Cloudburst 2013 Recordings Released!

The recordings of Cloudburst 2013 have been posted.

You can access them with the following link:
http://www.mixcloud.com/TheRootdrinkerInstitute/playlists/cloudburst-council-2013/

Thank you to everyone who attended. Special Thanks to David Landrey for the audio

Poem Written Since Last Year's Council, A Piece that Employs The Magic Citadel. by David Landrey

The  direction of the will in

the course of the twentieth century

is deeply disturbed.

—Robert Duncan, The H. D. Book (367)

To pay attention is to sustain the will

but can we? have we the currency?

or is it spent on other forces

on fields of energy brought us by …

          … by whom?

                   who

needs us to be distracted

                   who

desires the misdirection

the disturbance rumbling in the depths

                   who

gains and what?

Wealth driven upward into castles

armed and opposing the magic citadel

opposing any movement in the direction of

the will to face the familiar

to embrace uncertainty          doubt

the sweet mystery of being

and to tell it     sing it     live it

make it ours.

——David Landrey, Psyche and Ares 9, August 2012

CLOUDS # ALIFAIR SKEBE # Poem

Clouds

cannot be owned

music

the patterns between ears

cannot be manmade

be manned

clouds can be owned

as much as any man

any miner

any mountaintop

tree fish stream

stripes across the sky

cross-hatched

stretch across the endless

breast of blue

and we thought those stars

were forever

--Alifair Skebe

PROGRAM FOR CLOUDBURST COUNCIL 2013

PROGRAM CLOUDBURST 2013    

Fri. May 10, 2013

1:30-3:00     Early Bird Registration (enjoy the site)\

3:00-4:00      Lew Welch and Little Wigglies in the Stream with Stephen Lewandowski

                       (an outdoor visit to a small stream)

3:00-6:00  Registration

5:00-6:00  Light Dinner Served (soup, bread, green salad )

 6:00-6:15  Martha Deed:  Welcome

6:15-6:30  poet – Joe Napora

6:30-6:45  poet—Robert Podgurski

6:45-7:00  —break

7:00-8:00  Panel – Serendipity—Haniel Long (Alan Casline, Alifare Skebe, obeeduid)

8:00-8:15  poet—Bernadette Mayer

 8:15-8:30  poet—Michael Czarnecki

 8:30-8:45  John Roche: Cloudburst thoughts and evening wrap-up

 8:45  Party  (last year party was 10:00!)

 Sat. May 11, 2013

 8:30 Breakfast Served  (oatmeal, cereal, fruit, pastry,etc.)

         Breakfast will be continuously served.

 10-11 -  Panel- Memory Helen Ruggieri moderator  (David Landrey, Martin Willitts,Jr., Charlie Rossiter)

 11:00-11:15 poet—Bill Heyen

11:15-11:30  poet—Stephen Ellis

11:30-11:45  poet—Ryki Zuckerman

11:45-12:00  poet—Judith Kerman

 Noon- 1 Panel – Accumulation (Ken Warren, Stephen Ellis, Robert Podgurski)

 1:00-1:15 poet—Martha Treichler

1:15-1:30  poet—Steve Tills

 1:30 Lunch Served (cold sandwiches bag lunch)

 Open Time 1:30 - 3:45

Tour of Long Point,  Finger Lakes Watershed with Steve Lewandowski (optional)

 3:45--4:00 poet--Craig Czury
4:00-4:15 poet—Pat Schwartz

 4:15-4:30  poet—Colleen Powderly

4:30-5:30 Panel –Precedent  with Helen Ruggieri on Robert Lax; John Roche on W.H.C. Hosmer; Walt Franklin on W.W. Chrisman: Martha Deed on Adelaide Crapsey

 5:30 - 7 Dinner (hot vegetarian etc.)

 7-10 - Open Mic Reading hosted by Alan Casline and John Roche(by sign-up, those not otherwise slotted during conference to go first)

 10-10:10 Wrap-up—Ken Warren

 10:11 Campfire Party hosted by Michael Czarnecki

 Sun.

 9:30-11 Brunch (like Saturday Breakfast plus eggs and meat)

 9:30-11 Trade Fair

 9:45-11:00 Handmade Books Display and  Workshop led by Judith Kerman

 11:10-12:35 Panel:  What Have They Done to the Rain? with Joe Napora, Paulette Swartzfager,  Craig Czury, Philip Good

 12:20 - 1:15  Further

Stephen Ellis Poem OBSESSION poem from STEPHEN ELLIS for CLOUDBURST

Obsession

The white flare of
spring's first crocus
extinguishes itself

as time's song is
elevated where 
absence comes full

to reign.  To assign
desire to another
is madness, despite

I hear high winds
in distant trees
and the spread of

pollen overcoming
in its permeation
the quiet sanity of

chronology whose
integers discount
dream's full pain.

Ears are made to
hear illusion
and whatever truth

it carries: That is
why it has so many
folds. Like the wood

of trees that
grows in layers
around itself, from

inside out, hearing
flowers and one 
then knows the body

is not supported
by its skeleton, but
by the scar of

a lightning strike
made invisible,
along with the sound

of the sap of
a whirlpool's 
endless roar

LORD BUCKLEY ON CABEZA DE VACA

Stephen Baraban send this find to us interested readers of Haniel Long's prose poem concerning the journey and journal of Cabeza de Vaca. Not sure how many will know about Lord Buckley. I still have one of his records with my old records collection in the basement. Lord Buckley refers to Cabeza de Vaca as "the gasser" hence the title.

This address is for the words; you can also find the actual performance on YouTube

http://lordbuckley.com/LBC_The_Word/LBC_Transcriptions/The_Gasser.htm

Here is  a You Tube address

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX-dhT6qoXA 

Hope these addresses work

                                            --Alan Casline

Joe Napora remarks about distance, concealed weapons and one redwood.

Joe Napora sent three poems for the Cloudburst Council. Suggestion...you might read them.

 
                                                                                                --- Alan Casline

A few remarks about distance  

                                for Mary Laird

As he records in his book

lonely Jack Kerouac

saunters through Ashland

looking for Walt Whitman’s

abode, not any house

no domicile but a haven

not a haunt nor

a haunted house

where ghosts refuge

from the open road,

he spies a woman

standing beneath the marquee

 of the Paramount Theater.

It’s over seventy degrees

in my Kentucky town

along the Ohio River

on a January day that

should freeze the breath in

 to short gasps of pain. Jack.

 You are not on my mind.

It’s this eleven year old girl

who asked her  mother

to buy my book, a hand made

book of a long poem called

Snaketrain  Freightrain

and though it could reference

you and Neal and take me

along for the ride

it’s with Khlebnikov

Mayakovsky, Sandino

and the massacre of students

in Mexico City at the 1968

Olympics. What was it

that this girl read

at the table where Mary

was packing up her books

what did she find that

moved her to ask for

this poem for her birthday?

For the price of the book

she could have had an X-Box

an I-Phone, a couple pair

of running shoes

to take her on the road

from Los Angeles to Ashland

to stand below the sign

at the theater where

I would write a world

about her that would be

a home where she

could be safe, a place

where she can be

the Queen of Hearts

and not end shattered

and a broken princess

against the bullet holed

wall that keeps us  alone

and distant forever

Concealed Weapons

                They locked

                the Police State

                in with us. –Jack Hirschman

                                “The June Stilts Arcane”

This and that.

His nd hat.

Is n at.

We stop and look

not from this

and then that

is what we see.

His hat. My god

how could we

you and me have

missed that?

It is a soldier’s cap

on the head of

a head of

a child.

The child who you

you just met

walking toward you

on the street.

They have interiorized

the terrorists.

Terror was no error.

It fit them as

as they say

to a T an error

purposely done

to keep us down

not out  not out

with each reach

of our desire to be

complete. Take that

child’s hand

take both and that

give him a ball cap

and maybe that

will keep him

from his gun.

One Redwood: the abc’s of money

                        for Jack Hirschman

a.  The pathology of accounting

“If you’ve see one redwood

you’ve seen them all.” He

never said that. He said

something much worse. A curse.

We live still

and restless and we die

in the long night

of dark money. Millionaires

of deviant schemes and

billionaires buy elections

the way we buy espresso

at Specs and Café Trieste.

He said, and it began with him

this rapid and rabid turn

against the poor, the young,

against the people who create wealth

with hands and heart. Against the artist

the poet. He said,

and he turned on you, us, he said

when my highschool friends

were playing cards and I think

Csaba was there, someone turned

on the television and he was there

pimping for laundry detergent  I said

that’s one scary son of a bitch,

he said,  “I mean, if you've looked

at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees—

you know, a tree is a tree, how many more

do you need to look at?” Look at

the dollar bill in my hand. I see one

and a hundred thousand in his. How many

more do I need to look at?

Judi Bari saw one and tried

to save them all. Reagan gave the EPA

to Lee Muller Thomas who became

the president of Georgia Pacific.

Sharon wrote the great poem

about this attempted assassination

of Judi and Daryl. She’ll drink

with us as we wait and watch.

 The money grows

and goes to the 400 families who rule

over us, who stamp into “this Neruda earth”

their bloody booted Iron Heel.

b. Counting lesson

At the gift shop I buy a baby

redwood, 6 inches now to grow

to 200 feet in some distant future.

Ronald Reagan is long dead

but his spore have spawned a multitude

of zombie politicians whose only goal

in this dead living is to transfer money

from us to their masters.

Financial (Non-Home) Wealth

Top 1 percent  Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent

1983    42.9%              48.4%                 8.7%

2010    42.1%              53.5%                 4.7%

We accept as the nature of things

that the top 20% own 95% of the wealth

and create none. My tiny redwood

 is the only one I can see now.  It

sits at my window where outside

three deer eat up the corn

Barbara leaves for them.  There is

a sadness in this side and out.

But when I return to San Francisco

and we walk and talk again

we’ll count the redwood rings

on display at Muir woods.

We’ll mark the growth

of wealth garnered through the tricks

of no tradesman’s work

of the great and widening gap

from us to them. We mark a big flag

at the Walmart ring: "Today the Walton family

 own more wealth than the bottom

 40 percent of America.”

c. Fairy Tale Finance

I wanted a bumper sticker

that read I Hated George Bush

Before it was Cool. But now

I feel as square as the Congress

who follow Obama, rats chasing

the Pied Piper of Big Money.

We dance to another tune

but we know that soon

it all comes crashing down

like London Bridge between

those who have taken

and those who have given

of themselves. The sleeping giant

 rises with no illusion

as to who is the enemy.

The dirt under nails

and on hands is enough

to feed the growth

of the thousands of redwoods

Reagan wished to cut

for condos for the rich

and famous for wanting

it all and for once

in a time beyond counting

they get only what

they deserve. And we

we get ours. Espresso.

I’ll buy. That banker serves.

3 poems by Joe Napora


bio:  Joe Napora, most distinctive achievement: over thirty five years of correspondence with Ken Warren. Former editor and publisher of BullHead. Most recent publications:Sentences and Bills : 1917;  and FINK; and The Daniel Boone Poems.

Paulette Swartzfager: Poem For Cloudburst

delta elegy

in warm night

when deep horizon

meets black water

fire

smoke

boiling waters

diving into gulf

into marsh

polishing bayous like Sunday shoes

finding catfish diving into silt

sand

or swamp reed

into cane

over cottonmouth,

deep as mother midnight tears

before morning

 --- Paulette Swartzfager

Paulette Swartzfager is a poet, freelance journalist, and activist originally from New Orleans, who moved to Rochester NY after Katrina. She is currently a lecturer in the University Writing Program a RIT. 

KARLA LINN MERRIFIELD: POEMS FOR CLOUDBURST

Karla Linn Merrifield's name came to me this year from three separate and seemingly unrelated sources.

That is when I start paying attention. She will be at Cloudburst this May. Haniel Long's Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca tells the remarkable tale of Europeans stripped bare of all clothes and even the thoughts of their minds. Hundreds of people from one village guided them to the next where their services as healers were bartered for. The new villagers would repeat the pattern. It was one way to cross the continent.

Karla's poem (below) speaks of a much later time. What was the mission of the U.S. Army Expedition she mentions? Makes me think of trappers and their native wife's. Her second poem On Ice freezes us in her blue veins. The neighborhood ice is all gone here although another freeze is on the way. You find ice tucked under granite shelves in deep hollows, places of limited sunshine and cool air currents. I note Karla has a new book being published  The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica.
                                                                                                                     --- Alan Casline

TWO POEMS FOR CLOUDBURST FROM KARLA LINN MERRIFIELD

1842: US ARMY EXPEDITION—

58 DAYS, 85 SOLDIERS,

ONE NATIVE GUIDE, ONE WOMAN

My Seminole husband,

your guide, earned a pittance

and I earned

no thanks

for my crane liver stew,

no thanks

for mending mosquito netting, 

no thanks

for salves to sooth

sunburn, sawgrass gashes,

and poisonwood rashes, 

no thanks

for sucking cottonmouth venom

from puncture wounds, 

no thanks

when you took my brown womanhood

by force.

I, Aw-won-aw Hoke-tee,

Willow-Tree Woman,

who once bent to white men, I say:

No thank you.

Appeared in Barrier Island Review

On Ice 

How did I come to have colorful ice

in my blue veins? Ice turquoise and

cerulean, violet ice, azure ice,

black, white and crystalline ice,

ice bottle-green and milky jade?

Was it slushy frazil ice

or the nilas—thinnest of ice sheets

that too quickly accrue

on a becalmed skin of sea?

The ice speaks in tongues,

slabs, beads, streams—entire

rivers of ice. The ice of Antarctica

bewitches granule by granule

between the pink toes of penguins,

beneath brown bellies of elephant seals.

All creatures do the ice’s bidding.

                                                    

                        Karla Linn Merrifield

Karla Linn Merrifield has has nine books to her credit, the newest of which are Lithic Scatter and Other Poems (Mercury Heartlink) and The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North, and from FootHills Publishing, Attaining Canopy: Amazon Poems. Her Godwit:  Poems of Canada (FootHills) She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com), a member of the board of directors of TallGrass Writers Guild, and a member of Just Poets (Rochester, NY) and the New Mexico State Poetry Society. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.