31st
December & 1st January
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Rod at
Dos Vidas. Photo by Thomas Kist from the 2006 Arjan Vlakveld film “Rod
McKuen: A Man Alone” for Netherlands Public Television. Photo ©2006,
2007 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives. All Rights Reserved.
A Thought for Today
A toast to everything that touched us all year long -
friends newly met, old friends here and gone but still remembered.
FROM the¨BOOKS
WINTER IN AMERICA
Smoke winds in columns ever up
unending furnace, appetite unquenched
and it will snow forever.
The cries of birds misjudging seasons
ring like bobsled bells, hill to valley
eave of barn to kitchen doorway.
The kitchen cat stops milk-drunk
near the sink.
Unspools herself, spools up again and sleeps,
Everything is fading.
The sky, the ground, the earth frame..
Everything.
And love
so small a thing to loom so big
in every snowman's life
is lost or gone away again. To spring perhaps.
Come home milkmaid, from the milking shed.
Mirrors everywhere, look there in ice
your own face frowning back,
another year and still no wise men
coming from the East.
Another year
where every sunset caught is forfeit
given back to its horizon line.
Winter will be long again,
winter will be long.
The cowherd boys are grumbling
and pickups take an hour to start.
We've lost the heart of everything
to slush.
In the street outside of town
no dogs raise their heads to bark.
The snow's lieutenant, sleet,
begins a walking of the guard.
Beyond the window and beyond
the fields are frozen frescos,
picture cards.
Not beautiful, but flawed
as though a crazed mechanic
worked too long,
to hard on it -
a spotless, gleaming engine
that will not run.
The Lord's off dozing, with the cattle
or the lord of manor
and doesn't care.
And yet to see it is to know
that so much love
has gone into this country's
countryscape,
as if the whole United States
has been reshaped
to fit a smaller definition.
My country, my America,
you are the frozen north
at north and south and in-between.
You're mean as age and getting meaner.
Were I God
I'd be ashamed
to show my face in such a clime.
Coast to coast it's wintertime.
Even stars have snowy coverlets.
- from "Suspension Bridge," 1984
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Monday
31 December
New Years Eve
Rex Allen o
Elizabeth Arden o
Paula Barbier o
Barbara Carrera o
Jacques Cartier o
Rosalind Cash o
Lord Cornwallis o
Burton Cummings o
Joe Dallesandro o
John Denver o
Anthony Hopkins o
Jonah Jones o
Val Kilmer o
Ben Kingsley o
Tim Matheson o
Henri Matisse o
Joe McIntyre o
Sarah Miles o
Pola Negri o
Bebe Neuwirth o
Odetta o
Nino Rota o
George Schlatter o
Patti Smith o
Goran Sollscher o
Jule Styne o
Donna Summer
Tuesday 1 January
New Year's Day
Dana Andrews o
Charles Bickford o
Xavier Cugat o
E.M. Forster o
Frances the Talking Mule o
Barry Goldwater o
Rocky Graziano o
Hank Greenberg o J.
Edgar Hoover o
Kala Sosefina o
Mileniume Kauvaka o
Carole Landis o
Frank Langella o
Country Joe McDonald o
Don Novello o
Joe Orton o
Paul Revere o
Betsy Ross o
J.D. Salinger o
Joey Stefano |
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A Toast: May your hand be full for always, if only with another hand. May your heart be empty only long enough to give you cause to fill it up again.
Here comes the miracle you prayed for but certainly didn't expect.
Looking backward helps us to go forward with
a sense of purpose.
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JEAN, ONE
for Jean, la vie, une vie |
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Noc - Noc had a party.
I remember that I came in white,
my flesh beneath
an off white parka
pale as any winter.
I must have wanted to be like
that never ending Paris snow.
And like the snow
I melted deep into the crowd.
Heady with new hang-ups
brought along across the ocean
I wanted to remain unnoticed, uninvolved.
Carefully I picked a corner
staked it out
and built a wall,
real enough to make
penetration impossible.
The Epiphany pie was passed
I sliced the smallest piece -
though I was eager for insurance
safe balm or palmistry
spelling out the year ahead.
As those things happen,
and we are not to know
just why they do,
you came through the door
sometime after nine o'clock.
No exploration,
no initial glances.
The night was moving
not by hours, but by inches.
No testing, feeling out,
we left surveillance
to professionals
becoming innocents
and amateurs
for that one evening.
Then
like children
through the streets
we stumbled and ran
eager to be home
in that hotel room bed,
discovering the truth
we knew already -
that we would fit
each others contours
doped and groggy
or alert.
Passion the penultimate.
Need the know all.
And something more,
a kindly survey
of each other
eye to eye
body to body
unafraid.
I cannot conceive
of anything we did not
or would not do together.
You were all the angels
in the Abbaye
who had waited patiently
exploring other bodies
through the years
then giving all the stored up
knowledge you had come upon
to me.
It mingled with my own
until the larder of our learning
was flowing over and overflowed.
Having come back
to a favored city
after too long a time
My need spread over you
and into you
like a mantle of want.
I held back not a nod
or wince.
I was
I am convinced
no motion or emotion
stayed fastened
to its mooring place
and no clocked-off hour
was wasted or ill spent.
The morning
and the night
and another morning came
each went away
as we grew stronger
because the pouring into
one another
came from each of us
in equal measure.
Pleasures
of the pleasure dome
not known to me
are well known now
as I look back
upon my sojourn
into your Samarkand.
So it was
we squandered
all the silence
and knelt together
in the endless night
that stretched through the days.
Your face was like
a mirror
and like Narcissus
I looked into it
with longing and with love.
Whatever else the Paris winter offered
stays a mystery.- from "We Touch The
Sky", 1978 & 1979. |
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