FROM THE CYCLE OF CHAPBOOKS #1
STANDING JUST OFF STAGE- The Violent Ground beneath our Feet Pt. 1
Seven Severe Sisters 1.)
• Three Sisters, just West of Bend, is considered a "very high threat." Nicknamed "the Bulge”, the ground just West of the South Sister has started to deform as magma moves and accumulates underground, a sign of an impending eruption! Location: Central Oregon Last eruption: 440 CE
• Oregon's highest peak: Mount Hood, the sixth most dangerous volcano in the United States. Location: Northwest Oregon Last eruption: 1866 CE
• Crater Lake is the 17th most dangerous volcano in America. Last eruption: 2850 BCE
• Mount St. Helens Location: Southwest Washington Last eruption: 2008
• Mount Rainier Location: Northwest Washington Last eruption: 1894
(Source) National Geographic
1.) In ancient India the mountain deity Kali was multiplied by a process in which these "Wrathful Mothers" came to inhabit many high, fearsome places as well as the primordial emotions of fascinating violence and passionate sexuality.
STANDING JUST OFF STAGE - The Violent Ground beneath our Feet Pt. 2
the Cascadia Subduction Zone
Oregon has the potential for a 9.0+ magnitude earthquake caused by the Cascadia Subduction Zone and a resulting tsunami of up to 100 feet in height that will impact the coastal area. There is an estimated 2-4 minutes of shaking or rolling that will be felt along the coast line with the strength and intensity decreasing the further inland you are....Currently, scientists are predicting that there is about a 37% chance that a mega-thrust earthquake of 7.1+ magnitude in this fault zone will occur in the next 50 years. This event will be felt throughout the Pacific Northwest.1.)
“Cascadia's fault is going to cause damage to all the cities and towns along the swath more than 800 miles (1300 kilometers) from north to south and as much as 125 miles (200 kilometers) inland.” Jeri Thompson2.)
“When you read this sentence, stop to ask yourself what you would do if a magnitude 9 point 0 earthquake struck at this moment....the next subduction earthquake will trigger the most serious natural disaster in Oregon history.”3.)
Mount Rainier
Location: Northwest Washington
Last eruption: 1894
(Source) National Geographic
1.) https://www.oregon.gov/OEM/hazardsprep/Pages/Cascadia-Subduction-Zone.aspx
2.) Thompson, Jerry. Cascadia’s Fault. Ontario Canada: Harper Collins, 2011.
3.) SULLIVAN, William L. Oregon’s Greatest Natural Disasters. 5th ed. Eugene, Oregon: Navillus Press, 2008.
SOME SCENES FROM THE PURELAND OF THE VOLCANOES
A CHAPBOOK OF SOME SAMPLE POEMS
from all over the place!
DAWN ON THE OREGON COAST
With a line of light
a silhouette outline
on the mountain,
I pull aside
without speech
to see an Elk astride
a rock connected
by a footpath
- rock to beach.
Low voices
accompany
the waves and wind
onto the beach.
Out ON THE BEACH,
faint eachos, (almost
out of reach),
speak to me
of faraway War and
crematoria snow
as our footfalls go
to the Pureland 2.)
of the Volcano.
2.) ‘Pureland” in Buddhism is an environment created as a ‘field of purity’ around a Buddha, like the lines of magnetic attraction around a magnet. In Buddhism, a deer is a direct reference to the Buddha's first teaching in the Deer Park, Sarnath.
INTO THE RED LIGHT - of the great burning in Oregon 2020
Going out on a day that smells
like a chain-smoker's death rattle.
Going out on a day that tastes
like powdered piss.
Going out on a day with
a urine colored sky like this
feels like those little ants in your bathroom
are crawling around behind your eyeballs
and your lips
are peeling off like little paint-chips!
You lick your lips
and you swallow your spit
and your head throbs
like a broken toe
when you are going out
of your softly screaming mind.
you are going out like this
into the red light of a burning world
the endless forests of The Ancients
have become the crematorium ash
of all History, all Things Passed
- a pyroclastic flow of bitter
on the tongue as if all Oregon
and the Garden within
had burst into flames, like the caldera
of some volcanic mountain.
In the red light of a burning world
in plague emptied streets folks go
shuffling and aimless
like zombies in shopping malls
dancing coughing fits, leaning to spit on walls.
This is the Red Light that comes with echoes
from The Future of it All!
AN AUTOPSY & EPITAPH WITHOUT APOLOGY FOR THE GREAT LATE 20TH CENTURY!
Goodbye to the twentieth century!
TOTAL WAR. Not just One
but Two World Wars. War, War
and More War where
tank treads like two
rows of shark teeth
roll in endless rows
on conveyor belts eating
churches, synagogues, hospitals,
schools and sad to see
cities that have in Europe
loomed for centuries
on hills, on postcard scenes,
where Millions were shot, were hung
and mauled and murdered
'til trauma hung like green clouds of gas
over farms and seaports and cities
and everything and everybody.
6,000,000 Jews, 6,000,000 Jews
in two columns marching
from the boxcars that brought them
to that railroad siding in Auschwitz to march
in different destinations
to be worked to death
or shown those famous showers, showers
tiles covered with pretty flowers.
then but two years later, the Partition of India, and
we see
down in the street
Hindus and Muslims marching in opposite directions
to different destinations
trauma hung like yellow clouds of Joss-stick incense
over everything and everybody, 'til today we see
a World divided into Strangler and the Strangled, we see
The Boomer Age in the days of the Suburban Fascist
and their Religion Of Greed!
It's an Age of Aquarius stitched together
with airplane routes and new disease, an age
in which Nations are torn, as Social Contracts
and families are torn and thrown into a hurricane wind
of anxiety, of intimidation and then as a Goodbye
the Twentieth Century, set on fire
and scattered like confetti
with a violence so those ashes achieve
an Escape Velocity.
THE CANTOR OF A MILLION TONGUES
A song sung by a boy
high on a tower,
a song sung by a man
to an invisible power,
a song sung by a girl
skipping rope in the hour
her mother hums
kneading bread,
hands white with flour.
Aie-yee! Our City is made
of cast away stones, with
streets like streams
streaming with fish -
each a man all alone
with a song and a wish.
This is the way
a City prays,
a choir of bells,
alarms and hoo-rays!
Only an Angel on a cloud
wings spread, and looking down,
can hear the Soul, the whole
of the soul of
this mountain of Sound!
GAIL’S FIELDS OF GOLD
One cool pool in the warm sea of wind
moves like a lover's palm
down the dunes
that weld cliffs to beach
where Gail sleeps naked on a sheet
- the fine gold hairs that curl her navel
and cover her thighs
quivering like grain. Again
Gail stretches. Again Gail sighs.
An Angel's picnic here
the Earth still Eden in her eyes.
THE LAST ANTHEM
I see the world after the world has come to an end
- the way a lover suddenly glimpses the bare skull
behind a pretty girl's skin.
I see the grey streets as concrete and real.
Then view the ‘raindrop on window’ streaks
of individuals like me and you
in the streets as fictions.
I see The Nations as wheezing bodies
in a tubercular ward
that the nurses of Silent Hill stride through
fanning the beds with flamethrowers in
a choir of Revolution!
I see the whale upon the beach
which the seagulls eat.
I see the fog that falls
from the borealis
to coil like an anaconda
around us
as all the World's beasts
step forth from the forest
or crawl up onto the beach
or if on wing, land on the sand
to bear witness AT LAST
to THE END OF MAN.
Rainer Is Next To Go
white clouds make
grace-like gull wings
in the upper sea
- a cursive yet stiff wet brush stroke
- a wry brow wrapped
over the snow made eye
tip top
of the volcano.
there is no peace in wildflower
won military battlefields
nor paper-house zen
temples where an old monk in
full lotus snores
like the old growth shawled
breast of the volcano.
old men
after the first heart attack know
women after their first
childbirth know
silence is not the only
thing to know
about volcano.
