April 12 -- Al Young, California Poet Laureate visits Mendocino County

National Poetry Month Poem of the Day for April 12, 2007

Celebrating the visits to Willits and Ukiah of California Poet Laureate Al Young

WILLITS LIBRARY 10 AM & UKIAH CITY HALL 7 PM with Ukiah Poets Laureate past & present

For Poets

Al Young

Stay beautiful

But don’t stay down underground too long

Don’t turn into a mole

or a worm

or a root

or a stone

Come on out into the sunlight

Breathe in trees

Knock out mountains

Commune with snakes

& be the very hero of birds

Don’t forget to poke your head up

& blink

Think

Walk all around

Swim upstream

Don’t forget to fly

Al Young

Notes on the Future of Love

Meanwhile over in yet another time zone,

somewhere between Iraq and another place

hard hit, the most toxic of gumbos thickens.

To the poisoned Kool-Aid taste of homemade sin,

answers-in-progress stack but don’t add up.

With every putrid breath you take, hope dissolves

into streaming reruns of hell and high water.

In Chinese, in Czech, in Arabic or Albanian,

in Japanese or German, does the Sermon on the Mount

still count? And does it say still: Thou shall not kill?

In your cozy time zone, sandwiched now somehow

between Iraq and another place hard hit,

where do you come down on the future of love?

Poetry for April 6

Art from the Sedona AZ Library

Eliza's choice

Eating Poetry
Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand,
when I get on my knees and lick her hand.
She screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Donna's choice

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day for April 6, 2007

Naomi Shihab Nye

STAYING CLOSE

On your tree surprised lemons

wore small caps of snow.

The bowl of steaming lentils

opened its wide mouth as we sat and sat,

stitching the seam of talk,

till the man with the rug from Baghdad arrived

rolling out its long length inside your door.

It was orange. It looked happy.

He had just come overland with a bundle of rugs.

When you kissed him good-bye on both cheeks

I wanted to kiss him too,

not for our offhand greeting,

or his deep eyes like furry animals

curled into lairs for the winter,

but for each doorway in Baghdad

with a rug in front of it

and humans moving in and out.

California Poet Laureate to visit Ukiah & Willits Libraries

Al Young, California's Poet Laureate
will appear Thursday, April 12th

Willits Library 10 to 11:30 a.m.
for a reading and a Q & A session.
300 Commercial St. 459-5908

Ukiah Council Chambers at 7:00 p.m.
Reading/Performance with Al Young,
bassist Don Robbins &
present & past Ukiah Poet Laureates,
David Smith-Ferri,
Linda Noel & Armand Brint.
300 Seminary Rd. Off of S. State St.