San Francisco International Poetry Festival

I have just spent the last four days going to the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. Which included the best poets from all over the world...Russia, Israel, Italy, France, The Philippines, Ecuador, Palastine, Wales, Austria, Sweden, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Vioetnam, Nigeria, Mexico China, Nicaragua and USA. Jack Hirschman of S.F. put this showing together with S.F. Library and Friends of Poets, and many others. It was a feast of poetry so rich that you were left wondering if you could digest all of those words. I told my sister, I felt like I had not only eaten not just a piece of rich cheesecake, but the whole pie. I didn't hold up to the very end which was a closing party at 7:00 o'clock the last night.
I enjoyed so much the documentry on Jack Hirschman on the first night that, they said, had been six years in the making. It was called THE RED POET. It is a must see when it come out at theatres. This movie made me think there should be millions of men like Jack Hirshman to make a better world. They touched on the many areas of his life and left you wanting more.
The second and third night, at The Palace, each poet, of over 25 poets, read in their own language and the poems were displayed in English on the large screen behind him or her. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diane DePrima, current poet laureate of S.F started the reading the first night. There was many different subject, styles and deliveries... from shy, beautiful voices, humorous, antimated, angry, sad, touching, indignant to the final booming deliver of Jack Hirshman. As I said, a feast of poetry.
During the days poets read at libraries in North Beach, Richmond and The Mission and on the forth day they had what they called a Poetry Crawl going from Kerouac Alley, to Cafe Trieste
to Beat Museum changing poets every two hours. I spent most of my time at the Beat Museum where my sculptures of poets, Harold Norse, Lawrence Farlinghette, Jack Micheline and A.D. Winans are displayed. Jerry, the owner introduced me to so many people, that I can't remember all their names and he invited me upstairs to eat with the poets. I am going to add my head of Robinson Jeffers to my heads of poets there. Everyone needs to see Jerry collection of wonderful Beat memorabilia in North Beach.
Someone else will have to tell about the poets closing party. I am sorry I missed it now, but I had to go home, rest and digest.

This is one of the poem Jack read. When I told him how much I like it, he got it right out and gave it to me for my sister, Gerry. Somehow I heard this poem as being against abortion, but it is really about the children in the Middle East. I guess it is because my sister Gerry is always yelling passionately in much the same way about the aborted children. I should have known a man would not go up against pro-choicer like that.
I still love the poem... Very strong. And it could be about an aborted David.

THE CHILDREN

allover will remember
their legs their arms
the amputated spaces
will be nothing branded
into their little souls,
never to forget, Israel,
you shattered their vessels
with your gunfire, shit on
the word, said fuck you
to the fetus in the womb.

You not they pissed on
your own wholly unholy
tetragramaton, its letters
a fraud and a fake
I wish I could feel you
hand grenades in you mug.
I want to stuff dead children
into you eyes, lovers of learning
lies.

May selah be broken
in your mouth, may amen
never find chapter and verse,
may your food turn into
the gangrenous limbs of the
children you've felled
those little trees of sparks.
You've killed David over
and over, you star of death.

O aliyah, how low!

O victory of defeat!

O stones growing in
the clenches of fists
enraged,

against you,
you rattler of bones!
---Jach Hirschman

BEAT MUSEUM FOR HAROLD NORSE

I went to the Beat Museum memorial for Harold Norse on Saturday. A.D. Winans, Neeli Cherkovski, Mel Clay all spoke and gave some interesting memories. Mel Clay had been at the Beat Hotel in Paris. He told stories about that place where Harold also stayed, with Ginsberg and other Beats. An older lesbian women, I did not catch her name got up and told how she saved Harold from a bunch of women once when he got up and read a poem about his sexual encounder with an under age boy. She praised his poetry, but at the same time got across her disapproval. It reminded me somewhat of Michael Jackson and his past history with children.
Jerry, owner of the Beat Museum, had my bust of Harold displayed up front. I wasn't going to read until I saw displayed on the wall a man that reminded me of the Grim Reaper with a poem that Harold's had written over the black cap in white. I decided to read a poem I had just written.

Death Visiting

Our first sight of Death
May only be that ominous black crow
That sits outside our window
Looking in with piercing eyes
It comes again, now in the corner
Just a face or a telling shadow
Somewhere...somehow
Death keeps showing up
Where we walk or have coffee
Death looking at us from
The window of a car
Stopped on the freeway
Slowly you know that Death
Moved into the building
You see him down the hall
On the patio, in the elevator
Soon you are saying hello
Walking the same street
Talking to the same people
One morning you are across
From Death having coffee
And you know, just know
Death will soon be at your door
Sitting in your living room
Looking into your closet
Sizing up your rooms
You sit and talk of dreams
Or others who have passed on
And you are not surprised
When Death takes your hand
Touches your head
Soothes your pain
Death says
He is a friend
And comes only
For those who
Have been calling
Those who need a friend
Death say he heals hurts
And mistakes of the past
That only death can heal
Death tell me he brings change
To a world that has become
A slow and boring crawl
You never imagine
Being a friend of Death
But it's comfortable
It feels right...the way to go
Now your friend comes
Almost every day
You are counting on it
...Your friend to knock
...To be there for you
And you wait
...Every day
Until Death come
...Linda King 7/12/09

I read this poem of Harold's

First Love

I couldn't keep
my eyes off him
Waking and before
sleeping I gazed
at his gray-blue
eyes that stared
with innocence
at me. I felt sad
for his soft heart
and long to warn
him of the loss
of friendship and
love. I couldn't
do it. He wouldn't
understand. The
distance was too
great between us.
He was 21, I was 81.
Of course it
happened not
once or twice
but again and
again. He lost
everything to
invidious friends.
With longing
I stared a my
young photo
with it's gray-blue
eyes, its innocence
buried in a trunk
for 60 years
Now I know
that it isn't love.
It's a blind date
with one's self.
Harold Norse

Collective Dreaming

I just finished a book called HEALING DREAMS by Marc Ian Barasch. Maybe I will stop dreaming so much now I am through with this book. I don't usually like dream books because they have a standard meanings for symbols in you dreams and I feel like each one of us may have different meanings for the same thing. You dream is so individual to you alone, that maybe only you alone can receive the true meaning. Marc studied dreams of many nationalities and came up with the similar dreams with all nationalities. He said many of the Indians have dreams sessions asking for leads and answers from dreams. One Indian girl had dreams of our planet loosing trees and then having no air to breathe. There was a suggestion that we all might try collective dreaming to save our planet....from global warming, over population, etc.
After the last chapter of the book I had a dream I was being healed and it was over a body of water. I think it was angels that had ahold of the sneer red cloth and throwing me up and down catching me. At the same time I was being sprinkled from above. They kept sprinkling and bouncing me. I was at loss to know what this met. Not drinking enough water...need to swim more...need to have more fun? I was happy to have a healing dream at the end of this book. Maybe more meaning will come of it. Maybe we should try to have some collective dreams to help our planet, our country, our government. If anyone wants to send me their dreams I will attempt to keep track of solutions, similarities and help. We should try for collective dreams.

Different night...I dreamed Artichoke. I woke up and thought...choke, choke, choke....something is being choked....what it being choked? Artichoke. Artichoke...Artichoke. Art... Art...that is it. Art is being choked. So easy these dreams. I know. My Art is being Choked. Okay.... I haven't done any good art for months. My poor Art.

MOVIES BEING FILM...AT LEAST IN MY DREAMS

The movie that my son and nephew made has not been sold, but a new movie was being shot...at least in my dreams. I was all night building set with Ron Nix on somekind of western movie town. This dream went on so long and with so much detail, I am sure, now, I am living more in my dream than in reality...or my dreams have become reality and reality is now a dream. I was not only helping to build sets, but I was acting in the movie as well. My whole wardrobe was given to me and I was deciding how to fix my hair. I was going over lines. The old log cabin in Salt Gutch was being used for some of the scenes, while other scenes were going to be shot on the mountains of Boulder.
Toward morning it seems I was coming out of a hole and I heard, "Don't give up, light is just around the corner. I looked up and saw light as if I was in a hole.
Later I came out of the hole and the light was so bright on everything I had to cover my eyes. I thought I had made it into a new land that had a different kind of light than the earth had. Everything was bathed in a yellow brightness.
Now if my dreams come true as they often have done in the past...there will be some more movie making going on in the future.
One woman I was working with told me she never dreamed. I said, "Well, just tell me what you want to know and I'll dream for you." She said, "We are thinking of going into a buiness with this other guy and I want to know if it is a good move." I ask my dreams to answer this and dreamed that a tree was planted in a little corner...and it was just too small a space for that tree to grow. I then looked up on the wall and a pieces of the wall paper was coming loose. When I looked at it there was a nest of cockroachs living under it. I told her the dream and they later found out that this guy had a bunch of bad credit and yes, the place they looked at for the business was way too small.

I accidently found
an opening
...and opening
to eternity
and just
came on back
inside myself
...L.K.

DREAM - GET OUT OF THE COVERS

In this dream I went to see my sister, Margie. She was all dressed in a beautiful suit and that had a beautiful matching hat of the same material. I thought she must be going to church. She said she was going to take me over to Floyd's brother. She said Floyd's brother had left his wife and he and the woman he was living with had a baby that was close to a year old. We went there and they were laying in bed. Margie said, "They are so much in love they hardly get out of bed."
I held out my hand to the baby and she just took off walking to me. I talked to her and she started talking to me in long sentences, like kids don't do. "This is the smartest little baby I have ever seen," I said. The mother of the baby came out and she had a big blue birth mark on her face. I was curious about the woman that Floyd's brother had fallen so much in love with and was surprised at how she looked.
I was thinking....these Ence Brothers are rather wild.
Suddenly we were in Boulder and Gerry was with up. Dale Barney came up and Gerry started talking about the outlaws of Boulder. Dale went into this big act...acting out the part. Someone said they were afraid of him and Bruce and he just went into it... big time... trying to scare them even more. He said, "You sister, Gerry, was with me when we kill 8 squaws on the res...." I knew that had to be a lie. We were walking in this western town, like a movie set. I thought Ron Nix was there helping to build the set. I was wondering myself it that actually had been some murders. Dales daughter came in and seemed to be all mixed up in it as well.
These dreams are so colorful and detailed, I am wondering if I am not just running my own reels for the night.

Last night I had a very telling dream about myself. I had overslept and finding it hard to get up. I dreamed I was back working for Flo and she came in with a whole big bunch of people and I was suppose to take their orders. There was nothing to write on but some old covers. I took everyones order on these covers. When I got to the kitchen, I couldn't read any of the orders as they had absorbed into the covers. I thought I was going to get fired. I was trying to get all these hungry people to get up and tell the cook what they wanted. (Resturant dreams are my nightmare deams.) After I woke up in a panic. I thought... why Flo and Link, my old bosses? Then I realized my dreams were probably telling me to "flow and link" as on the internet. Out there they are waiting for me to "flow and link." ....Get out of the covers.

Dreaming in Hi-Tech

My dreams get more and more interesting when my life gets dull. Last night I had a long highly colored dream of both the living and the dead getting together, probably for the 4th of July.
I thought my sister Gerry and I were working as waitresses. I was going home and heard that my cousin Max Wison had stopped by were we worked, with all of his family. I told my sister to go back and also to bring my mother (passed on) as Aunt Elaine would be there (passed on.) I went back to the restaurant walking with my brother-in -law Pole (passed on) which was now almost full of Wisons, kids, cousins... everyone. I thought I was never going to be able to handle this many people. Gerry said she wasn't going to do it for $2.00 and hour. I finally just turned the whole thing over to the night crew. I suddenly saw Dean (my brother-in-law, who was lost) come running in, chasing one of the resturant workers. My sister was getting mad at his running around like that and finally she said, "I just want to know what is going on." (Aware he was dead and now young again.) I finally sat down among the living and the dead and was happy that my cousin had made the effort to stop by for this visit.
Next night... I deamed we were all going through all these clothes looking for the prefect thing for my sister Ann to wear. We finally found this beautiful flowing dress that was perfect and her husband, Tom, came out and he had on a suit that matched perfectly with her dress. I was exciting to see them going off to dance. I thought Tom was going to dance on his not so perfect leg for this event. (Maybe like ...So You Think You Can Dance...couples.) I remembered how they danced so well together when they were young.
Next night...Dream my sister, Gerry, and I were walking with a rather wild dark colored dog. We walked for a long time up a mountain until we were out of the city and then ...As we came over the top their was a bright orange hill, clouds and sunset it was beautiful in the distance (like heaven) but the trail went straight down. Gerry was just heading out down the trail...talking, not noticing how far we had gone. I finally told her we should head back up or we would never make it back. She turned around heading back up hill.
The colors and the length of these dream are what are amazing. My cousin Max is meeting right now in Boulder with his family for the 4th of July.....as well as my other sister, Ann and her family. Maybe I am just traveling along in my dreams. Maybe the living and the dead are always intmingled, if we could see them.
Again I dreamed....
I was walking down this street and their was a gang of hooigans come at me down the street.
Instead of meeting them, I used my old ability....I had always had it, to fly up onto the shed away from them. They climbed up on the shed and tried to catch me, but I took off flying down the street just over the heads of people. I realized I was kind of rusty as I hadn't flown for awhile. Some one called after me and said, "We just want a DNA sample. If you can fly, it must show in your blood and we can find other people who can do this too." I thought, I am not going to let them catch me until I practice flying some more and can do it better.