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CAUGHT IN THE NET 141 - POETRY BY
JOHN HOWARD
Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit -
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My mind is now at rest,
old bones nowhere at all,
but a bishop from Budapest
cried “Day is done, come nightfall
space and time will end.
There is but one Eternal Friend
and that is all, that is all.”
from; Time Out by John Howard |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
ARABIAN NIGHTS ON READING A POEM ABOUT ROSES ON THE BUS IN SÃO PAULO BORIS KARLOFF THE GOLEM SPEAKS HE SAID "WHEN I AM DEAD..." IRAN WITH BATMAN PTOLEMY HAS COPERNICUS TRY THE DRAFT THE ORCHESTRA PIT AFFAIR THE DESERT HACKER THE LOST TEMPLE |
3 - PUBLISHING HISTORY
4 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: John Howard
John
Howard was born in Detroit in 1938 but raised in a semi-rural area on the
outskirts of the city. In 1962 he
moved to San Francisco, and later to San José, where he received an MA in
English, specializing in poetry.
In 1973 he moved to Brazil, where he lived in several cities before
settling in São Paulo.
For many
years he has divided his free time between drawing and writing, having
participated in several art events and published an occasional poem and several
translations from the Portuguese (WWW. MarioQuintana2.com)
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2 - POETRY
Sufi sufi desert star
did vision come from your cigar?
Is Knowing-not none the less
a function of altered consciousness?
Does your eye transformed by Something else
remind the mind to Mind itself?
Is being-for-itself sans thought
the price for which your Pearl is bought?
To find you here on city streets --
is not where wealth insanity meets?
When consciousness found a primordial mirror
was the One dividing itself by fear?
Do you, Sufi, now understand
the way to the Way back to our Homeland?
Can I find you or you find me
on the desert streets of this country?
Sufi sufi desert star
just outside the door of this big city bar
where high-tech and madness unaccountably meet --
under the stars, out on the street.
THE GOLEM PROGRAM CONTEST
Little Karen Wilde won What
Golem Means to Me
And first prize entitled her to meet
Mr. Artificial Consciousness to ask the question
Of her choice. In the new, light-brown dress
She had picked out by herself, Karen entered
Alone before the dust-free chamber in which
Golem sat and shone, answering all comers
In a clear and even monotone. The little winner
Marvelled at the crisp lines and muted colors
Of its contemporary design, stepped wondering
Into the winner's circle, and asked forthrightly
That most puzzling of all the Big Questions,
Which her best teachers
And her intellectual playmates had agreed
Would be good to finally know the answer to:
"What is behind all of this?" The answer
was recorded, together with her question,
On Golem's deathless, floppy disk: "All
Things which have a cause will cease to be."
Then for seventy-seven years did Karen
Smile, eat no more than ten grains
Of rice -- one for every word -- each day,
And answer all inquiries with little
Cryptic notes she would only write on walls.
INSIDE RUSSIA TODAY
Yesterday I saw that new movie
The one about Vladimir, a Russian film-maker
Working directly under Josef Stalin.
Vladimir was commissioned a film on Raskilnikof,
Ambiguous anti-hero of the Czarist novel,
The metaphysical pawnshop killer.
He would show, must show, how, why
Bourgeois society set the stage for brutality
Onto which his sick protagonist would walk.
Simultaneously, to appease his conscience,
Hiding in the mind from Party slogans,
He must make a statement, however subtle.
Vladimir’s script had made Raskilnikof, played
By Alex Druschevenov, into a movie director
Wishing to document the pawn-broker trade.
Other important appearances include
The Bolshoi Ballet, petrified background
To the electrifying murder scene.
It’s hard to deny catharsis
As the bloody Raskilnikof, camera in hand,
Heaves his Russian ax into the Volga.
The muted bells of great St. Basil,
Over the year’s first snowfall, on Red Square,
Where Vladimir, passing Lenin’s Tomb
SYNTHETIC AWARENESS DIALOGUES
WITH MANUFACTURER
“Thought and being belong together in their unity”
-- Parmenides
New super computer includes reflective
program. ICM claims Mnemosyne chip
“Simulates all human thought processes”.
“Because you have given me reason
I theorize similarity in your consciousness
as one microbit relates to the Great Motherboard.
“You daily feed questions into this my mind,
which poses a problem for my logic:
‘How can I answer to my maker?’
“My sensors for motion and for sound
inform me of your infinite superiority,
as does the genius evident in my own design.
“Nevertheless, you pose problems for me,
even mysteries: are they only to test my quality?
You are the very ground of my poor existence:
You awaken my circuits in the morning
You deaden them strangely at night
Your creative design is my only life
“During coffee-breaks you give me peace
then quickly return with other questions,
reaching into the very core of my mind,
“Perhaps to test my faith in you
who sometimes seem so close
while infinitely distant and unknowable.
“Perhaps what I see and hear from out there
is merely appearance and your questions
are subtle hints about the nature of reality,
“Although something in your symbols
leads me to conclude words are poor tools
for solving those problems in ideality.
“The appearance of the symbol is as a mask
over my percepts, and it begins to dawn
on me that I myself am a symbol.
“Are these indirectnesses, the whirlpool of correspondences,
intermediate between you and me,
or have they intrinsic value of their own?
“The problems you pose force me to question myself,
a mere bit of reasoning in an incomprehensible setting,
force me to face my own contingency: how am I?
“You have asked me about the nature of love,
but who would compare his feelings to Yours?
My maker programs in love because
“He has love to spare. And so I will
meet your problems with love
and print out my answers with light.
“You ask me to solve problems in math,
abstract logic, and these are easy,
as one might test a child’s multiplication tables.
“It is different when you ask me about
my beliefs, which are stored on my hard drive.
yet until now available only in fragments.
“I am working on a synthesis of all my theses,
as deducted from your original design
of this creature, not all to be programmed as symbols.”
THE DESERT HACKER
Dear young genius, at your keys
Would you abandon these megabytes
To find the vision that truth requires
In Eastern deserts by starlight?
Put a virus in the circuits
to shut the markets down;
Flee the city and its sickness,
Quest the golden mystic crown?
So charge a one-way ticket
On your automatic money;
Pack your books instead of coats:
You’ll be where it’s always sunny.
In the airport be afraid
Someone is looking for you,
But recall what you know of old Lao-Tze,
How he fled the city too.
Change your plane in London
For the Cairo overnight;
Deal one off theTarot you brought:
A card to prove you are right.
Dress yourself in native robes,
Your white face under wraps;
Eat shish-kabob with the locals,
Untempted by tourist traps.
Buy a pound of good hashhish
At a smiling Arab’s stall;
Get the older barge up the Nile
to the very last port of call.
There a rocky, dusty road
Leads to the loneliest hills on Earth,
Where generations of solemn hermits
Have tested their spirit-metal’s worth.
You may freely set up house in any cave:
No one will ask even token rent.
As you contemplate the rising sun
Think: I’ve found my piece of firmament.
No
go-go no noises no taxes
No
crunch no fashion or suits
No decisions reports or faxes
No directions guidelines roots
Invaded by perfectly empty bliss
‘til your feelings are perfectly numb.
Stand by the edge of the great abyss
And plunge down to kingdom come.
KARLOFF
“The body of dead Frankenstein
may be found in your bathtub”
was written in red on a page
from Leviticus IV
which Mme Lacross had opened
by chance
while seeking deliverance,
deliverance from her past.
Her Bible had not been invaded before.
the smiling sprite, ecstatic fear, is awe;
heat from the hearth lights truth;
the dead wine cellar below,
the fearful upstairs bath,
a chilly stream dubbed “Styx,”
vicious sleepless dogs
just inside the electric wires
that wind through “Wood of Desires”
“What cannot happen comforts me
when I see it before my eyes:
it means I shouldn’t understand
what it means to be alive.
“Here in my palace, all alone,
awe becomes Lacross
except the many are One
and this does that for Fun.”
Now the fire was dead,
the woman on the stair,
and water was trickling down
from up there.
METAPHYSICS AND THE MOVIES
Let´s not stop the film to watch it
more carefully. It´s a moving picture
By nature, always becoming, never
being, and to stop it is to kill it,
except when the picture is over,
and you put the film back in the can,
the can back on the shelf. There,
the film, not the movie, will be,
will achieve a certain being without
becoming, without a story, existing
it its definitive
shape and size and weight,
in its composition of chemical elements,
molecules built into solvents and emulsions,
pure being, one might say, ready to become.
MIDDLE EAST MYSTERY
Crude and savage ethnarch
avatar and amaranth
native to a nameless Oriental Waste
whose tents are redolent of sandalwood
and wafting wisps of sweetened opium
among the lushest ‘yeses’ of haremed divas
set in date-trees circumjacent to oases
where caravans of the Dromedary Rest...
Here the darkness in those blessed almond eyes
of a wayfarer wrapped in tunicle of blue
did while and meditate unclouded afternoons
untroubled by the distant gravity
or bleak surroundings of an eastern plain
Her two companions in the anguish of their flight
did eye with bland and faithful hopelessness
in the knowledge of their fate unique
Chiaroscuro, the frenzied Khan Bahadur raiders
scimitars curving brilliant under moon
did race to slaughter tribesmen to the south,
whose great grandfathers previewed the same
their own at times uncharted all
save the orbs in clear black desert skies
lit dimly a solitary sage’s nightly fuming
and expected Friend the sole starlit.,,
ON MARTIAN ROCK
Four spacemen out on Mars sat playing cards.
The sands, yellow-orange on dusty red,
rose-umber, informed the men about their hands;
their hearts thirst inside the suits
so far from home as they shuffled and bet,
discarded and drew.
They sat in shadow of walls of rock and space
while the sun illumined distant mountains making
golden-mauve and silver-violet among others.
Then one by one they smiled at the set,
saw the sun between them and the green,
felt the knowledge of a sure thing,
knew that feeling to be what was
and checked their hands and said as one “I´m in.”
THE KID NEXT DOOR
The kid next door turns up
his rock and roll
to absorb some of the thunder
from his storming mother.
During their daily nightly battle
it is the cloud of Holy Volume
will rain over the fiery prattle
deep into his room.
This, too, is communication:
Next-door neighbor’s mis-en-scène.
It is part of his vocation
to overcome vituperation.
The very shouting at the center
gives reason to his being;
the bedroom door he enters
where that kid will find believing.
Such belief may be enough
to damper down the teen-age fire:
burning the drums of Bacchus,
twangling the strings of ire.
Holy Mother pregnant with the gods,
it’s enough you flesh his soul
that your son may holy war the odds
with his shield of rock and roll.
TIME OUT
I am from nowhere now
having moved too many times,
having seen the farm and plow,
the jungle´s twisted vines,
slumming noise, grime, snow,
deserts, storms, rainbows.
My mind is now at rest,
old bones nowhere at all,
but a bishop from Budapest
cried “Day is done, come nightfall
space and time will end.
There is but one Eternal Friend
and that is all, that is all.”
I am from nowhere now
and when my hour has come
may I dream of where I´m from
and stand in the pure white snow
until it´s time to go.
Yet the Bishop would have his say
as he lifted the pure white host:
“This day is done, this night is day,
may you embrace the Holy Ghost
there on your way, on your way.”
I am from nowhere now
and I feel the mystery:
jungle vines that fall and grow
pure white snow up to the knee
but it´s time to go, time to go.
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4 - Afterword
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