What A Week It Was

I'll confess, this great weather we're having in the Pacific Northwest makes it hard to buckle down and get something productive done.

I had a situation all week wherein I couldn't get B. Deemer's book Variations posted properly at Amazon. I sent in two--count 'em two--wrong trim sizes for the book, creating a communication hassle with the poor Amazon printing department, which must have taken to cursing me like filthy sailors.

Probably deserved it, too.

Well, I finally got it done and the book should appear on Amazon in a week or so. You can buy it now at Lulu (Just click on any of the books at the sidebar of this site to get your RBP fix).

Then came the bug problem, or it finally materialized with such vigor that I finally had to call in the bug police to take over. I had tried with limited success to kill the little monsters. Can only hope the pros did a better job than I.

With the banning of certain pesticides, bugs have seemingly taken over the world. We have a bug crisis in America, in case you're interested. I live in a huge apartment building. The bugs move around like stealth fighters, annoying the hell out of the human beings who only want to find happiness in their modest homes.

Bugs bringing humanity to its knees.

A person could move to the country. But then field mice and many other creatures would make that situation just as rough no doubt. I'd hate to come face-to-face with a cougar, like those poor sheep in Sweet Home, my home town. Eaten alive they were.

Slaughtered in life's little pecking order.

Anyway, RBP is in a bit of a lull now. I'm contemplating a couple of projects. The painter and ceramic artist Charles Lucas is supposed to be photoshopping some of his work for a planned book. But I don't know how hard he's working, either.

Maybe the weather has forced him into a long bike ride and an avoidance of what he needs to do to finish up the art and deliver it to me. I know he had considerable passion for the project a month ago.

Lucas, get off your ass and do something!

In Sept. or October I'll begin compiling e-prints for yet another art book, but that is in the loose planning stages.

Well, the pot is simmering right now. The past six months were good, more like a steady and constant heat of creativity. RBP put out three fine poetry collections by Northwest writers, and I expect all three to gather considerable notice in the future.

Society and the cultural critics are a little slow when it comes to discovering the riches around them. I'll give them all a little more time to figure things out before I cut off my ear.

While we wait, try these:

SOPHIE

Because we did not know
A parrot’s sex

We named you Sophie
And caged you

By an inside tree whose leaves
Had died

After being watered
By last night’s gin.

You screamed at us
All the time

Day and night – why?
Hadn’t we filled your bowl

Companionably
With suet seeds and beer?

We had hoped you would help us
Seduce

The sorority nuns who attended
Our Friday night rites,

But you frightened them into
Feeling wrong

Like that professor of poignant
Dying English,

Whose shriek was a sort of lost
Romantic song.

I remember the intricate urge
In your voice,

The vanishing passion,
Untranslatable,

As you hung it in our ears,
Shouting

The stunned hate and fear
Of our rebellious age,

Of how you’d been caged by fools
Who might win something

Only if they could rise out
Of the spray

Of others who had already won
Something.

You were the Stokely Carmichael
Of birds, Sophie,

With your Caribbean
Feathers

And high-sounding parrot
Gobbledygook.

Let’s face it
You bitch (or bastard,

Or whatever you were):
You chased all the girls away!

And there we were with our ale
And our books

And our seductionless
Beards.

Even so, when we discovered you’d
Flown the coop

That August day – I spoke up
For you:

For whoever you were, Sophie,
Fair or no,

Bird bright or dull,
Or simply relieved

To have lived once
At all,

With your posture earned
In your egg

Cracked open by whatever
Psychic imagoes

Only parrots parrot
And bring,

And everything else a bird is,
Including

The cramped urgency
To survive.

To scream one song
Beyond yourself

Into the faces of those who’d
Confined it.

The only song
We should ever know of you –

“You named me Sophie,
But I am free.”


K.C. Bacon from Morandi's Bottles


Advice to an Artist on Choosing a Wife


May the gods bless you
with a wife who understands you

If you are not so fortunate
may she accept you for who you are

and if not this
at least put up with you

If she cannot put up with you
may she not kick you out

or if she does
not also call the police
or the Mental Health Institute

but even if she does
may she not inflict bodily harm
or drive you to cut off an ear

though should this happen
may the blade be clean
and not cause infection

Yet if serious harm comes to you
may she at least spare your work
and not destroy it

and if she must
let her forget the work
hoarded by your friends

If she knocks on their doors
may they not be home
or refuse to answer
or escape out the back door

and if she catches up with them at last
May God have mercy on their souls


Charles Deemer from In My Old Age


THE OLD MAN’S STORY

I been on this farm
all my life & gone nowheres,
no more than twenty miles off
any direction. Shit.

So I got me a van
and fixed her up real nice---
a bed in back & cupboards,
even a stereo radio!
But think I can get away?

I sit in her sometimes
and listen to the radio
in the garage. Shit.


Bill Deemer from Variations


There you have a sampling. Buy now so you may one day say I knew them well.


TS