19th & 20th October, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Details of Rod at The Luckman in November - click here

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Edward Habib McKuen. ©2006 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives

A Thought for Today

Wisdom lurks between the lines; it's seldom verbalized or written down.

 

This One Does It For Me!

MIND MINDER

A butterfly flies up
inside my head,
consuming all my early years
the memory of just yesterday,
other loves and lives
I might have known or knew.

He sits and eats away
within that place I’ve lived
where he now lives.

Please remember for me
all those things
that need remembering.
Let me use your head
                  as mine.

I ask that you
attempt to lead me,
to carry me aloft
bend down to scoop me up,
to ferry me across my life
as you would a child
across a too deep river.
You are the end of me,
and my new beginning.

You are my brother
and my wife.
My lover and my son.
My mother and my husband
                 my teacher
and the one I long to teach.

The woman
that I dreamed of finding
the friend who never was.

You transcend gender,
eliminate September,
add another month of Sundays
to a calendar well worn.

I will be for you
             whatever works.
I will work to make you be,
while you eliminate
the buzzing, ringing sound
that permeates my brain
                           of late.
A butterfly
and maybe more
is buzzing in my head.
If he should eat it all away
you’ve head enough for both of us.

If caterpillars crawl
down through my brain
you’ve brain enough
to see us both through
this thing that has seized me,
seized us both at once.

- from "The Sea Around Me, " 1976, 1977

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notable birthdays

Thursday 19 October

Jack Anderson o Robert Beatty o Amy Carter o Divine o Sean Garrison o Jean Genet o Omar Gooding o Lloyd Haynes o Jennifer Holliday o Evander Holyfield o John LeCarre o John Lithgow o Tony LoBianco o Walter Mathews o Peter Max o Lewis Mumford o George Nader o Troy Parker o Robert Reed o Jeannie C. Riley o Johnny Stompanato

Friday 20 October
Hawkes Bay Anniversary (New Zealand)

Herschel Bernardi o Dr. Joyce Brothers o Roosevelt Brown o Art Buchwald o Barrie Chase o Robert Craft o Snoop Doggy Dogg o Margaret Dumont o Michael Dunn o Arlene Francis o (Mother) Dolores Hart o Charles Ives o Wanda Jackson o Grandpa Jones o Bela Lugosi o Mickey Mantle o Brown Meggs o Donnii Minogue o Vigo Mortensen o Anna Neagle o Fayard Nicholas o Jerry Orbach o Tom Petty o Arthur Rimbaud o Will Rogers, Jr. o Christopher Wren

Rod's random thoughts If all the world's a stage, try to get decent seats.

Love is more a single movement than a symphony.

Contempt for people's baser habits hinders contemplation.

TWENTY SIX / BROWN OCTOBER

Leaves fall down now
         brown and beautiful
     brittle to the touch
lying on the ground or filling public fountains.
Swirling down the street,
catching in the gutters
             and diverting little streams of water.

Brown October leaves
          trampled under foot
banged about by brooms that sweep the gutters 
                    clean.

I remembered today
that among the silly things you saved
                was a brown and yellow leaf
pressed between the pages of a book somewhere.

We found it in the park, remember ?

I shook out every book I owned to find it. 
                                   Still it's lost,
or owned these days by Hemingway or Whitman.
Maybe even Gertrude Stein.
Would she know what to do 
                with a brown and yellow leaf ?
And would she give it back ?

- from "Listen To The Warm", 1967

 
     
 
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