Tuesday, March 31, 2009

blue

I never really noticed the color of her eyes before although we worked close together, but then she was alone on the park bench looking down at her shoes, and I walked by surprised to see her there and whispering her name she looked up and she was crying, her tears washing aside the final strokes of a portrait of sorrow.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Woody

Woody's fable on injustice,
in Tails Of Manhattan,
from The New Yorker.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Half Wits!



From January 1983.

"I don't follow you."

Friday, March 27, 2009

inventions

You have this box, and put it on top of a post, and waaLA! you got yourself a postbox.
Stick the post into the ground, and people will come by and feed it postcards like tossing morsels to pigeons from a park bench.

What a beautiful concept. And to really capture the attention of pigeons you can even paint various styles of the concept green.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

a cookie parable

Saturday, March 21, 2009

one day into Spring

I let Old Man Winter stay one last day. This morning, after loading his dripping suitcase into the trunk, I drove him down to the bus station and then kicked him in the ass, water dripping from beneath his overcoat. He dropped his cardboard suitcase on the brick sidewalk causing it to burst open, its contents spilling. Ice cube trays and my copy of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit fell out. It was soggy and ruined. I kicked him again. He started to cry, plus his hair was dripping. I said, "your hair is dripping." He just shoved his old hat down further. And the bus driver made him sit up front. I noticed he got on the wrong bus and was heading south.

***
Spring
(Lord Alfred Tennyson)
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail,
On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood, that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too: and my regret
Become an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.

Friday, March 20, 2009

time to spare


1905


I lived there 80 years on for awhile, and even though those wheel tracks've long since vanished into the soil, there remained an old style black box with flimsy lid at eye level attached to my apartment house.

I imagine there is time to stop for a friendly chat with plenty of slow motion hours to deliver all the postcards before pff fades into the sunset.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

will you go lassie, go

Just a couple of legends.



From Pete Seeger's educational folk-music television show, Rainbow Quest, February 1966.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

if ever you were mine




performed by Cherish The Ladies

the presidential motorcade

How I invision it..

1st limo: 'H' and The Twins, his beloved teleprompters strapped in snugly riding up front

2nd Limo: speechwriters and 'advisers' squished up against each other, one desperate sweaty face pressed up against a window

3rd Limo: a basketball

4th Limo: wife and kids

Friday, March 13, 2009

drive on by and don't make eye contact


What to do if you're a postman delivering with these 3 out by their mailbox. They seem harmless enough, but you can always drive by, turn around, and come back when they're through making sudden moves with those flailing arms.

Or, maybe they're just excited because it's Friday, and they know it's PPF!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Kerouac on his birthday(1922)

Lo, in the morning I woke up and it was beautiful blue sunshine sky and I went out in my alpine yard and there it was, everything Japhy said it was, hundreds of miles of pure snow-covered rocks and virgin lakes and high timber, and below, instead of the world, I saw a sea of marshmallow clouds flat as a roof and extending miles and miles in every direction, creaming all the valleys, what they call low-level clouds, on my 6600-foot pinnacle it was all far below me. I brewed coffee on the stove and came out and warmed my mist-drenched bones in the hot sun of my little woodsteps.

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (1958)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

spiritual

The death of an old man is not a tragedy
~ Robert Altman

That may be true,
but to believe that is true
does little to console the grieving.

For Doris and her Grandfather...


Josh Haden, "Spiritual"

Friday, March 6, 2009

flaming postcards

Fire
extinguisher at the ready.

Hats of the dedicated pulled down, bills straight.

Serious looking driver leaves engine running at the curb, hand gripping wheel.

Penny postcard addressed to Marie Reed carefully removed from iron box.

It must be PFF.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

your talk show too

It's been over a year, so I thought I'd bring this back...

The phone rings. The frantic voice on the other end begs you to fill in one evening for a missing host.
You say no! They plead.
You say, ok, you'll do it, but you must have your choice of:

1)opening theme song
2)celebrity sidekick
3)sponsor
4)one actor/actress/director, etc..
5)one musical act and name of song
6)the last thing you say signing off
7)your closing theme song

You're on. 3..2..1..lights come up..GO!

mine:
1)'L-O-V-E' (Nat King Cole)
2)Joe Pesci
3)Kellogg's Fruit Loops
4)Clint Eastwood
5)She & Him..."Sentimental Heart"
6)"remember..tomorrow night is my anniversary show!"
7)'Lil Darlin'(Count Basie)

gambling with our money

Oh the irony.

The silhouette on local billboards and in newspaper ads promoting Indiana's new casino is unmistakable.
The impersonated voice on the accompanying radio ad is definitely the Current Occupant.



And here, his reckless spending, gambling with our money, is going to destroy our free market system.

Simply amazing. Change we can believe in.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

March

March is a tomboy with tousled hair,
a mischievous smile,
mud on her shoes
and a laugh in her voice.


~ Hal Borland
(1900-1978)

website number calculator

Hundreds, no thousands! of you have written to me recently asking to explain how to ascertain the unlisted number of your favorite websites.
Most of the letters, greeting me warmly as Dear Shithead, have arrived just in the last few days (after I've skipped down the walkway to my small mailbox hoping to find free candy in a promised 'for official use only' yellow government envelope), following the televised appearance of Vice-President Joe Biden, a man whom you all know(pictured below with his new teeth!), a member of the smartest, cleanest, and articulated administration in the history of the world.

So, here's how it works: to find the number of a particular website on the internets what you do is take the tangent motion of the angle, constant only at a radius divided at the derivative, commonly known as t/r^5, usually a positive fraction A pedibus usque ad caput Ab initio Lusus naturae.

That's all there is to it. And keep those letters!

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