Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
What veils? What clouds?
Wing upon wing feathers the view.
The door swings between rooms.
Blast of air, cold rain. Not
ruin. I’ve only longed to find
what you said you lost in a dream:
mountains dissolved in lake water,
sunflowers turning like weather vanes.
Amulets among the cracked stones,
cross-hairs in the branches.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
It as if winter has gone on strike, leaving nothing but a few scabs.
All five of the small depressions on top of the mountain are full; what we usually call vernal ponds have become distinctly hibernal. It may seem like an odd place for water to collect, but a mountaintop is the one place where water doesn’t really know which way to go, so some of it just stays put.
Maybe that’s generally the case with things on top of mountains — they stay because they can’t decide on the best route down. Not that I would know, of course.
Zest of lemons fills the air, and on the radio,
yearning notes from the throat of a cello.
Exactly how much salt or spice to throw in?
Without measurement, the senses tend to open wider.
Viola, violin, strings from the orchestra fill out
undertones in the andante part of the Rococo Variations:
this is Tchaikovsky in the arms of Rostropovich, or
so my daughter tells me. Slow as a waltz— and suddenly I
realize this might be the music I’d like played at my funeral.
Quelle alternative? I don’t know, as I wasn’t really
pondering the matter. Just something in the phrasing,
or the way the quietly contemplative cadenzas make me feel
none of the sorrowful hysteria sometimes induced by
music that lobs the racquetball of the soul around in its cage,
little bird reminded of the wilderness that bred it.
Kindness after long difficulty is what I hear, perhaps. Or
just a simple turn, a few steps around the room, notes that burgeon
into the fullness of their theme. I don’t know much more.
How have I started with lemons and garlic—
grease quietly sputtering under the layer of
fricasseed chicken breasts in a pan on the stove— then
ended up thinking of music by which to exit?
Don’t read more into this than there is.
Clouds look lovely outside the prismatic window,
bunched and fleecy as pulled wool. I’m here and not
about to go anywhere just yet; I love the color yellow.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
[M]y tendency is to gulp information off the screen in hunks, finding a topic sentence and then skipping the paragraph below it, snatching the big ideas and leaving the details behind. In Korean the word for this kind of action is heo-geop-jji-geop. I’m not sure, but I think it is an onomatope. At least, it sounds like one to me. If you eat gulping, hurried, barely chewing, this is the sound you make: heo-geop-jji-geop. And that is how I read most things on the internet, and by extension, anything on a computer screen.
The cold is a mother
as generous as the space
between the stars. I gave her
my discontent & my distance:
all those older & more restless selves
who are still out there, moving away
at the speed of light.
I grinned for Polaroid & single-lens
reflex alike, but inside
I was wincing. Cold.
I learned how to knit
when I was seven: scarves
& sweaters, socks & gloves, maps
& pastures & that long deep lake
I later loved. By then I’d crossed
oceans, no mere mermaid;
you couldn’t touch me without noticing
the scars from ships’ propellers
& orca attacks, the stubborn barnacles.
On land I was a sycamore, rich
in baubles no one wanted,
struggling to peel down
to a warmer skin.
*
See the photo reponse by Rachel Rawlins, “Advert for a summer holiday.”
I held the lead. Let pulsing lips
explore my hands, my jacket.The narrow nose stretched
under my fingers andI rubbed the strong, shallow bone
above curious, sensing nostrils.
From William Carlos Williams, I learned how to find what I already had.
From Rumi, I learned how to keep searching for it anyway.
From Dickinson, I learned that certainty is death-in-life.
From Whitman, I learned that Creation doesn’t require a God.
From Neruda, I learned that one can be entirely wrong and still be right.
From Francis Ponge, I learned that radical empathy and clinical analysis make good bedfellows.
From Lucille Clifton, I learned that four or five well-chosen words can punch harder than an entire blood-stained epic.
From Ryōkan, I learned that poets must never be too old for children’s games.
From Miguel Hernandez, I learned that onion tears are as good as real ones.
From the Bible, I learned that thoughts are better when they repeat once in a higher key.
From Ai, I learned that even the worst, most evil men and women can still be beautiful.
From Issa, I learned that a poet’s first duty is compassion.
From John Clare, I learned that siding with nature can get you locked away.
From Robinson Jeffers, I learned that weather is the best muse.
From Vicente Aleixandre, I learned that eternity devours us moment by moment.
From Mary Oliver, I learned why a question mark is shaped like an open mouth.
From Charles Simic, I learned how to listen to stones.
Confused by warmth followed
by plummeting cold, buds
on the pink magnolia
begin to fruit. In this case,
as in many others, I know
the outcomes of nostalgia.
Don’t look back, I want to say
to the not yet fully formed
corona of petals—
though the sun’s warmth
is barely a husk on this
day with no brim or trestle.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
There are mockups of mermaids every few
blocks in this town— plaster and paint
over wire, arms stretched fore and aft. All
in the same frozen pose, they look like
synchronized swimmers yanked out of the pool
before their final choreographed curtsy.
Pale, flat-chested, not the least bit
sinuous, each sports a different garb:
one’s in a sailor suit, another’s covered
in fake barnacles; and the one in the bay
of the Chinese pagoda close to where
we live has a painted-on cheongsam
of red and gold. Rooted under the half-
moon and the scattering of pixelated stars,
each looks across the pavements and parking
lots, out to the dark water— where all day,
restless waves come in and out with the tide.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
It’s been a long time in coming, but I’m very happy to announce that a print and e-book collection of 109 satirical cartoons featuring Via Negativa’s original, imaginary guest-blogger Diogenes is now available from that famous London publishing powerhouse, Bauble Tree Books. (If you caught my announcement at the beginning of December and are wondering why we weren’t able to get it out before Christmas, here are all the gory details.)
Visit the Bauble Tree page for the book. Or save a click and go directly to the source(s):
Print edition at Lulu (£9.99 — $15.30 at current exchange rate)
Paperback, 224 pages
EPUB edition at Lulu (£0.99 — $1.52)
For Nook, iPad, iPhone, etc.
Kindle edition at Amazon.com ($2.99)
Kindle edition at Amazon UK (£2.00)
Amazon’s French site (I’m an “auteur”!), German site, Spanish site, and Italian site (€2.68)
All of the cartoons have been re-done from what I originally published here (which were small GIF files, many of them long since vanished into the ether, presumably due to server failure or retirement by the free image-hosting service I used). A significant number of Diogenes’ signs were re-written, and a couple are brand-new.
Also adding value to the book is a short preface by my friend Kaspalita, a UK-based Pureland Buddhist priest and blogger. Now you may be wondering, “Why a Buddhist? Why would you not ask a graphic artist to introduce a book of graphic ‘art’?” But Words on the Street, as an inaction comic, is all about sitting, and who knows more about sitting than a Buddhist priest? We could argue about the difference between mindful repetition of the nembutsu and humorous repetition of the same drawing with different words, but never mind. Here’s some of what Kaspa said:
Anne Bogart described great art as something that stops you in your tracks and won’t let you move beyond it. Dave Bonta’s few words provoke a similar arrest. His placards draw forth a wry smile and, as good satire should, leads us into a critique of the many questionable aspects of our society.
Bonta’s words are given another layer of meaning by their fixed context, the unchanging homeless character whose placard they grace. “Friend Me” takes on a completely different significance seen here, as opposed to on one’s favorite social networking site.
Each page I flick to raises a smile and then asks me to come back to it and think, and then to think again. In this book Dave moves towards cementing his reputation as satirist and as an important contemporary gadfly.
Hear that? “An important contemporary gadfly”! If anyone not as fully trustworthy as an ordained priest said that, I’ll bet you’d be inclined to raise an eyebrow, wouldn’t you?
Needless to say, reviews would be very welcome. I’m told some review copies of the digital version may be available — contact the publisher.
Keep in mind that all of my royalities from the sale of this book and ebook will go toward supporting the Via Negativa blog network, including the production (and hopefully much more reliable hosting!) of brand new Words on the Street cartoons. So think of it as a sponsorship for something you’d like to see continue. (Well, of course, you can also think of it as a fabulous Valentine’s Day gift if you like.)
Also in that vein, if you like Words in the Street and/or want to support Via Negativa, don’t forget to visit my storefront at CafePress. Send me photos or videos of Via Negativa t-shirts, mugs, etc. “in the wild” and I’ll be happy to post them with a link back to your blog, if you have one. (No need to include your face if you’re shy.) Ditto for photos of the book being read in unlikely places.
In fact, let me conclude this post with some shots of Cynthia Cox modeling a t-shirt with my personal favorite Words on the Street cartoon. Cynthia is an award-winning poet based in the Houston, Texas area whose work I first came to know years ago at a blog called the twitching line; she now shares poems, videos and other fun and wonderful things at mareymercy. Herewith her riffs on “Clichéd — please help” (click to embiggen):
