vain

surrounded by darkness, in shadows of the night
will I ever sleep this night, must face the day
close my eyes, hear their screams of fright
clutching my teddy, eyes closed nightmares find their way.

shake, shiver and wake up screaming
gasping for breath staring at the wall
was it real or was I dreaming
fall back to bed grasp my teddy and bawl

it's over now, it's over they say
I shake my head to agree with sadness
but these things are in my heart each day
it has all driven me to madness


and yet I'm still alive, some say I've survived
who am I to say it's true, I find it hard to believe
I feel so unloved, I've been morally deprived
trapped in my own web of reality, I weave

Lucretia Bennett
Lestat@azstarnet.com

FOR THEREBY SOME HAVE ENTERTAINED ANGELS UNAWARES*

"Marsh Marsh,"
She found our house
from short-circuited memory
fused direct with idiot love,
lost in our garden
facing the wrong way,
calling to the cottage
where her father had lived,
her voice coming over the years
calling broken, snuff palated.

The passing of senseless time
made the girl a woman
in uncoordinated lumps,
one side too large,
humping, devouring the other.
Splayed feet in heeled stride,
stood grinning awry uncertain
near some rosemary.
I want to walk and pick some,
I want to say to her,
"That's for remembrance,"
then have her quietly reply,
"Pray you, love, remember."
Instead a screwed face honking,
"Marsh Marsh."

I went calling her name,
she turned in teetering lurches,
in gleeful fists,
in a failed blind grace.
"Hey you got it."

The you of hey you
said singling me out
from remembered
and fancied me, you, others.

Stood close in rocking pride,
in snuffling hugs,
saying,
"You got it,"
telling several nothings
at once; of remembered
and invented pet cats
to care for. Everything,
including the me of hey,
the me of you, of got it,
was one while her eyes dream-danced
over my face, her merry mouth
spittled and fizzed.

I crushed some rosemary
that we smelled in giggles,
in her arms reaching, dreaming,
in woman-heat, in pure rosemary
in getting and giving.

I took her back to her father
where we parted in rosemary promises.
"Marsh Marsh," she called
from a cheerleader's crouch,
"You got it."

Walking back to my work
feeling good about
having seen her, still
unable to keep out
the selfish guilty thanks
on the cusp of sleaze
she wasn't my child,
flicking the limp rosemary
crazyquilt to the wind;
unable, at that moment,
to accept or keep
what I had gotten--
for remembrance.

*"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Hebrews, Chapter 13, verse 2.

This poem has disturbed any number of people. I'd have to say that the "event" in the poem never happened. Bits and pieces of it happened over a period of decades. The young woman in the story was a friend when she was a child and continues to be a good friend even though we're separated by distance. There was a time when I felt she saved my sanity. How she did this I don't know. Maybe just by being herself. We've always been close, always understood one another.

Some of what I put in the poem is a deep disturbance in me... a sense that I desert people, disappoint them. The last time I talked to my friend, she was trying hard to get a driver's license. She's been trying for years.

I've been thinking about her and how we relate. No one, not her mother or father, both loving, nor my wife can understand what it is between us. To say she saved my life is such a melodramtic thing, yet she did. Our first time together she was about 12 and we spent the whole day and got along with a minimum of words. I felt differently after being with her and now, on those rare occasions when we do see one another, we laugh a lot and she does most of the talking.

Donald Marsh
marsh@cruzio.com

I was especially touched by one of the poems by Sharon Davies (LBOL #3, Section C), and the phrase... "...not knowing if she was still alive..."

I remember being in the the old USSR when my mother was ill and often thinking that I didn't know at the moment if she was alive. But one time when we stopped over in Helsinki on my way home I went shopping for a dress for her to wear comfortably in her wheelchair. These were difficult to find. I found the perfect dress and something told me that she didn't need it and I knew that meant that she was not alive... The moment I arrived in Canada a phone call to her home verified that she had died the day before... Of course, to punish me for going away when she was ill (I made 11 trips to the USSR while she was ill) ... the family had buried her without waiting for me. A dear friend, former Chief of the West Coast Haida Indians, came to my home and put on a wonderful and very meaningful "saying goodbye" ritual for me and about 18 friends. He didn't know my mother and that her favorite flower was red roses but he brought red roses for everyone present. It was a fitting good-bye for my mother and a "quietening in the heart" ritual for me...

So that's why her poem meant so much to me....

Crystal Croll-Young
hawk145@idirect.com (Crystal Hawk)

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Section A: .................................................................. July 15, 1997

Boulder Creek, CA

Having received an E-mail from a friend to save a weekend date, this poem came.

DATE SAVING

Just as the sun dipped below the horizon
the sky split open and the heavens thundered
as the summons from the silken goddess of the north arrived
Save these dates!!!
Who me?
Can a human being do such a thing?
Whatever we do the dates will go on.
Is this another new age cause?
Are the dates endangered?
Save these whales!!!
Did you ever try to lift one of those things?
Can you imagine pulling one from the sea and trying to breathe into it?
Who's going to save me?

These dates are not endangered.
They stand there in single file.
A line so long you could never see the end
marching relentlessly forward one by one by one
until they reach the front
have their moment in the light
and poof! they vanish.
The day you were born. Poof!
The day you fell off the bike. Poof!
The day you got fired. Poof!
Should I lose all abandon and throw my body
amidst this eternal machine and become trampled.
Save these dates!!!
Do you know what you're asking of me?

As these dates disappear
we don't really care.
Most have no name.
They're gone.
We have other fish to fry.
But every now and then we save one.
You, you're the day that will live in infamy.
You, you're the day Kennedy was shot.
You, you're the day my father died.
I still know you well.
But the day he put his arm on top of my shoulder
and said I was the perfect height
And the day not so many years later when he became
the perfect height for me
I don't know those dates
they don't live in time.
Save these dates!!!
Do you know what you're asking of me?

All around the world calendars open
the beautiful silence of empty pages
some with a month filling the page
others with only one day
and we facing the joy and the horror of the emptiness
desperately wanting to be needed, to be useful
to be somebody
begin to eliminate the space
and each writing our place in the world
pin a note to the body of the date marching down the line
so it arrives at the front covered in notes, bleeding
a lifeless corpse
Save these dates!!!
Do you know what you're asking of me?

This ritual slaughter takes place at midnight
when we are asleep or too tired to care.
Greeting tomorrow in the light when we are wide awake
we have no interest in grief.
The old system was right
let the day end with the setting sun
with us still awake knowing what we missed,
tomorrow suddenly arrives.
Facing the long abyss of darkness
knowing that by the time light arrives
this day will be half gone.
The panic gripping us as we clutch our calendars
trying to keep up.
Save these dates!!!
Do you know what you're asking of me?

Just once I'd like to see a date make it to the front naked
No notes
All calendars blank
We know who we are but not what we are.
Job, we don't remember.
Stock market, we don't remember.
Chores, we don't remember.
We'll have nothing to do,
we won't even know what doing is.
When we meet we can look in each other's eyes
and we will know we share a secret
and we will never know what that secret is.
We won't need to.
It's not the dates that need saving.

Stuart Wells
ldngedge@pacbell.net

Here is a poem for you..

UNTITLED

The potter's wheel
is wooden
round
turning in time
to the yellow sun
beckoning
outside the trees
bent toward the window
as if to say "hello"

On top of it
I place the clay
the grey matter
full of impulses
im
pul
ses
and synapses
they call
messengers
of the brain

I shape it
out of intestine shaped
tubes
into something
not quite round
but split in two

each half
significant
to influencing
the other

When I am done
I look outside
nearly dark
there are only shadows
caressing
the wood
xthat
stops
it's
xspinning

until another
day

Ingrid Middleton
IR Middelton@aol.com

#19 GOD AS PASSIONATE LOVER

God came, a Princeton graduate:
tap dancing, bowtie,
dark flannel jokes.

God, a lonely pie-faced woman
eating a sundae
in a resurrected Five-and-Dime.
A longing and looking
out over Notions.

God, a Brahmin girl:
finger cymbals, sidesaddle looks,
supple brown bare midriff.
Her eyes told me
I could not seduce Him
but She me.

God, an old blackman
has seen everything
in a reverie
in an empty ghetto lot.
Calls klaxon,
smiles snaggle,
offers all a paperbag
bottle benediction
at a going by.

So many birds in a field feeding:
on a signal they rise together,
turn in a slow tornado,
confetti pieces of night:
only to please,
one of them is God,
a redwing blackbird.

Port Authority is a huge bus station in Manhattan. Just about all the Trailways and Greyhound buses from all over the country come there. Also commuter buses from Connecticut and New Jersey and all the surrounding airports. At one time it was in the center of the porno movie district. It was said you could buy just about any human vice and/or drug in the area surrounding Port Authority. The neighborhood is being cleaned up now, Disney Mickey Mouse Centers replacing the streetwalkers... an elusive difference. In midtown Manhattan, on the west side, Port Authority sits in an area once known as Hell's Kitchen.

#22 AT PORT AUTHORITY

In the din and dirty
card-deck neon jumble,
in the squawking dingle
of porno festered 8th Avenue,
spider clenched in webbed
----------------------traffic,
in the impatient steam hiss,
in the panting horn bleat--

From a taxi window
watching a street vendor
twist stamp snap compulsive
in some great tired hate,
spitting words, head jerking,
finger belly-ripping the air,
"I am sick," he screams,
"I am sick and I am tired,"
in exhausted rage,
"Of your shit!"

Spins indignant, stalks away
from his pretzel cart to return
to twist stamp snap compulsive,
"I am sick," he says all day,
"And I am tired," everyday,
"of," he does it on the subway,
"your," at sad shabby room,
"shit," for long dark years.

This misery mantra
repeated by rote, finding
a fulfillment in ritual,
threadbare satisfaction
in stale fantasy.
I know. I understand.

I am sick and I am tired
of this write I write
everyday at home, away,
in my head, my heart, for years.
We are sick and we are tired.
We are caught, we are sick
and we are tired of our caught,
must say it over and over.

"He's working," the taxidriver
in a chocolate coffee voice
gazing turtle eyed at me
in the rear-view mirror,
"He's working and that's all
----------------------that matters."

Donald Marsh
marsh@cruzio.com

Thank you for your creative offerings!

I invite readers to share their own creative works (poems, stories, images, comment, etc.) in Letter Box On Line (LBOL). I look for work and comments I feel support understanding and encouragement of the creative process, and hence, the process of life.

The Editor

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