Monday Morning Music
Children of Sanchez
Took me almost an hour to find a parking space and now I need to unwind a bit before I go to bed…at 1:30 AM.
Flower Friday
with butterfly
Writing a poem can be therapeutic, but it is not therapy.
First poem in Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. I remember reading it as a boy and the pleasure it gave me, especially how the illustrations matched the poems. I think I’d forgotten this book as an early influence in my becoming a poet.
Saw Bullet Train last night. It’s a stupid movie. It’s supposed to be a kind of satire, I guess, and I know it’s based on a book, but it felt like a really bad ripoff of Kill Bill.
Monday Morning Music
War Pigs
Finished reading: It’s about Time by Barry Wallenstein 📚
Reading this book is like having an extended conversation with a good and wise friend, someone you can talk to about just about anything, who says what he has to say straightforwardly, without unnecessary adornment, and leaves you always with truly satisfying food for thought.
Starting to put the publicity together for the First Tuesdays 2022-2023 season, the tenth since I took it over in 2012, and I am excited for this lineup:
- September: Jacqueline Jones LaMon
- October: Elizabeth T. Gray
- November: Jason Schneiderman
- December: Steven Paul Alvarez
- January: Shams Momin
- February: Sara Goudarzi
- March: Elizabeth Wood
- April: Nandana Sen
- May: Andrea Carter Brown
- June: Pramila Venkateswaran
The clouds look like a mountain range behind Manhattan’s skyline.
Flower Friday
Sitting on my mother’s deck thinking about change. When it happens organically, it may be hard, but, in my experience, it always turns out “right.” On the other hand, When you try to force it, something always breaks.
Monday Morning Music
Eulogy
Casinos are places of such desperation. This is not a comment about people who enjoy gambling or who are professionals, etc. It’s a response to the overwhelming atmosphere, as I experience it, on the casino floor.
Flower Friday
Monday Morning Music
Married To The Blues
Me at Saadi’s tomb in Shiraz in 2008.
Going through my photos the other day, I realized that the angle of my right arm in this one makes it look like I’m taking a selfie. In fact, my girlfriend Pat took this in the 1980s. See how dark my hair is. I wish I remembered the cat’s name too. I adored her.
From “Simplicity,” in Barry Wallenstein’s It’s About Time:
the urge toward perfection
belongs to the body too and
issues from the same place
as sweat.
from the lovely prose poem Shroud, by Erin Moure, published in @Columba: “…to set sail in the wind of the scent of the first blade of oat of the first spring as it rose out of the soil of the first field.” Go read the whole thing!
Flower Friday
A strange message to have hanging in a restaurant’s men’s room.
Monday Morning Music
Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right
From “Calling it ruins,” by Precious Okpechi in Isele Magazine:
say you paint me an image
of the sky, i would – in the storm
of blue and roaring white
clouds – miss the kite gliding over
these mountains.