Renee Good/Doug Van Koss/Jonah Raskin/Jack Foley

Rest in Peace, Mother and Poet Renee Nicole Good

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Rhttps://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=9a9c725456583bfe0b61763ae2750d1f4bf0aff9cd73fa17f468ddd3311765d0JmltdHM9MTc2ODAwMzIwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=0b9f7957-e0a9-61c4-3f0e-6b55e12d6043&u=a1L2ltYWdlcy9zZWFyY2g_cT1yZW5lZStuaWNvbGUrZ29vZCZpZD1CQTM3QkRENzdGMDlDRDhCNTE1NTNEM0E2QUVCQ0QyRTlCQ0VDNTc0JkZPUk09SVFGUkJBShared with Your friendsRest in Peace, Poet Renee Nicole Good

On Facebook, I shared the words of one of my major heros, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez,

“I understand that VP Vance believes shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not. That is a fundamental difference between VP Vance and I. I do not believe the American people should be assassinated in the street.”

to which Petaluma, California poet Donna Emerson added,

Donna Emerson

According to the last video I saw, Renee Nicole Good was shot in the face shortly after she smiled at the shooter and said "I'm not mad at you..." turning her car away from him. He was 'locked and loaded.' She was a poet, won prizes at Old Dominion where she went to college. VP Vance spews from his full body rage weekly. Often against women.

Battle Hymn of Donald Trump 

by Doug Van Koss at 90

   Mine eyes have seen the glory of the tramping of my troops

   They have trampled out the freedoms where the dreams of peace are stored.

   They have loosed their terrible weapons on the homeless and the poor

   My troops are Trumping on

    Gory, gory, what’s it to yah!

    Gory, gory, what’s it to yah!

    Gory, gory, what’s it to yah!

    My troops are Trumping on.

  Battle Hymn of Most Everybody Else

   Mine eyes have seen the return of a guy named Donald Trump

   He has used the constitution to wipe his filthy rump

   He has taken all our hopes and dreams and burned them in a clump

    A pox on Donald Trump

     Sorry, sorry, he’s out ta screw yah!

    Sorry, sorry, he’s out ta screw yah!

    Sorry, sorry, he’s out ta screw yah!

    A pox on Donald Trump   

- Doug von Koss at 90

Jonah Raskin My Symmetrical Life 

As a "prelude"  to Jonah Raskin's startlingly revealing article in Caveat Lector, I would like to begin with the poem which I wrote for Jonah shortly after he published his chapbook, The Thief of Yellow Roses in 2023.

**********************************************

                        The best man I know 

circulates
San Francisco
these latter years
as a cloud a mist
perhaps as a memory
the fog of love, also
perhaps of war and
of battles surrendered,
and may he also 
find in the flesh
the still familiar 
long-lost face
of the dear one,
and when so much
comes down
to flowers and
he deems himself
to be a larcenist,
I tell him that at least 
rhetorically, my friend, 
it cannot be termed stealing 
to pinch from your own
vibrantly petalled 
bounty of produce
blooming each year
from bulbs fondly planted 
by you to culture your self 
as well as all those others 
who are lost and missed.
                                            (for J.R.)

Atheist Catholic

Now I recommend going to Raskin in Caveat Lector, the blog which he founded. There, you can read Jonah's revealing essay "James Joyce and Father John Converted Me: How I Became an Atheist Catholic."

Once you've pressed the link and read the essay, you might want to check out my poem touching on this subject, particularly its reference to Graham Greene,

and the shorter one which follows and which well might be employed by me, Ed Coletti, to conclude my book which will be titled  A Tourist in Time / Confessions of  a Catholic Agnostic.

Through a Glass Darkly

Entering each day into this cloud darkened redwood grove,

No fairy ring of filtered sun rays to light my understanding,

I watch the future moving closer and puzzle the obscurity

blinding me from vision of you—of what or where or why.

 

When willingly I take Paul’s entreaty seriously

To put aside my childish ways,

I wander from the tree limb shelter and cross over

from forested safeguards back into ultraviolet solar burn,

 

I face the sun—then flinch, retreat, realize nothing novel

here to spur conversion from the fear to face instead

toward heaven, hell, or empty void when, in a poem,

I depict once more my barren vision,

 

“I will want only/the efficiency of a single/beckoning off-switch.”

What a childish choice, mere nonexistence,

existential nonbeing, the pain of not being here

or, for that matter, anywhere even in remembrance.

 

I care too much about opinions of the other poets

regarding Ed’s supposed drift toward belief

though he is merely toying with notions and wonders

about all those sage converts to Catholicism

 

Not only TS Eliot, CS Lewis, John Henry Newman, GK Chesterton,

Dave Brubeck, Gustave Mahler and Henry Aaron, but also

the slave trader Jim Bowie and assassin John Wilkes Booth, and

I value Graham Greene most for dubbing himself 

a “Catholic Atheist.”

 Graham Greene

            

                                                      

Ed Coletti                                                 

Agnostic (Redux)

 Having written all of this,

I still don’t know

What’s true,

Do You?

 And

 I’ve grown

To like it

This way too.

Being

A Tourist in Time

Still Feels to me

To always be

Just fine,

 Yet

Even this

Faith in

My uncertainty

Wavers

Much the same as

That boat

Shooting rapids

Through

My earlier poem

“Floating”

 

But

 Opposite shore

Reveals

Curiously

Blurred,

Philosopher

Heraclitus

Praying,

and

So it goes,

Back and forth —

Mysterious flux

The river is

*******************************************************

Jack Foley (1940-2025)

I have known Jack for the past 20 years. I first met him at Moe's Bookstore (Berkeley) when we both were reading there. Although his body of work proved too abundant for me to sample more than a smattering, I certainly was familiar with his impressive talent and intellect. Over the years, we have spoken and corresponded from time to time. However, the events that were nearest my heart were Jack's acts of kindness to Joyce and me following the loss of our home and possessions to the October 2017 Tubbs Wildfire. Much to my astonishment, Jack, with no prompting from me, gifted us with a thousand dollars! This act of generosity was matched by his contribution of a poem to my chapbook Firestorm (Round Barn Press - 2018). Here is the text:

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ED COLETTI  by Jack Foley

They can burn my house

They can burn my shoes

They can burn everything

I usually use

They can burn my kitchen

They can burn my den

They can burn my lamp

But I show up again

Show up again

With my dog, my wife

When you got nothing

You still got life

And life isn’t nothing

Let the fire destroy

Everything I do

I CAN DO IT AGAIN

I’M A FIRE TOO

So burn

So burn

So burn

                                    Thank you, Jack. We will miss you.

***************************************************************************************

Thich/Buk/Gwynn/Ed/Jane/Fran/Graves/Borges/

This timely passage is excerpted (pgs 53-54) from Thich Nhat Hanh's How to Smile Copyright © 2023 Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism on behalf of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org. Do not duplicate.

All though the following is not one of his poems, Thich Nhat Hanh's message strikes me as perfect for our difficult age.

Our World 

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Many of us worry about the world situation. As

individuals, we feel helpless, despairing. The

situation is so dangerous, injustice is so wide-

spread, the danger is so close. In this kind of

situation, if we panic, things will only become

worse. We need to remain calm, to see clearly.

Meditation is to be aware and to try to help.

After the war, many people left Vietnam to

travel in small overcrowded boats across the

Gulf of Siam. Often they were caught in storms

or rough seas. People could panic, making

the boat more likely to sink. But if one person

aboard could remain lucid and calm, knowing

what to do and what not to do, that person

could help the boat survive. Their voice and

body would communicate clarity and calm;

people would trust them and listen to what

they had to say. One such person can save

the lives of many. Our world is something like

a small boat. Compared with the cosmos, our

planet is a very small boat. We may be about

to panic because our situation is no better than

that of the small boat in the sea. Humankind

has become a very dangerous species. We

need people who can sit still, are able to smile,

and can walk peacefully in order to save us. In

my tradition it’s said that you are that person,

that each of us is that person.

Cafe Frida Poetry Festival Resumes March 30th With New Director Gwynn O'Gara

Having served three years, I felt that it was time to place the baton into Gwynn's very capable hand. Gwynn who was Poet Laureate back in the day, accepted with enthusiasm. She'll do a fantastic job!  - Ed Coletti

 

And from Gwynn, Dear Poetry Fans and Newcomers,

Our first 2025 reading at Cafe Frida Gallery, 300 South A Street, Santa Rosa, on the outdoor stage, will take place on Sunday,
March 30th at 1 pm. Any of you who have attended know this series to be a joyful festival that Ed Coletti began following the height of the pandemic when poets and audiences were hungry to get out and mingle. Each subsequent gathering has been similarly well-received by large (at least by poetry reading standards) audiences. Come one, come all!
This year’s additional Festival readings will be on June 29th and September 28th.
As we enter the Festival’s 4th year, Ed Coletti is moving on to other things, and has entrusted this valuable enterprise to me. I am honored and I will do my best. We will all miss Ed as instigator, curator and MC, but he will be one of the readers at the next Cafe Frida Poetry Festival on June 29th.
I’m pleased and proud to present the reading order of the terrific poets for March 30th:
—Gwynn O’Gara (Ed had a hand in this.)
—Bill Greenwood
—Rita Losch
—Karl Frederick
—Shawna Swetech
—Chris Giovachini
—Susan Lamont
—David Madgalene
Hope to see you on the 30th, and please say Hi. There are many of you I don’t know and would like to (“friends I haven’t met yet” as Gene Ruggles would say). Consider arriving early for lunch and great music!
Cheers to all,
Gwynn O'Gara

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Charles Bukowski

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.

-Charles Bukowski

Trashcan Lives

the wind blows hard tonight and it's a cold wind and I think about the boys on the row. I hope some of them have a bottle of red. it's when you're on the row that you notice that everything is owned and that there are locks on everything. this is the way a democracy works: you get what you can, try to keep that and add to it

My personal experience with the work of Bukowski began somewhat naively as expressed in my own poem

"Ed Coletti’s poem is a boozy nod to Bukowski’s busted saints and spider-veined 'glory,' significantly asking “Is this poetry?”-- before answering with a resigned grin and sinking into ultimate pleasure." -- XCarl Macki

Bukowski Sometimes Makes Me Happy

                      by Ed Coletti

Drop in

to Treehorn,

start to read

Bukowski 

who’s recalling

a rag man and

his exhausted horse

during the depression.

So I ask myself

Is this poetry?

Not

everyone else 

thinks it is—

He makes me happy, and

Black Sparrow grew out of him.

so of course

it must be 

poetry.

Hookers nudie dancers

barrooms made him

happy just thinking

about them— this Charles

or Hank clobbering 

that loudmouthed Irish barkeep 

who the others cheered to win—

So it goes with drunks bums addicts,

saints pleasuring in memories

bathing in our own brief smile, 

never again wanting

to kill after wanting to

murder the rag picker who 

possessed and was whipping 

still another 

ancient mangy mare.

Published in Zombie Logic Review March 2014

My infatuation with Buk's work continued for years but dimmed as I dug deeper and discovered that, to a greater extent, I had outgrown the rebel personality that I professed. Bukowski's image as the post-beat o.g. of  young poets lost it's luster for me...particularly his prodigious drinking and overall apparent shock-jockery, each of these to escape but also to express his own self-loathing. Recently, in my quest to get a better sense of the man, I began to look at videos of readings in which Bukowski armed with two quarts of whatever he was drinking at the time, drank, swigged straight from the bottle, one in each hand, a caricature of  the two fisted drinker, the king of the self-destroyers. Those readings became too much for me to watch. Too depressingly sadomasochistic 

I recalled watching Bukowski reading his poem "The Poetry Reading" which I have or had on a DVD given me by a friend long ago. I appreciated the poem and its depiction of himself as a poet loathing himself for doing readings solely for the money. (Unlike with the original version, I've chosen to center this one.)

The Poetry Reading

at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it's for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I'm tense lousy feel bad
poor people I'm failing I'm failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a dirty poem
somebody told me not to read dirty poems
here
it's too late.
my eyes can't see some lines
I read it
out-
desperate trembling
lousy
they can't hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that's it, I'm
finished.
and later in my room
there's scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in tiny dark halls
reading poems I have long since become tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.

*******************

Several years later, I read his less introspective but more damning poem about readings. This one shook me to my poetic core.

Poetry Readings by Charles Bukowski

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
week after week, month after month, year
after year,
getting old together,
reading on to tiny gatherings,
still hoping their genius will be
discovered,
making tapes together, discs together,
sweating for applause
they read basically to and for
each other,
they can't find a New York publisher
or one
within miles,
but they read on and on
in the poetry holes of America,
never daunted,
never considering the possibility that
their talent might be
thin, almost invisible,
they read on and on
before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,
their wives, their friends, the other poets
and the handful of idiots who have wandered
in
from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything
anything
but
these.

 

Writing Instructions

Very helpful to me, the words of Graves and Borges

"...crossed out adjectives and found better nouns. The same with adverbs swallowed into better verbs

  “If you need adj or adv you’re still fishing for the right noun or verb” ie one that doesn’t need propping up with modifiers.
                       Robert Graves to Alastair Reed

"I confessed the difficulty of putting the images I saw into adequate words, and he nodded eagerly. 'This is, my dear, the work before us, always. To find a language adequate to what is revealed. I’m glad you know this. I feel the same consternation quite often, trying to attach feelings to words, to summon the image and declare it pure.'”  -(quote from Borges in Jay Parini  Borges and Me pg162

**********************

Fran Claggett's Tribute Causes Me to Blush

Felicity du Fleur, at a poetry reading

Just the other day, at a poetry reading

organized by our own Ed Coletti at the

Frida Cafe, yes, that Frida, we see her

always in pain in her art, married to

Diego, but he had nothing to do with

her pain, well, we don't know, do we.

but she gave her name to this cafe, made for

poetry, with a stage and shade, just perfect,

anyway, as I was saying, the other day,

Sunday, it was, the poetry lovers of Sonoma

were there to hear some of our wonderful

poets, well, Ed himself, read and I must tell

you, his poems were, well, simply said, the

absolute best we heard all afternoon, so good

I can't wait to read them in print, not only the

one about crows, since he and I both know that

is a winner, but the second one, and I can't recall

the title, but it was, well, just great, a totally fine

poem and I should know, because although my name

is Felicity du Fleur, it might as well have been

Felicity du Poetas because I know a great poem

when I hear it and I heard Ed read it last Sunday,

but what I really want to tell you today is that

every time I lifted my eyes to the wall, the WAll

at the entrance of the Cafe, the whole wall, the

entire bank of it was shimmering with a deep deep

beyond the pale purple flower, an absolute purple

totally covering the wall...on and on, as far as the

wall went, as far as Ed's poem took me,

Felicity du Fleur/Poetas at this, Frida's purple cafe.  

 

                                                               Felicity du Fleur

                                                aka fran claggett-holland

The Fifth Day

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking
of rivers, of boulders and air.

Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

   - Jane Hirshfield