Pelé may be gone, but Baby Pelé will live on forever.

 Jimmy, I'm sorry I forgot your birthday.  I hope it was filled with cheer.

Forgotten, but not gone

 Missing my birthday greeting!

Been there, done that

 

Happy birthday Johny

 And how you are celebrating today?

Dum Dum Boys

https://youtu.be/jRivyhE3JvU

Nice interview. Nice hearing them sing together, too.

Do The Murmuration, Baby

When 10,000 starlings fly

They mur-mur-ate

Make a kaleidoscope in the sky

They mur-mur-ate

Dancing without holding hands

More precise than marching bands

Just doing what the dance demands

They murmurate! They murmurate!

Humans on earth, let’s do it too

Let's mur-mur-ate

Let’s join together like starlings do

Let's mur-mur-ate

Can’t we learn to take a page

From those starlings who engage

To make the whole sky their own stage

Let’s murmurate! Let’s murmurate!

We too can move in a big formation

Let's mur-mur-ate

Rising and falling in a great gyration

Let's mur-mur-ate

We don’t need leaders, we don’t need rules

There’s dances you can’t learn in schools

Come on all you dancing fools

Let’s murmurate! Let’s murmurate!

Let's mur-mur-ate!

This is a 60s dance craze-type song for my dear friend Larry Starling.  Because he's dark-colored and lives in a birdcage he's hard to photograph.  This is the best I could do:

Epithalamion

I also wrote this one for him.  (Ned Stone = Philip van Ouse.)

Yesterday we wept

Tomorrow we will fight

But let there be no tears,

No anger on this night

And even if tomorrow is

The day the world ends

Tonight there is still time enough

To celebrate our friends

Though I am not a believer

And barely an agnostic

I do believe in this union

Of Van Ouse & Tomasic

Tonight there is no room
For the fear we all have carried

Tonight there’s only room for joy

For our friends who’re getting married

Don’t rise up from the table

Don’t turn away the cup

Tonight all sorrow’s chased with joy

Tonight we’ll drink it up

Though I am not a believer

And barely an agnostic

I do believe in this union

Of Van Ouse & Tomasic

Sonnet 43 or so

 My friend Ned Stone's getting married next month. I wrote this song for him (by way of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Cage)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the droop and breach and heft
My soap can reach, when feeling out of samples
For the ends of buttons and ideal grandmother.
I love thee to the liver of every day’s
Most quaggy niche, by soup and canine light.
I love thee frizzily, as men strip for Richard.
I love thee purple, as they turn from prairie dogs.
I love thee with the passport put to use
In my old gravy, and with my chicken’s fade-in.
I love thee with a love I seemed to loop
With my locked saints. I love thee with the bakery,
Smock, teapot, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after Delaware.

RIP Mary

 My mother died at home in bed on 11 May.

RIP Steven

I Am Waiting

I was thinking of like a Bowie song from "Lodger."

I am waiting for instructions
I am waiting to be given
The most recent set of orders
I am waiting for directions
I am waiting for a stockpile
Of gasoline and toilet paper
I am waiting for the drugstore
To renew my last prescription

I am waiting
I am waiting

I am waiting for the sirens
To stop their ringing for a moment
I am waiting for the militia
Getting closer to our borders
I am waiting to hear the anthem
Cheering on our local Farm Team
I am waiting for the ice cream truck
I haven’t heard those chimes in days now

I am waiting
I am waiting

We need the Good Guys, at least allies
The hotsie-totsies who punch Nazis
The dads and mommies, anti-Commies
Mounties on horses with their forces
I am waiting for the code
To this episode
The book, the guide
All the answers found inside

I am waiting for the moral
To this fable I keep hearing
I am waiting for the secret
Explanation to this story
I am waiting for the punchline
Of this endless shaggy dog joke
I am waiting. Can you hear me?
I am waiting. I am waiting

RIP Ronnie

https://youtu.be/_3QA2ATgIb0

 

Stood Up By A Song

Last night I was stood up by a song

I thought we had a date

I stayed home to wait

Did I get the day or the time all wrong?

Tuned my guitar and poured some wine

Gave my best cowboy boots a shine

But why did I get dressed

To be stood up by this guest

This shiftless no-show friend of mine?

Oh, I fill my head with words

Harmonize in thirds

Yodel country blues

Grab my book of synonyms

Then start chanting hymns

Bow down to the Muse

Guess that song’s not coming ‘round

The wine has all been downed

I’ll go quietly to bed

I’ll just have silence instead

No song, no words, no sound

No use for rhyming words

Major or minor thirds 

All I know of blues

Lose all those synonyms

No use chanting hymns

Just silence for the Muse