Thursday, March 24, 2011

Sous Ton Visage-- Under Your Face.

Under Your Face (Eng)

your visage

sculpted of peanut butter in full sun
your traits melting under weight of years
your wrinkles sliding under a frown
stranded under gravity

waiting for me on the quay
no you never cry
your creator lacked talent
mine romance

I write the scene anew
in order to replay your ego
your pride lost under dust

the train arrives
my stomach slides
I retain the essential
under other skies
to my own rhythm



everywhere I replay you
I meet you mother finally relieved
under funerary ashes

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Sous Ton Visage (Fr)

ton visage

sculpté de pâte d' arachide en plein soleil
tes traits fondant sous le poids des années
tes rides glissant sous sourcils froncés
tu gits là sous force de gravité

m' attendant sur le quai.
non tu ne pleures jamais
ton crèateur a manqué de talent
le mien de roman

et j'écris la scène de nouveau
afin de rejouer ton moi
ta fierté perdue sous poussière

le train qui arrive
mon estomac qui dérive
je retiens l'essentiel
sous d'autres ciels
à mes propres rythmes

et partout je te rejoue
je te rencontre mère enfin soulagée
sous cendres funèraires.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

White Feather


White Feather

The old Indian woman stoops on her wooden porch and picks up a white feather. Her bones are tall and wide – she has the proud bearing of a Shoshone.

Her pouchy brown eyes are now covered with slowly advancing cataracts, but she can still feel her mountains; she can smell the cool dry air brushing over high valley grasses.

She tells of days when her grandmother walked out of the stone age before she died with such quiet confusion.
She tells of her mother who wore her Indian name with dignity to her own end.
Now it is she who bears responsibility above the new insanity. Only I know her name.
She now is worn and consumed by the unmentionable degradation of unpronounceable disease.

She who was summoned to fight for her people’s rights at senate committee hearings – she who held up her great gray head, softly voicing her peace above skinny nervous men who underestimated her indolent presence.

An indulgent smile moves across her tired round face as she speaks of her children’ s children:
“Sure, they didn’t want to live at the ranch. There is no modern man’s fun up there – progress calls down below on the great desert floor – much, much too lonely up there – I’ll lose them as I lost their parents to the money or the drink.”

She moves slowly a lenient hand, and calls with voice neither raised nor anxious. The peace of god and old aunts is with her. The love of gray husband, always around. She senses passage of seasons on her land with the resolution of a fair borrower.

Round eye sagging in face of concern – round hip of motherhood – carried papoose and basket to collect pine nuts and rush root and once felt part of the all mother. She dries her great wrinkled hand on a flowered apron. With a squint to the dusty mementos on the wall, the woman gathers ancestral consciousness in one long breath.

She remembers ancestors who hunted all the way to the birth of the river; now she sees her sons gather wild horse and buy violent new cars – till they depend on the wealth of others and the destitution of self.

She bears the looks of townspeople who mock the schoolchildren hire the fathers and the bureaucrats who evade her honesty.

Proud Shoshone woman, my friend.

Geese have gone south and the “taibos” will soon be driving up the rock trails with their infernal machines mounted on so high axles as to conquer Earth itself.

The Indian woman’s legs are heavy as her head now. She doesn’t want to be driven into town anymore, or to the Indian hospital on the Paiute reservation – free doctors – free nurses – cost plenty – to her – so nice – so far – so, no.
Time to let spirit go – god is fine and the doctors also. Children will be well: one married to sweet blond girl; the other just got her diploma – she is strong now.
Husband' s tears will dry up in wind – time to speak Shoshone once more to old aunt. A phone call from down below – a two hour drive.
Old woman twirls great white feather in rich brown hands.
Time to let spirit go south.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

The Lady of Café de la Gare.



With long hand folded as a broken wing, she brushes a gray strand from her forehead, an aging beauty from the silent screen. Elegant in her tidy apron, Simone glides across decades in classic gesture.

Cloth moistened, the lady of the café de la Gare wipes each marble tabletop, with neither haste nor sloth, intent on comfort and cleanliness - eye to the door, ready to welcome her regulars. Those who have spent the better part of their youth and most of their retirement in her establishment.

A northern pride keeps her chin well lifted and her long limbs gracefully answer each task as she nearly waltzes through the long tables of the bar, her voice, strong and sharp, sings of the unforgotten Paris of Henry Miller stories and Garbo movies.
With respect in eye and courtesy to lips, her blue gaze sees to every anticipated need of her daily clients, her friends in quotidian routine.

As long as she serves stout red wine with the same smile as she pours bitters, she will be surrounded by the imperturbable mystery that binds the servile to the served; a courtship of kind in the untouchable, unchangeable environment of rural French cafés.

The indomitable lady of the establishment, owner of her destiny in the face of faster trains and full buses, she draws the menu with chalk in hand and keeps the card games honest. With neither reproach nor unkind word, she sorts out the daily gossip to be served with the spirits. She has heard every complaint about every politician installed in more decades than the clientéle can count. Shakes her head, gives a knowing nod and refrains from joining the popular frenzy.

When talk turns too personal, the lady pours a slow wine in the glass of the loudest, and tones calm down as if the ritual gesture brought sense into the room. She knows how to encourage the positive and alleviate the pains. With a hand raised to the routines of the evening, she can relieve tensions with a simple question,
and you Edgard? Did you prefer the trout or the veal this supper?” it's all in the timing and the tone; never a judgment be told.

Simone glides upon the ancient tiles and serves her people well. She is the lady who waits for the train and the bus everyday, neither sad nor anxious, as she has done for years. Her silent companion stirs the soupe du jour, a stout and sweet woman, seldom seen out of the kitchen which is full of warm ovens and old utensils.

Today, quiche and salade aux champignons rosés, to remember Raoul, the homeless man who came after supper, daily, to partake of leftovers and a glass of piquette, the sour house wine. The train could not brake in time, says the headline.

Women' s Month Ongoing.


  In order to commemorate half the world of humanity, i shall post poem or prose a day.
The feminine side of all in all its aspects. An exercise in blogging and topic maintenance.
This humble beginning was published on Durable Goods, a micro mag which is printed and edited by Aleathia Dremmer--a Wonderful Woman. mother and friend, with a keen eye for the written word.

Two women

one solemn one silly

sat at a wooden table
and read each other' s work
they laughed they cried
written words to surface
to show to share
kitchen wisdom
in great rifts of passion
dressed in light fare

some solemn some silly

one classic one rustic
borrowing burying
sorrows in serious lines
writings of toil
memories of soil
never far from tears
never faint from fears
they laughed at the script

some solemn some silly

nadine sellers written in Colton CA on a steamy day...years ago.

Monday, March 7, 2011

an Ocean in a Bathtub.


Spring has once again taken a detour, postponing chores and serious work till further sunshine...late snows and frozen rain gracing the hillsides with shimmering decor, birds engaged in bickering and gathering what winter has left. Nature an eyeful of continuum, never deterred. Today is not for wasting, so i gather my own leftovers, words of lost meaning, recycled in a few lines, through a landscape of snow-drops and barely bulging bulbs.
----------------------------------

Having read songs of sea and elements,
then watched the whale's acrobatics.
Mind waving along schools of silver
meandering along thermal currents.

Pulse resting and tension releasing its nasty grip.

Slowly, i let words fall, not trying to catch them.
Slowly, i swallow water and release it again.
Immersed in the mineral brine
then float about, alone in time.


Sunday, February 27, 2011

Pfft! Not For Everyone Magazet.


The DADA YOW community emerges again amid a climate of irrelevance and irreverence in these times of scattered wars and poorly planned patent-hood..

Who can stand still at the gates of doom?
Who will take the reins of spent monarchies?
Who else is going to cook for the badger kings?
Who then will grow the cabbage and row the boat?
Who shall chew the ink berries to print the last page?
DADA YOW …
Absurdists to the rescue, provides an element of strange sanity and sustainability...
Major or minor, there's plenty delirium in the medium of current independent magazines*

DALI : unearthed in the pages of ---PFFT! ^^^Featuring the fringe few who survive trends and counter trends within a loosely crocheted community..raking the tender undersides of literati...

As cubism was to representational art, verbal dadaism bucks formalism in the sonnet>
Keep your pentameter belted on, and meditate upon nothingness; the art of being suspended**.

Polyanna buried and Pandora unchained, somewhere within, roam free verse and untethered phrase to haunt the halls of this magazet from
www.RADIO ACTIVE MANGO.com..recordings

Stir and sift, dilute this potent nonsense of everyday life.
Fini, the opulence, the financial flatulence..
The trees are belching black ink on colorful paper-matter,
not to be understood, but rather perused and used.
Hey? PFFT! magazet
OMPHALOS DADA YOW community...
dot org.

nadinada. for Justynn Tyme and Robert Montilla et al...

Saturday, February 26, 2011

How to Cook Cereal..or Not..


How to Fix Cereal.

Dear would be cook and dish-washer.

From the cyberland express, i rush to your assistance to arouse your interest in self-sufficiency. Having humorously invited me to your humble digs in the mighty state of Texas to cook for you, i am left to assume that you are in desperate need of household help. The very best help however, remains at the end of your right arm, again assuming that you are fully equipped for clean living and solvency.

By the minimal observable data provided in your short comment, i once more assume that: A) you are a lost bachelor in state of helplessness, B) a man with a late rising mate, C) a late rising man, raised by a no-cook mother.

Should any of the above assumptions prove off the mark, please chalk this off to the vast geography and opacity of the network. Now we may proceed on a path to self gratification; lessons i should have learned in kindergarten. More fun to try as adults.

Put right foot on floor, if floor is still there, please apply pressure, if leg still there, put left foot close to the right and stand up. Now dash to the outhouse or nearest watering facility.
once voided of previous liquids, pour clean water, clean is the operative word here, into a clean receptacle, drink, it's only water.

With emergencies out of the way, you may relax and chance a peek at the mirror, enjoy the natural animal reflection. Observe the details facing you, any hair growth, change of skin tone, overnight surprises in texture of skin...Good. however you must resist the urge to poke and tease blemishes. Just as in a fruit, any blemish is a sign of life, life is good. Perfection, not so good.

With your daily activity quota nearly fulfilled, you may now attend to hygiene details, no, no, i shall not intrude into your mouth and other personal cavities, of course not. Far be it from a seasoned life coach such as myself to invade the interstitial privacies of a total stranger. This is an impersonal column by a recipe writer from the soft earth in the middle of nowhere.
Seasoned yes, coaching one self yes, thereby ending any presumed teaching principles.

You're not finished yet; so the next step takes you to the room you may call kitchen, cubby-hole or corner closet. Reach for a clean bowl, pan or other clean concave object, hunt for your favorite brand of cold cereal. It may be behind assorted moldy breads, buggy Rice-a-loony boxes or mothy pre-packaged dry goods your family gave you a few years ago. First things first...Do not stir or even open the suspicious bread items or dead pastries, gently grab and run softly to nearest sealable plastic bag, close hermetically to avoid cross contamination of other cereal products. Mold spores affect undernourished and love starved individuals the most.

As soon as you spot the cereal, straighten all items around the shelf, if you have regular cupboards. Now that this phase of your quotidium is over, look at the clock, good, are you late?. Late for what?. Then go to the fridge, go ahead, sniff the milk, gingerly at first, if lumpless and pure white, it still may be digestible-- pour, sniff twice as you have seen the wine tasters do on PBS -- pass under nose discreetly -- make a smug little grimace --add a bit of sugar if you haven't outgrown that rotten molar at the back of your cavities -- do you have a few nuts laying around in the pantry? -- ok, check the chair cushions -- how about dried fruits for anti-oxidants, you know that humans need their phytochemicals to survive this stressful world they have fostered. Ready?

Forget the comfy chair, the zen practice of eating-for-the-sake-of-eating alone would be disturbed by the bodily convenience, comfort is a spoiler of character. Instead may i suggest the plainest kitchen seat you have -- now hold your spine straight -- stretch neck as if a string held you suspended from the very spot on the ceiling above you -- plunge spoon with great anticipation into the liquid ahead -- disregard the strange floating objects in the milk -- as long as they are not brown and ovate -- they may not be from rodent source -- and should they be of insect origin, just consider them proof of the lack of excess chemical pesticide in your valuable food source. High fiber content is what you are concentrating on.

But? I digress, remain ever grateful as the spoon arcs to your open mouth, the gods of agriculture and nourishment are smiling upon the familiar gesture of feeding the creature. Do you feel it? That's it you have accomplished the true art of satisfying self-sufficiency.

Argh! well, i told you to smell-check that milk, didn't i? spit that down quickly, in the bowl, the stray dog outback may be starving again, recycle-recycle, end of lesson in self feeding, so much for the zen of it all. you've been doing great, just peruse recipes for the clues. Have a nice day now!