Thursday, May 31, 2007

CM Evans - Published! Again!


Surprise, a third collection. One more for the road. This 200 page book "CM Bergomont's Poetry Jamboree", a collection of my poems and illustrations, is twice the size of the poetry collection "Poetry from the City of Brass"-- I like how the cover turned out. I like the insides too. I just ordered me a copy to make sure all my corrections have gone in. The next book after this will be a 200 pager of my collected cartoons -- many that are posted to my cartooning website CM Evans Cartoons -- but that will have to wait for fall of this year, because I'm pooped. I hope a few of you out there decide to enjoy the fruits of this labor.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

CM Evans - Published!



Heelllo all. It's me, your old pal CM. I now have 2 books, on CafePress. One is a selection of my poems, "Poetry from the City of Brass", the other, "Selected Short Stories - The Vignettes" is a selection of my short stories. Many of the poems and short stories have appeared here, but others have been floating around in my files -- some going back 10 or more years. It is my hope that these collections have "legs", and could be enjoyed by people who generally hate poetry and writing. Those are the kind of people who I write for. I've been thinking on using the "print on demand" service with CafePress for about a year, at least, so I'm glad now I did it. The covers are gorgeous 4 color glossy printing, and the inside is greyscale. After two aborted attempts, it wasn't too difficult once I got the hang of it -- but if anyone out there wants some pointers on how to design for print on demand through CafePress, I can give you some tips. Hell, if you are writing and want to have me publish your book, let me know, if I like your work I'll set it up for you. I could even design the cover of your book.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Cats

We go out of town for a few days, the cats don't see us around, they wonder where we are off to. And while we are gone, the cats think about us as the cats sit in the places they expect us to occupy by the normal daily-habit-routine-of-things. Then the cats forget about us, but then when the neighbors come over to feed them, these people are recognized as "not us" by the cats, so after the neighbors are gone, the cats think about us again. This remembering forgetting recalling goes on for a few days, until the cats are not certain if we, their owners, are entirely real, or just thoughts the cats have in their own heads. Then unexpectedly, we arrive back home in the middle of the night, and the cats look at us. They are happy we are home, but they are not sure if they have dreamed us out of thin air. The cats feel a bit shy. To determine if we are real, and not just a manifestation of their own thoughts, the cats stay awake and sit on us and hang out in the room for hours that night. It dawns on the cats we are real, we always existed that way. Now the cats have no idea where the hell we have been, or for how long we have been gone, except we have been somewhere -- re-entering from an environment that smells different.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

sparrow

my faults
my positive adornment

my virtues
my base obscurement

once like
little lines and scratches

now like
terrifying mountains

and
precipitous gorges

me like
a little sparrow

tiny free
blown amongst high and low

happy in
the blue empty sky

Monday, May 14, 2007

Jack Spicer, nor John Wieners - or - My Dada Moment

Up until last week I didn't know a damn thing about Jack Spicer, nor John Wieners -- which astounds me, flat out astounds me. I appreciate knowing my writers, and I try to be aware about stuff in general, so I am not totally stupid. I had not the faintest inkling of two great and influential poets, Jack Spicer being one of the dynamos, one of the stars, one of the prime movers of "The San Francisco Renaissance", even though he despised publication. Richard Brautigan dedicated "Trout Fishing in America" (one of my favorite books) to Spicer, fer kristsakes! I mean, I know about Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti and Kerouac. I know about the Beats, I love City Lights Bookstore, I got drunk countless times at (and hid Hell Money all over) Vesuvio. I just can't believe I didn't run into the other side of the coin or discover the rest of a world, that universe, that story. I even studied at SF State, in the English Literature Department, in Creative Writing, yet no peep about Jack Spicer, who taught a famous poetry workshop, there. I can't understand that. Possibly people at SF State hated him, I don't know -- SFSU was a weird place full of disconnects. What a huge omission! So I ordered, at Latif Harris' suggestion, Spicer's collected works, and I'm picking up some collected poems of Wieners, and I look forward to reading these books & other poets that studied with Spicer and his cohorts -- including Latif Harris, who has his own collection of poems, "Bodhisattva's Busted Truth: Selected Poems and Dohas of an American Buddhist" out from last year. This all reminds me of a associate who is an artist, a fine artist, yet I discovered he had never heard of Dada & had no notion of it whatsoever. So here's my latest Dada moment, I guess. One of many more, to be sure. I truly do not know what I do not know.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Poem to Latif

meep meep

honk honk

bow wow wow

said the crow

to a cloud

Two Long Stemmed Roses

Two long stemmed roses hang on the wall, over the door, affixed there by not my hands. Long stemmed roses, blossoms dry and pale, an insect moves disturbing the dust. I have seen love grow and die, I have felt passions seize us suddenly -- tempered with a flawed reluctance. But now it is reflections on this love past, swelling in me, influenced in part by this room with books and scattered papers of writing and poems, and part of me, on how I gave and it was lost. The roses hang a few inches apart, blossoms down. I lean closer, and I look for the first time, and I see the roses have no thorns, and two leaves.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Pink Diamond

I go looking for you, but after 3 years I would have been surprised to find you still working the counter at the jewelry store. I remember how we told stories to everyone about the wonderful pink diamond that was displayed in the window -- such a rarity -- that is what started us off in the relationship. It was romantic and fun at first.

Then you dated other people without telling me, you told the other guys you were fucking I was your best friend. At the end of the year, after confusing me with lies, you took off and vacationed in Hawaii with a finance. Later, I called you up in my sleep in the middle of the night and told you I was lonely and I missed you, and why? But if you answered then the question, why, I wouldn't have heard it, because I was asleep.

Now there I was, 3 years later, actually excusing myself from a circle of shining friends, all of us piratically locked elbow to elbow laughing and chatting in the cafe. I told them I'd be right back, and I quickly walked down the street to the mall a half a block away. I watched myself in the glass doors, the reflection almost a silhouette, more like a hole than a person, and then I went in. The pink diamond was gone, and so were you.

Friday, May 04, 2007

fish in a fish tank just looking around thinking the tank is huge

7.12.99

latif i call you on my birthday and we scream like pirates

you old fucked up coot but we laugh ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa

because we both know someday i'll be just like you

and you'll be just like me but for now we're just like

fish in a fish tank just looking around thinking the tank is huge

blowing bubbles

and knowing

somehow the food will be coming down any time now

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Time to Go

Someone from the family visited her almost every day at the recovery center when she was ill, she said she'd move nearer to my parent's house in Napa when she got better. But one day my Grandmother died alone, at the hospital, in the morning. A nurse had brushed her hair for a while, because they loved her -- when the orderly came back at 6 AM or so to check, my Grandmother was dead.

I am sure it was fine that way for her. I am sure it was fine.

At the funeral, for some reason, I ended up separated from my mother and father at the mass. It was not intentional; I sat behind my sister and my brother-in-law and their kids. When the service started, it was too late to move. So I cried alone in my pew in the church when they sang the psalm, "And He shall raise you up on eagles wings/ Fill you with the breath of life/ make you shine like the sun/ and hold you in the palm, of His hand..." I was surprised that psalm made me cry, I had not thought I would cry. I had no tissues.

Later, at the funeral home, I looked at my Grandmother's body, lying in the coffin. I was always afraid to touch a corpse, up until then. But I loved my Grandma so much; her body being dead didn't matter. When the wake was over, we were alone.

It seemed wrong to leave her there. It seemed wrong to just pop into a car, and drive off. I thought about this. Illogically, it was like intentionally leaving a wad of cash behind. I could hear the traffic on College Street, the candles were burning red in their glasses. The noise of the cars and the trucks seemed inappropriate, making the scene -- which should have been tranquil -- pathetic. My Grandfather had lain in this mortuary, in this very room, and I had felt the same way about the traffic. But these thoughts passed.

I reached out and stroked her cheek. I rubbed her earlobe a few times so it was warm and whispered her name as she lay so still in the coffin, saying goodbye Grandma, goodbye for the last time. It still felt wrong to leave her, but I looked at her and I knew it was time to go.

What Can Happen in a Single Year

A year ago, today, on May Day, I wrote a eulogy for our beloved cat Fritz-Christopher, who had died just the day before from a rare feline wasting disease called FIP. He had been sick for about three months, and we couldn't seem to nail down precisely what was wrong with him until near the very end. But by then we also knew that FIP is 99.99% fatal, and nothing practical could have been done to keep him from dying from it. We were very sad. But Fritz got to die at home, in the afternoon, after having a goodbye nap in the sun, on his favorite spot on the couch. When he was ready, we told him it was okay to go, and we gave him some private time -- when I came back from the store 10 minutes later, he was gone.

Now today, a year later, so many things have happened, changed, or is in the process of changing -- it is remarkable that all these events are contained in one year. Since Fritz died we

- Built a pool
- Had a baby
- Bought, rode for almost a year & then totaled a motorcycle
- I severely broke my wrist crashing the motorcycle
- My wife decided to go back to school and get her BFA
- My wife got accepted into the Chicago Art Institute
- We decided to move to Chicago
- I am switching groups at my work
- We moved out of the studio
- I painted half a dozen major works
- I published two books, one a selection of short stories

Wow.