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Edward & Rod: The Brother's McKuen.
Photographed by Diane Kopperman, May 2002 at BB King's New York City
A Thought for Today
The only thing we own without condition
is experience.
FROM the¨BOOKS
Today’s poetry comes from Looking for a Friend, Love’s Been Good to Me and
The Sound of Solitude.
SLOW DANCE ON THE MATING GROUND
You said your name
while we were walking home,
my mind was on
ahead
already settled up atop the covers,
and who you are still circles
in the outside air
unlearned, so unremembered.
We beat down brainwaves
with makeshift conversation,
stay locked in stories started
not worth
ending,
and when a sentence
made of thought arrives and stops
we fail to recognize it for itself.
I would not burn words,
but here beneath your tent of hair
communication voice to ear
is all
but useless
as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
revives us both
and tells us more about each other
than all the family histories
printed on the widest page.
Forgive me
if your name seems unimportant,
I only just
discovered
your appendix scar,
while learning what you are.
Your legs are sentences
not said aloud to me before,
literate enough to challenge wordsmiths.
Your breath tell stories new to me
your mouth puts Gulliver in reach.
Fact and fiction meet
behind your tongue.
I swallow mouthfuls of it
while I swallow you.
Whole dictionaries pass between us
in a blur
the way the night is passing.
Your hand. One more time.
Spread it back across my face
and feel the stories inside lines
that time has carved here.
I say hello by traversing
your eyelids with my own.
Body conversation
proves your thighs to be
not just the framework of the world
but intellectuals in themselves.
The universe beyond this mattress
holds more danger than a fog.
I will not let you leave
or go beyond my eyes protection.
No world is larger now
than that landmass above your eyes.
- from "The Sound of Solitude," 1983
Nocturne
At twilight
spires pierce the middle air
as if to feel their way
through clouds and into
God’s green garden
and protected grass.
Later when the midnight comes
they venture further
perhaps into His living space.
I wonder how He greets
these round, well meaning domes
with pleasure or indifference.
Depending on His boredom
or the bacchanal
of cheribim and seraphim
in
progress.
I expect He welcomes
all the brave intruders
especially if their curiosity
is gently mixed with love.
Midnight’s’
not as desperate
as we’re told
we should believe it is.
Loving and the act of love
is only one more affirmation
that God in heaven
walks and runs
and somersaults
living on to see
all things His hands created
die, arise and live again.
– from “Love’s Been Good to Me,” 1979
It takes a lot of hands on work to put together the daily flight
plan and no one is more ‘hands on’ than our webmaster Ken. Too often we
forget to acknowledge those behind the scenes who enable us to get through
our days productively and with ease and confidence.
So, please join me in a round of applause and a gusty Happy Birthday to
Priscilla Blackie! Thanks for your patience and love that helps deliver
Ken’s talent to so many people all over the world every day of every year.
And a low and personal bow from the man who benefits most.
RM 10/21/2002 8:27 PM PST Previously unpublished.
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(posted 09/28/2002).
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