·:[ Stephen Vincent ]:·
• • • • •

The sun is wretched

The convertible is wretched

My ears are being tortured

My heart is being carved

Highway 1 is one long ache

River Road is a continuous motorcycle

The River End restaurant hangs by its teeth

The deep-fry oysters grim to each bite:

Let me say once and for all

None of this, absolutely not one item, is true:

The ocean breeze is velvet across my cheeks

The sun is a subservient caress

My heart goes soft as the fresh-shucked oyster

Highway 1 is a fresh loom of late spring rain green grasses

The River End serves bright wild sauté red salmon pierced on lemon grass

River Road leads to a bed amongst the most tender of pink and white roses:

It’s goodbye spring & hello summer

It’s hello “full” and goodbye “splits”:

My love is going to the highlands

And I am far from ready

My love is going to the highlands

And I am far from ready.

To be among the gentle
Foolhardy, yes, indeed

Whether I want to
Or not, to go dizzy with grief
Indeed I do

Across the Bridge, under the Gate
My father, my brother, both their ashes
To be gone, drowned in the sea

What gowns the heart, what gowns the soul
A black gown on the door knob, draped, turned

Splash water, splash sun, wind whip sail
Crash wave, spit salt, clover on your tongue

Burial is the want, burial to be gone
Know ritual into song

To go down with the dead
To go down into the sea with the dead
To marry the ghost, father ghost, brother ghost
To go down, down among the dead
To wash and to cleanse
To turn ashes into will
To swim gracefully
To be reborn
To be shaken
To be gowned in light
This burning baptism
Blood on the tongue
Do not go gentle
Do not go gentle
Wind sail wind.

Empathy is a big fat wet car.

Texture is more interesting than statement.
Texture is more interesting than statement.
Texture is more interesting than statement.
Texture is more interesting than statement.
Texture is more interesting than statement.

I touch therefore I am.
I touch therefore I am.
I touch therefore I

Ultimately one gets a picture (or music or voice or poetry or)
Then another, and another and

So it goes, the makers
So it goes, witness (step by step)
Focused, breath upon breath,
Closely.

http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/ebooks/ebooks_home.html

Shearsman Books (England) has just anounced the publication of Triggers, a new book of my poems. A sample:

Ascend and dive
and don’t tell me a thing
I’ve got a good love on the loose

A wet madrone, skin peeling, its bone bare trunk

Never stop for thought,
especially when the going’s good

She’s inside me, then out,
tactile as a banana or something to munch

Spasms spring tender illuminations
mauve and pink -

I am a young man now and a young man then:
Live live live

*
Access & enjoy!

*
Tender is the Real

Two boxes full of Blue Smoke

**

Yoku (def.): Two parallel lines of indeterminate words, syllables or any
other measure of count. The Yoku conjoins disparate - or elements of no
obvious transparent relation - into a compositional whole in which both
lines infer or give a value to one another in a manner that cannot be
stated. The “whole” may be considered similar to the sight of two
parallel lines that, by definition, cannot intersect. A Yoku is related to,
but not to be confused with a metaphysical conceit in which opposites are
violently yoked together into an artificial coherence to compel an intended
“conceit”, that is an enforced imposition of implied or directly stated
meaning, ironic or otherwise. A Yoku is also related to a Haiku, but
different.

Forgiveness
Is the Fragrance
Of a Flower
When Trampled
Upon

“The Flower Shop”
Signage Aside the Entrance
Peoples Park, Berkeley, 1969

I had not heard this quote before - though it is possible to source it on Google, as I have, and find variations on it commonly used among pacifist Christians, though the author is unknown. I found it on a black and white photograph in Bancroft Library archives taken during the demonstrations to liberate the Park from University control its then plans to build a new dormitory on the land in quetion. Demonstrators chased by the police and the National Guard, and tear gas permeate the photograph of which the proverbs white painted scripted lettering provides an ironic plea, and now my aesthetic pleasure.
It’s a curious syntactic question isn’t it, that is, when does one generations experience of a “plea” become another generation’s source of aesthetic “pleasure”, as when we say, “That’s a great photograph.”
I am of both generations.

A diversion from death focus, ritual, etc., etc., it’s nice to go a long ways away and revisit a few originals from “Sleeping With Sappho.” Enjoy.

44.A

]
As it is, shaggy Eric is fatherless
No son or golden-haired lover bears his name
Athena would not hand him a book
Or work as his messenger]

]cocksure, nobody has a clue
]not even the wanton are willing to come near

It is time for him to speak up, get another
God to work his favors. A tame virgin
With little resistance, an unknown name
]Pull down his pants. Pull his trigger.
]Diana - sweet God with the tiny hands –
Will surely reach out to nourish his way.

45.

short and make it quick!

46.

and she on a rough stone

will not spread one leg or the other

47.

]
Hate crippled
heart twisted: cane without a path
]
]

48.

]
She refused to come and burnt my heart:
Distance quenches nothing, not even the ocean
]
]

49.

I hate you Eleanor, today, tomorrow, forever
]
]You were such a fox on my doorstep.

(If this work is new to you, faux published an ebook version of about 40 other ones that may be found at:
http://www.fauxpress.com/e/vincent/
“…it’s like being in a hotel room and listening with my ear to the bedroom wall, and hearing time pass between lovers on the other side, and hearing conversations, and I laugh, or wonder, and sometimes the wall becomes limestone, and sometimes air, with nothing between the reader and the fragment of a voice receding.” Jean Vengua
I am still most appreciative of this quote from Jean who, by the way, keeps a wonderful and various (poetry, art & reflection) blog at: http://okir.blogspot.com/
Her sensibility is right there - but different - with that of Stephanie Young - for my eye, ear.

The Contra Costa Times (today) ran this nice obit for my father:
Jay Vincent, 93, helped save East Bay shores, parks
By Rebecca Rosen Lum
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
John A. “Jay” Vincent, an engineer and yachtsman well-known locally for securing parkland along the East Bay shoreline, died May 4. He was 93.
“My father was a significant Richmond civic leader who contributed greatly to the East Bay shoreline, including many, many parks and the development of the Bay Trail,” said his son, Stephen Vincent of San Francisco.
Vincent and his wife, Barbara, helped to save and develop the Miller Knox Regional park, Point Molate, Marina Green, Peninsula Park and an open space preserve at the end of Point San Pablo.
“When he started, there was reputed to be 60 feet of accessible shoreline,” said David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay Association.
“It’s hard to imagine today, but all those places were privately owned — with fences and guards. These days we take it for granted the shoreline is a public place, but it wasn’t always so.”
In 1996, the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council honored the Vincents as Persons of Distinction. Jay Vincent quipped that the couple needed to work “a double shift — one for the things we are doing and another for the things we want to do.”
A native of Tupelo, Okla., Jay Vincent was 12 when his family moved to Richmond. Graduates of Richmond public schools, Barbara and Jay Vincent met while students at UC Berkeley. He graduated in 1934, she in 1937, and they married that year. He joined Standard Oil as a researcher. She raised their four sons, chaired the city Planning Commission and worked with the Save San Francisco Bay Association and the League of Women Voters.
The Vincents battled to regain public access to Wild Cat Canyon and the Bay Shoreline.
The city honored the Vincents by naming a 6-acre park, wildlife preserve and sailing education area after them.
At the opening in 1997, the city manager said Vincent often came to meetings armed with more research than any staff member — once, for instance, using knowledge of tides and timber to successfully argue to keep the Bay Trail’s wooden railroad bridges. Regional Park officials had proposed replacing them with concrete structures.
“The way he did it was as impressive as what he did,” Lewis said. “He was a really gentle person. Gentle, patient, energetic and optimistic. He was a model for me in that way.”
Vincent loved sailing and was an active member of the Richmond Yacht Club. He also chaired the Citizens Harbor Development Committee for Marina Bay.
He hand-built one of the first Bear Boats on the Bay. In 1939, he skippered the Pola No. 8 to victory in the 1939 Treasure Island World’s Fair Regatta. He later developed the Yacht Club’s Youth Sailing Program.
Stephen Vincent described his father as “a modest man,” who, in later years, said that “whatever he pursued, either racing a boat or in politics, ‘I liked to win.’”

EPITAPH
John A. “Jay” Vincent
Born: Jan. 18, 1912, Tupelo, Okla.
Died: May 4, 2005, in Richmond
Survivors: Wife of 67 years, Barbara Vincent of Richmond; sons J. Michael of Suisun, Stephen of San Francisco, David of Richmond; brother J.D. Vincent; five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Son Christopher preceded him in death.
Services: Memorial service, 2 p.m. Wednesday, May 18, Richmond Yacht Club, 351 Brickyard Cove Road.
Memorial gifts: Save The Bay Association, 350 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Suite 900, Oakland 94612; Richmond Plunge Trust, P.O. Box 70443, Richmond 94807; Richmond Yacht Club Youth Foundation, P.O. Box 70295, Richmond 94807; Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000.

Love’s limbs voluptuous & diversionary
The body a wedge issue
Wet cell & tissue:
No one writes a love poem anymore
“Straight from the heart” an oxymoron:
An iris open, a-flop, lavender, barely a-shake in the breeze
Love’s toll to emptiness, a prickled measure
Sheer leisure slowly or, sometimes, profoundly, even rapidly, sprung:
One could go on like this, not get anywhere; the virtue of volumes
Victory over circumstance, a poem but, no joke, an open
Well, you do have to turn the handle and, normally, push
To make it this, a fully open that’s not - note the clarity - a door:
Feast on it, love, as you will, yes, then, sweetly, fully, infinitely
Adore.