Tuesday, April 12, 2016

洞月亮 April 2016

FEATURED POET: Michael Daley— was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He later took vows and prepared to become a Catholic priest. Upon leaving religious life, he was wild in the streets, protesting wars and seeking a life of experience. He holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.F.A. from the University of Washington. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Rhino, North American Review, Writers Almanac, Raven Chronicles, Seattle Review, Jeopardy, Prairie Schooner, Cirque, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cascadia Review, and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of Empty Bowl Press, publisher of the Dalmo’ma series of anthologies among other titles; former Poet-in-Residence for the Washington State Arts Commission, the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a retired English Instructor for Mount Vernon High School. His reviews and essays have appeared in Pacific Northwest Review of Books, Raven Chronicles, Port Townsend Leader, and Book/Mark Quarterly Review. In addition to seven chapbooks, he has published three full-length collections of his poetry: The Straits, To Curve, Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest, and a book of essays: Way Out There/Lyrical Essays. He has been awarded by the Washington State Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, Fulbright, and the National Endowment of the Humanities; recently, Pleasure Boat Studio published his translation of Alter Mundus by Italian poet Lucia Gazzino. Of a Feather has just been published by Empty Bowl of Port Townsend, a division of Jack Estes’ Pleasure Boat Studio, New York City.  Look for his work in the upcoming Cave Moon Press Anthology Footsteps to benefit homeless veterans.







Michael Daley-Site












WAR CRIMES
“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while 
then a layer of scum floats to the top.”—Edward Abbey

The Senator was protecting, like a she-bear, 
that revered Dr. K., whose damned body, 
well past ninety and rotting in his slippers,
shuffled into the Senate to advise a subcommittee
underwhelmed by chanting protesters —
a Greek tragedy, his body wheeled in 
from a movie set—Dr. Strangelove.
The Chorus chanted names of countries
where Henry’s legacy arose, where 
countless human animals boiled in
or fled our poisons, our strafing, 
boots we crept in to make them safe.
When they chanted the name, “Vietnam,”
the Senator cried out. Once I had assumed 
he spoke with my own heart.
I lied to myself that he knew the city streets,
could have been my classmate,
might have walked the old neighborhood,
struggled with us, knew what work is. 
I blinded myself to his history of privilege.
He’d been chained to a wall in the prison hut, 
so why bow to this war criminal, 
frail seer led to testify before Creon
while the Chorus in pink was ushered offstage?
They may have felt it savage, compassionless, 
to hiss at the defender of détente, intervention,
hemisphere hegemony, and overthrow—once,
the brain of Nixon, our blood line to the Hapsburgs. 
When the Senator spewed his regal curse, 
no one spoke. Protestors had defiled his hall,
calm proceedings gave him meaning, 
an imagined hurt to Henry was a breach. 
But the Senator hurt me, ratted my trust. 
Not by sicking his slick and frothing dogs
to slime the staircase, but he whipped me 
with my own guilt, that beautiful 
inward machine. Pop indoctrination 
and other Media distractions halted, even
the Prisoner of War unmasked as drone
of the dictator class, outraged, was silenced
for the moment, and those clowns, the Chorus
whispered: “War Crime War Crime War Crime.”
Picture her swept into the arms of the suited guard, 
the Code Pink girl who rushes Henry
shaking like Voodoo her shiny handcuffs, 
the nauseated wife behind Schultz
flanked by two daughters in a trance—
the girl shoved away, pumps above the wreckage
of Kissinger her scrawled sign: “Cambodia,” 
the Senator cursing her, cursing all of us
dredges up from his own inmost filth:
“Get out of here, you low-life scum.”

FROM OF THE FEATHER
*
Across the lake in the darkness
is a light where a man sits at a table
eating a breakfast of oatmeal
and writing his first poem of the day.
When he looks into darkness
he knows the giant cedar is out there,
and the lake—last night a tub of dull moon—
hasn’t dried up, or changed
in any way apparent or important.
He sees one light, only this one,
where someone at a kitchen table
(with oatmeal, and scribbling)
doesn’t trouble what lies
in the dark between us.


WRITE YOUR POEM!

From Michael's last poem we question the role of the poet.  When he writes in the third person the reader is forced to sit at the table next to him and watch him scribble his poem.  So it begs questions. What is the color of Michael's shirt?  When you sit the reader down at the breakfast table in prose lines they start to look around the room and wonder.  Is Michael's oatmeal instant?  Does he use Folger's coffee, like your grandmother, or Starbuck's blend?

In the end, does your poem make you the lead singer of an 80's power ballad? Does your voice carry the poem or is it the images that carry the poem?  Michael has put us in the middle of that question but like all master poets he ultimately points us back to the words. The last line makes us forget that we don't care that he might wear a green, plaid Pendleton shirt with his DeKalb baseball cap tilted just a bit so he can concentrate.....write your poem.