POETRY

FIVE LINE POEM
Always spreading his beat/ blues message in unlikely places, here James R. Merrill brightens a dreary and defunct movie marquee.

James R Merrill's poem gets a lot of eyeballs in OR

Reality’s Gon’ Gooey by the Ravendove/ 4-2020
Here the mysterious Ravendove dips into a topical groove of this radically changing world today.  One  wonders if the dateline refers to the cannabis lovers holiday or this spot in time.

Reality’s gon’ gooey

The hard fixed edges

Lines and angles

The solidity of certainty

Melting like imaginary ice cream

In a make believe museum

Where we once waxed

Without end

Donut Man by the Ravendove

Ravendove is the nom de plume of a multi-pronged creative, whose book (with RW Klarin) Courageous Collaborative Cagebreakers inspired this website and movement.  For the first time his soulful commentary appears on the Firebird Rising.  (RW Klarin)

the tones of the sixties vibrated in my ears

and the word was REVOLUTION

as a child i loved things that spin

a coin a top a ball

and i knew i was gonna change things

make this world spin on my finger y’all

so i got educated

i could philosophize and quote Rousseau

Cervantes Gibran Emerson and Thoreau

i read quantum theory string theory

hell, i read timothy leary

but along the way i lost the plan 

i was well rounded see                with no center

i was donut man

suddenly the only revolution i knew

was the rotation of planet livin’ day to day 2 day 2 day

stranded on a kiln i was clay

oozing thru the fingers of everyone else’s

whims and ideas of what i should be

molded and shaped like dough

never minding cz it’s cool

to be kneeded

one day i looked in the mirror and didn’t

recognize the person staring back

next day it was the same way

and the day after that and the day after that

there was a stranger hanging on the wall

so eventually i stopped looking at all

Proximity Is Everywhere by James  R Merrill

A new poem by one of our Firebird Rising authors, Jim is the poet laureate of Keizer, OR.  In this time of Covid-19, perhaps the theme of proximity strikes a poignant note.  (RW Klarin)

Do you notice the sun on
your back, the sun as a neighbor,

an intimate? It’s a heat-sending force,

reaching down to arrive at the surface.

My cheek, forehead, my hands. And it

goes under the skin – it’s potent, causes

cancer without enough shade -- without

huddling together. Young mother with babe

in the shade of her stroller lights up a smoke.

She doesn’t notice or cares not. Proximity is everything.

                                                                                                                                                  The children, their parents—every little boy,
every prancing girl – the tattoos, piercings,

the phones, games in the phones. Fashions

the tattered jeans, the sheer leggings –  close

to the skin, bodies touch bodies, shapes

on display. Everywhere I go, I see a thing

revealed. The closest things reveal the

bold brash beauty, of proximity.

Ocean  Park--- 4/8/20 by RW Klarin
RW Klarin resides in the formerly bohemian/ hippie district now notoriously techie Silicon Beach in Santa Monica.  He published a volume of poetry Expression is Liberation  in 2010.

Walking  down  the quiet streets of my beach side neighborhood and seeing

---Young couple both wearing stylish black masks walking their suitably small dog

---Chronic homeless guy on a bike sifting through the recycling bin

---Older bicyclist racing on a ten-speed on my street now that the beach path is closed

---Porsche Macan speeding down Highland Ave with forty-something staring  straight ahead

And still the sun shines brightly after last night's rain, small pleasures

I look and note and breathe slowly now, I do almost everything slower now;

talking, bathing, hand-washing, shopping, and household chores.

No rush, nowhere I can go for distraction.  This retreat without end digs deep. 

An even more desultory scene greeted me at the grocery store with a half-hour wait in line 

with employees playing games to amuse the sullen customers.

The novelty is off now, the novelty of isolation, the novelty of a global health threat, the novelty  of the  stock market crash, and anxious wondering prevails.

A novel corona virus has done what a recession or war alone could not---stop EVERYTHING all at once.

Stopping is easy, but starting again will be slow and painful.

What do we  open first?  The beaches?  The golf courses? The places of worship?  The bars?  The hiking  trails?  The movie theaters?  The borders?

The old doctor says maybe in the fall schools can open and maybe not

Perhaps  the basketball season can start in the fall with no spectators or not.

Imagining this is all a dream, but it's not.

The utter fragility of life stares at all of us and reminds us to

Breathe and see, really see that Monarch butterfly and that lonely possum.

SOMETHING MY DHARMA TEACHER  SAID by James R. Merrill

Here renowned Beat poet Merrill explores the paradox of studying nothing by nobody.  (RW Klarin, publisher)

A bumper sticker in Colorado in the 90’s said, “Shit Happens” — you remember that

one? The next one that came out in Boulder was a clever retort: “Nothing Happens”.

But you might not get it unless you were part of the new age western Buddhists of

that era … a position that holds: man’s place in the universe is not just puny, but human

perceptions are all illusion; there’s nothing real in the mind.

I’d be driving around Boulder imagining World Peace, driving down Arapahoe

Boulevard in my worn out west coast groove wagon, blithely reading bumper stickers,

such as another favorite of the day, “Visualize Whirled Peas”.

I can see trees swaying overhead, recoiling from the fierce winds blowing

off the Front Range into town. I could be back there now.  It’s my mind, which isn’t real --

so why not go?  I’ve just spied a squirrel tip-toeing, ballerina style, across the high wire

stretched above College Blvd.  I’m still pondering the unsolvable riddle I just read on a woman’s T-shirt. It read: “Stop Staring at My Breasts” — printed right across her chest.  What a koan! She had opened the door of her apartment to show me a car she had for sale in the paper. Now I’m thinking about her breasts, so basically I bought the car without giving it a second look.

Back to driving my old beater on its last legs; I’m worried if that squirrel is going to make his

way across the wire, or even if he is really there. That’s silly, of course he’s there. But is he in a dream of his own illusion, or is it only humans who are tripping through this life in illusion? Then I start a dialog with my dharma teacher. It was only in my head; he wasn’t there. But he had told me earlier in the day that it is my obstinate ego that is clinging to the notion of reality. And then, “Boom!” -- I tailgate the guy in front of me who’s stopped at the railroad tracks while I’m looking up at a squirrel and arguing with something my dharma teacher told me. 

*Dharma teacher:  An individual who  teaches Buddhist philosophy