For Claudia, too

Can you keep a sad light just by
  holding (in a black&white),

as Frank held you and Dolores in
  a Japanese yard, long ago?

And the last rose, amidst the sun
                                     & arms,
  his final, his inseparable--

dear Claudia, this rather now wraps
  around you

A vindication of the rights of Lorine Niedecker ('bout bloody time!)

"I used to feel I was goofing off unless I held only to the hard, clear image, the thing you could put your hand on but now I dare do this reflection" ( Lorine Niedecker, Correspondence)


Say, Zuks! the upper limit of what--
  pine's third limb down
  (banking right & lithe)
or wing's phish?

Every vowel bit (with the nerve to
  to do it!) won't empty
  into You. That's that

Again, if she only saw better, you'd
  see oval-eyed & fair
  were not for thee


And "better shine"  than this, plumper
  she'd made already since
  it's all heart & all likeable
and you're

not. And a fracturing you'll always go,
  without wing. But, Zuks
  ever find why she's pine
to your "swamp"?

"Bridget bird" is out!

"Bridget bird" held proudly by me

I am pleased to announce that my first book of poetry, titled Bridget bird, is out! If you would like to purchase a copy of my book (18$), please contact me for the mailing address at cdidiodato@gmail.com.

An appetizing excerpt from poem "Bridget bird" on page 8 :

A leaf pressed into the red thirsting beak

    of a bird!

The harder the catch, leaf, slug, the harder you spin

    like a Bridget bird!

You a hipster and the Sun commingle wherever

    bugs are, glossing

over fields and looking bird-deep into a fresh face of

    sunny sunny things

_____________

Details of the book launch will be posted in a week or so.

I'd like to thank you (in advance) for your kind support.

"Earth": the gnostic in me, perforce

"

"You were always right, and your holiest inspiration/is Death"(Rilke)


Without the sighing and crying, the spirits do mean to go, (better
  approximately than never)

  Dawn is not some one-inch cheek--
                                           I mean dead

This wan morn (pharisaical-wise) really does go either on its own
  or through dawn dust which raining down
  only settles into one good eye
  
                                          (as so much raining light!)

The challenge of it is to wait dry-eyed,  a peaceful calf-wait
 with sandy thigh,   til something, well something like the Tree,

    says the pine can out-spirit the real, hedges bend at the knee, &
    geese peck for meal (for god's sake!)

But look! the raised pink beribboned word of the supplicant, there
  between the spires (head over lectern)
  grows a meaty tongue
                                        & eats his own shit:
         
                   dead at dawn

Ah, Davy boy: I miss you already

Davy Jones

I can't be a fake and pretend I didn't grow up with this guy nor deny I used to rush home at lunchtime so that I could play the old Monkees 45s over and over ('Daydream Believer, Last Train to Clarksville,Pleasant Valley Sunday, etc.) . Over and over til I fairly skipped with it back to the school yard.

I didn't listen to Jazz (well, not til it was cool to say you did in university) and classical music and opera, aside from the little my immigrant parents had brought into the house, accompanied by the usual adult moroseness, weren't standard fare for happy blue collar kids like me who were too busy playing street hockey and pillaging neighours' gardens. The Monkees were pure 1967 and to that time period alone I will dare attribute the poet in me!

Transistor radios pressed to our ears, it was Davy Jones we listened to. Cute blond-haired girls named Nancy, admired from afar, always came with the music. The lyrics seemed, in fact, to be made of summer stardust. A perfect accompaniment to baseball and breezy summer verandahs, too. My favourite teacher, Mr. Allen, even had that same cool youthful Davy Jones twinkle in his eye. He was all of 25 years of age in 1967.

I'm not afraid to admit it: I know who I am and where I come from. I still skip to it and dream of unapproachable loves with it. My wife and I, on our usual Saturday nite drive, just sang "a little bit me a little bit you" to each other. Spontaneously. Because we'd lived it. The car fairly hummed with it.

Ah, Davy boy. Thanks for the summer gardens, verandahs and favourite teachers.

"Toxic succedaneum": or a helluva gnostic truth

More blessed than god
or Dod, and inheritably 
spare (as god is spare!),

is the him by whom, or
him for whom, god is
trimly there (and he is)

Dod & him, similarly full,
follow the sure slope to
perdition (as who won't!),

'cause god's stuck in night
and right to get Dod's girl,
      Aeons & Aeons ago

"Connectivism": a gift from Irina Moga

I am grateful to poet Irina Moga for sending me a copy of Connectivism: Variety Crossing 13, an anthology of verses "celebrating Canadian identities" in which her own fine poems "The Music Pavilion" and "Island" appear.

Congratulations to Irina for her successful submissions!