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by Bea Garth, copyright 2009
(From Conversations To Greg Hall–written July 1, 4:30 A.M.)

How was I to know
marrying white breasts
with your long fingered hands
is what you did, is what you do
when I take off my shoes,
my feet aching,
knowing you will soothe them.
Soon my buttons are undone
our kisses sweeter
than the peaches and guavas
ripening outside,
tiny buttons,
your fingers traipsing
over my shirt;
we dance to Hank Williams, the Beatles the Beats
—those fifties and seventies moves
as we sidle our bodies closer.
You got back with your
blonde girlfriend
and I with a new beau
but it was never
really over
and still isn’t
even though
the fat lady finally did sing
and you left with
the pretty Latina detective
– her black police uniform
hiding her white breasts
shrouding her
and the waiting coroner
from the truth:
you are still alive,
more vibrant than the guava tree
outside your bedroom window,
the smoke still coloring your walls
sepia and ochre,
your silver ashtray
still sits on the front porch
now surrounded
by roses.


by Bea Garth, copyright 2009

_____________

GREG HALL 1946-2009

Note: There will be a Memorial  Celebration of Greg Hall’s life and poetry at the WORKS Gallery in downtown San Jose on July 19th at 6 PM 451 S. 1st St., San Jose, CA 95113; phone: 408 256-6250. Friends of his will be reading his poetry and reminiscing.  Lynn Rogers will perform a healing ceremony and his daughter Danielle Hall will perform music with either the guitar or base, possibly with one or two other musicians.  More on the list of participants etc. later.

Note: see bottom of article for links to blogs by two friends of Greg’s–F.A. Nettlebeck and Liz Henry.  Also several of Greg’s poems are found in the list to the right under Poetry.

—–

This picture is also being used by the Santa Cruz Weekly and the Metro  for an obit by Stephen Kessler on Greg Hall

"Greg Winking" photo by Bea Garth, copyright 2009. This picture is also being used by the Santa Cruz Weekly and the Metro for an obit by Stephen Kessler on Greg Hall

I am still in shock at the passing of  one of my best friend’s — the much loved and talented poet Greg Hall.  He died in his cottage here in San Jose most likely late Monday night or early on Tuesday morning June 23rd 2009, probably from a heart attack.

I said hi to him early Monday evening  when he was bringing back his wash and now wish I had followed my intuition and visited him that evening. I learned later that his old friend Stephen Kessler talked with him at length about things poetic that very day. His daughter Danielle had wished him a happy Father’s Day  Sunday night and my friend Graeme Jones had spoken with him for an hour about politics and culture Sunday morning.

Greg worked at the local county hospital as a schedule clerk .  The staff  worried when he didn’t show up and  found he could not be reached by telephone all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning. They thus sent the police and I opened the door for them early Wednesday afternoon.

Greg was one of those unique people that you don’t find very often — an extraordinarily talented poet with a big heart who also was very private.  He didn’t like all the “hoopla” — something he had all too much of as a young man. Although he appreciated the attention on the one hand, he felt it got in the way of writing poetry on the other. His first book of poetry (Flame People) had an introduction by Robert Bly.  Soon  Greg  got drawn into the “poetry circuit” of which he had both fond and mixed memories.  He still kept up many of his contacts but chose to move away from the more boisterous poetry community in Santa Cruz to lead a more calm life in San Jose for both him and his family.

Despite his enthusiasms, Greg  chose to live what was  in many ways an austere life so he could focus more on what was important to him–writing poetry.  Greg’s interior life was very rich as a result;  he  liked to read  a constant stream of serious writers like Proust,  Mellarme, Fanon, Graves, and Sarte — and listened to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Muddy Waters and  Hank Williams — all of which he would recycle at the local book and music stores.

Despite his often solitary nature, he reached out to people in the poetry community in ways that really mattered  as well as to his neighbors at the cul-de-sac where he lived.  He was  a very deep soul with a warm heart and wonderful sense of humor –  as also evidenced in both his beautifully crafted and evoked lyric love poems and his ironically self-humorous  “dirty Greggie” poems.

His very last bit of writing is below,  found inside his cottage after he died; it is once again a humorous piece of ’stream of consciousness’. All other writings were sent off to friends, including Walter Martin in Texas whom we hope contacts us very soon. (Note: For examples of his poetry see the listing “Greg Hall poems” off to the right and the listing “poems by Greg Hall” below–more of which I will transfer to the above listing to preserve their original line breaks. Be watching this site also for additional poems that he gave me and said Eos could publish.)

SNAKES

Wonder how snakes
got a bad name…
Well you got
Cleopatra
… and all that.
Then you got
the fucking Bible.
…the Bible’s
an iceberg,
it’s melting.
How did I get
into this
anyway?
…I thought
you give
it your all
you get discovered
they publish
your book
it’s over.
That was
30 years ago.
This is looser
than poetry
it’s better
than talking to yourself
it’s monologue
I’m gonna start
writing this shit down.

by Greg Hall,  copyright June 2009

For more info on Greg Hall please visit the following blog-site by Greg’s long-term friend F. A. Nettlebeck, kindly brought to my attention by writer and psychologist Marilyn Graham, Greg’s ex-wife from his time in Santa Cruz transitioning into San Jose  and mother of his  daughter Danielle Hall:

Blog: SEWING MEMORY
Post: GREG HALL 1946-2009
Link: http://fanettelbeck.blogspot.com/2009/06/poet-greg-hall-dies-greg-hall-author-of.html

Also check out Liz Henry’s wonderful blog entries on Greg–her insights, one of Greg’s drawings,  some of his poems and recordings:

http://liz-henry.blogspot.com/

Depoe Bay

by Steve Arntson
copyright 2009

—————-

D-e-p-o-e Bay
Well, it’s a misspelled place
Unless “Depoe” is French    or means more than storage
But no one’s talking    no one’s saying
Edgar Allan’s honored
obliquely
discreetly
But no one’s scared    no one’s anxious
Business is good
It’s summer and crowded
The D River flows and waters the sea
a hundred yards at a time
Later on we’ll know
And know what to make of it
Silence falling out of the geographic word
to an Absolute name
begun like the start of the day
its training wheels barely spinning ’round
First part of a book’s impulse and cry for help    for delivery
A depot for Defoe    and archive
It is the bay-before-departure’s bathtub
with baby boats and brand-new brains
Tub in the house of Tiny Town
Whose strict constructions
belie the superseding chaos
of coastal funny-faces sounding city names
beginning with “D”
You can almost believe in their brevity
I want you to remember enough    just enough
to pronounce the syllables two
that tell of the time there
And remember the tide that came in
as if out of curiosity and obedience
for a word-for-word of morning blessing
Plenty of place despite the crowds
And tamper-proof despite the depot’s shifting
alphabetical being
The deal is:
although THEN there were Indians
and the Taliban is due and certainly TO COME
right now you are safe
safe
safe
and thoroughly astray
in a town
like a vault
of tumblers

Note: summer solstice

Happy Solstice everyone!

Bea

Holy Ground

by Carolyn Donnell,
copyright 2009

This is Holy Ground,
You have desecrated
our Holy shrines.
Words said throughout the ages
to excuse Mankind’s warring
and destructive ways.
But what is Holy Ground?
Where battles were fought,
or won or lost?
What is a holy shrine?
Where a person was born,
or lived, or died?
Is Holy Ground a man made thing?
Or is it forests, mountains
and teeming seas?
Look at the universe far and wide.
Where else can mankind live?
Nowhere we have found.
Our precious blue planet,
humanity’s only Holy Ground,
is all we have.
How much more death, war,
and destruction has to come
before we learn?
Will we reach out to one another,
to rescue, to preserve this,
our solitary refuge?
Or will we persist in slaughtering
people, animals, plants,
and lose the true Holy Ground?
We can preserve this rare and shining orb.
Or piece by piece destroy,
our blue and living Earth.
Time grows shorter every hour.
Leaving us with less and less.
What will you do?
Today.

Editorial Notes:

by Bea Garth,
copyright2009

Meanwhile art and poetry fearlessly go on.  And believe me, I think all of you know what I mean by “meanwhile”!! Below my rant on the (war) economy, are several inspired pieces –artwork and poems for your perusal.   A new painting from Japan by Erik Sutter-Kaye does say it all!

Also of note are works by the June 18th Thursday Gig featured poet Roberto Duran and featured artist Lori Krein.  Roberto’s poem is as usual short and to the point.

Lori’s collage is beautiful, reminding us of what our cities can be if we are open to the moment both in and out of time.

The Thursday Gig (as mentioned below Roberto’s and Lori’s work) is at the Stone Griffin Gallery at 411 E. Campbell Ave.,  Campbell, CA from 6:30-9:30 PM. It’s  on the ground floor on the north side of the street near the railroad tracks in old downtown Campbell.  Open Mic follows the two features.

Essay by Bea Garth
copyright 2009

Do any of us want to look and see what is starting to happen overseas to the dollar?? Ouch! It seems several countries just met in Yekaterinburg: Russia, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia  for trade discussions. The so-called BRIC nations — Brazil, Russia, India and China –  may no longer want to play. The hegemony of the U.S. dollar is now extremely vulnerable due to the interplay of the bond market and increasing reluctance of foreign central banks to accumulate more dollar reserves.

This is a big deal. U.S. bonds replaced the gold standard since the early seventies. The U.S. is  used to dominating the economic plate without having to tighten our belt like the IMF has insisted others do. Now those others want some of their own back. They are starting to plan to create their own trade with each other with local rather than  US dollars–behind closed doors (i.e., no U.S. financial representatives or IMF types allowed).

It seems the BRIC nations  are worried that the U.S. doesn’t have the resources to back all those trillions of dollars that are being furiously printed to back our bank etc. bailouts and expensive war economy. They don’t want to be forced to keep backing what are becoming  increasingly less valued U.S. bonds!

While the above story has largely been ignored, the general press has instead focused on the frenzied electoral situation in Iran.

Whereas much of the press and various governmental officials have  lead us to believe  the Iranian presidential election was rigged, I read elsewhere that this is likely false.  Two award winning independent pollsters who were in Iran collecting information just before the election indicated the Iranian election would turn out just as it did.  Its one thing to not like Mr. Ahmadinejad and its another to say his re-election was illegitimate. And certainly up through the election a majority of Iranians did seem to like him.

Middle East pollsters, Ken Ballen of the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the nonprofit New America Foundation, describe their poll of the Iranian election in an op ed piece in the June 15 Washington Post:

“Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election…”

The poll, conducted in Farsi, was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Ballen and Doherty often work for ABC News and the BBC in the Middle East.

Black Ops scare me; like many I would like to think our government is not still up to its dirty tricks. However  part of me can’t help but agree with those that think  some branch of the US government is  likely to have  had a hand in creating electoral distress in Iran — as well as helping to manipulate the news in America and Britain.

Nevertheless officially at least  the Obama administration seems to be trying to stay neutral while the political situation in Iran is  spiraling beyond  anyone’s control.  Now its a question of appropriate human response as that country reels from governmental violence perpetrated against the protestors.  Whether they won the election or not, the protestors are winning the hearts of their fellow Iranians who, as the above pollsters Ballen and Doherty  found, want free elections and a free media as a priority whether they supported one candidate or the other.

The danger is the US making use of this situation to create fodder for intervention, thus furthering the old Bush agenda. Of course reason says that the one thing our economy  doesn’t need is yet another arena for war. But when has reason shifted the powers that be to do the right thing?

Fortunately so far the Obama administration does appear to be unwilling to take sides in this developing situation in Iran. Though with Bush’s cronies still running much of the war effort in neighboring Iraq (now spread more fully  into Afghanistan plus  Pakistan), it gives one pause.

Meanwhile the drive to continue funding the spiraling war  at the cost of  trillions of dollars while the fabric of our real economy languishes sorrowfully does not encourage me to think the best of our current administration. Greed left over from the Bush era and a desire not to rock the boat in the Obama camp seem to be heading us  towards a dismal economic future.  For those who thought Obama might by himself do more to bypass it, think again. He might want to, however he doesn’t seem to know how. He seems to want to please too many people to be able to do it effectively.  Further it is my observation that his Achilles heal is that he may be too easily deceived by whomever he surrounds himself with.

To make real progress radical changes to our system would have to be made; and radical does not  seem to be where the Obama administration is at.  It may well boil down to historical forces making “we the people”  take action,  despite our collective reluctance so far to do so. The change train seems inevitably coming towards us whether we want it or not. No one leader is going to save us.

Already those forces of change may be inspiring the struggle in Iran. Something beyond who actually won that election seems to be bursting forth.  The question of freedom and respect and right action towards the electorate seems to be on the plate in one of the oldest and most authoritarian countries in the world.

Meanwhile as said before, the forces of change are making countries like China and Brazil  think about going off the dollar when trading with each other simply to protect their own interests; a maneuver more of us may eventually have to take — much as some communities are doing in hard hit areas of America’s North-East.

As more countries and communities do this, of course, the change train will come barreling in even faster. But what choice do any of us really have but to flow with the needs of the times? War mongerers will continue to try to stave off those changes, but it  is a dying absurdist act against the inevitable.

It is a truism that times of great change bring great suffering;  it seems it can’t be avoided — however unfortunately.  Nevertheless with spirit, humility,   self awareness  and a desire to help each other we can learn to use these difficult times as an opportunity  to transform and co-create  a  more intelligent and beautiful  stewardship of the world.

watercolor by Erik Sutter-Kaye
copyright 2009

Monetary Freefall II State V a

Note from Editor: This piece says it all! Even in/from Japan. Hang onto your hats folks!

DISTURBING THE PEACE

by Roberto Duran
copyright 2009

DISTURBING THE PEACE

WHAT PEACE?


Roberto Duran will be the featured poet at the June 18, 2009 Thursday Gig held at the Stone Griffin Gallery at 411 E. Campbell Ave., Campbell CA.  Roberto is known for his firey, dramatic and confrontive short poems. Open mic follows…

Landscape 2

collage by Lori Krein
copyright 2009

"landscape 2"  by Lori Krein, copyright 2009

Lori Krein will be the featured artist at the June 18, 2009 Thursday Gig held at the Stone Griffin Gallery, 411 E. Campbell Ave., Campbell CA.

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