Happy birthday, Johny!

 You can retire now!

 I wrote this in my sleep last night: "Starting Small in America was the last man in the world to wear a tie to work."

Night Coffee

The sun set long ago

The dusk’s already gone

The Milly Way’s spread overhead

We may never see the dawn

Oh night coffee

Lit up only by starlight

Let’s brew another pot

And drink coffee through the night

I like mine sweet and creamy

You like yours straight & black

We’ll go screaming through the night

Like Cassidy & Kerouac

Oh night coffee, 

Our nocturnal delight

Let’s brew another pot 

And drink coffee through the night

Folks in bed

Counting sheep

We live our dreams

While they’re asleep

The night lies out before us

Our heads are strong and clear

We’ll go flying through the darkness

Up beyond the stratosphere

Oh night coffee

Like Charles Lindbergh on his flight

Let’s make another pot of coffee

And keep flying through the night

What if indeed

 I scare myself

Today's Verse: 20 August 2024

If I had a beard
What would it say?

Come close, my dear?

Go far away?

If I had a beard

What would it want

In the night?

In the dark?

How would it relate

To a lesser expression

Of my true self

The hair on my head?

On my chest?

In my ass?

In my nose?

My ears?

And under my arms?

When I die

Will the mortician care

To understand my feelings there

To wash and crop, perhaps perfume

The best of me, my salient plumes?

Today's Verse: 3 May and 11 July 2024

In the after now

Dreams come true

And nightmares too

In the after now

What I want

And what I dread

Are making out

Inside my head

In the after now

What I am

And what I'm not

Half-remembered

Half-forgot

egina nantara    nijavaguttave kanasugula

                         mattu dusvapnagalu kuda

egina nantara    bayakegalu mattu digilugalu 

                          muddu madittave nanna taleyolage

egina nantara    naneno enallavo

                          ardha nenapu

                          ardha marevu

Recollections of a Shining Youth

When we were young 

We vowed that we’d shine

As brightly as the sun

We’d stand and defy

In fact we’d outshine

Every star in the sky

When the stars saw us try

So jealous were they

Of their place in the sky

They told us up here

By night or by day

We don’t belong in their sphere

Ah but the Sun by his grace

Froze Time’s mad race

Stood still in his place

Whatever we were meant to be

Just for one moment we could see

That we shone for all eternity

And now we’ve grown old

We look back and we know

If we weren’t really gold

If we popped or we flopped

We stepped out of the show

For us just once time stopped

We glowed and we shone and time stopped

Ode to the Wheel

The wheel really is quite a simple machine.
A circle on a stick. But someone invented it.  
We know this because we’re always being told not 
to re-invent it. “No need to re-invent the wheel,” 
we’re told.  Because it’s so basic.  A simple machine.
The circle is the simplest shape, the most perfect form, 
all the points equidistant from a single point.
It’s how the universe should work.  Revolving 
without rolling.  And is there rolling without wheels?
There are no wheels in nature.  Someone had to invent it. 
But once you’ve seen it, of course you want to invent it.  
Put it a circle on a stick and we can use it to move things. 
The circle, the perfect shape, the perfect machine. 
We all know nothing’s really round, but what if 
you could make something nearly round. Nearly perfect.  
Like the human heart, so beautiful, so imperfect. 
But if you could make it frictionless, it could 
carry anything.  Love, you mean. Yes of course, 
that was invented a long time ago.  Simple, 
perfect, frictionless. If only. Don’t tell me
there’s no need to re-invent it.  Re-inventing 
is what we all need to do, every generation, 
every person, every lover.  The wheel will turn.  
We’ll invent it. Let it turn.  Reinvent it.

Ode to the Pulley

And here’s to the pulley.  It seems 
like the most old-fashioned of the 
simple machines: it powers 
a flag pole or a theater curtain.  
A dumb waiter. A pail in a well. 
Something that should creak.  Something 
that might be called “a contraption,”  
that Wile E. Coyote might rig up 
to drop a heavy weight.  Something 
Rube Goldberg, himself an old-fashioned 
20th century construction, 
might use.  And terms like winch
or block and tackle:  muscular words.
Sweaty men in sailorsuits 
hoisting up the rigging.  Oh,
you could use motors.  You could use 
electricity, have it work
with the push of a button.
No need to put your back into it. 
Even then, it’s still old-fashioned.
Let us pull a curtain over this scene:
Skreeeek 
skreeeek 
skreeeek 
skreeeek

Ode to the Wedge

The wedge doesn’t move things 
or lift things or attach them.  
The wedge splits things.  Divides them 
apart.  Blows them up, unlike 
the screw which leaves a hole 
no bigger than itself.  
An axe is a wedge. It’s a wedge 
on a handle, so that 
you can swing it.  But who
is it that swings the axe,
who is it that pounds the wedge? 
Who cuts the trees and digs up the stumps? 
You have to clear the land
before you can build on it 
then plough it, another wedge.
Who is that mighty arm? Is it 
Progress?  The Will of the People? 
The Blood and Soil of the Nation? 
The Common Man? The Mother Church?
The ideal of Truth and Beauty? 
Freedom? Brotherhood? Does the axe 
rise higher than the head 
of the one who swings it?
Whoever drives the wedge picks
the songs the rest of us will sing.
Or maybe it’s the other way:

whoever calls the tunes drives the wedge.

Ode to the Inclined Plane

The inclined plane is so simple. 

It’s like math made visible.

I guess that makes it physics.  

Look: if you have to lift an object 

straight up, that’s a 90° plane. 

Make it easier, construct 

a 45° plane.  

Still too hard? 30°.

15°. Find your angle.  

Small angle, less effort! Oh,

but more time spent pushing.  

Large angle, short path.  But 

what if you could reduce 

the angle to almost nothing?  

Very little effort needed but

unending path.  Poor Sisyphus, 

it turns out he made the wrong wish. 

The work must be done, anyway.  

Less effort, and the path never ends; 

short path, and you have to keep pushing.

The work is always there.

Incline the plane and make your choice. 

Some people lift and some people push.

It’s a matter of inclination.

Either way, the work must be done.

Ode to the Screw

Pity the screw.  Poor screw.  

You know why.  In English 

its name means—you know what.  

We’re not supposed to say.  It means 

“fuck.” Screw means fuck.  Not gentle 

loving-making, but screwing.  Screw you!

He’s screwing his secretary.

Really screwed that guy over.  

Poor screw.  It’s a helix, you know  

It turns, it doesn’t pound.  

A nail goes straight in: bang! bang! bang! 

A screw turns a circle into 

a straight line.  You think that’s nothing?  

Listen—the ratio of a circle 

to a straight line is completely 

irrational, it’s pi, it can’t be expressed

as a fraction. But look at the screw go, 

turning and turning the circles 

into a delving straight line.  And look: 

it leaves something behind.  

Not sawdust, not debris, look: 

little wooden curlicues. 

Little spiral images 

of itself, made up of

the material it’s screwing 

or being screwed into.

Lovely screw.

Ode to the Lever

A friend was teaching at a Waldorf school and told me that when the students studied astronomy, they sang songs and recited poems about the planets. I asked if they had songs and poems when they studied mechanics.  She told me they don't, so I thought I'd write a series of odes to the six simple machines.  Here's one for the lever:

The lever must be the simplest simple machine,

as simple as (if you’ll excuse me saying so) 

picking your nose.  And yet Archimedes—

the guy who jumped out of his bathtub and shouted, 

“Eureka!”—that same Archimedes said: Give me 

a place to stand and I will move the world.  So he knew.  

He knew the power of the simplest simple machine. 

But also: he needed that place to stand, he said.  

Sure, a place to stand, we all want that.  And for him, 

the earth was the center of the cosmos. So how far out 

do you have to go to get that “place to stand?”  

Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover is completely 

outside the world, but he doesn’t need a lever. He’s divine. 

But what’s the place for the man who lept out of his tub?

What’s the place for the man who wants to move the world

with just a stick? Outside the earth, but still in the world,

wearing a space helmet and a toga.  He’ll do it. Give him

a place, he’ll do it.  He’ll move the world with one big shove.

Only the place to stand, it’s all anyone needs.

We all need it, just a place to stand.

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Today's Verse: 15 April 2024

I'm looking for a pet
To carry my resentments

Indulge me every penchant

Adore me like a god

Without a conscience

Attractive and repulsive

As only beasts can be

Certainly no better than me

To suffer each compulsion,

Obsession, delusion

In exchange casual,

Habitual, sentimental

Benificence

(A Vision of America Seen) Counterclockwisely

I stand astride 

Across the continent

Sea to shining sea

Watching the time

Flow back into the past

Counterclockwisely

Old men grow young

Their births then undone

Fruit grows into the tree

Which then turn to bud

Vanishes in the mud

Counterclockwisely 

The ships full of men

Sailing against the tide

And back in time

Transatlantically

I see from above

Words flying off the page

Unwriting history

It’s not The New World

It’s not an empty stage

It’s another chance to be

Counterclockwisely

Kannada class

Nan ninna kitaki inda nortini, neenu chandra nante badalagtiya

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

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

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

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