A Visit with Allan Bazar

 including his/my poetry



Hi! I'm Allan Bazar. I'm 74 years old (born in 1934) and have been writing poetry of all flavors and styles for 50-55 years all the while doing the needful to support myself and those dependent upon me.

The image above represents me through many years and changes...
It is like my poetry which has a very strong visual element, is based on me and my experience, and has/will have many levels of interest.

I am currently (at this very moment, more or less) creating an image map of the above image which when completed will enable us to click on any part of the image and be transported to pages containing the original photographs from which the images were extracted and maybe a word or two of creative explanation.



(The original painting was by Laurie Litowitz who made a double portrait entitled: "Bazar in Oaxaca and Bazar in Oaxaca Dos." I created the collage. I was, as one can see, a boy of 50 at the time.)


March 2002                                                           May 2007

The years have been kinder than I would have expected. I still seem to be me.


It is my intention to include on this page various bits of biographical material, poetry, perhaps some stories and whatever the hell else comes to mind.


We now suffer through another year when our young men and women have been sent to fight a fruitless, useless, battle for survival because they were dispatched into an area of frightful danger by arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent cowardly men and women who, as sociopaths, woefully lack any sense of compassion and who, as narcissists, filter reality through the distorted lens of their ideology.  In 2003, as the Bush administration was preparing for the war they thought would cover them in glory I wrote the following and posted it in Poets Against the War.  I reproduce it here:
Though my heart overflows with joy,
I weep
I weep for the babies who will be wrenched out of this life they just entered
I weep for the old ones whose lives will be instantly turned to dust and rubble
I weep for the adolescents from whom the worlds they have yet to embrace will be destroyed
I weep for the young ones who love has conquered but whose dreams will vanish in the night.
I weep, as well, for those terrified weak leaders who send others to their doom yet who cowered in fear when their times came.
I weep for their servants, the bureaucrats of information who bark like dogs in the chorus of the fearful.
I weep for that sad, lost soul who stands atop the dungheap of his own making with characteristic smirk standing alone in false triumph praying that he may yet be a man.
Were he not so weak, so small, so frightened he might have been great. I weep for that loss.
Yet my heart will not empty of joy, but will find a place for sadness
as I weep.
Needless to say, I am even sadder today. There is so much joy available in this world. For it to be besmirched by those pathetic creatures who constitute the government is sad, indeed.  Fortunately, though, when we understand the nature of compassion, we do not need to allow our sadness to overcome our ability to find joy, beauty, and wonder in the world in which we are embedded. It is to the discovery and enjoyment of that world that the poems herein are dedicated.


As the number of poems increases, I am finding it necessary to prepare a Table of Contents, the link to which I shall place here when or if it is completed.


NEW:   
9/12/04
Xmas in Xanadu

NEW:    
Bubbles in the Sea of Consciousness
NEW:
 From Deep Within the Spaces Between  Image and Idea
NEW:
8/1/2004
 Virgins & Starlight
Updated
11/20/07
 In Another Sense
NEW:
Beginnings





I am pleased to have finally added my most ambitious work, The Elements, on this site.
Elements is a long poem on which I have worked for the past 15 - 20 years.
I offer it here to you:

Enter this elemental world here

This world is the world of the four elements: Fire,Water,Earth, and Air.
Welcome!

I do not use Front Page or any other Microsoft product in the preparation of these pages. Thus, while the words and many of the pictures that are associated with them are viewable on Internet Explorer, they are best viewed using the Netscape 6.0 or higher, Mozilla, Firefox, or Opera browser though the layout is not consistent with any of them.

I have  been creating, over time, something pleasing to the eye, the mind, and the spirit. Meanwhile I am going to start this section out with two of my more favorite poems: two of the more sensual and recursive ones. I hope you enjoy them. These poems reflect the similarity between the behaviors of love and creativity. [Insert Smiley Face here!]

Oh Gaze With Me

In Another Sense (Aural)



[[I must warn you that if you do not have broadband, the backgrounds (which are worth waiting for) on some of the following poems (Dreams, In Another Sense, Waiting, Tunnel of Love, and Rainbow in particular) are rather large files and, unless you have broadband, as I do, will take a little while to load. Please wait for them. They are an integral part of the poems.]]

I suppose I will organize these poems one day:
The following one would come under the heading of Love Poem. It is a love poem to the universe and to someone who for many years has held a special place in my heart:
Waiting (or Putting things in perspective)

This poem is inspired by and dedicated to Catherine Vaughan (Aug. 28, 1950 to Aug. 26, 2000.) She was an artist and lived artfully. Her media were fused glass and life. The fused glass remains with us. Her passionate love of life lives on in my heart and mind.
Dreams

The following prose poem is in honor of Jane Porrit who was a dear, dear friend who died in 1984, the very day her restaurant, a lifelong dream, was to open.  A memorial to Jane was written by Marilyn Renaker with the title:
"She danced it, The only dance there is, To the full."
When you read the poem, do so with the knowledge that Jane occasionally spun yarn with her beloved spinning wheel.

Mackie




Now
Here're some more poems......


This speaks more of an idea and use, if I may so say, of
(my) poetry.
Be warned, there is not much more here
than meets the eye....or mind.
or is there?

Again, if you do not have broadband, the graphic backgrounds will take a few seconds to load on some of these:

All of them do have graphic settings.


The Tunnel of Love
 Adrift
Mandala 

A Letter Home
51st Birthday Poem
The Fool
Each Alone

Fly

Central Park

Just Another Country Western Song

Simply


This poem was written originally in San Agustin, Colombia. I was struck by the teeming life in the "jungle" in which the stelae were situated. A fallen tree had. without hesitation it seemed, become not so much a symbol of death but the source of new life:
All A Rainbow's Dream
I had been hurrying south on this little adventure but ended up staying two weeks in the little town watching and participating in the rhythms of life.....






Here is a story I wrote while I was living in Trinity County, California in a log cabin in the canyon of the South Fork of the Trinity River 11 miles from the village of Hyampom:
Shadows

These are part of a series I worked on when I lived in Oaxaca and fine tuned recently for inclusion here:

They might be called prose poems by those who like to label,
categorize, and pin anesthetized or, even,
still wriggling beauty to velvet.
And... I might ask... why not?
Why not what?
Oh shut up and read!

Rainy Night in the Bar (This poem was inspired by many evenings and weekend afternoons in the Cedar Street Tavern in New York City in the '50's. I was usually introduced as a "young Brooklyn poet" in those days though I considered myself to be a slightly lost Arizona boy.)



The Broken Cup
(This one was inspired by a dream during a period in which I was reading a lot of Jungian "stuff"--Hey! I still am!!!)


This poem is among a small group I call "tone poems." They are all about surfaces and textures. The musical reference is not unintentional nor is the choice of the color of this text..

Daycolor


Of course, all the writings that appear here are copyrighted by me. If you are interested in using them for any purpose, please contact me before you do so.

allanbazar@yahoo.com

or

abazar3@cox.net







((Smile!))


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