happy birthday john

the white-crowned sparrow sings

this is a photgraph from wikipedia that i played with. and regarding that song, the WCSs have regional dialects, sometimes drawing from a VERY small region, so in fact if you live anywhere other than my back yard, they might sound a little different.

also, regarding their coming and going, they don't actually go very far. they hang out all summer at the shore of the bay, where it never gets as warm as it occasionally can here only a mile inland.

equinox

OH YES

Oh no --
now we're in for it, everything's
slamming shut,
closing shop, the leaves on the cottonwood
are crying
fuck it and letting go in the wind, the cold

is coming, winter storms are massing at sea,
morning ice on the deck and the dog skids off
in a blur of legs, then it rains and rains
and rains,

and the plague is upon us, strange fevers
and aches,
the body spilling out, impossible to ignore,
you're in a machine consuming itself,
and this morning walking out, you look

at the persimmon tree
for the first time in weeks
and notice all the leaves are gone, and there they are --
persimmons -- fiery globes, hosannas and lauds,
and you can't help yourself, admit it, even sick

and miserable,
mired in the dreck of winter,
you reach out your hand,
take hold of the fruit,
oh yes, there's another world, there's a sun

within the sun, yes,
kindness is real,
oh yes, blessings are everywhere.

Joseph Stroud

SAY IT LOUD!

 no I MASTURBATE & I'M PROUD!

(for those of you who do not live in this extremely odd country,you might want to know that the republican nominee for the us senate
for the state of delaware, is, quite vocally,
running on an anti-masturbation platform!
it is time for all self-pleasurers to come to the aid of their party!)

SHE BOPWe-hell-I see them every night in tight blue jeans--
In the pages of a blue boy magazine
Hey I've been thinking of a new sensation
I'm picking up--good vibration--
Oop--she bop--


Do I wanna go out with a lion's roar Huh, yea, I wanna go south n get me some more Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine They say I better stop--or I'll go blind

Oop--she bop--she bop

She bop--he bop--a--we bop
I bop--you bop--a--they bop
Be bop--be bop--a--lu--she bop,
I hope He will understand
She bop--he bop--a--we bop
I bop--you bop--a--they bop
Be bop--be bop--a--lu--she bop,
Oo--oo--she--do--she bop--she bop

(whistle along here)...


Hey, hey--they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone
No, I won't worry, and I won't fret--
Ain't no law against it yet--

Oop--she bop--she bop--

She bop--he bop--we bop...

Cyndi Lauper

meher baba says:

CLICK HERE!!

(for d)

s'about fucking time!

yeeeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

ASK! TELL!

when i fall in love

(to set the mood,
i must first ask you to CLICK BELOW)
then close your eyes.)

why this, now? i finally found a friend,
from 40 years ago.

A LOVE SONG

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

William Carlos Williams

first published in Poems 1916.

and all i can say is how little we've learned,and yet too much,

interlude

In this world
love has no color --
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.

Izami Shikibu
tran. Jane Hirshfield

interlude

i can't remember ever --
well, not for a long time, anyway --
feeling this way:
being offered, now,
what i may have wanted then,
but recognizing how
it was never what i thought.

and it's painful very deeply inside.
that his life, i think,
has been destroyed
by his unavoidable
misunderstandings.

the pain comes, of course,
witnessing his pain,
and knowing by osmosis
it once was mine.

where was our noah?

i
feel
cheated.

why didn't noah come and save all our animals?

could no righteous person be found?

have we not our own sodomites? (are we not all sodomites?)

have we not our false prophets, whole networks of them?

were so many of those of us, fleshed, furred, and feathered, kin to water, simply unworthy
of salvation?

have we not sufficiently loved this earth?

where was our noah?

(see fulltable's extraordinary collection here,
and a journey round my skull's here.)

Give Us Independence from the British -- AGAIN

losing currency

one of my favorite mystery writers, stuart kaminsky, i recently learn, died. oddly, nobody told me. why should they? but....

this is one of the things about getting older about which no one would ever even think of mentioning, but to me it's surely emblematic of becoming part of a fading time.

i don't mean to be morose! not at all. if you're paying attention you notice stuff. that's all. young marrieds are nostalgic about stuff you grew up with. stuff like that.

you find that things that you knew were valuable -- everyone agreed -- now are unheard of. having not only been to woodstock, and seen the beatles in person, you were a groupie with roadies for both dr john and bonzo dog, and, like, what's cooler than that? they humor you with a quick smile, if they have even heard of any of these. your currency is no longer worth a thing, and you realize it probably never was!

and it doesn't matter if it wasn't, either.

sometimes really finding out "whatever happened to..." completely breaks your heart. and sometimes something that you've forgotten having done gives a gift to someone you didn't meet till decades later. oh joy!

in the end, what point has there been in your life deciding what's important, what is not? aren't you going to change your mind some day and then feel yourself to have been a fool? are your memories filled with what you would have expected?

there's every chance you will be known then remembered by some impression you left, even if it was a misinterpretation, or a misunderstanding, or an attribution that was assumed but never deserved. in fact the chances of that lasting impression have anything to do with the real you are very very small.

isn't that freeing? or is that a shade of green you're turning? and then you realize you must turn it around. did you ever know anyone at all? if your opinions, your agreements and disagreements, your mad dervish plans and your careful arrangements, looked silly one day, would that matter?

if you can't just laugh at this point, well then, i guess you just can't.

summer night-- the moon

.夏の夜や河辺の月も今三日

natsu no yo ya kawabe
no tsuki mo ima mikka

summer night--
the moon by the river
just a sliver

This is an early haiku written in the 1790s. The rhyme in my translation is accidental--so I decided to allow it. The moon is a "three-day moon"...just a sliver.

WARM SUMMER SUN

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

Mark Twain

1792
.寝せ付て外へは出たり夏の月
nese-tsukete soto e wa detari natsu no tsuki

it's bedtime
but out I go...
summer moon

SUMMER SONG


Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer's smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?

William Carlos Williams

1817
.短夜や草はついついついと咲
mijika yo ya kusa wa tsui-tsui-tsui to saku

short summer night--
the grasses bloom
swish, swish, swish!

MY KIND

My kind? I don’t know my kind.
I see the sunlight speaking
in the windy leaves — a clear,
cold, early summer day that says
whatever is lost will come down
the daylight to meet you.

Forget it. There’s never anyone.
And I find myself wanting
to invent a new language. My
country’s the scratch of rain on
glass, these straight miles of
crucified wire — empty as a rose.

Remember the night skies? Navy.
A silk drawn slowly from the
breast pocket for the last deep
trick of the stars: the splash,
the scraps of silver tinselling
down in the flooding white light.

Robert Dana



(all haiku by issa, translated by david g. lanou, here.)