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

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

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

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?

Today's Verse: 5 December 2023

There's another cyclone raging in the bay

Souvenirs are strewn across its rocky shores

Torn to pieces by the last one

That passed this way before

There's a cyclone, mighty cyclone

There's a cyclone in the bay

I think I want to get out of here

Now its been too many years

Many years stuck in this place

This place I came to escape

To escape indifferent fate

But traffic's at a standstill

No good choices do remain

A low pressure system

Spreads out like a duvet

The airport's closed forever

There's a cyclone in the bay

Jymn now you too have arrived at that age celebrated in the Beatles song.  May you be needed and fed for another year and many more.

Your sincerely,

Wasting Away

Flag Day

 As part of my ongoing project to write a song for every holiday

Flags are waving throughout the land

Come on now strike up the band

I don’t really understand

It’s Flag Day, Flag Day

From every car lot, every mall

Flags are flying straight and tall

Stand up and salute them all


It’s Flag Day, Flag Day

Everywhere the flags are flying

Everywhere they’re on display

It is very mystifying

Why flags should have a special day

There’s no speech, no oratory

No one ever tells the story

All we do is wave Old Glory

It’s Flag Day, Flag Day

Geography of Sorrow

Dennis had said that he wanted to do some new recordings on the theme of "Cosmic American Music," which was Gram Parsons term for his own music, mixing the country music of that era with hippie music.  I don't think that's what Dennis means, I think he just means our songs but with slide guitar and National steel, but here's what I came up with as a first attempt at my own version of it:

The Geography of Sorrow

I placed my flag in the new world

To flourish and to burgeon

And threw myself on the green land

As if it were a virgin

And though I thought I’d conquered it

It all turned contradictory

I found there was no apple pie

In what had seemed a victory

What’s the geography of sorrow?

What’s the geography of tears?
How do we map the loss

The hatred and the fears?

This land’s become my body

A map, immense and vast

It always flows out bountifully

But hides behind a mask

The land remains eternal

Though it’s life’s as short as mine

Silent as a history book

But ticking, watching time

What’s the geography of sorrow?

What’s the geography of tears?
How do we map the loss

The hatred and the fears?

I felt a mighty anger

Fire flooding from above

I’ve felt the wrath of fear

But this is wrath of love

It’s I who am now guilty

It’s I who played the whore

I kneel down and bow my head

Dressed as a conquistador

What’s the geography of sorrow?

What’s the geography of tears?
How do we map the loss

The hatred and the fears?

It rained the other night--always welcome in Northern California--and I felt some twinges in my right ankle.  It took me a few moments to realize that this my old football injury from St. John's greeting me from across 45 years. There are some things the body doesn't forget.

Happy birthday Johny!

 Now the earth's gone around the sun sixty-three times since it first shown on your budding body. And today it starts its round again. Have a good trip, one more time.