Clara will be the featured poet at the Sacred Grounds Poetry Reading. The series used to be at the Sacred Grounds Cafe on Cole and Hayes. Because of the pandemic it is now online. This is a popular reading. You must email host Dan Brady to get the zoom link. It is not listed. Open mic before the feature. Clara will read between 8:15-8:30 pm.
Maybe he is Buddha. But for seven years Bill Mercer was in flesh and blood. It couldn’t have been a dream. We read poetry and accompanied each other with musical instruments for as long as we’ve known each other. Tonight I heard he left his apartment keys to another friend and took off in his van to Louisiana, where he came from.
Without a goodbye Bill disappears into the mist. Seven years ago he appeared at my shop, picked up one of the shakuhachis on display and filled the room with breathy and unharnessed sound. Bill became a regular customer at my world music concert series and we bumped into each other at Sacred Grounds’ poetry reading.
A constant friend and poetry partner, we read all over the Bay Area as Lunation. Bill cared for my cats while I was away. Up to two weeks ago he was helping me to take care of my aging father.
His brush paintings hang on my walls, somehow I know Bill won’t been back for a long time. Steve Mackin called him “Buddha of the Bayou”. There is something mystical about the number 7.
There’s nothing like getting obsessed over writing these paired and rhymed couplets. It’s a great way to learn about exact rhymes. My over-the-top enthusiasm is a bit scary for Jack Foley. He keeps shaking his hands: Stop! Stop! Quality, please.
Well, just a few more, for the Sacred Grounds poets:
Laurie Hampton prints a poem
more stylish than a Russian goem
“Justice” is she
Say, can you see?
*
Bill Mercer dips his brushes
to make smudges and rushes
Buddha by the bayou
cooks red bean and rice for you
*
Don Brennan
fires a cannon
aims at the Empire
stakes it like a vampire
*
From Sacramento comes Kellyann Conway
with her GPS there’s only one-way
to Sacred Grounds she goes
on her tippy toes
*
Greg Pond
calm as a frond
takes you into darkness
exposes interior starkness
*
Deirdre Evan’s crypt
is plainly in her script
She is Mother Goose
who has since run loose
*
Christopher Trian gives you a head
in paint, without the lead
He’s tall as a tower
and boy, his voice is power
*
Carlos Ramirez dances
goes into trances
time is lost
in the frost
*
Owen Dunkel writes
the metaphor of kites
high flying are they
before diving into the bay
*
Buford Buntin has a story
that has nothing to do with fiori
he gives a helping hand
to a fallen kid in the sand
*
Foley starts the clerihews
When Hsu attempts they lose their hues
He begs her to stop
before the verses go flop
“You have grey hair,” said Don Eli, looking up from his dinner plate at Sacred Grounds. We’ve known each other for ten years. True enough, our hair color has both changed to a much lighter shade since we first met. There was a time when we saw each other every Wednesday, until Don decided to hang out on Haight Street reciting poetry for money. There must have been a gap of six, seven years before he popped back into Sacred Grounds again. His observation was a reminder of how time has passed.
“I’m proud of my grey hair,” I said. “This is an achievement, not without effort.”
Don agreed.
It’s slowly happening: pink antennae bobbing on a woman’s head, Pocahontas in her skimpy frilly outfit, a man wearing a diamond studded crown. And there will be more today, I’m sure, slowly emerging in downtown among the shoppers—the devil, the clown, the fairy queen, the tea kettle, the pretzel! T’s the season to be something else.
Halloween being on a Monday, we have the whole weekend to play. Dressed up. Dressed down. Our imagination gets a good work out. One day of the year (and a few days before) we get to exercise it unrestrained. But what about the other times when we settle for the old humdrum?
Last year Bill Mercer and I read Love and Death at Sacred Grounds during Halloween with our faces painted. The inferior quality of the paint made our skin unbearably itchy. We ran to the bathroom cursing and washed our makeup off . I guess that is a good reason why we’ll just be ordinary this year.
The night was unusually warm and inside the Sacred Grounds Cafe it was even warmer. The reading was about to begin when my father’s neighbor Devi and I walked in with two huge arrangements of dahlias. Some of the blossoms were as big as my head, some dainty like pompoms on a clown’s tunic. We put them down on the host’s table next to the mike. Their grandiose presence stunned everyone.
Devi wanted to bring the flowers when I read my dahlia poem, which was published in the Bulletin of the American Dahlia Society. I selected my reading based on a flower theme, which means any poem with the faintest suggestion of flower was a qualified candidate. As the night went on the dahlia looked even more vibrant as we melted slowly in the heat.
The poetic diehards hung on to the very end. When the reading was concluded I invited everyone to pick a dahlia. The room suddenly came alive again. Eager hands reached out and the vases were promptly emptied. We walked out of the cafe into the cooling night each holding what could have been mistaken as gigantic lollipops. I watched the dahlias floated away in all directions. It was beautiful.
“I like the sound of my poems.” Owen Dunkle told me at Sacred Grounds. I think we all like the sound of our poems and the sound of our own voice, otherwise we won’t be signing up for open mikes. Beyond sharing what we have written, it is important to “sound them out”, as HD Moe likes to say. It’s a sure way to find out if a poem has rhythm and flow. Some poets even edit their poems while they are reading on stage.
The ability to read well, I think, is an important tool for a poet. One night at Sacred Grounds, Bill Mercer decided to recite Yeats’ The Song of Wandering Aengus. His recital brought the house down. At the break I saw Fiona, the owner of the cafe. She stopped me and asked what Bill was reading.
“I didn’t understand the words, but I felt his emotion rushed at me. So powerful that I had to listen.” Fiona put her hand over her heart. She is an immigrant from Hong Kong and speaks limited English. But I know she gets the poem.
I missed the #44 bus last night, watching it passed as I stood across the street on Fulton and 8th. I could have waved. It might have stopped. But it was crowded and I decided to let it go. At the bus shelter it said 18 minutes before the next one. I took a walk in the ripping wind. Glad to be bundled up in my winter coat.
The bus looked empty when it arrived. After I boarded someone in the front said hello. It was Zach T sitting on an electric scooter. Hello, I said, I just met a friend of yours yesterday and you were on our mind. I sat down across from him. New bike, I observed. Yeah. He nodded. It’s fantastic.
Zach is probably in his early twenties. When we fist met at the Sacred Grounds he walked with a limp with the aid of a walking stick. But when he read his poetry was fiery and punctuated, fabulously hip-hop without a trace of debilitation. Sometimes he just came to listen. Huddled in a corner, left as quietly as he came.
He told me he missed two buses. I told him I missed one. That was all that it took to meet up. It was late at night. Few people got on the bus as we chatted. He invited me to draw and paint with him and his friends. I said yes I’d like that. He got off at Mission and Silver. I got off a little further down and trudged uphill.
I got to know Shirchin Baatar, visiting Mongolian scholar at UC Berkeley, in 2001. Together with Jeff Falt, human rights lawyer, we produced several fund raising events to send the first Mongolian woman, Oyuna Tsedevdamba, to Stanford University. With our combined effort Oyuna received her MA in International Policy Studies and now works as an adviser to the president of Mongolia.
Years later, Baatar introduced me to G. Mend Ooyo, poet and president of the 26th World Congress of Poets, who came to the Sacred Grounds and read his poetry in Mongolian. Baatar works tirelessly to help the underprivileged Mongolian community in the Bay Area and to keep their tradition and culture alive. The Naadam festival is happening soon, where Baatar brings wrestling, music and archery to the Golden Gate Park. The music is always enchanting. The food and the men hefty. Ask for Baatar at the West Speedway Meadow. Everybody knows him.
