Leno's New Show Featured Three Million Monkeys at Typewriters

OK 300 million can’t be wrong! Well they can but I won’t go there (not now). What I want to say is that I joined Facebook today. There were already about ten requestors waiting and anxiously wanting me to be their friend – I feel so wanted – someone from my high school (my! but  we are all getting to look so old) and a former co-worker. I haven’t seen a classmate since 1972 when I ran into one while I was still in the Army have just been medivaced out of Vietnam. I’m not sure I want to go there.- reconnecting with the past.  The last I heard I was listed as ‘whereabouts unknown’ by my class of ’66. I answered my former co-worker with an acceptance. Lets see were this goes – this social network on the Internet! I uploaded three recent works of art and left the URL for this blog in the notes field of my profile on Facebook .  Everyone has been talking up Facebook – even old  ladies – I have been overhearing it mentioned in a lot of their conversations (what are you doing lisenting in on the converseations of old ladies - Is life that monontous?) – so I just had to see for myself.

Your doubt is only the patina of shit the culture paints on those in the margins. Tomorrow the full moon is on Good Friday, / the blind face of the gods who can’t see us anymore – Jim Harrison - In Search of Small Gods, 2009 p68

Politics, except for those
      Who are its professionals
Is a thing forced upon one by
       Extraordinary circumstances


It is only an insignificant role
That we play in a periodic ritual
       Of endorsing those same
       Fulltime politicians

Time? IS money / it’s Time, it’s shit, it’s nothing / its Time with a celebrity on the cover – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p117

Does one ever find themselves
On the same side as the heroes
Without first surrendering themselves

I don’t give a shit for the law, I’ve got the power – Cornelius Vanderbilt



WATCH MY NEW SHOW

Husband and wife
Each in their automobile
Backing out of the driveway
Headed to work – he to
      The airport – Jackson

      Mississippi today

Thursdays in Buffalo

She to Walgreens to

       Stock Hallmark

       Greeting cards
The kids are all grown
Only a dog and cat remain
The grass must be mown
She planted three pots
      Of mums


Feed the dog, take out the trash
       Drive to the airport
Spend the weekend at the lake
She said she fell asleep during
       Leno’s new show last night

Spending might accomplish what fucking hadn’t – Larry McMurtry

Liberalism has yet
To adapt to a postmodern
        World
In this sense it has
        Retorgraded
Conservatism with a heart
        And a perchance
        For self-criticism
Progressives and fascists
        Are cynical
The liberal debates
        The irrelevant

That we did not fight and perhaps get killed in Spain can even today be felt as a reproach – Stephen Spender – World Within World, 1994 pxvi

This passive suffering
Of one who has only
        The deal with
The active suffering of others


Being a poet justifies a lot

Gas chamber by day and Wagner by night / “5 million” said Eichmann (it was more like 6) / Or else we want to put make-up on the face of death. / The Loved Ones (don’t say the dead) / made-up, manicured, smiling / in the Garden of Repose of Whispering Meadows – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p113

First thing that I do upon getting up is  to feed the dog – will that’s what the dog thought that  I should do. It was not what I did first – I took a pee and brushed my teeth. Wriggly (that’s the dog – a Golden Lab) followed me about and Iggy (that’s the cat) got up on the bed and wouldn’t get off so I spread the bedspread over his head. Last night he got mad when Ila (that’s his human) tried to pat him and he tried to bite her. He has a quick temper, she said. He went off and sulked. I went down to the kitchen with Wriggly a half a step ahead of me – I put water in her bowl and she stood there looking at me – that’s not at all what I want and you know it! I got down the dog food container from on top the refrigerator and measured out a cup and a half – bling ding-a-ling ding into her metal bowl – she knows to sit and wait for the command – Release! – gobble-de-gobblidy-gobble and it is all gone – it doesn’t take her long – she licks the last of the crumbs, every last one and she is ready to go out. Then I put on the coffee and make two slices of toast. By then she’s ready to come back in.

So I get on the elevator at 101 California after flashing my ID at the security guard at the front desk. I wave the badge against the magnetic reader and push the button marked ‘33”. The light next to ‘33’ is now lite red. In the back left corner is a smartly dressed Japanese businesswoman and in the right rear corner is a Japanese businessman in a gray suit with a pink tie. Very smart! I concede. I and another gentlemen are standing between them. The rules for occupying an elevator are universal. The first person in stands at the rear center facing the door. Then they move to the rear right corner as a second person enters, the one selecting his floor then moves to the rear left corner. Everyone faces the doors and all remains silent. The third person occupies the spot right in front of the floor buttons – in other words he does not move back after making his selection. There will be additional choreography for additional people entering and exiting. No choreographer need be present. No one needs to be reminded that being silent is a cardinal principle for the duration of this trip. Obviously he was the first person and she the second person to enter (they had gotten on together - he with a sweep of his right arm broke the laser beam in the elevator door and it stayed open as she entered first quickly followed by himself - I imagine all of this, I was not actually there when it transpired). There may be a slight variation of the rules for Japanese, but I am sure that they do not make much of a departure and most likely in the direction of more formality and greater defference.  Anyway these two smartly dressed Japanese businesspeople are each grasping matching Neiman Marcus shopping bags with draw strings. Their contents appear to be identical. “Matching shoppers” I say. The woman giggles. The man is stoic. They get off at 31, leaving me in solitude for two more floors.

I read that some women run with wolves / but I walk with opossums / and someday will slow to the desert tortoise’s / steady pace. / Char says that a poet has only to be there when the bread / comes out of the oven – Jim Harrison - In Search of Small Gods, 2009 p66

Daddy is pushing his infant son in a tryke that has a handle like a lawn mower (that is it is a baby carriage made to look like a cross between a joggers tricycle and a lawnmower). He was a big guy with a brown leather jacket, shaven head and a neatly trimmed goatee. The tricycle is red somewhere between that of a stop light and the Oriental woman (who I had encountered on the  bus the other day)’s felt coat. And then the man with the lawnmower baby tryke passes headed in the opposite direction, north up Fillmore at a fast pace. Instead of a brown leather jacket he is wearing a charcoal gray sweat suit with fluorescent green strips down the sleeves. Rather than big, he was somewhere between stout and obese. I evidently would not have made a very good witness. Don't make me swear to any of this.

It occurred to me that the fish we were eating were essentially the same fish eaten by Jesus and the Buddha. I was alarmed by the idea that the contents of life are indeed limited – Jim Harrison - In Search of Small Gods, 2009 p58

Now I am off to the boulaungerie for a three seed baguette. They once tried to sell me three loaves, when I had asked for a three seed baguette. I am often misinterpreted. My nephew’s Polish wife says I clip my words and run them together. She has difficulty she says understanding what I say. She often has to ask me to repeat myself. Bukowski had this problem too, not that I am a Bukowski and not because I slur my words due to drink, its because I’m trying to catch up with my thoughts and maybe it was the same with Bukowski

(Hunger isn’t just a matter of tortillas and black beans / although it’s also a matter of tortillas and black beans) – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p144