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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Your Sunday Poem

This lovely poem is from “Dogggerel; Poems about dogs,” and is by Lisel Mueller

What The Dog Perhaps Hears

If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn’t a shudder
too high for us to hear.

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly there,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

11 comments:

Alon Perlman said...

An excellent choice Ann, seems to go to what I like in a poem, a window to another world, presented in a manner that makes me think.

This is the sound dogs respond to best- DogWhistle.mp3

Alon Perlman said...

I may as well drop ths work in progress here;Louise Holms owner of the Merrimaker died a couple of weeks ago

This is called Unhappy Hour.

----------------------
Sure Barkeep

line me up with;
a pint of pain
a quart of quatrain
a bottle of brined brain
a pre-frontal refrain

And that half lime, right there in the drain

A jigger of grog
a late morning Fog
a wink and a nod
a sob and a laugh

And the pessimistic half of a persimmon cognac carafe

A bolt of upright white lightning
a moment of clarity, frightning
a sex on the pier, delighting
a colder shoulder to fondle

And a Hanoi Jane absinth, to forget all my sins, with

The pride of Baywood
the scribing of Beardwood
the of stem of Rosewood
entwined in a wormwood wine snifter

And a shot of Carb cleaner and a Hurst dual shifter

A fifth of Santa-Maria
a corner of second
first of three brick houses sold
a Mountain of Gold

A goblet of sherry for a maker of merry

A malted helter skelter
a random shooter
a liberal smattering of smack
a lick of lascivious latitude

And a drained-white pale Mary, in a run-over cup

A tequila mockingbird
a rummy disposition
a smidgen of smug cosmopolitan
a long draw of awe

And a chaser chalice of cool cherry cherished chastisement

And push over that pail of pretzels of provocative punishment, while you are at it...


Word verification; resseold
which is the crux of the matter, Louise dying among friends and will always be remembered.
So what will become of that other Baywood Tradition.

SLOTowner said...

Alon, post your poetry on your own blog. No need to be a show-off!

Churadogs said...

A Toast to Louise, and Godspeed to her!

And, sure, Alon. You have a website, why not post whatever you want on that site, but certainly feel free to link in this comment section. That would certainly give you all the space you'd need since this comment section is limited and for usually brief comments among readers & etc.

Alon Perlman said...

So, SLOTowner since you newly decided to walk all the way over here, from Obispo.
In this Heat...
I guess I'll tell you what goes on over here.
While Ann has friends among the Literati and creative artists of the written coastal word, this has been for several years a Los Osos Sewer Blog.
And as such it has attracted a rather severe case of Gut malaise, an infestation of a particularly nasty type of Intestinal Parasites. And this has wormed its way into the elements of the blog ostensibly not related to sewer issues. So many of the “Poetry related” comments placed on the Poem postings are in fact:
About settling scores on Sewer Issues, not about Poems at all.

So reason #2 that I don't post on my my own Blog is that I don't want these Sewernasties following me out there and leaving their foul castings all over the pristine mahogany flooring.

And I tell you this so that you don't naively drag that pair, Itchy and Scratchy Ooch over to your blog.
Cause if you offend them, and they offend easily, they will reappear under guises, spouting the most vile lies, then re-apparating as their angelic persona’s, tusk tusk tusking and church ladying about and proclaiming angst and innocence and politely suggesting paranoiac treatment.

Hard to believe I know, but what is even harder to believe is that they have been doing it long before they became Orange County outcasts and placed their filthy refuse on our shores.

And if one dons those thickened gloves and delves into those muckrakers primal oozings there is another surprise in store:

Many of the comments placed on the Canon's postings are in fact:
Not about settling scores on Sewer Issues, but about offenses to their ego's.
Welcome to Los Egos.

And if the jetsum and flotsum are then scraped away, and the cadaverous slime pressure-hosed back, (Yet still the stench of smegmatic smug self-satisfaction lingers) one finds the little people naked and find that the cliche lives on; Talent having skipped a couple of generations and with all the puffery wetted back, it is just a sad little family affair. Junior proficient but no artist. The proud parents denying the reality, ragging raging hissy-fits of Jealousy, for you see;

It's not about settling ego scores on Sewer Issues. It's about Poems after all.

Alon Perlman said...

So Ann; Why did I not respond to SLOT Owner yesterday, when I first saw the comment?
Hmmm? Why wait for an AM to cycle through Hmmmm?

What is the frequency of a new poetry lover being born?
What is the frequency of a sewer parasite engaging in adaptive mimicry and casting off one more exoskeleton?



Do you see how freaking boring this is, How predictable?
As in; One month ago predictable.
I salute your choice in allowing the relative freedom and rarity of deletions. But I know from the emails that it is also a response to Harassment.
So my offer still stands; If you don't like my postings; push the button and delete them.

But don’t let yourself be ditto-headed into policing your own blog, by suggestions by the self appointed Blogland Police. I respect you to much for that. Until today...


Like many Los Ossans; you got played.
Just kidding -Today; being no different than any other.

Unknown said...

This is a special day! I find myself in agreement with M and now with Alon. The venom ought to start flowing in ernest this evening. Although she may have to ask ron to write her rebuttal.

Have a truly nice evening. BTW, great help on clearing the abandoned trailers and boats. Pandora should be congratulated for her community spirit! Sure beats the negative crap from Santa Margarita

Aaron Ochs - Managing Editor of The ROCK said...

Ann, I found out that Alon has a site of his own. He has a Twitter account.

Churadogs said...

Alon sez:"Do you see how freaking boring this is, How predictable?"

Yes, I DO see how boring and predictable all of this is. That's why I keep asking people to grow up and go back to their own yards to stage their fist fights. And if you don't want sicko people to follow you "home" in order to dump THEIR crap all over YOUR website, then don't allow for comments. That way you can post a link here, and they CAN'T follow you home, and if they start being too stupid HERE over something you've posted over THERE, then I'll have to start dumping them. And go back to telling all of you to GROW UP.

And for some of you who think this is a SEWER BLOG, that simply speaks to your inability to read or remember anything. The Can(n)ons, for YEARS, has always been about a wide variety of topics. The reason sewer issues come to the fore is because for a good deal of time, they've been topic #1 du jour, so they get attention. And if you had been paying attention, you'd notice I haven't posted any Cannons on the sewer for a long time because things are on the back burner. If and when it comes up again as issue du jour, I'll comment again.

But this is not and never has been a sewer blog. Ron's blog is a sewer blog. The problem here is that there's a small, tiny number of obsessive "sewer" people who want to fight and come here to do it. You know who you are. I've been pretty tolerant to allow a certain amount of it, but C'mon people. Time to pull on you big boy pants and get a grip.

Aaron Ochs - Managing Editor of The ROCK said...

On a somewhat serious note, I'll address what Ann wrote.

For about four years, I've received many e-mails from people who write to me and said, "Hey, check this out," [NOTE: people who inform me of what's happening do not post on Can(n)on] and they link me to all the fighting in the comments, not the article itself. I feel bad for Ann because people have vandalized her site for so long that anything she posts is undermined by poisonous sewer rhetoric.

I've always known that Ann's blog is not all about the sewer, but people -- who don't have a site of their own -- unnaturally shift the discourse to that particular issue. If you look at the even bigger picture, life on the Central Coast isn't about the sewer.

Growing up is hard to do for some people. Also, if you're going to attack me and my positions, go on my site. I'll be more than happy to lift my ban moratorium on Taxpayers Watch if reasonable disagreement can be achieved.

Churadogs said...

Razor sez:'I feel bad for Ann because people have vandalized her site for so long that anything she posts is undermined by poisonous sewer rhetoric."

Or I get "threatening" phone messages left on my answering machine or get "threatening" e-mails from "anonymous" personages who I consider to be sadly suffering from a certifiable (and clearly untreated) mental illness.

And so it goes. So, have you children gotten your little pissing contests out of your system? Good. Time to move along.