have you ever met a person who gives you her life's story absolutely without provocation?
yesterday, i was in line to buy groceries when the clerk asked me my name
richard, i said.
cherie, she said.  meeting my gaze at her name tag.
a lovely name, i told her.
it's from a song, she said.  my father loved that song.
mon cherie, i guessed.
my cherie amour, by stevie wonder.
ah.
he died, let's see.  about 19 . . .no 2005.  my dad had about 500 people at his funeral.
that's a lot, i answered.  that's like a small rock concert.
he was a very popular man, she replied.
sounds like one of a kind guy.
yep.  he was.  want your receipt?

5 words for 2020

i'd
rather
live
in
hope

'covered' - 'uncovered'

what have i become, my sweetest friend



& you can have it all my empire of dirt

ah: anthology of american haiku [mondo edition]

richard robert hansen, publisher of small [like in size] books of poems, poems-for-all, started an in-house imprint of 'mondo' books to augment his wonderful postage sized collections of poems.  mondo books are about the length of a chapbook but with the look & feel of a small paperback.

jonathan hayes & i are fortunate to have our anthology of demotic haiku reissued in the larger format.  hansen is a book publisher & designer par excellence as you can see from the above photos.  tho the form of demotic haiku is provisionally called 'american haiku' at least one of our contributors, lars palm, hails from sweden.  so in a very real sense this anthology of haiku is a citizen of the international republic of poetry.

you can see the list of contributors, including the late poets steve dalachinsky, doug draime & glen chesnut, are an outstanding array of poets.  i am pleased & proud to help jonathan hayes & richard robert hansen usher this edition of haiku into the international republic of poetry.

hit me with an email or in the comments section if you would like a copy.  you can find my email address in the profile section of this blog.  please make it obvious in the title line of the email that you are writing me for a copy because of spammers.

i will be sending out copies after the holidays.  
 

'there will be dying, there will be dying'

i nearly forgot today is the winter solstice.  the shortest day of the year & the official start of winter.  i nearly forgot for the days continue in their turning & i am a hostage to time.  the poet said, 'my life is made of the world; i will do what i can.'  so it goes on.

& but yet, today was a good day.  we did our weekly chores.  i am in the habit of listening to podcasts as i help clean the house, do laundry, tend to the garden & do the other things that are necessary for living in this moment of time.  my most favorite podcast is Startalk hosted by astrophysicist neil de grasse tyson.  i think tyson is a wonderful science educator & funny man.  but i also started listening to the podcast Hardcore History hosted by dan carlin.  carlin does a deep dive into a topic that comes with many twists & turns.  his shows are epic in length too.  many episodes are multi-hours long.  still, carlin is such a good storyteller that if you give yourself over to the narrative soon those hours melt away into a continuous present.

popular hunger & need for storytelling has revived the radio show.  the radio show becomes the podcast & is distributed via the interwebs & the device most commonly used to listen to podcasts is the smart phone.  that piece of technology has literally & figuratively transformed our world.  i am not telling you something you don't already know.  but what amazes me is despite what seems like a dumbing down of our culture there is also a steady stream of programs like TED Talks via youtube & podcasts, which are often non-fiction docu-style narratives, that feed our hunger for knowledge.  for a few hundred years it was the printed book that helped educate us.  today we have digital media to also help educate us.

the world transforms into something else that we can't trace its designs yet.  it scares us.  fear is what fuels our politics today.  the world is changing but people remain the same.  same desires, needs, wants, & so on are so embedded within our human being that no matter the technological, political & socio-economic changes that are changing our civilization into somethings we don't quite understand yet we remain deeply social creatures that love & hate each other sometimes at the same time.

i am no visionary, prophet, political wonk, or even a cassandra.  i am ordinary: a sentient being.  today, anna & were watching a program about orphans thru out the world.  one of the cities in that documentary was rio de janiero.  the wealth gap between the very wealthy & the rest of the population is the size of the grand canyon.  & yet, in the favelas of rio the working poor is plugged in to digital life via smart phones & other devices.  that is not a judgment at all but an observation i made when watching the three girls who were adopted by their working class grandmother.  all three girls had their own phones.  the homeless tent cities on the streets of rio look like the homeless tent cities of sacramento too.  but as we watched the program i said to anna, brazil is the home of some great poets.  what can poets do but observe, she said.  that's right, i said.  & i thought of the cuban poet omar perez who said, when he was interviewed by an american journalist who asked what is the role of the poet in today's cuba.  have fun, said perez.  have fun & observe & comment on what you are observing.

it is arguable that having fun & observation of our society is the sole role of the poet of the early 21st C.  but it ain't so bad a role.  make more of your own role if you like.  but as i see the world that we are creating i think of this poem by northern irish poet derek mahon, 'everything is going to be alright.'  will it?  i don't know but it is a strength i think to have hope.  as mahon, who is among a great generation of northern irish poets who lived thru The Troubles, said, 'there will be dying, there will be dying/but there is no need to go into that' because, i think, to live in these weird times without hope is a despair without end.

waiting no waiting

nick was born on this day 15 years ago.  he's 15!  yep, i'm letting that sink in.  i started blogging when anna was pregnant.  i also began my life in poetry in earnest at that time.  i mean, i've been writing for a long time before that.  i'd publish a few pieces here & there.  however, i was alone.  i didn't know any other poets.  or didn't know any other poets well.  it wasn't until i got on the interwebs i started making friends.  lifelong friends.  brothers & sisters in this art & life.  i'll leave my thought there & say i am lucky & grateful for this life in friends, family & poetry.

thank you.

* * *

when anna was pregnant we would do our normal everyday routine things like shop for groceries.  we would wonder: what kind of little human being would be in the car seat behind us.  it was strange to think that soon we would have a little person to care for & love sharing our lives as we tootled to & fro in the daily struggles of early 21st C life.

we know now & yet the magic of being parents of this special human being has not worn off.

* * *

this morning as i drove nick to school i was thinking aloud about contemporary plastic & performance arts.  how much art is not readily or easily accessible to the viewer.  one needs an education in the vernacular of the modes of art as well as a knowledge of art history.  often a piece can seem random to a viewer without that art vernacular.  i do not mean to say that the plastic & performative arts are above & beyond the comprehension of viewers.  however, the arts, what are called the high arts, are not so readily accessible as popular music & movies.  there are artists that bridge these divides, like warhol, or joseph cornell, but even with pop artists like cornell & warhol as soon as you hang a box of detergent in a museum just the placement in such a space renders the object into abstraction.  thus the viewer requires an a priori vernacular to 'get' what the artist might be trying to say.

well, then, nick had a play to attend after school.  cultural events like plays, & poetry readings, are a mandatory component of the curriculum.  this particular play was worth double the points because it was not only a play but a school production to boot.  when i picked him up this evening i asked him what did he see.  ah, it was about two dudes doing a lot of talking about waiting.

waiting for godot by samuel beckett, i radiated.  i love me some beckett, i said.  what did you think of the play, i asked nick.  it was odd, he said.  alienating, i added?  yes, nick answered.

do you think vladimir & estragon are heroes or fools, i asked.

huh?

are they fools for waiting for nothing, or are they heroic in the waiting?  could they be both, i continued.  beckett survived ww2 & as a child during ww1.  the world was ripped into meaningless.  the struggles of vladimir & estragon are cyphers for our crises.  do you think it matters if godot ever appears?  or is the waiting the adventure?

i think nick both got a kick out of my wondering & was non-plussed.  for this play perfectly illustrates my thoughts about contemporary art earlier this morning.  waiting for godot is 66 years old [really not that old as far as literature is concerned] & very much part of our culture.  & yet, the play is odd & affected & alienating to the viewer.  one would need to learn the vernacular of 20th C absurdest theater to get it.  but i say 'get it' provisionally.  because beckett's masterpiece was performed by high school students at a high school.  & that art is available to all of us once we allow ourselves the patience for it.

nick is much better educated than i was at his age.  i wouldn't read beckett until my early 20s when i was also developing into my own human being.  but then again, i was & am an autodidact & late bloomer. 

* * *

& that is what amazes me about being a parent.  anna & i, as well as every parent on this planet [which is unique & fundamental even if so common a thing], have a front row seat in the growth of another sentient being.  it is a fucking miracle of being.  for that i am humbled & in love.         

the holly and the ivy [1952]

the basic cable movie channel, turner classic movies, is a jewel for film buffs & movie lovers of all stripes & persuasions.  why & what for?  for even in our digital age, when everything you want &/or need is at your fingertips via smart phones, smart TVs, ipads & computers, tcm is on air with wonderful hosts, like the late robert osbourne, to introduce & guide film lovers to movies that might fall off the personal viewing radar.

like this film under discussion, one i wouldn't have seen if anna & i were not tuned in to tcm tonight.  host ben mankeiwicz [who took over main hosting duties after robert osbourne] & guest host leonard maltin introduced this british christmas movie starring ralph richardson as a parson of a small village.  the parson's children all come home for the christmas holiday.  jenny, played by celia johnson, is the adult daughter of the parson who stayed home to keep house for the patriarch.  jenny is in love with a young man who is about to begin his career as an engineer in south america.  he so desperately needs jenny to join him.  jenny is conflicted because she can't leave her father by himself.

& so on & so on.  jenny has a younger sister who is a successful fashion journalist with a dark secret.  denholm elliot [who is more recognizable as dr marcus brody in the indiana jones movies] is jenny's brother who is either on leave or is AWOL from the army to visit the family.  family dynamics being what they are the ghosts come out, tensions are stirred, & all is resolved in a very brief 83 minutes.  in fact, the ending came so abruptly that anna & i were puzzled.  is that all?  yes, that was all.

still, the movie is a wonderful post-war period piece that was adapted from a play.  indeed the two eccentric aunts, aunt lydia [margaret halstan] & aunt bridget [maureen delaney], reprised their roles from the stage.  they are delights to watch, particularly aunt lydia, a beautifully complex creature of human compassion & understanding.  so is ralph richardson [rev. martin gregory], who is the grand patriarch of this wide & complex family.  richardson is a great actor, one that i was just introduced to tonight.  you'd think a parson of a messed up family who would be messed up himself by tying himself in knots regarding faith, duty & obligation.  after all, this is a post-war british movie.  & yet, richard's martin is a man of great humility & compassion.  indeed, all his children are non-believers.  but martin accepts & loves them all.

the direction & the photography are serviceable & solid.  nothing flashy but i wouldn't expect a tour de force of filmmaking regarding the subject.  there was a scene exquisitely framed, when martin & his younger daughter, fashion journalist margaret [margaret leighton], come to a meeting of the minds.  margaret's face is in the foreground while martin's is in the background.  each is in focus as they detail that secret into their lives.

but as i mentioned the movie comes to an abrupt end.  all the loose ends are suddenly tied.  the director would've done better by expanding the story by about 10 or 15 minutes.  seriously, the film ends that fast.  & yet, there is a sense of conclusion & the emotional valance of coming to know & care for a family like a great many families in this world: complex, sad, ecstatic, & made of individual people who can't make it in this world alone.

post rilke

get outta bed you stub your toe

late for work again

& your outta coffee

traffic is bad it is always bad

indifference & lassitude are on the menu today

the cat scratches you he seemed to be aiming for the jugular

can't decide what to make for dinner you hate to cook

same ol' shit same ol' face in the mirror

blase & ennui

ho-hum & tedium

& what the fuck do you gotta look forward to

that you've forgotten you've let your guard down

you don't see the way the sun splinters the clouds

or your favorite song you know the one you were just thinking about

is now playing on the radio

as you drive home from work

fighting the rush hour

you forget it is out there waiting for you

hidden for now

but at just the right moment

when you least expect it

beauty leaps out at you

grabs you by the throat

& punches you in the mouth

absolute music

this song, & this performance, is my favorite by smashing pumpkins.  it is 1992.  anna & i just met.  we are dating.  we are spending the day together.  we take a drive to the delta, that marshy, riverine, region of northern california where the sunlight is just right, the bridges are old-fangled, & the river is perfect in its curvy way.  the road leads to forever, i am sitting beside my great love, optimism is in the air, & this song is playing on the radio.



 

poems=in=the=key=of=life

present tense

sitting around
the rain
the wind
the doppler effect of the freeway

petting the cats
drinking a beer
wide awake nothing doing
doing nothing

death of heaven & hell

nick clued me to this wonderful video of the possible death of our universe.  the timescales presented here are beyond human imagining.  as the science grows more clear & confident many of these speculations will remain just that: speculations.  as we study, observe, test our hypotheses & learn the universe we will come to a greater understanding of our place in it.  but it is nearly certain that even our universe will die.  eternity becomes meaningless.  time will stop.  & matter will fade away into the void of nothingness.  & yet, this video, & others like it, are reminders that our universe is still so young.  our place in it is utterly unique.  that we are alive right now with our sentience to comprehend these vast vast scales of time, matter & distance are miracles of awe & wonder.  for even beyond our imagination our thin ideas of heaven & hell are tiny in the vastness of our cosmos.  but for these few moments we are granted we can expand our awe, knowledge & wonder of our lives in this beautiful place we find ourselves in: the universe, the earth, the you.