survival info

 

April 30, posted over the years  (I was so much older then…)

more slogans from the 8^th grade bulletin board

 

         survival info

Flattery is alright if you don’t inhale

Those searching for the key to life seldom try the knob

To not desire the forbidden is to desire the impossible

Never offend with style when you can offend with substance

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

Knowing the tricks is not all to knowing the trade

Thick skin is a gift of the gods

He who laughs last thinks slowest

The difference between ignorance and apathy?  I don’t know and I don’t care

One of these days is none of these days

Move over and let the big dog eat

Shut up and dance

The vulture flies with carrion luggage

I’d rather be being

April Showers of 1969

 

from the month of April, 1969  (I was 24)

 

          April Showers of 1969 -or droplets of some kind

                  -journal scribbles this month

Linking verbs have no connotations.  4/7

Someone on 60 Minutes said, “If we didn’t have funerals

we’d never know when to stop crying.”  4/7

Being bitter is work, also as ridiculous as being agreeable.  4/9

We love to lean near the edge; we do not fear that we may fall,

but rather that we may fall eternally.  4/10

Singing, cockles and mussels, saliva salivo. 4/10

I’m tired of having to cope with people who could even imagine me

being dangerous.  4/13

There he stood in his Florentine whimsy, spelling smile with his teeth. 4/13

Paths are clear; the one I’m on is blotched with horse shit

as far as I can see. 4/22

Achilles, your mother was extremely stupid. 4/24

Polarity interests me, and me. 4/24

Rip off a cheer for good beer 4/24

Oh ladies of the Amazon

will you please put pajamas on? 4/25

A most valuable lesson teaches the difference

between explication and impliction.  4/25

I sit in calm and suddenly fear

I might become content  4/25

This is 1977 and I’ve got detergent in the cranium

 

from this week in April, 1977  (I was 32)

 

This is 1977 and I’ve got detergent in the cranium

I’m not paying enough attention to my eye muscles

I don’t have any money

Vaseline in the pocketbook

Oil leaking out of my rear end.

Personal relationships are hesitant

I’m putting a brick in the toilet tank;

The neighbor is watering his lawn.

There must be someway to buy our way out of this drought;

Who do we have to pay?

Arabs? Cubans? Columbians?

Can’t we buy something from England or France

Besides that big plane?

mobius strip

 

April 27, 2014  (I was 69)

 

                  mobius strip

What comes around goes around it’s been said

get it in your head before it spirals around again

from another bend in the track

moon at your back and sun in your eyes

run while it sets and hear the night rise

You could be tore out of earth like iron ore

giving birth to a car that takes you far away

to where unreality is made reel and you feel

queasy from the smog and uneasy from the jog

and old and trashy all at once at first

Hollywood is fun and scary for any Curly Moe or Larry

I had an agnostic friend

 

April 26, 2008  (I was 63)

 

I had an agnostic friend

When we were together he spoke incessantly

It was as if it was all he knew what to do

We went on a long drive

He’d say Snow on the mountains

when anyone in the car could see the snow

Shredded tires all over the highway

Contrails crisscrossing the sky

must be Air Force maneuvers

Gas cheaper in Carolina than California

Third dead dog in the last ten miles

wonder if they got hit or just jumped out of trucks

Damn potholes are three feet across

whole infrastructure is going to hell

Saw this thing on PBS said within ten years

we’d be able to paint solar panels on almost anything

They’re putting silicon cells in the paint

and algae is gonna end up the best source for ethanol

cause it reproduces so fast and is harvested from

pond scum

I said why don’t you just be quiet  He looked at me and said 

And that won’t bother you the silence

No I said  Thank God he said

And never spoke to me again

silent as the door to the cellar

 

April 25, 1970  (I was 25)

 

silent as the door to the cellar

as open as the night

a deep with teeth like stairs

the future shows us nothing

more carefully than its nothing

we remember nothing that we knew

of cellar dark before and ever

just a single step from knowing more

Infamous Quotes

 

April 24

noted this week in 2003

 

More from the 8^th grade bulletin board

-posted over the years to 1966-2003

 

         Infamous Quotes

Life goes on within you and without you.  George the Beatle

I yam what I yam.  Popeye the sailor

Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Newman the pianist

Money doesn’t talk, it swears. Dylan the Zimmerman

I used to be disgusted.  Now I try to be amused.  Elvis the Costello

Art is the lie that reveals the truth.  Picasso the cubist

Changes in latitude, changes in attitude.   Buffett the pirate

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. S. Johnson the Brit.

Take a picture, it lasts longer.  F Stop Fitzgerald the photo-novelist

I butchered rocks to free the men inside.  Michelangelo the quarryman

We have enough youth, where’s the Fountain of Smart?  Dunce de Leon

Like other surrealists, I am not a surrealist.  sign in a Salvador deli

One of my students told me his father

 

from this week in April, 1969  (I was 24)

 

One of my students told me his father

thinks I’m a twenty-four year old adolescent.  Who

better to teach eighth-graders than an adolescent

with a college education and at least bright enough to

deceive the State Department of Teacher Credentialing?

It is necessary to separate

 

from this week in April, 1999  (I was 54)

 

It is necessary to separate

knowing and being 

to perceive the balance

existent within their wisdoms.

 

Knowing is the ability

to take enough time

to see expressionist silhouettes

of leaf and branch upon cloud lit sky

 

after sunset on a June night,

insistent silhouettes

concocted of beasts and myths

of our own conception.

 

Knowing is the ability to take time to see               

the interaction of silhouette and thought

acknowledged as reality

in the environment of now.

 

To be is to assume position

among the interacting silhouettes

in the reality of the illusion

of the moment that is now.

 

It is necessary to separate

moon from cloud, beast from tree

necessary to realize                                 

where we stand is what we see.

 

It helps to take the kinks out

come to accept the effect of dents

check for leaks

read the charts and move on.

 

Reflections off a bathroom mirror

can blind the young.

And only refractions of life

Illuminate the eyes of the old.

 

A new mind needs milestones,

reminders of where it’s been

on a geography to where it’s going.

Later we are satisfied to know

 

we are as good as there.

I’m not concerned that yesterday

be remembered tomorrow

as it is remembered today.

 

I am concerned

about our perceptive abilities

to support our testimony

that yesterday ever existed at all.

For nearly one hundred years

 

April 21, 2014  (I was 69)

 

For nearly one hundred years

commercial luau dancers of Hawaii

have performed a traditional program

touring the Polynesian Islands

representing each with a dance

punctuated with drums

and protruding tongues of Samoans

Then the fire batons

ignite the rum in all the mai-tais

the incense of distant memory

the fire that dances in all of us

It no longer matters how genuine the tale

the repetition has married us to the myth

The hands the feet and the motion

convey the reality of real dancers today

The smoke disappears to where it always goes

and we cheer the performance

Cannabis

 

from this week in April, 2014  (I was 69)

 

Cannabis

for me has always been the gatekeeper

the smoky entrance to doors of perception

the mind changer that made reality

of fantasy in the woods

and imaginings under the stars

confirming the actualities of existence

that put the daily grind in perspective

And in that knowing time of clarity

to write to paint to sculpt to strum to dance to think

the obvious which is so often invisible

in its own transparency

I am a body rhythm man

 

April 19, 1970  (I was 25)

 

I am a body rhythm man

pulse you a poem

shiver you same

flash you a funny

cough you a couplet

twitch in tetrameter

and ache in absurdity

Deer flees

 

from this week in April, 1974  (I was 29)

 

Deer flees

Nijinski through the trees

wide eyes look once

The old buck runs

wet black woods at night

Knowledge has made him fragile

passion and arrows agile

Evening Stroll

 

April 17, 2009  (I was 64)

 

         Evening Stroll

I walk a few paces behind

Your voice drifts back

Mine never catches up

Once we walked abreast

Now the path doesn’t seem so wide

the sound of our footfalls not in sync

I am unaware of your breath

as you are of mine

Our shadows still dance together

a tall then small tango

between the intermittent street lights

Even in the short plank of common wood

 

from this week in April, 1999  (I was 54)

 

Even in the short plank of common wood

lessons might be read in the grain,

hard and tight, soft and wide, dark or light. 

How it might age or take a stain,

be burnished by use to common good.

I knew the only way to escape

 

April 15, 2017  (I was 72)

 

I knew the only way to escape

was to go to jail so I did

minimum security for four years

The charge was gross ignorance

didn’t know enough to plead innocence

Got out took a job avoided the draft

married a different kind of conflict

fighting each day to keep it from slipping away

Planted flowers don’t hold the ground

it takes a tree with stronger roots

to keep from blowing over in the wind

Left again with nothing to do but begin

knowing no matter what you learn

how to lose more often than how to win

Awake in a muddled morass of fog thought

 

April 14, 2014  (I was 69)

 

Awake in a muddled morass of fog thought

want to paper it all in precious language

and finding logically more fog than thought

I turn instead to Heather McHugh who

(as Seuss would know) can orderly spew

fulminate might be her word

or one confetto used to pepper the absurd

She’s one of those writers who make it okay

that our skill is still one lifetime away

I thought the geist a ghost

 

from this week in April, 2014  (I was 69)

 

I thought the geist a ghost

What did I know but the likeness of sound

I am amused that a Croatian spirit is but duh

Some shades apparently succinct

It might alter perceptions of me

when asked what I am

if I answered Duh

in Zagreb or in Omaha

 

*duh is spirit in Croatian

The translated poem is obvious

 

from this week in April, 2020  (I was 75)

 

The translated poem is obvious

ly two poems side-by-side

poet side foreigner side

by themselves not by itself

trying to be understood and understanding

a sound working or not

working around a meaning or two

meanings working to

be one in the same

Most who know know one or the other

very rarely both to compare

and be forced to choose between twins

one born much later than the other

each favoring a different parent

The honest histrionics of D.H. Lawrence

 

April 11, 2011  (I was 66)

 

The honest histrionics of D.H. Lawrence

admit abhorrence of a humorless end

maniacal horror though it may be

emigrating to eternity

 

A ripe pomegranate in his hands

cracked he says

is a broken heart

a sacred broken heart in Tuscany

I’ve been called out looking

 

April 10, 2014  (I was 69)

 

I’ve been called out looking

I’ve gone down swinging

Almost got a hit but it was a foul tip

caught for strike three

I contested a checked swing

They said I went around

I was drilled in the chest

ruled a glance off the bat

I squared to bunt but stepped on the plate

Took ball four with one foot out of the box

Still my anger could be abated

if those umps and I weren’t related

So without ever getting on

I was thrown out at home

The place I lived was less significant

 

April 9, 2009  (I was 64)

 

The place I lived was less significant

than those in books and movies

The surrounding forest was not Sherwood

The mines held iron not gold or diamonds

Lake sand beaches were narrow the water cold

no tropical palms nor pounding surf

The crops were corn and potatoes

The shops were small the merchandise modest

The library had stereoscopic pictures that proved history

was three dimensional and black and white

The movie theater had a single aisle

but it became a yellow brick road

A single path in the church but no wizard there

The post office smelled of lost correspondence

Posters Wanted crooks for city crimes

None of the trains carried passengers