Love hurts

Sadness can turn to anger between two people who do love each other but fail to understand each other. The balance between them lost, both will scream, speak the truth as they perceive it so bluntly that it hurts their own soul. Tears flow in private. The communication break down has crept upon them. Yet they are a great team. She has failed to draw the boundaries clearly and he has overstepped. They can't understand the other fully and both get hurt. How does one show support for a person? How, in general, one can help another person without exploiting, using the person... and without being exploited or used. How to show tenderness among the hurt. Time flows differently for different people. One is fast paced, running, to cram as much into life as feels good. The other is in slow motion, thoughtful, deep thinking but not communicative, not speaking ever  about what moves on a personal level. A lot about the world, music, opinions, but hardly anything abou what makes this person tic. So, silence installs itself between two people and misunderstandings arise more and more often. How does one feel loved?

I see the blue-black eye

hear the nagging

and know the bruises of their soul

There is a war out there

Don’t wage that war on me

I lost my past and who I was

to find searching

a gentle caring sharing

need

But waves of anger

wash me to a breaking shore

My friend Vicky - out West

She lived her life the way it was supposed to be. Like so many of us. A husband, children... Some of it good, bad times too. Like so many of us. She changed, made mistakes, missed the right or left turn. Yet she became alive and kept looking for whom, for what?

What is what she found first, deep in mud ... Then she found whom, whom she could dare and share with. Thus we met, thus she left, following her road with heart.

Godspeed Vicky... Still moving on and on.

Unsung hero

Rose vdw is one of my unsung heroes. She is gentle and compassionate, a good friend and poet. She is quiet spoken, a lover and supporter of art. She bakes a mean apple cake which I savor with relish. She is also a help in working through my feelings concerning my mother who is suffering with dementia. Rose, for about 16 long years, visited her mother with Alzheimer in the ‘Cocoon’. This soft spoken soul however was a power house when she felt her mother had not been dealt with as she deserved. The institution offered ‘comfort care ‘, which turned out to be mainly comfortable for the nurses. The patients would be bedded down every day and every night. They were no longer dressed, nor would they sit at a table to eat, or sit in a comfortable chair in the afternoon. Then the daughter became the advocate who trembling with emotions of sadness and anger would defend the quality of life of her mother and thus also of the other patients. When my mother's illness began, Rose would answer my questions, sometimes sketch what awaited me in the logical evolution that was to follow. She gave invaluable insight and thus acceptance of what was to come.

Here a moving poem about her mother’s reaction when Rose's father passed away.

I have loved him so much, she said.

A month before he died - he couldn't

eat a bite - she had set out there

the same stack of sandwiches

already for fifty years. He fumed.

A wounded lion. The berry jam, soon a

bloodstain on the carpet. In almost

a scuffle he was felled by her as if a feather.

I have loved him so much, she said

while crying and unknowing of the days,

now angry, then again fearful was left behind.

On her own a passport with a spotless past.

The square and B B King

I am sitting in a trendy square and am amazed at how young the city has become. Just here and there a graying beard, a white head. Just two, three ample gray haired women. The 30/40 year old are mainly skinny, Sancere sipping and speaking about a new partner be it in love or in business. Also relationships turned sour are a frequent subject. Good advice, or advice meant as such, is balanced by hard edged principles, used as a dam against more hurt. And then from somewhere a line of music:

If you don't know
what to do
listen to T-Bone Walker
if you don't now
what hit you
when you're under
a bad spell
can't hide the thrill
listen
listen
to B B King

Muddy roads will be traveling soon but first Bart Stouten's presentation tonight

THAT FEELING

                    Flying.

A feeling of laying in an unmade bed.

Staring at Buddhist sutras

from floor to ceiling

slipping in and out one's consciousness.

Feeling the sutras

keep you alive.

                    The stewardess, a cameo appearance

in dark Chinese whispers, brought coffee,

lukewarm and annoyingly weak with powdered milk

and a glimpse of hauling about her darlings.

Made corny jokes about thick and thin. Her own choice

written on her body. In fluent French.

No idea where it came from. That feeling.

I loved her, briefly, put myself to work

emptied all this thinness.

                    Waiting, with sleep and in-flight magazine,

for better pastimes.

                    It came. High above the gold coast,

which reminded my neighbor of the complicated timing

of coming into the world elsewhere: mom's returning

from a trip to Papua New Guinea, her desire

to birth him in Australia, his first scream

in a Lockheed Hercules en route. And how he

two years ago – his pousse café a fait divers

for Quantas – was gripped by a fear of flying so intense

that he nailed to the floor, watched how the plane left

without him, to yet another continent.

                    ...in an unmade bed... staring at

Buddhist sutras...

                    For me no alcohol.

Vascular problem requiring an understanding smile,

so thinks the stewardess.

*
8 pm: in den Hopsack, Grote Pieter Pot straat, Antwerp, Belgium

Job Degenaar-Lucienne Stassaert-Fred Schywek in salon 12b

 Lucienne Stassaert started the evening with an introduction to the poetess Andrée Chedid whose work she has been translating from French into Dutch. The love of nature and landscapes, the positive outlook on life, Caïro and Paris as the two cities with a stream which where her home, all that was a medicine, an antidote in a difficult for Lucienne. The translation is vibrant and alive.

Fred Schywek read from Weisse Mühle to be published in 2 or 3 languages in autumn. His poetry has strong imaginary and plays on language. Love and loving and love lost and longing are the theme in this book.

During the break Goulash soup was served and Rice pudding with apples ( thanks Rose!) Then followed Job Degenaar with a well chosen reading from his latest book Ich bin- I am, read in its three languages: Dutch, German and English. He is a traveler with an eye for detail, finding the beauty in melancholy, seeing the deep and fascinating humanity in others. Job performed several traditional ballads delighting us all. I thank the poetry loving friends who came and shared a warm and intimate evening of beauty in four languages.

 

John Sinclair

John Sinclair performs on tour with a band. The band plays according to the lyrics spoken. A lot of the poetry is influenced by Jazz, so we were treated with Monk, a bit of Coltrane, good old blues... and the words which flowed. The band prepares and then plays a set of songs, lyrics by Ken Post. After the break, after a moment of stillness and concentration, poet-activist, icon of American sub-culture performs. A love poem with a twist, a poem about being on the road and in jail with the beau of his mother and making money because the prison guards loved their performance and brought them out every night to another club.

Strong
moving
to the point
surprising
love
and struggle
freedom
and all that...
Here you see the band, Lenny on the sax had his work cut out for him.

A fun night, without any of the tediousness of officialdom.
Honest en open jazzy poetry.
If  you have a chance to see John Sinclair perform, do go and listen.
It will warm the cockles of your heart.
Read the history of his struggle for the freedom to get high.

Funerals and the celebration of life

In the span of a few weeks I attended three funerals and in this misty November it made me pensive. I learned from each of the services, which all three happened to be non-religious memorial services. In one case, I saw the person as a gruff, a bit rude, uncompromising, self-righteous man, yet I learned how he doted on his wife, how he was a kind father and kinder grandfather still, always preparing fun and grand holidays involving boats. In the second funeral, the character of the man shone through in the music his wife and sun had picked out. An ardent tango - they did dance together for years - spoke of the kind of love they felt for each other. And two rather irreverent songs about life and death and yes, it was in keeping with his mentality. I also learned how much he had been there for other people. And the third, a brother of a dear friend passed. The speakers were friends and the family, not professional speakers. Two different personalities emerged from the memories people held dear: from a cantankerous contrarian, who loved jazz and loved discussions. The heartfelt thank you was: thanks for the headwind you provided. And then out of the family's words there emerged the kind, attentive uncle or brother and brother in law, protective of those he loved. He used his stubbornness trying to beat the odds and his sister said: I couldn't have wished for a kinder, better brother...

Goodbyes are hard. Pain mixes in with cold of night and yet life has to be celebrated, their life and ours.

San Francisco Poetry

Shawn at the Paradiso studio

© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2011

One of the reasons to come to San Francisco was to  record Susan Birkeland's poetry. Through Nicole Savage's website of San Francisco heart, and indeed a big heart and a fountain of information, some poetry friends of Susan gather at the Paradiso Studio and will record in their voice,  Susan's poetry.

The first to read was Bill Mercer  choosing three of Susan's poems. The next friend and poet was Ana Elsner reading one and afterward sharing about her friendship/sisterhood with Susan and their shared life experiences like having overcome cancer... Clara Hsu with her melodious reading of Flashlights of Innocence, was followed by Nicole Savage who brought this group together and reading 6 poems. Also Jerry read two poems.

After those voices and words are secured, devorah major read from tears in the mouth of the moon and Dark Love from where rivers meet ocean. A powerful display and moving performance. The studio is very professional: in three hours all the poetry that needed to be recorded was on cd's, all this under  the watchful eye of the organizer.

She went walking

The old lady just upped and left. In a blink of an eye. She went home, or so she thought when she got away. Through the brush and brambles, her legs bleeding from the sticks and stubs she went looking for what she left: her home of 35 plus years. Her man, barely younger than she, always kept her in his sight and still she wandered off out of an enclosed elegiac garden. He looked in the thickets, checked the bushes and brush. Phoned the police. Got in his car, went looking for her. Nowhere is the lady in her dress and and slippers to be seen. Then the call came: She was found wandering towards the busy main road. They took her to the hospital, cleaned her wounds, found out his name. Her's, she had forgotten. She was glad to see him, has no memory of her escapade. He was glad to see her: love reigns supreme.