set to music

Nate Scheible is a young composer/musician in Cleveland who contactd me after reading February 03. he's working on a piece tentatively titld "This time next year you'll be oxidizing stone." he wonderd if I'd be interestd in collaborating.

first he sent me some of the "lyrics" he'd already written. I attemptd to write something that I felt fit. but after I actually heard his music I wrote some things based on childhood experiences in Lorain where my grandparents lived & Nate was born.

yesterday he sent me demos of 2 songs from the cycle using my words. it was quite emotional listening to my words as "heard" by another. I look forward to the final composition.

winter comes to Santa Fe

/ 

curious

that the rodent pope -- resplendent in designer coat & expensive shoes -- wd attempt to placate Muslims by visiting Attaturk's tomb. I'm sure the Greeks & Armenians who consider Attaturk a butcher are happy with that.

bah humbug

had to mail a friend some books. the wait at the p.o. was 40 minutes. & it's not even dec yet.

rumor

Lynne Cheney will have a cameo in the new Mel Gibson-Michael Richards movie.

Mugs

so it's a sunny saturday
& I'm reading Todd Moore
(Dillinger as a pre-Bogart Bogart)
& I'm drinking Moka Java
from the tan mug with blue lines
that got me thru Kent ayems
& I'm wondering how
the thing we drink from
shares a word meaning face

so I throw Moore on the floor
& get out my college Webster's
mug   n.   1. a heavy drinking cup
of earthenware ... formerly often ornamented
with a human face

& I remember Moore lining up
Cagney beside Boagart
& I can't think of Cagney
w/o thinking of grapefruit
Cagney was a thug with a mug
who pushd that grapefruit
into Mae Clarke's face
beautities had faces   thugs mugs
& I remember 58 years after that scene
seeing Mae Clarke in Beverly Hills
even as an old lady
she had a face

& I once saw Cagney
in that same place
even as an old man
he was a thug with a mug

Moore shoots words
it's a sunny saturday
& he hit me in the face
just like that grapefruit
except you can't wash off
what a word does

gray friday

Iraq slips into civil war & the news programs open with video of people already in debt standing in line at 5 in the ayem waiting to shop. how ridiculous.

Anita O'Day (1919-2006)

, 

we're still here

nestld among the advertising circulars in yesterday's mail was my copy of This Passing World. I'm a slow reader   esp with novels & I'm still reading Richard Balthazar's Divine Debauch. so I can't start Don Cauble's novel yet but I cdn't resist opening it. & there were quotations from Tom Kryss & Doug Blazek. & I suddenly become emotional.

back in the 60s when the poems of Kryss & Blazek & Cauble & Gildzen were appearing together in magazines I never imagind we'd be alive in the 21st century. but here we are. alive & still writing & publishing.

I'm not a holiday person. however on this one I give thx for my generation of poets   esp the ones who are still tapdancing in the mine fields.

bus & truck is alive if not well

years ago most Broadway hits went on tour. the primary tours featurd either the original stars or big-name replacements & playd at least a week in major cities. for me that was the Hanna Theater in Cleveland. there was also something known as bus & truck companies. these playd for a nite or 2 in secondary cities with casts of those on their way up or down but never on top. for example   I saw "Butterflies Are Free" at Akron Civic Theater featuring Jan Sterling whose Hollywood star was dimming & John Spencer before he found tv stardom. somewhere along the way Broadway had fewer hits & much of the touring ceasd.

when I heard there was a bus & truck company coming to Santa Fe I immediately got a ticket. last nite's production was "Camelot." now this was the first musical I ever saw on Broadway. Kennedy was president & the show's star was Julie Andrews. so I wasn't expecting much this time. & that's what I got. it was a charmless production with a dull cast in K Mart costumes. imagine a paunchy Arthur without authority   a Lancelot lacking dash. the only sparkle came from Mollie Vogt-Welch as Guenevere. but as dreary as the experience was I'm pleasd that the tradition continues & I hope better companies will come to town.

Robert Altman (1925-2006)

query to fellow bloggers

if you're on Blogspot are you switching to the new version? is it difficult? what will happen if we simply stay with the old version?

cats

for many reasons I've decid'd not to get another.

but my life is not lacking in felines. I'm putting Melina's food & water bowls on the back portal & keeping them full. a trio of neighborhood cats are regulars. I know where they live. they'll talk to me thru the protection of a glass window but still scamper if I try to go outdoors to chat. I'm enjoying getting to learn the eccentricities of their movements.

Pink Flamingo (1957-2006)

Roman Tymchyshyn sent me the obit of this 20th century icon.

the lawn ornament was "inventd" nearly a half century ago by Don Featherstone & was manufacturd by Union Products of Leominster MA. it originally sold for $2.75 but a few are available online for $50. the announcement that Union is no longer making pink flamingos no doubt will up that price.

thank you Mr. Blair

the PM has finally admittd that our invasion of Iraq was a disaster.

"if I lay here"

for someone who reads (& writes)   the worst part of a gay resort is the nonstop music that's piped into public spaces.

that sd   let me add that last month while lolling at Inn Exile I was happy to hear what for me was a new song: Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars." I'll always think of Palm Springs when I hear that song just as hearing "MacArthur Park" brings back Provincetown & "Theme from 'Shaft' " makes me think of Fire Island Pines.

Lana

it was getting a bit gray here so I'm peroxiding things up a bit. 

"This Passing World"

synchronicity is such a big part of my life I no longer become surprisd when it manifests itself.

on flights back from Miami a husband & wife were wearing t-shirts with this quotation from Philo of Alexandria: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." & then among the first e's that come thru upon my return is one from Don Cauble using the same quotation as part of his signature statement.

I've never met Cauble. back in the 60s Hugh Fox brought our poems together in his important but now-neglectd anthology The Living Underground. Cauble seemd to have disappeard. after I gave my copy of that book to Matthew Wascovich he really got into Cauble's work & "found" him in Portland. via Wasco I began corresponding with Cauble.

there are reasons we didn't hear from Cauble. altho he's writing poetry again he has just seen the publication of his first novel This Passing World. I won't say that the book provides some answers to his "disappearance." art is more than biography. however I suspect first novels tend to have roots in the biographies of their writers. I look forward to reading it.

Patchen places

Larry Smith must have a special shelf in his closet for all the hats he wears. but don't expect to find a beret. Larry's a poet of the midwest who publishes other poets of the midwest & who honors the best of the midwest.

a while back he put on line a gallery of photos of d.a. levy's residences which so moved me I wrote a poem abt it. now he's done the same for Kenneth Patchen.

so let me find one of my old Ohio hats & tip it to Larry.

old people at the opera are worse than children on a plane

they can't find their seats & simply sit in the wrong one. during the performance they talk & unwrap godknowswhat & drop their programs & let their cell phones ring & applaud in the wrong places & fall asleep.

if this is my future   I pass.

a coin tossd in the air

heads: despondent in South Beach

volcano of bile scalds flesh. get out of bed. walking is unguent. to the ocean. if I fist a wave will I find calm. sun too hot. walk to strip of palms along Ocean Dr. across street a deco hotel. bars of blue beside lavender. white circles & green lines. I choke for air. I breathe so deep I feel my toes in my mouth.

tails: across the bay

art pulls us from the midden. opera calld me to Miami. the perfection of Mozart wd probably nourish on a deathbed. & Verdi when done with fire (& here it was literal) can make us soar (even when the lovers die in each other's arms).

flying to Miami

to check out the new opera house

taking America back

it's abt time

back to the future

in the 13 some years I've lived in New Mexico I've been voting on touch-screen machines. however since so many citizens now believe that President Worst Ever didn't actually win either of his last 2 elections   there's a cry for a paper trail. so this morning I took a step into the past & cast a paper ballot.

what was sad to me tho was that with the polls open for 2 hours only 54 others in my precinct had already voted. turnout is key to the Rove-Mehlman scenario to retain control.

all hail La Mama

Jerry Tallmer has a piece on Ellen Stewart that reminds us what a treasure she is.

You Tube

Bing Crosby / Bette Midler duet with me in the audience

David Hockney painting a BMW

Percy Helton is a Japanese tv commercial

Anita O'Day singing boogie in 1941

Kerouac reading from On the Road

John Curry skating 30 years ago

the alternate ending of "Rebel Without a Cause"

      I admit it. I've become an addict.

70000 views of the history of LA

Bill Berger filld me in out a great resource. LA Public Library has made available online part of their historic image collection. tiptoeing thru is a joy.


1947 portrait of Betty Bersinger   the woman who discoverd the body of Elizabeth Short on Norton Ave

white xmas

this is the man Rev. Haggard went to for a massage. that's all. he just had a massage.


Mike Jones 

love child of Freddie Mercury & Rufus Wainwright

, 

Mika

a great old broad

I suspect I first saw Wayland Flowers & his divine creation Madame on "Laugh In." the only time I saw them perform live was the summer of 1986 in Provincetown. it was one of those acts that had me in tears -- first from laughing & finally in its poignant farewell with a plea to love one another. 2 years later Flowers was dead at 48 & Madame was sd to have been buried with him.

I hadn't thot of them in a while & then as happens yesterday they came into my life twice. on a theater message board I read that Madame is on the verge of a comeback with a new man up her skirt. & in an interview with Jerry Torre -- the Marble Faun of "Grey Gardens" -- I learnd that he spent a summer in Provincetown with Flowers. I wonderd if that summer was 1986 & if he was in the room the nite I saw them.

olfactory delites

for me autumn smells better than any other season.

& if that isn't enuf I just pickd the last of my Ohio basil.

my nostrils are in frenzy.