I live in Santa Cruz with my wife, Laurie. I have two grandchildren, Briton and Oona by Erika, my daughter-in-law, and Jason, my son. My career has focused on teaching writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I have also been involved in local politics, serving for eight years on the city council and on other boards as well as serving as Mayor of Santa Cruz from 2000 to 2001. Now I also teach creative writing once a week in a maximum security prison. Please send your comments to tim.fitzmaurice1@gmail.com.
for David Winters, a singer/guitarist and champion of
labor.
We are jolted awake and
suddenly flinch
at the unpardonable beauty of
emptiness.
Someone has sneaked away in
the evening.
David is gone with our music.
Someone has absconded with
the air,
the air like Bach’s.
An air, an aria, a ballad, a
song,
someone has taken the music.
Now …
Who will bring the music?
The swollen river of music
has dried up. We are facing a
drought.
We know about droughts;
they are what we do.
We know about conserving our
resources in a dry spell.
We know about the invisible
springs that must be fed
and the impervious earth
that must be opened.
So that it can drink again.
Who will bring the music?
The music of hope and the
music
of we-can-and-must–be-better,
the truest politics of love
and rescue
and solidarity and trust.
Who will bring the music now?
Our brother is asking us.
He has a smiling guitar
and laughing fingers and
the pledge
that nothing will be left
unsung.
Who will bring the Music?
We have been thrown. We have
been thrown
into this orphanage of
silence.
Tony will bring the quickness
Jeff will bring the slow
Bonnie will bring the outcry
and
Mathilda will bring the hope.
Nora will bring the struggle
and
Doug will bring the history
and
Bruce will bring the joy.
Katherine will bring the
care.
Ruth will bring the honesty
and Marv will bring the
justice.
Rachel will bring the facts.
You will bring the honey and
Chris will bring the bees.
Jane will bring the scrutiny.
Brian will bring the
patience.
Ron will bring the acts
and Sherry will bring the
pulse.
Mardi will bring the motion
and Tim Jenkins will bring
community.
Dan will bring the ocean
and Micah will bring the
bikes and
Debbie will bring the wild.
Celia will bring the must
and Peter will bring the may
and Laurie will bring the
empathy.
Jimmie will bring the now
and I will bring confusion
and that’s everything we
need. Oh …
Keith will bring the force
that drives the flower
through its stem. But
Who will bring the music?
Sometimes we forget the
music.
Sometimes we are too busy to
fold it into our purses and
pockets.
It seems too heavy for us
It seems to be unnecessary
and an afterthought,
but the music is always
before thought.
The music is the habitat of
thought.
But now
Who will bring the music?
The birds will come.
The sea will come with its
music.
The voices of need will come
with their music
The children will come with
their music
The insects will come
The wind will come
The ones who work will bring
their music
The ones who struggle
The ones who are victims and
the ones
who are heroes: all of them
will
bring their music.
All they ask is that we
listen.
We have been thrown! We
have been thrown.
The ordinary miracles
that we took for granted …
the things we take which
we forgot were gifts.
He was always dragging us
through the garden, always
warming us
with his sweet smile. Now
Who will bring the music?
Why is it
we never see the dark stars
that do not shine
but are invisible and pulling
us
and pushing us. We know them
by
their influence, by what we
become
in their presence.
Who will bring the music?
Every sense is touching us
somehow.
and they radiate away into
invisibility,
from actual touch with finger
then tongue
to the brief hover of smell
above us
to the capture of eyes by
something that appears to us.
But sound can be invisible.
It is touching from around
the corner.
It can come from shyness,
from humility.
So we do not always see
Who will bring the music?
until they come to us
around the corner.
We often overlook them.
And they can disappear just
as quickly
as they come.
But they a leave a trace of
sound
even when their physical
presence
is a mist and an evaporation.
Who will bring the music?
We will
We will keep the promise
that he made.
We must keep this promise.
We will bring the music.
Monday, August 13, 2018
SONG: WITHOUT APPETITE
a four-part poem on Anorexia
1.
Prelude: St. Margaret of Hungary
Hundreds of years ago
waiting in the kitchen
in torchlight the daughter
of the house
of the king himself.
But now she has made herself
the servant, the nourishing,
always bringing the meal
always
ready to be waiting. Her
father
arranging the wedding.
Each step on the stair
could be someone coming
closer.
She always making herself
as narrow as hope and as
beautiful
as the urge to art and has
whittled
herself to only a famished
heart.
Each point of bone
protruding through the skin
is a syllable in his holy
name.
Her father there waiting for
the rescuer
to come, unless she has first
been abducted into holiness
So all through history
young girls have lost
their appetite,
swallowed mystery,
and vanished into night.
2.
her last words
I will call you one day
And when you pick up the
phone
I will only say:
I have become an idea
finally! And click.
And you will come to my door
And open it up and look
inside
And say: It is true!
She has become finally
blue!
3.
A letter to her
Brother.
I saw her
standing
like an unfinished house.
There was a bird loose
in her ribs.
The wood was still green.
Along a street
An unexpected parade
Full of children
Who exploded their voices
through brass
and called it music.
I am sorry to have to be
the one to tell you this,
but some of that music
went through her frame.
It shook the wooden beams
and startled the bird.
4.
Dialogue
When will the sleeping
margarets wake
and walk among us once again?
When we have made a gentle place
where women walk with loving men.
But the world I see is green
with joy
and if you try, you can be
free.
I know there are no margarets there
I cannot see what you can see.
But this is the garden my
father grew
I’ve done my best to make it
flower.
If
no margaret lives beyond an hour,
then I guess this place will not do.
Well, what can we do to make
it new
to make the sleeping
margarets wake?
We’ll
have to tear it up again
for
every single margaret’s sake.
AFTERWORD
A while ago I was teaching at UCSC
and a student came late to the class. It was a required class. She must have this class in her first year. Her name was Sonya. She came with her parents and her
brother. It was unusual to see such a crowd. They met with me after class.
Sonya was almost two weeks behind. She needed my permission to start the class
so late.
Sonya’s
parents and brother were very earnest—almost desperate. I told the parents I
would listen to their story, but I would not discuss their daughter’s work or her decisions with
them. They said she had been in the hospital and just got out. It was at
Stanford. It was special program addressing anorexia.
It was the late 1980’s. Eating
disorders were getting attention. This disease seemed especially complex and
political.It should be noted that at
the time I lost 60lbs because of physical problem. At the time did not know
why. I could not swallow and was stuck. For years eating in public became anathema for me. When I
ate I vomited. So I felt some oblique connection with this catastrophe. My family intervened much later and I got surgery at UCSF. But I felt what it was like to starve for about 12 years.
Sonya at this time was just out of
what they thought was successful treatment in a new therapeutic environment. A
few weeks later I saw her running and saw her losing weight. Her face was
drawn. She left school before the quarter ended. Her parents called me with the
sad news that she died suddenly not long after. I wrote these poems in one
sitting in a forest near by.
Poodle dressed in his tightest tee and his shortest shorts
& stood with cradled clipboard in front of Starbucks
mingling with the aging hogsters and other exhibivalents.
flashes a winning smile and he speaks: Have you got one minute
to save the whole flucking animal kingdom?
How could anyone say no to that?
They taught Poodle this pitch at the POODLEPEACE
marketing school for summer interns in Daly City,
where as they say: We can get you to yessiree!
Actually they did not use the word flucking
in the course on sidewalk counseling and outreach.
Poodle added the word himself as his personal attempt
at rhetorical intensification and just that dollop
of edgy intimidation.
Well plenty tumbled. It was worth the drive
from Daly City to the City that never said No.
Only the evil could say no to anything.
But if he got a squirmer, Poodle could be crazy cruel
and play them like a brook trout.
Do you have a minute for the beasts?
Do you have any friends who are beasts?
Can I be your friend?
You don’t have a minute to make a friend?
Or is it you don’t have a minute to make a poodle friend?
Have you done anything for anybody today other than yourself?
Oh you have?
Then I guess that poodles don’t qualify for your good heartedness.
Even the slightest hint that he had gotten into their heads and
into their nightmares could be as good as a sale.
People would cross the street and go to the Coffee Roasting Company
instead of Starbucks
and so Poodle had to mosey
down to the space in front of Urban Outfitters,
next to where the cinema line would queue up.
He always chose the coziest sidewalks
or the tight squeezes.
[Hand out the poem machines. For applauding.]
Poodle: an explanation
In the 1960’s I read Goethe’s Faust to my son, Jason, when he was two weeks old. It was edited by Stephen Spender and translated by Louis MacNiece. Wagner is talking to Faust. Faust sees something in the stubble and corn and Wagner says that it is just a poodle. But Faust says: But don’t you perceive how in wide spirals around us he is running, fire eddies behind him in his wakes? And Wagner replies: I can see nothing but a black poodle. So is he the devil or just a poodle? Well since then I have written many poems using Poodle as my eyes and ears and paws because he can go places that I cannot go.
A first poem
Defining Poodle (1969)
A poodle is not an act of god.
A poodle is a symptom
of advanced education,
a highly developed
artistic temperament,
an unusual interest
in the accidents of breeding,
and too much time on your hands.
4.
Poodle goes to the avenue each day
to see whose missing
Some are present:
Pinnochio the registered sex offender. & balloon man,
tarot man, empathy man, taco bell boy, saxety yak,
Long legged short shorts blonde man who keeps his head down at the margins,
The maestro who with his boom box tucked under his arm
plays tapes of his endless piano etudes to the unsuspecting and uncomprehending.
Our friend, the polite Vince, who loves to boogie
while standing in doorways. He listens to his walkman
in doorways wearing the new clothes that his parents give him
once a year when he goes to the east coast I think on vacation
from his schizophrenia. We trade ten dollars about once a month. He always pays me back
even when he doesn’t owe me anything.
Or Paul with his trout post cards,
who fell down last year and almost did not get up
High-five woman who works the crew. She gave me a book
that she wrote last week which said APPY BOOEK on every page.
& scarves lady who preaches to the unsaved and spanges the rest
and who is not cosmic lady or the lady with scarves
who danced outside while Warmth played in front
of the Cooperhouse. Then everything changed.
Tbat building refused to be demolished without a fight.
The youthful and enthusiastic soilies, is it? The new tribes who play gypsy music
and live in magic buses and who have pushed the less charming old men and women to the side streets and in the bushes next to the library. The brutal aisles of the downtown are thick with jealousies & rivalries & heartbreak. The old envelopes are no longer entertaining. These deead letters, their addresses have all been obliterated.
But I see some of the disappeared
Of course the obvious California Slim and sawplayer Tom. But
I would like to point out a special case
Ra, The Sun God, but how can you point to a negative.
He was absent when he was present. Then he was erased.
In a nutshell: he was thrown
from the Water Sreet Bridge and killed
maybe twenty-five years ago?
The person or persons were male or female and
between the ages of1 and 100. I believe
they are still at large. So if you see them,
please call the local authorities.
Ra was the one—do you remember?—
who stood on bridges or in streets with his head
tilted back and his face to the sun and he stared
with the beatific abandon of St Teresa of Avila
whilst she lingered in the vise-like grip of her spiritual wedding.
His skin become the color of a French roast
Tres Americas coffee bean but edged in gold
with patches of a permanent blush.
Then one day he was thrown away.
6. Poodle learns that Power corrupts
and obnoxious power corrupts
obnoxilutely
How many fat asses can you fit into a mediocre mind?
asked nostradamus.
So poodle could see that all hell could --
well you know the rest..
So Poodle tried to give advice
at a perfectly ordinary picnic table.
So yes he told Nostramemus the burgomeister:
Don’t do what you imagine and
don’t imagine what you do!
No one will even mention the quicksand
until you can taste the grit in your mouth.
They will gladly finish your sentences and deliver
whatever poison you wish for with ribbons and gladness.
If you fall down they will say you are leaping.
If you crawl in the mud they will say it is dancing.
The swankness you swank will be swanked upon you.
just like your nostramomma told you.
But he fell like adam upon eve and grew somber.
Fortunately he was saved by the inclemency of the arrow that flies by day
so he shouted like Houdini
drop the tray
and I will strop the stray
and the terror that flies by night and
the arrow that flies by day.
We shall tattoo this upon every mother’s heart in Live Oak
and it will announce my resurrection to terms everlasting.
for
What is a hero if it isn’t the me
who eats shit
and shits policy.
7.
Poodle Pissed upon Eleven palm trees
on Mission Hill
in order of height:
no easy feat!
Not including the baby palms just sprouting and too tender
for his unction or the palm tree locked behind the cloister wall
of the home for unwed mothers,
from where he has never heard singing,
but yes thoughtlessly upon the rectory
but not upon the church itself,
which would have been at least blasphemy and
probably a violation of the muni code.
& he passed the crumbling graves overlooking
the hardware store covered in quaking grass and thistles
He could not add even an exclamation point
to the desecration of it.
But you cannot hold it against a dog for not holding it
& pissing.
Pissing for dogs is conversation. My language.
It is a series of assertions
of a fact, agreement, contradiction,
ejaculation or condolence. Just as smelling listens.
Every thing speaks to them. Things shouting at them.
We cannot know what contrariness and annoyances
they deal with. Poodle can tell you:
When dogs are in government,
there’s a whole lot of sniffing and pissing going on.
Poodle Waiting for the truth of Mozart
K283 PC
For two years I’ve listened
and heard nothing,
like Frank Drake eavesdropping
on the death of god,
or the Grant’s patiently tagging finches
on Galapagos for twenty generations.
For two years I have just listened
and waited as if this thing
will walk through this door
if only I leave it open long enough.
I wonder if I am so
irresistible that such gifts must come.
But it is obvious
that most live behind doors
upon which no one
ever knocks.
Poodle & the Magician’s Last Trick
His darkening eyes hold
the distraction of it all
in their slim pools.
Loch Ness monsters could live
undiscovered
in the deep retinas
& sleep
& only wake to feed.
It’s possible there’s enough magic
left in this wand
to manage this last trick.
Where is the suit
with the pockets
in which the white birds live?
14
Now that they allowed our four-pawed pals
to trot downtown,
he could see the army of souls who have been
chosen to be there.
The diabetes man and his need-food sign, &
the man in the wheel chair
clutching a blanket between his teeth
and flying down the bike lane &
The Burrito man.
You know the bass-singing, one-note-playing,
guitar-plucking, cowboy-hatted blues man
who sings only one song:
AHHHHHHHHHHHH! I aint got no doughghghgh
to get a burritoooooooo! AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Have you noticed?
No “Homeless & Pregnant” signs this year!
And then there’s David
who once slept under parked cars
until they took his leg away.
Then they moved him to Pleasantville somewhere in Live Oak,
which might as well be Sweden.
but David still gets on the bus,
comes downtown, never speaks, no schtick at all,
only sitting in his wheel chair to cadge dollars
with a hand-lettered cardboard sign.
Poodle had to hate a world where
losing a leg was the best financial move
he had made
in his whole life.
12.
Poodle and the twilight of the gods
for Nobby
So to visit the gods
Poodle always trotted over to Sunshine Villa
in the Psycho house on Beach hill
where Dionysus was locked up
inside of a room which was locked up
inside of a room which was buried
under the ground
with windows that only looked out
upon the dirt.
He was the professor of Love and Shit,
so he was much admired in the poodle community.
Many watched the Gotterdammerung as he plummeted
into history.
So many thought that the fall of Bockus was unspeakable.
They could not stand to watch
as he happily plummeted into soft food and silences.
It was not the silence but the smacking of his lips
that embarrassed them.
We are all happy to feel our friend’s requisite shame
After all genius consists of more than a tweed suit.
No surprise that very few could watch this fall from
gracefulness.
Poodle likewise never wanted to see his father’s
nakedness. But he endeavored to break the lock
and to enter in.
Poodle brought some gooey meta s’mores
by Ovid from S’Logos &
the professor of wine and exposes was
unspeakably hungry.
So here Poodle sat &
thought something about happiness
but what?
All the previous tenses are swept away &
here it is: the lovely body:
Nothing more than
little boy
on a dolphin.
PASSPORT
Swimming in your eyes I
am in two worlds.
Outside your eyes,
my hands are orphans.
My every smile
a supplication,
wishing for 20 dollars
from estranged American parents
on their mastercard.
Do you see the deer children
coming down thoughtlessly
attracted to the green?
What can I say?
Your soul
is my last country,
and I have burned my passport.
Dances
Tango: Keep your eyes
a poem of erotic love and frustration
Keep your eyes! I can’t use them
anymore. Everything in this world
is finally visible to me. No secrets.
No drums at a distance.
No having seen.
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
Her ring and some lips.
The nesting of oranges in morning
sunlight:
So are they strangers, strange
as frozen pebbles of rain.
They hit my window.
They hope to become invisible
in the warm room. Her lips
and eyes and some rings.
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
You are the always other one of my dreams
the woman who walks past me in the street
\a pickpocket and perfect explainer.
I am sick of your explanations and
smirkings.
I want you
to not be walking past me when I am
walking.
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
Have you seen the streets flooded with mystics
with exaltation, with grief?
They are holding hands with so many
dead. They take air like a narcotic.
They are waiting to see oif the experiment
failed
or whether—
I’m squawking about it because
it is your problem!
Mein gott ich liebe dich zo
A Dialogue (1985)
on a woman who died of anorexia
When will the sleeping margarets wake
and walk among us once again?
When we have made a gentle place
where women walk with loving men.
But the world I see is green with joy,
and if you try you can be free.
I know there are not margarets there.
I cannot see what you can see.
This is the garden my fatrher grew.
I’ve donme my best to make it flower.
If no Margaret lives beyond an hour,
then I guess this place will not do.
Well, what can we do to make it new,
to makle the sleeping margarets wake?
We’ll have to tear it up again
for every single margarets sake.
MAMBO: Hija del Volcan (after Neruda)
written on the occasion of the death
of a Merrill student & activist, Sandra Frausto
“estando ya mi casa sosegada” (Juan de la Cruz)
“En la perdida misma los olivios encuentro” (Sor Juana)
