Small Press Poet 5

After meeting at the planning session for the 1978 annual New York Book Fair, Barbara Fisher and I grew closer. I returned from Washington to work with Ten Penny Players. We were funded to develop new audiences for poetry through the New York State Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players, presenting a series of outdoor book fairs along the waterfronts, piers, and bridges of New York. We enlisted a cohort of 25 New York State poetry presses both small press and trade house.

NYS Waterways Project - 1979 1

Each poetry press had its own table. For the presses that could not attend, Barbara tended to a combined exhibit. Jackie Eubanks, Brooklyn College Research Librarian and Small Press activist, advised us:

Small Press Poet 4

PJ became my mentor in the mid 1970’s. Born at the end of the Nineteenth Century, he was forty seven years older than me. He spoke of living in the Village since the 1920’s and seldom traveling north of Fourteenth Street. His garret apartment, atop three narrow flights, was filled with boxes of journals, sketchpads, correspondences, and boxes of archived notebooks.
A frail, white bearded man, he lived alone in his garret. In the 1930's he operated a printing press in a basement off Minetta Lane, where he printed “The Poetry Quartos” for Donald Klopfer and Bennett Cerf at Random House.
When we met, he was using to a photocopier to print “Hue and Cry”, wherein he advocated nonconceptual (noncon) art. Mary Clark has written about him at her blog:
http://erinyespoetwriter.blogspot.com/2009/07/paul-johnston-american-philosopher.html

In 1975, the American Place Theater left its home at St. Clements on West 46th Street for a larger space near Sixth Avenue. The small theater in St. Clements basement became available for weekly readings. I invited small presses from the New York Book Fair to hold readings after 10 p.m. A small room on the top floor of the church became a small press library that was started with a dump display presented by CCLM. The large space in the church was made available to stage benefit readings like those to aid poets Kim Chi Ha and Kofi Awoonor.
I became an intern at the Literature Program of the NEA. Len Randolph was the program director. Literature, along with the rest of the NEA’s funded programs, was under attack. Congress was hostile to artists’ sexual license. Lines were drawn among artists between elitists and populists. The Endowment was transitioning from a Republican (Ford) administration to the Democrat (Carter) administration. Livingston Biddle chairman. When I returned New York, I felt tarnished by the experience.

Small Press Poet 3

Using my old Olympia typewriter to typeset and hiring an offset printer, I was able to fund limited editions of small poetry chapbooks. I was selling mass market paperbacks for Bantam Books and reading plays for Joe Papp at the New York Shakepeare Festival. I named my publications BardPress, and published chapbooks for the Scribblers under that imprint.

The Eye of the Cat by Matt Laufer

Aria by Lydia Raurell

The chapbooks were distributed at poetry readings and at the New York Small Press Book Fair; the first of which was held at the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art at Columbus Circle (1974). -- Subsequent fairs were held at Lincoln Center, the Custom’s House, Bryant Park, Martin Luther King Jr. High School, NYU, the East Side Armory, Madison Square Garden, and finally in 1987 at Columbia University.

Small Press Poet 2

Back in Manhattan (1974), the Scribblers, began as an open reading on West 85th Street. Vincenetta Gunn, an actresss, and I were living together in a brownstone. Suzie Kaufman was our next door neighbor. Vinnie enjoyed entertaining. She agreed to host the poets who came in from the Street. Suzie and I designed a small poster which we hung on a nearby lamppost. An Australian entrepreneur, Norman Bright, arrived and promised to make us all famous. He gave us the name Scribblers after Jonathan Swift’s Martin Scriblerus Society. Norman was working for Wisdom’s Child, a weekly penny saver that listed cultural events among its classified ads. Through his contacts we were able to host a weekly Saturday morning poetry reading at the English Pub across the street from Carnegie Hall. Mary Grace Bookhart invited the Scribblers to read at the Sunday evening coffee house at the Church of Saint Paul and Saint Andrew on West 86th Street. We attracted young writers like Clint McCown, Patricia and Russell Kelly, Marty Asher, Janet Bloom, Billy Drago, Arlene Rosen, Matthew Laufer, Magdalena Gomez, Barbara Holland, and Lydia Raurell. Rissa Korsun, a senior poet, who had trouble climbing the stairs to our apartment, brought us to the Goddard Riverside Community Center where Patricia helped us publish the Scribblers newsletter.

Scribblers 1

Small Press Poet

I began writing poetry in journals I kept while a Peace Corps volunteer in Bassa County, Liberia (1969). I burned most of my notebook in a fireplace in Tenerife when I left West Africa (1970). The few pages I held onto were published as a small chapbook at the London New Arts Lab. I hawked my chapbook, Chrylust, in Regent Park, the Roundhouse Café, and the Troubadour.

CHRYLUST & Others

Reflected Bursts

Ahab browses the
Internet in search
of the great blank page.

oh, i do not know so much
i do not know if the world
outside is yesterday's or
today's and i do not
know what now is about

Sometimes in
the random
rush I find
redeeming
moments when
my artless
attempts to
relate rest
in your eyes.

Beyond all words that
parse the nuance of thoughts
and voices that mourn, bless
praise, or condemn
is the look of surprised
recognition in your eyes.

Pacifists danced with cabalists
under the rocket’s arc.

The warm world
turned
indifferent seasons.

Devouring thrills were
choreographed against
the grave forces
that turned this world

At the Brighton Beach ball
adolescents stuttered their struts
while sirens blared about them.

Children at the costume ball:
Superman in blue pajamas,
white jockey shorts, and a red
blanket for a cape, waltzed
beside Washington in
a white colonial cotton wig.

She sat on the swing;
and then cartwheeled
across the grass.

The infants danced
up and down the stares.
Friends played and
made each other laugh.

In the awkward dark
initiates step through
a dance of doom.

moving together -- amending creation
amid bright corpuscular bursts . . .

I lead my imagination
through the intricate
dance of the tongue.

Watching her dance
the dance moves these
words and the means
to understand.

performing the dance of
fingers falling on the keys

The free verse dances;
loosely wheeling,
embarrassed by appearances.

His exuberant spaced out
liberation dance embarrassed
one stiff backed señorita.

The darkness outside
oblivious to memories
dancing down this page:
from the African
bars of Buchanan
to the discotheques
of Torremolinos.

Fingers on the machine
dance with memories of
Buchanan and juke box
music in the Star Bar.

These fingers dance
before me, tapping
with the music
of the mind --
celebrating
in a dance of
pixels on the screen
and words on the page.

That too as much as
this is the future
dance; in dark motions,
on a dim stage, her
foot tries the moment;
feeling the music
of a distant drum.

The body moving,
breaking all the past forms,
danced free;
all the new forms of the body,
moved
the body
in the pulse time,
the rhythm of a smile.

Dancing

The conscious body danced
in the grip of gravity,
in the hesitant circles
that responded to the touch
of another standing there.

I leave these words
to walk through the city,
to visit its parks,
while the traffic flows
above, beside, and beneath.

There is no end
to the walking.
Senses open. --
What’s inner looks out.
Forms blend in the wind.

Understand, it’s going to get me someplace;
walking away from oppression and fear,
saving fuel, and walking on down the road.

Touching ground, the world walked home.
Carrying the heavy words
of times passed, the world kept going.

to walk out into the world--
to work against gravity--
to wake and walk
into the wilderness.

While I walked upon
the lush soil of West Africa,
an astronaut first
stepped on
the rocks of the moon.

The child, who walked along Denton Avenue,
put one foot in front of another;
kept the body moving--
walking through a rainy season in West Africa.

The body in balance
walked across the loft,
each step scratched
the surface: walking,
walking, walking.

Sick with malaria I walked
in the warm West African rain:
a downpour that echoed
Voltaire’s laughter
at Milton’s angels.

The step marks the distance
as our feet feel the movement
in the curve of terrain, the floor
of footing; walking the immediate city
be it London, Edinburgh,
Rome, Marrakesh, Charlotte Amalie,
Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo,
Chicago, or New York.

I was taught to walk
one foot in front of another --
one two one two one two.
I still count steps.
Each step is part of a larger unity.
Walking breaks the world
into a duality --
one two one two one two.

I began counting my steps in Syracuse.
Counting made the walks more pleasant.
It distracted me. My thoughts flowed freely.

We passed Herald Square, the Hotel McAlpin,
and Empire State Building. We walked Sixth Avenue,
stopping at Rockefeller Center to speak with security.
We walked through the night, passing the tall glass
and concrete structures of the city -- to breakfast
at an Upper West Side restaurant.

We stopped at Washington’s
statue in Union Square
and looked south to the World
Trade Towers. We were walking.
The world was turning.

After a chess game and dinner,
Russ and I began our walk
uptown from the East Village.

Barbara walked
Mrs. Peel
around the Village.

I walked uptown
with Lantis
to Central Park,
where we walked
around
some more.

Conscious of feet beneath --
arched or flat, common
or not -- the walker finds
footing -- timid or firm.

I took long walks through Manhattan.
My shoes were fine
for walking in one direction.

Walking

When I learned
to walk my
weak ankles needed
braces. Walking away,
my legs crossed
like scissors
beneath me.

John Smith, over
six foot four,
strode past
the long embrace
of childhood polio.

They sat on their haunches --
Thurman Munson, Roy Campanella,
and Yogi Berra behind home plate
(ready to receive the pitch)
watched the ball speed toward them.

Did the catcher,
crouched behind home-plate,
direct the motion
of the pitch
that was caught
in his mitt?

Watching the Yanks on TV,
Lantis sat across the armchair.
His back was braced
by one of the chair’s arms.
His legs were diagonally draped
over the other arm.

I sit and
let the world
come to me.

I fight on
as the words
sit and watch.

“No love toward others in that bosom sits”
Sonnet 9 (Shakespeare)

Had love in that bosom sat
down to compose a sonnet,
but frustrated by passionate
angst, arose amid shreds
of shame to upload a blog instead?

all there is
to say

Chess pieces are left standing,
while a world sits ---
praying, traveling, and working.
A word worker rises to speak.

Up and at ‘em;
at the machine
in my blue bathrobe
this morning
typing.

I sit working
at writing
in the small
morning hours.

6

The pressure now on the middle back,
soon the spine will become a bow,
then taut to throw an arrow
backwards.

Now resting on the back of the chair;
packing the writing in words in front of me;
the back arches and the spine curves.

The writing continued:
word after word bent
to become the poem.

Soon morning will rise,
and Barbara will waken,
to stand up to a new day
and greet the surprise.

My fingers continued to dance on the keyboard.

Soon we’ll need to get a sound permit
(from the police department)
to go down by the waters and read
our poems to each other.

5. Sitting close to the ground, my spine bending; I expect the words will happen according to the world.

4.

Humility is a blank
page upon which
the proud words rest.

3.

Words sit and work
-- seriously spelled
into being; or
unsure, wavering,
and stereotyped.
Words form from the machine.
The letters find themselves
arrayed before me.

2.

Coming from elsewhere,
the machine wrote, reread,
and crafted the writing.

The machine saw the writing
in the book of poetry, in the
set type, and the worth of the word;

while amity, anger, and awe
radiated from the roofs of the world,
and spread over tall city buildings.

1.

Typing,
working at a desk,
feet crossed beneath the seat,
small of the back supported by the back of the swivel chair;
back and forth
as if dovining.

The length of the line is not the length of the thought.

Bathing at Coney

I come to build sand castles,
to romp in and wrestle the tides;
the girl and the smile and the beach
beneath the sun; I come.

Around, around, around the whirling
wheels turn; around,
around the whirling world;
the oyster in the sea.

This rides me up and throws me down.
Your fantasies cling to me, splinter into me,

stick to me like the sand at the beach;
I come here amusing myself, a
grain in the dream.

The Village’s pass-through the history
of western art was on exhibit in
Bruno’s Garret. We came to the water’s
edge to read poetry and cast our words
to currents that carried to the ocean
all that was in the river; streams of dreams.

Through narrow
winding streets,
the gypsy
seer roams
the Village.

I wanted to live by the sea
or beneath a waterfall, while
all the world was elsewhere. When I'm
gone, cremate me with my sandals
on and toss my ashes into
a stream.

Amazed by fate
and the time we wait
where the old is on our minds
and the new goes by outside
(sometimes a poem drifts by).

Like breathing, here:
stepfather and lover,
making business
and keeping house,
breathing,
writing and reading.
All around the town,
boys and girls together . . .
Daisy, Daisy,
give me your answer true.
I’m half crazy
all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage.
I can’t afford a carriage,
but you’ll look sweet
upon the seat
of a bicycle built for two.

Alien at Westbeth, Bank Street, and Sheridan Square,
I passed through the Eighth Street Bookstore and NYU.
I saw a surreal bohemia at Washington Square,
the Jefferson Market Library, and Balducci’s.
One word after another stopped at Minneta Lane.
Westway was not my poem. The old village was more real
than punk rock on Gansvoort, street singers on Greenwich,
and the tight ropewalker on Hudson. At the Bobst Library
I wrote a poem for the Cornelia Street Café. I swam at
the Carmine Street Pool; and found Jane, Perry, and Horatio.

My father complained bitterly of the hand mortality dealt him. He would not go gentle into that dark night, while at the center of the world, on the island of Manhattan, I sought poetry in a peaceable kingdom.

In Greenwich Village, like everywhere else, writers left their words; Millay in the narrowest house, Cummings in Patchen Place, Auden on St. Marks Place, and Ginsberg in the East Village. All put words down on paper, one after another, like the chop of hooves on cobblestone.

There. I put a new tape in the machine.

I like it here. I live here. I write here.

For twenty years, at home in Greenwich Village, I sat at this machine, typed away, and put the words down -- one word after another, making minimal sense. That home became my home.

I wrote four flights above Greenwich Street in an old sea chandler’s shop, converted to a working artist’s loft. I wrote, sang, and rejoiced in my bohemian Village; my soul, my bone and blood became one with my dreams.

Ukeleles strummed once in tea houses gave way to the blare of boom boxes in Washington Square across from Bruno’s garret.

I sat on the fire escape putting the words down, when the IBM Selectric typewriter fell off the table. Ooops.

Bobby Edwards played his ukelele at the Greenwich Village Follies and in tea houses. Edna St. Vincent Millay read her poetry and performed with the Provincetown Players. John Sloan and Max Eastman fought over policy at The Massses.

PJ, born in 1899, came to the Village in 1919. He was my Village historian: “Once Minetta Creek flowed in Greenwich Village. From Washington Square, look south to where Bruno’s garret drew tourists, who took the Fifth Avenue bus down to bohemia.”

In the early 70's I spent two years living on the Upper West Side, then moved to West Tenth Street. I was back in the Village.

After more than two years in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean I returned to Greenwich Village, living at the Albert Hotel, attending classes at the New School for Social Research, and supporting myself by driving a taxi.

After graduating from Syracuse University in the summer of 1967, I lived in the East Village with Sarajon. We lived first on Fifth Street then on Avenue B around the corner from Tompkins Square Park where Tiny Tim played his ukeleke. The Real Great Society opened an art gallery on Avenue A, where Sarajon exhibited her paintings.

Later that season, I studied Camus at NYU and lived in a dormitory looking out on Fifth Avenue. My roommate, from Sao Paulo, spoke only Portuguese. He brought me to his aunt’s house in Brooklyn, where we drank Cuba Libres. I brought Beto, his sister, Fatima, and their chaperone, to dance the Bossa Nova at Barry Eilenberg’s party on Long Island.

In the summer of 1965, I first spent a week caretaking John Chapman’s Barrow Street apartment, which was below street level, and dreaming of becoming a Greenwich Village writer.

Village Body

On New Years Eve of ‘64, I brought Alice to the Café Bizarre off Madougal Street in Greenwich Village. That winter Cliff Smith, Richie Beirach and Lenny Shaw were playing jazz in a small storefront on MacDougal Street, when an old man succumbed to a fit during one of their sets.

Sitting on the table,
beside a half filled
coffee cup, the cat eyed
the strawberry and rhubarb tart.

Celebrate the schav
with sour cream and dill;
the carrots, leeks, and asparagus.

The bird sang above the table where
the broad blade cut through the crisp side of
brown roasted pork, rich in juice, slicing
roughly around the dark red bone.

The writing formed
stalactites and
stalagmites in
the cave. The world
was in the words.

In the prose pose of the poet
errata will be righted by machine.

I wrote through the night in long
sleeves with unbuttoned cuffs.
The morning brought farm produce and
the scent of fresh dill to the Village.

Come away from the machine.
The return carriage pulled
us across the table.

Dreams spent. In the last fiscal period,
my muse became silent then abrasive.
Moist fingers were oiled by the machine.
As keys collided, the ribbon hurried by.

Hey, look at the lines written in the psyche,
as keys pressed bare feet, old jeans, and a blue shirt
into words. The chair swerved on the fourth floor.
The body fell through the first day of summer
in its thirty third year.

Whose will escaped
the gravity
of the random
crash
as imagination
charted a course
over the landscape?

At the end of the millennium
this poet’s fingers wove words, while keys
caught. The machine, sitting on a desk,
threw lead at a ribbon that ran by
too quickly. Keys stuck in space --
As we approached the World Trade Tower’s
observation deck, Lantis said to me,
“You should feel like a part of the family
and don’t feel that you don’t belong.”

Lantis and I left Blind Milton for the year’s
longest day atop the towers, while Buck Rogers
played on tv. The words of Carl Sagan and
Albert Einstein engraved in the World Trade Tower,
looked down on Don Lev and Richard Davidson’s
summer poetry reading at South Street Seaport.
The trade of words and ink begun with letters
on Earth, were sent billions of miles as signals
of commerce . . .

Eyes sought the beginning of written language
in the commerce of the world (gifts among men and women)
and found homes erected, traded, sold, ransacked, or stolen.
The energy of giving, buying, and selling, move in time
the tensions about the wrist tapping keys, working words
while the public eye squinted at the sun.

Impression formed after many years along Bleecker,
Macdougal, West Fourth, and Greenwich Streets.
After the New School for Social Research
and New York University, words came to the page;
Washington Square moments –
drinking at the Cedar, Lions Head, and White Horse.
I sang of Greenwich Village, its traffic and life
recorded by continually moving keys in lofts,
tenements, townhouses and Fifth Avenue apartments.

the mechanical body,
in front of the tv
listens to cockatiel, parakeet,
broadcast baseball, and
telephone rings.
it grows to accept
its own time in the world.

Fingers move the machine with thought,
tapping an unedited vocabulary, and
coining words from the limns of imagination.

This is the body of poetry hesitant to meet pain;
take chances, and accept a time in the world.

Eyes, bathed in light, strained to keep up
with the words. Back bent as elbows moved
behind palms poised above the keyboard.
My fingers moved this machine.

On Greenwich Street I lived in a loft,
watching the game afternoon keys
punch out the strawberries of life.
My freedom from being no longer
held back, the body awoke. Accepting
and rejecting the seas, I poured these
sighs into fingers that scratched at
the poetry of middle life with rumors
and tumors sending the old deal into hiding
from the advancing engine of uncertainty.

waking
from dreams of urban achievements
one hundred story towers of world trade
and the continual mounting of civilizations
risking wars
while love reclaims
the work of
the city.

“I haven’t been outside out yet.”
“You haven’t taken the dog?”
“Ma took her.”
And she says, “You’re gonna sit
there and type out nasty things
at the machine.” I wonder at
my own prejudices

She cat sat in the city.
He picked fruit on the farm.
I wrote the sense of the matter with
errors in spelling and punctuation.
The machine fell and moved,
clanging on the table.

early morning walks
to the store
with the dog
returning home
to the morning paper

the machine responds to pulling and punching
resists in its cyberspace
rejoices in its cyberspace
page after page
wondering at what it’s fed

motion and vision are computed on screens
and our voices become fingers tapping

Before us on the page continuing to the end of words
is a mind squirming under the load of the possible
suppose in the world of the child’s dream.

The writer at this machine looks
for the fracture in the wrested language.

Poets, poetry, song, singers, meters and
the machine’s wonder at the click of keys
bouncing the forms of collaboration
between thought long deliberate
and writing words.

Come to the machine morning reading
this world of power and love flooding the skies.
Lasting poets sing of Beatrice and Laura;
love between the night and reading
in the dark reaching each self
appointed loneliness and disability.
The reading reaching to belong
to an eternal reasoning, resting in peace.
Come to the returning morning wondering
at children sleeping, singing the heart of the art,
feeding words to the world, and
growing tomorrows for this millennium.

In the Brownian solution particles and globules rise shimmering,
weaving about the fluid dissolve of life on Earth;
varying forms come and go, settle but constantly move.

Radar seeks life far away sending beams
to the noble savages of the morning.

In old news, Duran lauded Sugar Ray
for the best fight he could have given.

For a ready audience in the machine, he puts down words.
Sitting in soft jeans, arms cramped at his side, hunched over the words,
his eyes look out from the glass enclosure
into the windy air above the building
and return to the child who eats his dinner.
What will the future say to these words?
Over and again, with the machine in front of him, he writes.

Hospitals and schools
invite the poets
without exploitation
without making them
objects of more attention
than each wants to be.

Poetry may solve equations of fear and distrust
through the rhythm of breath and the will of the tongue
in performance of the poet’s life sentence.

Under the spell of medical intervention
and educational mainstreaming
come children with empty eye sockets
and fistfuls of stumps.

the machine
continues with the world
and the words sing
over and again
in the house
of thought.

this is the work
of the writer moving
the machine moving
the world
hunched over
his back bent forward
his elbows at his side
his feet entangled
the left foot
circles the right

I come from the bed
recalling my fears
of where I am
not the body, but
an idea –
the many combinations
and aspirations
of passions
enlightened
by sublime desire.

We live
in the certainty of
our time
here, near
the body awakening
from deep dreams
seeking form
and responsibility.

I am
of the masses
of the many shapes of the world
born of this time
this moment

this is the body
the body is the world
and the masses of bodies
the continents and
colors of man
and the waters of life

break out
this time
from the inhumane
glory and gifts of the machine

and we will be the wills
and the whys and the freedom
of each other
we will be the chains and hates
the loves and skies

the itches and aches
loves and losses
fatigue or rejoicing
loving and hating
celebrating innocence
acknowledging experience

this is the cry of the body
from an inner voice
awaiting the budding leaves

returning with the undertow
to the awaiting seas --
the body is drawn to the bodies
crossing avenues
and the crowds in the square

frightened the body turns
upon itself and finds
the strength
of daylight the body
moves step
upon step

the youth
grows in form
and in sense
beyond the stars
that move the body

the body as reflection

here
in the uncertain
the certain
coming into the world
torso and limbs –
the body
is the world

we make poetry out of
oxygen and carbon
the chemistry of
the body

air from lungs
rises through larynx
making the noise
that is the voice

air reacts with blood and lung
the voice comes after

the space that is part of
the inner body

when the air inside
wishes to come out

word after word
comes from our lungs

we breathe
our sentences

the air
holds our vocabulary

the air
produces the sound of words

I celebrate
the in and out

I sit and write
poetry about breathing

the constrictor tightens its grip

into the wind bags of the body
keeping company with heart, stomach, and liver

blocking the free flow of air
down the throat

deviated septum
choking the breather

inhale through the nostril
clear the sinus

better breathing
takes practice

respiration and inspiration
conspire and perspire

Breathing (excerpts)

air is composed
with the greatest of ease

raspiegel 2

raspiegel 2,
originally uploaded by Ten Penny Players.

bordered

Green shades of ocean crested white . . .
(words pour
or slowly seep through the
mind) . . .
form constant
waters bordered by
beach.

Harbor
all boats
here:
come from
Greece or registered
Liberia --
wreckage,
barges,
floating
salvaged
boats.

Boats remain
here:
yesterday
a vessel
abandoned by its crew
in the Hudson;
Hudson was abandoned by crew . . .
set afloat with his son
in the Hudson.

Waters
turn idly
by docks,
splashing ambivalent
comments, humored by
bone white foam
about
bobbing
hulls.

Awaiting
and using
time to explore
port
(sailors
on Forty Second Street
out seeking liaisons),
bringing
some short visitation,
a vulnerability,
experience
hardened by
previous
ports
and aboard ship . . .

Moored to
docks:
voyage has been
chartered, maps are
better, and
the sea will
react the
same to hulls
that cut across her
surface.

Ports for vessels
of commerce,
coexisting
attending to
dilemma of their
own edification; what
matters what tides
bring ashore?
oil . . . dead
animals . . .
ships . . .

Masts gathered
along shoreline
one beside another beside
another and the city
grew: London, Amsterdam,
New York.

this is not
the end of the world
which all keep in
view as they
search the seas.

the harbor
master wants to know
my intentions,
"how long do you plan to
berth here?"

(harbor
forgotten dreams
here);

children . . .
subway system
park with its
castles and rambles
and lakes and
playground . . .

I look
on the tarred
road

I have brought
my ship into
port

Rain continues.
Traffic moves
and we read the news.

City
keeping us company.

Have to
move and make way
for another to
dock where I am.

Looking like rain
today here at harbor,
birds chirp,
my future in this port
seems most uncertain
with all these protestations
of love.

So far I have survived the storms.

Ships
enter the harbor
and
take away
what they find.

Viaducts carried
water across
land. Carried upon
waterways
were cargoes
of commerce.

voyagers crash
thrown by
currents unpredictable

it seems there
are unexpected
harbors in the
New World...

A
clipper
catching hold
of the
wind:

Harbor
refuge
from torrent...
few have
rested here.

Voyagers
wading in
blue waters, yellow
dunes,
come to
former voyagers
who waded ashore wet
with
waters of their
journey.

Oceans separated our lives
when rafts, dugouts, schooners,
clippers, steamers, tankers,
liners had not yet parted the waters
for human passage to harbor.

Out there
sanctuary
seemed
to exist
only in
our mind;
the reality
was sea,
only sea.

Water pulls
at life below;
all
who journey
the sea
await departure
(harbor
the ruins
of another time).

Harbor 1979

Clam chowder, fish
chowder,
mussels,
fish raw wrapped
in sea weed:

the bell for chow rings.
The crew gathers.

fingers hit all the wrong keys.

but couldn't see what he wrote. His

keys. -- I had a friend who wrote a novel,

puts his fingers on the wrong

not too accurately. He

prints it out. -- He goes fast, but

a printer; and the printer

When we get home he attaches

The machine is storing information.

the paper? There's no paper.

the right keys. -- Where did you put

typist. You're not hitting all

He looks so proud. He's a good

you reading everything properly?

there and typing. She laughed. Are

Look at him. He's looking out

dreamt she was on a cruise without end.

woman walked on her porch and

2008 Technology in the Arts - US Conference

2008 Technology in the Arts - US Conference,
originally uploaded by Center for Arts Management and Technology.

Thomas was co-presenter at the 2008 Technology in the Arts conference.

her yellow bathrobe, the small

in the afternoon grass. In

Heron and sandpiper played

She Was Losing Her Memory

money. They took everything.

Then he told me -- they took his