“Standard” modernus
Where I use to leaf my thoughts
Every autumn of a dream,
It’s an autumn of a world,
And whose-ever thought
I’ve ‘a grown green (it’s me, you see)
Ilking at a stone
Leave more than leaves,
Yea, the whole log,
Watered well.
Where have shinebones gone?
Mmmm,
Mmmm,
Mmmmmmm…
…Ilk the throne of blue water!
Gut its ironhold plastered wall!
Put it on the time machine
‘N push any button a-tall!

“Standard” modernus

Originally uploaded by taoboy49

I don’t consider this a great poem in my modest oeuvre, but fun.  A simple conceit, if you will. I remember it was one of the poems I  read at my first open poetry reading, I believe at the Catholic Student Center in Austin, early ’70s.  It was then I met some of my first poet friends.  Jeff Woodruff in particular, said he like my poems, which was enough encouragement to get me going.

First the Sauce

• 5-6 ancho peppers, deseeded
• 4 chipotle peppers, deseeded
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tbs veggie base
• salt to taste
• 15-16 oz. can of tomato sauce

I prefer to use dried chipotle peppers, which I used to get bulk at Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin.  I haven’t found them here in the Greenbelt, Maryland area, so I use canned chipotles from the local Latin market.  The veggie base I used this time was very salty, so I didn’t need any additional salt.  With non-salty base, I would use up to a tsp of sea salt.

Put 16 oz. water in sauce pan and bring to boil.  Add veggie base, anchos, and chipotles. Simmer about 5 minutes, until peppers are soft.  Put chopped onion, garlic and the peppers with all the fluid in a blender.  Puree until smooth.  Put contents back into sauce pan.  Add the can of tomato sauce. Use 6-8 oz. of water to swish out the tomato can and blender and add it to the sauce pan.  Simmer the sauce 20 minutes or more to cook onion and thicken.

Enchilada Stuffing

I continue to experiment with stuffing for vegan enchiladas.  No failures yet.  Asside from this batch, I have recently used black beans and tofu.  This batch used the following ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 2 jalepenos
• 3 clove garlic
• 2 yellow squash
• 10 oz. frozen corn
• 1 package seitan

Saute these ingredients in 1 tbs of olive oil.  Add about 10 oz of the enchilada sauce to the mix.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

In a greased pan, roll  heaping tablespoons of your stuffing into softened corn tortillas.  Getting the tortillas soft for this task has been its own challenge. I used to soften them up by heating briefly in simmering watered down sauce and oil, but the tortillas tend to fall apart if you heat them too long. This past year I discovered a great microwave tortilla warmer, La Tortilla Loca.  It is well worth the investment, as I use it several times a week.

After rolling all your tortillas (I got 22 out of this batch, in 2 pans), cover them with a generous layer of sauce.  You could cover them with shredded vegan cheese also, but I prefer not to.  Cook about 15-20 minutes in the oven at 325˚.  Sorry I didn’t get a picture of them, I was ready to eat!

The title Tune could refer to a melody or be a verb for the act of tuning a musical instrument or tuning in a radio station.  Driving around in the Texas Hill Country in a ’69 Bug can feel like you are searching for something meaningful, too.  Tuning your mind in on a direction in life, perhaps?

Don’t take my commentaries on these poems as gospel.  At its best poetry should be open to multiple interpretations.  We poets give the readers credit to discover the meanings that move them, harmonizing with their thought and experience.  Read it, prick up your antenna, and tune in.

William is still struggling with English, but his optimistic outlook is refreshingly clear in his recent interviews (see William’s Blog and his TED presentations).  His co-author, Bryan Mealer, a journalist, deserves credit for standing back and letting William’s voice come through.  The book then gives us Westerners an authentic view of the contemporary African experience.  We get to see the world thorough the culture and experience of a bright boy growing up in a poor farming family in rural Malawi.  The book is worth ten times its weight in anthropological theses.

The Malawi worldview that William reveals to us is one that mixes beliefs in magic, a third world economy viewed from ground level, a sense of government forces that blends tribal and corrupt rulers, and stories centered around community and family.  The details he presents are personal and vivid, his anecdotes mixed with humor and tragedy.

For me, the most powerful part of the book was his description of the 2002 famine and the dire steps his family and friends had to take to get through it.  After crop failure and mismanagement of stockpiles by corrupt government officials, William’s family faced the year with only two sacks of corn in their storeroom.  They used every resource possible to maintain a starvation diet, and William chronicles the struggle at each stage. Near the end of the famine year, his father had to sell off most of his projected tobacco harvest at cut-rate prices to buy small amounts of food at highly inflated prices.  Coming out of the famine, his family faced economic hardship and could not afford to pay to continue his education.

At the age of 14, William was keenly aware that education was key for any future advancement.  He endeavored to pursue his learning on his own.  The story of how he became inspired to build his “electric wind” and gained the attention of the world takes up the well-publicized remainder of the book.  I was impressed by the wisdom of his father to have faith in his eccentric son’s dream when everyone else in his family and village thought he was crazy.

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to read an inspiring, true-life story from out of Africa, which has far too many stories of starvation, disease, war, and corruption.  I believe it would make a wonderful book for teen readers, who will easily identify with William.  My sister, Kay, a recently retired middle school English teacher was always on the lookout for great books for her students.  Check this one out, Kay, I think it’s a winner!

This is the third poem of my Professional Human Being volume.  I’m tagging all such poems with the Professional Human Being tag, so that the emerging book can be brought up with a simple tag search.  I hope to be posting poetry outside that volume as well, both my own and others that I admire.

Early on, I noticed the poem has 14 lines, at which point I declared it to be a sonnet, but a sonnet that uses repetition of phrases and lines instead of a rhyme scheme.

Standing Around has been published in a very delightful way.  I had submitted it to an Austin art project that was taking poems to put on city busses, and it was accepted.  Graphic designers added their own creative interpretation of the texts to create 11″ X 17″ poetry posters that would occupy the slots above the seats that usually carried ads or public service announcements.  It was very gratifying to see my poem among my fellow Austin poets’ works in such a public space, moving along with our fellow citizens all over the city.  I was given several copies of the poster that I passed out to friends and family.  My parents framed the copy and hung it in their staircase.  I think my dad really liked the poem, because he enjoyed reciting it.

A loose group of friends would like to get together and make our own music of sorts.  We called our group “Disband.”  Allie Blair, one of our regular Disbanders, set the poem to music.  I have enjoyed his setting over the years, and in the past few years, I have added a few more verses to it.  I’ve had fun playing with Garage Band and have managed to put together the version I will share here.  It needs some bass and a lead guitar, I think.  The break sounds thin.  But here it is, a bit unfinished and a bit rough.