Picture: Psychological Self-Portrait

Sometimes You're the Bug.

Limerick Elsewhere: Grammar Police

In response to a limerick-capped discussion of a new round of student-bashing English 'education', I had to respond (I think I got it right: it's in moderation):

We strive to teach students clarity
and sometimes we end up with hilarity
but if they don't learn
from betting that burn
they'll treat us with similar charity.

In other words, if we put our effort into teaching them to write precisely before teaching them to think effectively, they'll view us, quite correctly, as scolds and neurotics.

Archaeological Limerick

In response to a call for a poetic response to the discovery of an old sailing ship under the World Trade Center site, I wrote:

We build on the bones of the past
Small things first, then monuments vast
When things fall apart
we go back to the start
and sometimes dig up an old mast.

Maybe it would work better as haiku....

Inauguration Lyrics: Power and Glory

The Power and the Glory
by Phil Ochs

Come and take a walk with me thru this green and growing land
Walk thru the meadows and the mountains and the sand
Walk thru the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk thru the sun and walk thru the rain

Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all (on us all)

From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new
Texas and Ohio and the California shore
Tell me, who could ask for more?

Chorus

Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

Chorus

Comment elsewhere: Current Events Sonnet

The first quatrain just popped out; the rest took a little longer, but it was shockingly easy. I blame Rich Puchalsky for reminding me how much fun it is to dash off a piece, and inspiring me to attempt sonnets. here it is:

The Dow Jones is collapsing
Midterm grades are due
Yom Kippur was relaxing
And slightly slimming, too.

McCain is on the road to hell
And Palin's going with him
Obama's doing oddly well
and planning his transition

Almost up to 1789
World history has this rhythm
Great depression's on my mind
Also early fascism

And while the world goes bad to worse
I calm myself by writing verse.

Go to sleep, you weary hobo....

Utah "Bruce" Phillips has passed away. He was a singer/songwriter, a hobo in the grand classic style, but also an historian, both archival and oral. Oh, and an unparalleled storyteller. I never saw him perform, but my spouse did, and says that he spent so much time telling stories that he only got through about four songs! His breakthrough recording, in fact, was a story, Moose Turd Pie:

The worst job I ever had was working for the Pacific Railroad, doing a thing called "gandy-dancing." Now most of you know the railroad was built partially by Irish labor. Well, back then the workers would use this long handled shovel, made by the Gandy Shovel Company of Great Neck New York. Well, they'd shove one end of the shovel under a railroad tie, and then run out to the other end of the shovel, when they could find it, and do a little jig on it, and they called it "gandy-dancin'". This would lift the tie up so they could shove gravel under it, which would level the roadbed, so when the train came along, it wouldn't tip over, which would be a real drag for everyone.

Well, nowadays, they run three cars out on the rail: a bunk car, an equipment car, and a mess car. The only thing they don't give you is a cook. The bosses figure you'll find out who the best cook is, and use him. Well, they were wrong. Y'see, they just find out who complains the loudest about the cooking, and he gets to be the cook. Well, that was me, see. Ol' aligator mouth. That was the worst food I'd ever had, and I complained about it. Things like "dog bottom pie" and "pheasant sweat." I thought it was garbage. So I complained. And everyone said, "alright, you think you can do better? You're the cook." Well, that made me mad, see? But I knew, that anyone who complained about my cooking, they were gonna have to cook.

Armed with that knowledge, I sallied forth, over the muddy river. I was walking along, and I saw just this hell of a big moose turd, I mean it was a real steamer! So I said to myself, "self, we're going to make us some moose turd pie." So I tipped that prairie pastry on its side, got my sh*t together, so to speak, and started rolling it down towards the cook car: flolump, flolump, flolump. I went in and made a big pie shell, and then I tipped that meadow muffin into it, laid strips of dough across it, and put a sprig of parsley on top. It was beautiful, poetry on a plate, and I served it up for dessert.

Well, this big guy come into the mess car, I mean, he's about 5 foot forty, and he sets himself down like a fool on a stool, picked up a fork and took a big bite of that moose turd pie. Well he threw down his fork and he let out a bellow, "My God, that's moose turd pie!"

"It's good though."

Phillips wrote any number of songs that sound like they've been around forever. My favorite, though, isn't a hobo song, but a simple romantic statement of faith:

"The Hymn Song"
(Bruce Phillips)

You know I think if lady luck was blind
That old sun would never shine
And I believe if death really held a knife
We'd all be beggars of life

Chorus:
I believe if I lived my life again
I'd still be here with you
I believe if I lived my life again
I'd still be here with you

Sometimes I wish that I could close my eyes
To some things I don't want to see
But I believe if you lived your life again
You'd still be here with me

Chorus

I'll never see the ending of my mind
Everything will have a time
Why should I ask for things that I don't need
Or pretty lies to hide my greed

Chorus

Thursday Lyric: The Last Chance

The portions in italics are spoken, not sung.
The transcription is my own, and I am guessing about punctuation and line breaks.

The Last chance
by Leon Rosselson

It was The Last Chance.
It was a nightclub in the desert called the Last Chance
a cluttered dive of stones and wheels,
it was a refuge for the rootless of the world washed up
like driftwood on the sand
And we were there.
it seemed so long ago.

They came from nowhere.
The lost the broken and the mad, as if from nowhere
they blundered in like blind invaders
while Mahalia boomed a gospel song
and candles blurred the gloom,
they drank and argued till the dawn
had drained the night away.

Among the seekers after oil or truth or a home;
Among the businessmen, the pickpockets and whores,
among the soldiers and the tourists, Some had names, and histories
Meier, with his stone bald head built like a butcher, which he was
He made his money dealing in pork, though not on the Sabbath
They said his parents were killed in Belsen
They said he saw his sister raped
but no one really knew.
Stories swirled about like dust on the desert wind.
You never knew what was true.
but in the end it didn't really matter. There he was.
And Sam, with his mournful expression
and his mobile face like crumpled leather,
there he was, a dancer. Light, light on his feet.
Theirs was a needle match, each trying to outscore the other
Sam out of mischief
Meier out of a desire for victory.
so they came out of opposite corners of the ring in every argument --
everything was an argument.
like the Sinai campaign.
For Meier that was the time of glory.
"That was when we found out we were strong," he said.
"Strong?" shrugged Sam. "Who needs it?"
So Meier pinned his arm behind his back
and forced him to his knees.
"You do, Jew," he said.
The general opinion was that Meier won that round.

They came from nowhere.
The lost the broken and the mad, as if from nowhere.
they blundered in like blind invaders
while Mahalia boomed a gospel song
and candles blurred the gloom
they drank and argued till the dawn
had drained the night away

Do you remember?
the day the Bedouins came to town
I still remember
the women waiting still as stone
their silent shapes cocooned in black against the whitewashed walls
that echoed back the sun to blind the eyes
ghosts from another world

"You know what's wrong with Israel?" said Meier one night.
"I know," said Sam, dancing in grinning. "Too many Arabs, right?"
"Wrong," said Meier, "too many Jews. Look at them.
Rabble. They don't speak Hebrew, half of them. Rabble.
Take the Yemenis: donkey riders.
Never set foot in a bus before they came here.
And their women? all whores."
"What about Rumanians?" Sam threw in obligingly.
"All thieves," said Meier.
"They say all Hungarians are bald", said Sam,
and raised his eyes to the heavens.
Meier ignored him.
"We must forge one nation," he said.
"We must weld the youth into one nation."
"Why?" said Sam. "How?" said Sam.
"In the fire," Meier went on.
"In the heat of battle, we will become one nation.
Under King Solomon, Israel was a great nation,
rich and powerful. One day she will be so again."
Sam sighed. "We are Jews," he said.
"Why should our children turn into Israelis?"
"History loves a winner," said Meier.
"No more guilt. No more fear.
No more being strangers.
No more being different."
"I like being different," Sam said, throwing his arms out.
"I want to be different."
Meier stood up and pointed a thick finger and yelled,
"He thinks he's funny. This Jew thinks he's funny.
No wonder they fed you into the gas ovens."

Do you remember?
the day the Bedouins came to town
I still remember
the women waiting still as stone
their silent shapes cocooned in black
against the whitewashed walls that echoed back the sun
to blind the eyes
ghosts from another world

across the desert,
the road carved southward to the Red Sea through the desert
a cratered moonscape made of sand.
we saw the burning fists of rock
and felt the wind that sucked us dry
and heard those urging, stirring songs:
always new lands to tame

Meier like telling stories of how,
in the War of Independence, he blew up Arab houses.
He knew Sam would become agitated.
It would turn Sam inside out.
"It was not true," he said, "you did not do that."
"Why not?" said Meier, "Facts.
Now there's nothing left for them to return to.
only stones. Let them find homes with their own kind."
"I want nothing to do with such facts," said Sam.
"Where would you be without them?" sneered Meier.
"we made this country," he said. "Before us, what was there?
Marshland, desert.
The promise was to us: the desert shall blossom like a rose."
"They were people," said Sam, "like us, with hopes and dreams."
"Hopes, dreams." Meier spat the words out.
"You think you can buy the future with dreams?"
And he took a pile of notes from his pocket
and threw them on the table.
"There," he said. "Facts, Money. Don't give me your dreams."
Sam turned away and began to find a dance with his feet,
like a child taking its first steps
while Mahalia sang on,
her voice intense with the joy and pain of believing.
But Meier wasn't finished.
"This man is full of dreams," he taunted, "full of could-have-beens:
a dancer he could have been. A mime artist he could have been."
"It's true," said Sam, as he moved and swayed to the music.
"I could have been a great mime artist."
and slowly, his mournful face upturned and his hands outstreched,
he wove a strange shuffling dance,
around the pillers and the wheels and the homemade stools,
round the stolen signpost indicatingRumna 45 kilometers away,
round the lacquered stones and pieces of driftwood
twisted, gnarled and desolated by the wind and the waves.
Meier's stone bald head seemed to swell with fury.
"Displaying himself," he said contemptously. "Where's the dignity?"
And he pushed aside his congac and pulled himself to his feet
and picked up a stone and gripped it in his bunched fist
and in his eyes was a peculiar sort of hatred.
And suddenly, the jangle of noise, the chattering, the shouting,
the laughing, fell away to a whisper; everyone turned to watch.
There was only the sound of Mahalia singing
and the shuffling steps of Sam's dance.
Could we have guessed then how it would be?
Could we have seen then in Meier's eyes those certainties,
Facts: the houses torn apart, the torture, the weeping,
the children burning, the fragmentation bombs, the phosphorous bombs.
Facts: The shortest distance between the past and the future.
But we saw only Meier, stone in his fist,
and waited in silence for what he would do.
"Sit down," he said in a low voice, "sit down."
Then he hurled the stone with all his force,
not at Sam exactly, but still, at him
It smashed against a pillar and clattered to the floor.
Sam froze, stopped dancing.
A silent shake in the candle gloom.
his mournful face crumpled and yellow
It seemed to us he was about to cry,
then he put his arms about his head as if to protect himself,
turning in on himself.
"I want to go home," he said. "I want to go home."

They came from nowhere.
The lost the broken and the mad, as if from nowhere
they blundered in like blind invaders
while Mahalia boomed a gospel song and candles blurred the gloom.
they drank and argued till the dawn had drained the night away.

It was The Last Chance.
It was a nightclub in the desert called The Last Chance
a cluttered dive of stones and wheels
it was a refuge for the rootless of the world
washed up like driftwood on the sand
And we were there.
it was so long ago.

Thursday Verses: The Nurse's Song

We've been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl. After an evening of reading political blogs and contemplating our present predicament, my spouse suggested this as a suitable poetic offering. I agree. This was published in 1972, so it was written when Bush hadn't even started going AWOL yet. And, despite this warning, here we are.

You can find a plot summary to put it in context here, and I stole the text from here.

The Nurse's Song

This mighty man of whom I sing,
The greatest of them all,
Was once a teeny little thing,
Just eighteen inches tall.

I knew him as a tiny tot,
I nursed him on my knee.
I used to sit him on the pot
And wait for him to wee.

I always washed between his toes,
And cut his little nails.
I brushed his hair and wiped his nose
And weighed him on the scales.

Through happy childhood days he strayed,
As all nice children should.
I smacked him when he disobeyed,
And stopped when he was good.

It soon began to dawn on me
He wasn't very bright,
Because when he was twenty-three
He couldn't read or write.

"What shall we do?" his parents sob.
"The boy has got the vapors!
He couldn't even get a job
Delivering the papers!"

"Ah-ha," I said, "this little clot
Could be a politician."
"Nanny," he cried, "Oh Nanny, what
A super proposition!"

"Okay," I said, "let's learn and note
The art of politics.
Let's teach you how to miss the boat
And how to drop some bricks,
And how to win the people's vote
And lots of other tricks.

Let's learn to make a speech a day
Upon the T.V. screen,
In which you never never say
Exactly what you mean.
And most important, by the way,
In not to let your teeth decay,
And keep your fingers clean."

And now that I am eighty nine,
It's too late to repent.
The fault was mine the little swine
Became the President.

Historical Mad Lib

This comes from a political exchange between two poets. Can you guess the people about whom this is written?

If you can convince the [________] that your armies are bombing their cities and rendering their women and children homeless beggars -- those of them that are not transformed into "mutilated mud-fish", to borrow one of your own phrases --, if you can convince these victims that they are only being subjected to a benevolent treatment which will in the end "save" their nation, it will no longer be necessary for you to convince us of your country's noble intentions. Your righteous indignation against the "polluted people" who are burning their own cities and art treasures (and presumably bombing their own citizens) to malign your soldiers, reminds me of Napoleon's noble wrath when he marched into a deserted Moscow and watched its palaces in flames. I should have expected from you who are a poet at least that much of imagination to feel, to what inhuman despair a people must be reduced to willingly burn their own handiwork of years', indeed centuries', labour. And even as a good nationalist, do you seriously believe that the mountain of bleeding corpses and the wilderness of bombed and burnt cities that is every day widening between your two countries, is making it easier for your two peoples to stretch your hands in a clasp of ever-lasting good will?

Yes, I think it sounds a lot like Iraq, too. I'll put the answer in comments, or you can read the whole exchange.

Thursday Verses: The Uncultured Rhymer to His Cultured Critics

Thanks to Penny Richards for noting his birthday recently, and pointing me to this incredible archive of Lawson's work.

My students probably feel this way about me sometimes (I'm not a grammar nut, mind you, but I do believe in the value of clarity and evidence) but that doesn't mean that I can't feel this way about other figures in my life.

The Uncultured Rhymer To His Cultured Critics
By Henry Lawson (1910)

Fight through ignorance, want, and care —
Through the griefs that crush the spirit;
Push your way to a fortune fair,
And the smiles of the world you’ll merit.
Long, as a boy, for the chance to learn —
For the chance that Fate denies you;
Win degrees where the Life-lights burn,
And scores will teach and advise you.
My cultured friends! you have come too late
With your bypath nicely graded;
I’ve fought thus far on my track of Fate,
And I’ll follow the rest unaided.
Must I be stopped by a college gate
On the track of Life encroaching?
Be dumb to Love, and be dumb to Hate,
For the lack of a college coaching?

You grope for Truth in a language dead —
In the dust ’neath tower and steeple!
What know you of the tracks we tread?
And what know you of our people?
‘I must read this, and that, and the rest,’
And write as the cult expects me? —
I’ll read the book that may please me best,
And write as my heart directs me!

You were quick to pick on a faulty line
That I strove to put my soul in:
Your eyes were keen for a ‘dash’ of mine
In the place of a semi-colon —
And blind to the rest. And is it for such
As you I must brook restriction?
‘I was taught too little?’ I learnt too much
To care for a pedant’s diction!

Must I turn aside from my destined way
For a task your Joss would find me?
I come with strength of the living day,
And with half the world behind me;
I leave you alone in your cultured halls
To drivel and croak and cavil:
Till your voice goes further than college walls,
Keep out of the tracks we travel!

Thursday Verses: Knots

(I know it's not Thursday yet, but I'm going to be busy tomorrow. Also for most of the weekend, so I won't be doing much blog stuff 'til next week)

Reminds me of teaching, especially in that first year.

"Knots" (1970)
- R. D. Laing [via]

There is something I don't know
that I am supposed to know.
I don't know what it is I don't know,
and yet I am supposed to know,
And I feel I look stupid
if I seem both not to know it
and not know what it is I don't know.
Therefore, I pretend I know it.
There is nerve-wracking since I don't
know what I must pretend to know.
Therefore, I pretend I know everything.

Thursday Verses: Doing Nothing

Heard this morning on Garrison Keilor's Writer's Almanac. He's rarely political in that venue, and this isn't explicitly political, either. It's just a meditation on a moment of human life, and I've been there, too.

Doing Nothing
by Dan Gerber from A Primer on Parallel Lives. © Copper Canyon Press.

When I passed him near the bus stop
on Union Square while the cops
cuffed his hands behind his back, while he
said, "I didn't do anything,"
I didn't, either,
do anything but look away,
a little afraid they might cuff me
if I paid too much attention,
and walked on still wondering
what he might've done
and still more what I
might've done.

Thursday Verses

An occasional series of music lyrics and poetry, inspired by Hugo Schwyzer

My writings
2005 January 14: Teaching Haiku
2005 July 14: Home Repair Haiku
2005 August 23: Political Limerick: Shorter Kieran Healy
2005 November 13: Stick Your Finger In God's Eye
2006 February 16: Vermin Haiku
2006 April 16: Fibonacci Poems
2006 April 16: A Simple Truth (Fib)
2006 May 26: four haiku, one of which won an eCherry
2006 June 24: A quick and dirty limerick in honor of the return of a poetry carnival.
2008 October 9: Current Events Sonnet
2008 December 20: Haiku, Limerick and Fib in honor of Terry's fourth blogiversary.

Other People:
2004 Nov 25: Thanksgiving Eve by Bob Franke
2004 Dec 2: After The Singing by Rod MacDonald
2005 Feb 3: Don't You Let Nobody Turn You 'Round by Tom Paxton
2005 March 17: The Shame of Going Back by Henry Lawson
2005 April 22: Hills of West Virginia by Phil Ochs
2005 May 5: Malcolm Solves His Problems With A Chainsaw by the Arrogant Worms
2005 May 19: World Turned Upside Down by Leon Rosselson
2005 June 2: The Kind of Love You Never Recover From by Christine Lavin
2005 June 16: Delivery Delayed by Stan Rogers
2005 June 23: Why Walk When You Can Fly by Mary-Chapin Carpenter
2005 June 28: Green Hills of Earth by Robert Heinlein
2005 July 7: After All by Henry Lawson
2005 July 21: If I Were Taken Now by Fred Small
2005 August 11: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right by Bob Dylan
2005 August 18: The Old Sailor by A.A.Milne
2005 August 25: Turning Toward the Morning by Gordon Bok
2005 September 15: The Dodger Song
2005 September 22: For Everyman by Jackson Browne
2005 October 6: Adon Olam by Solomon Rossi (16-17c)
2005 October 20: White Squall by Stan Rogers
2005 November 10: Questions from A Worker Who Reads by Bertolt Brecht
2005 November 17: Suzanne by Leonard Cohen
2005 December 1: Their Way by Bob Blue
2005 December 8: Don Quixote by Gordon Lightfoot
2005 December 15: Great Historical Bum by Woody Guthrie
2005 December 22: That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round by John Prine
2006 January 19: Waiting for the B Train by Christine Lavin
2006 January 28: Guantanamera by José Martí
2006 February 8: Waking the Dead By Joe Ivory Mattingly
2006 February 9: This Looks Familiar by Gonzo
2006 February 13: Mr. Blue by Tom Paxton
2006 February 23: Zen Gospel Singing by Mark Graham
2006 March 2: Brown Shirts by John Gorka
2006 March 23: Song of the Candle by Stan Rogers
2006 April 20: Poem for My Little Boy by Li Shangyin
2006 May 18: Number One in America by David Massengill
2006 June 15: Arrow by Cheryl Wheeler
2006 June 22: Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot
2006 September 7: Stormfront by Garnet Rogers
2006 September 27: In Broken Images by Robert Graves
2006 October 5: Montreal, December '89 by Judy Small
2006 November 8: Alleluia, The Great Storm Is Over by Bob Franke
2006 November 23: Love's Been Linked To The Blues by David Olney
2006 December 7: Stand Up For Judas by Leon Rosselson
2006 December 9: Ballad of The Carpenter by Phil Ochs
2006 December 22: Presidential Rag by Arlo Guthrie
2007 March 22: Muddy Water by Phil Rosenthall
2007 March 29: Binary Addendum by Suzette Haden Elgin
2007 April 26: Doing Nothing by Dan Gerber
2007 May 1: Know that I am Loved by Christy Simpson
2007 May 10: Magic Muffin Dance by Christy Simpson
2007 June 13: Knots by R. D. Laing
2007 July 19: The Uncultured Rhymer to His Cultured Critics by Henry Lawson
2007 December 6: The Nurse's Song by Roald Dahl
2008 March 13: The Last Chance by Leon Rosselson
2008 May 27: "Moose Turd Pie" and "The Hymn Song" by U. Utah Phillips.