Friday, February 16, 2024

Kannada class

Nan ninna kitaki inda nortini, neenu chandra nante badalagtiya

I see you through the window, like the moon you're changing

Monday, January 22, 2024

Ezra Pound

A scrappy fellow from Idaho

Came to Europe to try to show

Poetry could break free from the past

Helped Hemingway Eliot Joyce 

Helped define the modern voice

Yeah Ezra Pound kicked off with a Blast


Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, you turned poetry around

Though your Cantos are a tough slog to this day

They seem so crabbed and bloated 

Were you crazy when you wrote it

You’re a wild man but I love you Ezra Pound



American life moved too shittily

So he settled down in Italy

Didn’t mind expressing his political view

Loved Mussolini and the fascists

Never tried to mask it

Spoke out for the Axis powers in World War Two


Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, are you brilliant or a clown

Are you a fascist or are you insane?

Your readers called you genius

But the Feds said you were treasonous

You’re a wild man but I love you Ezra Pound



I know that you fell into fascism pretty deep

But I won’t put you down for the company you keep

Didn’t Woody Guthrie after all fall in

With fellows who were followers of Stalin?



The Feds didn’t like what’d he expressed

So they put him to a mental test

Said he wasn’t guilty, just insane

Locked in the bughouse for twelve years

Didn’t change much it appears

Ezra Pound what went on in your brain?


Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, you’ve turned my head around

No one did more for modern poetry

You sure did make it new 

But you didn’t much like the Jews

You’re a wild man, but I love you Ezra Pound


Saturday, January 13, 2024

Who(m) do you trust?

Who do you trust

a mountain or a museum?

Who do you trust?
Which one do you trust?

Museums are made by people, for a start 

And people are the ones who fill it up with art
That people have made to try to touch your heart

Or to touch your mind, your eye or touch some other part


No, culture’s just a weapon to tell us how to feel

It’s about control and not some big, lofty ideal

Of course that is the very thing the artist-types conceal

And instead they rely on artistic snob appeal


Who do you trust

a mountain or a museum?

Who do you trust?

Which one do you trust?


Now a mountain’s never going to try to tell you what to do 

A mountain will not preach about the value of virtue

But if you look and listen closely, then I’m sure that you

Will find that you can trust a mountain, a mountain’s always true


It’s a true a mountain’s true, a mountain’s never lied

But a mountain doesn’t care if we live or died

Though not every artwork may serve as a guide

Art connects us to the mountain that we have inside


So who do you trust

a mountain or a museum?

Who do you trust?
Which one do you trust?



Kind of a companion piece to "Mt. Holyoke." I imagine it with a Mike Nesmith finger-pickin' background

Friday, January 05, 2024

The View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton Massachusetts

We climbed Mount Holyoke to see the vista

Along with our dear friend, more like a sister

The clouds filtering pre-sunset rays

Creating a romantic golden haze

The sky, the light, the river: all sublime

Our friend says she takes pictures, every time

Forgetting the ones she has on her phone

Yet each one has a distinct look of its own


She told us there was a famous picture made

By Thomas Cole of this same mountain glade

Painted almost two hundred years ago

The same bend in the river, called oxbow

And though the mountain and the river are of course

Far older than the painting—they’re its source—

As we stand here late afternoon in October

I think how both picture and mountain will one day be over


A painting sometimes can become degraded

An artist’s reputation may have faded

Mountains crumble, they do not last forever

Flooding and dry seasons change a river

And though we may not say it in a song

Sometimes even love won’t last too long

For now we have both picture and the view, my love

For now we have a song for me and you, my love


Friday, December 22, 2023

Lillian

It’s true you’re only twenty-five, Lillian

But what matters most is that you’re alive, Lillian

Life’s just a pattern that’s always repeating

The clock on the shelf might be over-heating

But listen, your heart is now beating

It’s you now, you’re one a million

The wheel just keeps turning

It may seem to the eye of the discerning

Nobody sees and nobody’s learning

But in all eternity there’s only one Lillian



The history book and the map, Lillian

Want to box you up into a trap, Lillian

All the codes you’ve so long hated

Return as if they had been fated

The ticking of time cannot be sedated

The routine has become so vaudevillian

The cycles are never completed

The universe never depleted

But don’t think that you’ll be defeated

As long as you’re here you are Lillian


Sunday, December 17, 2023

I Sing the Body Atomic

Me trying to channel the Captain channeling Walt Whitman (if that's not obvious)




Well ah take off your shoes

And now take off your pants

And ah take down the doors 

But leave the windows to look through

Just draw the blinds open

Draw the blinds right open

Then draw the window, draw the mirror

And keep on drawing till you draw yourself


One day the sun won’t shine

The sun will stay in bed, won’t care to shine

But I won’t mind and you won’t need to mind

As long as you can feel that beat

All ya need’s the beat, that great big atomic beat

Rub those atoms together and feel the heat

Feel the heat, heal the light

And feel my heart, feel the heat


Yeah those little atoms in orbit

All turned on and shining bright

Shining like my heart and I didn’t forget to smile today

No I didn’t forget my heart

Well we can make that sun

If we have to we can break that sun

Every atom shines on shines on through

It’s that boogie momma beat


It’s the birds and the bees you see shine through

The birds are shining and the bees are too

All that light it’s two bees shining, shine shine on

Hear that boogie-woogie beating in your heart

Draw the doors and windows and blinds wide

Open ‘em wide and deep inside you

Rub those atoms together and feel the heat

Feel the heat and feel the beat, that boogie momma beat


Saturday, December 09, 2023

FSK

Mister Francis Scott Key, after all the fanfare

The question remains: are we saved or forsaken

You had asked it yourself: is our country still there

Is there anything left with the pounding we’ve taken?

Will the rockets and bombs prove to be all that strong
Leaving us just a question in our national song?

With so much that’s been damaged, say what can we save

In this land of the free and the home of the brave?



Mister Francis Scott Key, you yourself have done wrong

It’s a truth we ignore, but it can’t be denied

And the words we don’t say, the verse we won’t sing

That our founders themselves had stories we hide

But where is the blame? And where is the shame

If the peril in the night we cannot even name

And what is our debt to the native and slave

In this land of the free and the home of the brave?