Postcards for Peace

I participated in the first World Peace Poets postcard project this past February, after being invited by Carla Shafer. Rather than post every poem I wrote, I have put together a page which will feature all the poems I wrote for the project. The card I chose for #554....

526. Fennelity

Unlike Chicory, I’ve been eating fennel the last couple of summers. The intensity of this herb is astounding and a wonderful taste that one gets in Cascadia summer. I heard it grows wild north of San Francisco, as we recently saw aside Highway 1 on the way to Stinson...

525. Momentary Cultivation

An August Poetry Postcard from 2015 featuring yet another photo of mine from 2014, this one from the Skokomish Rez, I love the allusion to the American Indian Movement and hope President Obama will finally pardon Leonard Peltier. But the poem is more about...

Hummingbird Resuscitation

I like to think of it as a good sign in my life when critters are waiting until I pass by to drop from the sky in need of a little aid. Fortunately this recent experience was only a hummingbird, but the thud was palatable and the experience quite humbling. In town for...

524. Topless Lady (Not a Leinenkugel ®)

For some reason I segued into a memory from my rock n roll DJ days in Appleton, WI (WAPL) with this latest 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest poem from August 11. I was a member of the Leinenkugel Club and required to have at least one cold Leinie’s in the fridge at all...

522. More Recreation

Written in the heat of the recent Bernus Interruptus, which I witnessed and which my report of (I think) resulted in the loss of one postcard participant. The bloqueo reference is the Cuban economic embargo which has been quite punishing to the people of the country...

521. Composed in Solidarity

Since 2004, I’ve had a little soft spot in my heart for Muslims given that my spiritual practice (the Latihan Kejiwaan of Subud) was created (discovered?/invented?) by a Muslim. (I was initiated into Subud June 2004.) Maybe that’s why the case of the man...

519. Needs of the Market

On this 2015 August Poetry Postcard there is photo of the Chief after whom the city I live in is named. Is there another major American city that so directly honors its indigenous heritage? If yes, comment below. The poem also riffs off the Chief’s famous speech, or...

Hallelujah, the Poetics of Music

(For Columbia City Gallery Literary Series, Dec 13, 2015) “We study the self to lose the self. Only when you forget yourself can you become one with all things.” – Dögen Some brief thoughts about my immediate take on the subject for which we are ostensibly...

518. Stankbeard

More Salish art in this latest 2015 August Poetry Postcard and a reference to yet another plant species identified this summer. It really DOES smell like peanut butter, but beards are entirely different, and require a higher degree of hygiene effort that most other...

517. Blue Demons

Another one of my 2014 photographs turned into postcard, this one begins the summer-long fascination with chicory. Once identified (thank you Carol Blackbird Edson), I began to eat as many of the petals as I could find and also found chicory showing up in the OTHER...

516. Breakfast Special

More Salish art (one of my favorite card images) and a little piece of Wanda Coleman’s fire, in which you don’t eliminate clichés, per se, but “twist” them. Also, a nod to two different Benny Goodman/Charlie Christian tunes, Breakfast Feud and Air Mail...

515. Other Demons

In this latest 2015 August Poetry Postcard poem, again a great Kyger quote which makes me think of field poetics, a subject her friend Robert Duncan had a thing or two to say about. Also a reference to Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who recently returned to...