Thank you for the shot of assurance, Wayne. I never wrote for pudlication. Only private stuff, generally.
'Do not Depends prepare guides?'--Heanas Screed
'Friends do not drive guides to drink, they take a taxi.'--Braverly Samson
Big Bill Bierkhan tells this one:
'Two guides walk into a bar. The bartender adks 'What'll ya have?'
The first guide says, 'I'll have a Mountain Dew, on the rocks.'
The second says, 'I'll have what he's having, but use ice in mine.'--Offa Deszneid.
ba-dump!
/and BB, from BB, TY.
Calls for a celebration of blind mice chased by Women. Love is "Blind." Dig the rhythm. Now, you got your rhythm and you got euythmitic you got them mice all around the house, tired of hearing good ol' Mouse, he's so screwed up screwed up screwed up.
Amor de Verdad or True Love Waits Down the Insinkerator
Words by Hubby Dolley
[Very saccharine. Real country sappy. A tad schmaltzy.]
I will bury thee
Or you will bury me,
For I can’t love another
Just only you.
And no matter
What’s the deal
Our fears will have seemed so unreal.
We’ll laugh at them and kneel for each other’s forgiveness.
And so trust me or go away
But please listen to what I must say.
Silence speaks volumes
When no one is talking
But I trust you to steer me straight
When I go off walking
Where I shouldn’t have gone.
No, darling, no one else.
Only you.
Finely spun
Are my thoughts of you,
Held together
And woven through
For all time
By my feelings true.
We will come to the end of our days
Together.
[Up-tempo]
Corny verbs and silly words
Cannot express my absurd wishes
I'd really love to wash your dishes!
[Real good musical stuff guaranteed to burn your ears off and penetrate your soul. No less.]
It’s only suds down the drain,
I’m probably wishing in vain
And I wish you no pain;
To be the goal of your wishes
Would be oh so delicious.
So don’t be suspicious,
Please, just let me wash your dishes.
[Wild-ass finish suspended by tepid, dish-watery muzak? I leave it to the musical director.]
"Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower" by Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
The last two I posted go out to those who are hurtin' at this campfire. At least it seems there is a lot of hurtin' lately. Or maybe they are just squeaky wheels. Still, that's ok by me.
Nonetheless, those poems were delivered to me out of the blue; they spoke to me; and I thought of ya'll. Maybe they'll find their way to those in need and maybe even help a bit.
"The reader of modern literature, Piette asserts, distrusts poetic prose, sensing it to be an indulgence on the part of the writer unless justified by exigencies of the narrative itself. Piette's system allows for a writer's shift into poetic prose to be aesthetically justified -- or found to be unwarranted -- by exploring the mimetic relation between the fugitive music of rhyme and memory."
--review by Graham Fraser of: Adam Piette. Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce, Beckett. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1996. 285pp.
Prose or poetry? Poetry or prose? How to sound like you know what you're talking about is half the battle, but you judge the article for yourselves.
I blame Twinkies and the Hostess Co.
I blame the Norwegian for making me blame the Twinks.
I blame Oakley and Cody.
But it's OK because eventually there will be no one to blame and no one who doesn't share the blame.
Better we get hit over the head with a rolled-up copy of Argy-sod magazine real hard twenty times right now than to have to admit we are wrong about our "need" for guns.
We'll all have killed each other off before we settle this.
Ma Deuce sounds sooo sexy.
But what's so "special" about Saturday night?
By the logic of the hunter, weapons of mass destruction seem good.
That may seem extreme, but the Rev sez my logic is to change the subject.
The Rev never lies, for the sake of argument or otherwise.
When he an his dad got into archery, they settled the bug duck question with their scores, not by pricking stags with those long flying things the deer knew nothing about.
Hinting that hunting with arrows is just as unfair as hunting with guns might get me in deep doodoo; some may even mention my duck size, but at my age, that's laughable.
Is there much difference in "conquering" a route with aid, leaving our sh#t on walls that are utterly (except for falling stones) defenseless?
My mind is spinning like a high-speed bullet.
There goes another couple of innocent bystanders.
When God takes away our guns and leaves us with stones to throw and just our fingers to grip the throat, at least we will not have this argument to plague us.
Then she will have given us true freedom.
Here's a "sport" which may appeal.
Put up firing benches on the South Rim and charge tourons for taking potshots at aid climbers on El Cap: out-of-state permits twice the fee for Californians, but the revenue-sharing would be between the Feds and the STate.
In an ideal world, Guns and Ammo would be Buns and Amour.
There's a full-page ad for Twinkies in there, and a half-page ad for the Traverse Winery, owned and operated by me!
I can't blame Marion. He's a saint. He's got protection from the gal upstairs. Go fugure.
Credit: mouse from merced
Hold on
To what you believe
Even if it is a tree
Which stands by itself.^^^
The sentiment is a good one. We believe what we believe, we feel how we do. It's right to stand up for them and it's the purpose of a forum. I brought my thoughts here rather than try to turn them into arguments. I dislike arguing. It's puerile, and for all I know, even "ternary." :0)
My nookie days are over,
My pilot light is out.
What used to be my pride and joy,
Is now my water spout.
Time was when, on its own accord,
From my trousers it would spring.
But now I've got a full time job,
To find the f***in' thing.
It used to be embarrassing,
The way it would behave.
For every single morning,
It would stand and watch me shave.
Now as old age approaches,
It sure gives me the blues.
To see it hang its little head,
And watch me tie my shoes!
The rest of the morning was marked mostly by ferocious thirst, the bete noir of Yosemite climbers.
Our saliva glands went on strike, our toungues felt like resin bags, our lips like slugs.
At cramped belay stances our muscles cramped for want of water, while below us Nevada Fall still fell, and amid the unceasing roar we heard the cry of that ancient mariner So there was suffering.
But during those seemingly interminable waits at a belay stance, while I willed my body into quasi-hibernation--lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, mimimal muscle tension--my mind, not keen on suffering, cast about for something of interest.
Here a satisfying piee of astract art composed of facets of granite, there the peregrinations of a minuscule red spider, and, several feet away, a single-bloomed flower atop a green stem, thrust from a hairline crack and waving to and fro in the wafting air.
Yosemite walls are rife with Zen gardens that, if you were a nautral theologian, would make God a Buddhist wich, if you know something about Buddhism, is odd.
This represents a passage that has remarkable mimetics and wonderful imagery. There's an exuberance. There is a short bridge to cross between Joe's prose and what could be a really great poem with a little shearing here, some faint padding there. Royal would have been proud to have written this, I think. For that matter, I would.
So poetry's not hard if you are already competent at prose. It just requires a little time at the feet of the one's that the muses have already favored and some mimetic ability. Imagination's on you.
Here's one for the Fossil Climber, in retaliation for your mouse-poem, and in thanks for the recognition and the (ghostly) recommendation to North Face, so long ago.
Mouse
Having written lots of words
He has not completed a book
Nor even begun to compile his droppings
Having left a pile of words
He defines them as his little turds
Like sundaes with gross chocklit topping
He's fond of cheese and all the nuts
Ropes and rice and other stuff
His bad habits send climbers shopping
Old hands know and hate his guts
They can't afford to feed him much
They get so mad they're often hopping
If you would save your things from he
Then string them up in yonder tree
Keep fixing rope they all need chomping
Boogie woogie was a deer.
Boogie woogie had no "ear."
Boogie couldn't boogie.
Now really, how could he?
--Mouse
EL PERIFICO, OR SLEEP
A man throws ten thousand shovels of gravel at a window screen
propped upside a wheelbarrow so only the powder
passes into the wheelbarow and the gray rocks fall to the ground.
You musta died once to live like this.
Yeah he says I died once and I had lost my ear
so I was looking for it in a field and the stars were like a seiner's net
and then they were like a system of nerves
and then they were like a seive I came through
that right back into this country and got a job and married
the woman the first two things
she said to me in that fiery field holding in her hands
my ear were how this country now is full
only of pilgrims and residue and her name is Beatriz ending
like light ends with a z.
This was the eulogy I was not fated to deliver at my dad's memorial. It's a long story, involves anger. Rather not say now.
My dad and mom BOTH loved golf, but only after Mom decided she actually enjoyed it and had an interest did she doff her Golfing Widow Weeds. Once you get them on the course, they are hooked, sliced, and sunk, she would say..
A Man Who Loved Golf:
Boomer and Bobbye
(par four/300 words)
On behalf of my family, thank all of you for coming today.
It is tempting to memorialize my father with golfing metaphor, yet this is an inappropriate moment.
Even so--
I am human, like Boomer, and will resist the temptation to be completely decorous during this obsequy.
But I will make my attempt short and sweet, like a hole-in-one.
I may “ace” this address if I may say simply that the act of marrying Bobbye was like a “hole-in-one” for Dad: it was his stroke of luck and his stroke of genius, if you will, but he would ascribe his fortune as a gift from God, as is proper in a Christian.
His high school sweetheart was perfection to him, in spite of her peculiar breaks and swings: his swing might be off or his yardage miscalculated on occasion; and he might have missed the sweet spot any number of times; but the net score was perfection. They were a evenly matched, in my opinion.
No talk of handicapping, they played for keeps and kept it honest.
I don’t mean to sound flippant or irreverent at this solemn moment, but it is in fact not a solemn moment, but a joyous one. It doesn’t call for a mild golf clap. It requires mirth, but not frivolity.
Our honoree has reached his destiny as his partner has reached hers. They are content if anyone is content. Let’s be happy for that, among other important things.
I loved both my parents equally and love the prospect of playing the rest of my life’s round with a pleasant and well-loved foursome made up of my family, Mike, Lenna, and Tim.
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
Let us know!