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5th & 6th October, 2006
Details of Rod at The
Luckman in November - click here
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Photo by
Edward Habib McKuen. ©2006 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives
A Thought for Today
There are solutions
unspoken as there are reveries as yet untapped.
FROM the¨BOOKS
AUTUMN AS IT IS
Autumn as a season
and autumn as a life
are different
than I first expected.
The first, an abstract;
the second, a subtract.
The leaves turn crimson,
the hair turns white.
The leaves fall down,
as do testicles
and the firmest breast.
The dream goes on
for trees and man.
The difference is
the tree survives
the harshest winter,
but man may get
a simple cough
and raw will be
the days that follow.
It is as it is. It was as it was.
Nothing changes
but the scenes and seasons.
Worry not. It is only life
and that is all we have.
It often isnt much
but nearly always quite enough.
-from A Safe Place to Land", 2001
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Thursday 5 October
Karen Allen o
Chester A. Arthur o
Susan Badger o
Josie Bissette o
Peter Brown o
Diane Cilento o
Jeff Conaway o
Bill Dana o
Johnny Duncan o
Larry Fine o
Bob Geldof o
Richard Gordon o
Grant Hill o
Glynis Johns o
Ray Kroc o
Mario Lemieux o
Joshua Logan o
Allan Ludden o
Guy Pearce o
Donald Pleasence o
George Rebh o
Patrick Roy o
Cecilia Salvesen o
Ovidu Varga o
Horace Walpole o
Kate Winslet
Friday
6 October
Sukkot begins at Sundown / Chinese Mid Autumn Festival / United
Nations Childrens Day
Shana Alexander o
Paul Badura-Skoda o
Henry Chadwick o
Alan Copeland o Le
Corbusier o
Jerome Cowan o
Britt Ekland o
Bill Gallagher o
Janet Gaynor o
Gary Gentry o
Charles Hallam o
Thor Heyerdahl o
Amy Jo Johnson o
Jenny Lind o
Carole Lombard o
Elizabeth Shue o
Millie Small o Li
Ta-chao o
Fred Travelena o
George Westinghouse o
Helen Wills o
Stephanie Zimbalist |
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Humility is the mirror on the inside.
If love is a folly, hate is insanity.
I'll try anything once and anything that doesn't hurt, more
than once.
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GOING HOME:
A QUESTION OF BALANCE |
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Beretta's gone.
That voice so haunting
in the Porter / Coward song
has not been stilled
but now fills other halls,
sends new lovers home
to fresh-made bed and breakfast
in Eastern cities.
Ginsberg comes home on occasion
and Snyder carries North Beach ever onward -
not so much a tattered banner
(the City Lights have never dimmed)
but now it's more a whim to him than cause.
Because the old haunts haunt us
I go back.
And yes you can go home again -
sameness, once allowed to set
will supercede each change
and what we find and name call strangeness.
Those of us addicted,
infected with dependency of time and place,
will always have a home here,
if not homecoming.
What serves and saves us
is our own hard overriding need
forever pumping adrenaline into the landscape.
I arrive furloughlike
on R. & R. without the hell-raise bent
knowing no one anymore but knowing
there are those
convinced beyond mere reckoning
that they know me.
It's true
you are not a hero in your own hometown
unless you've got a weekly series running
or rerunning every day.
But even that is danger-bent.
The mask must never slip.
The dancer must waltz endlessly,
he's not allowed to dip or turn
or do-si-do, without rehearsal.
Still San Francisco always gives back
better than we give.
It is a luxury to merely walk the wharf.
Day workers jingle take home pay
that would stagger millionaires,
coin of the realm in ambiance.
But none of us are heroes
in a hero city.
Praise singers only.
Caen's Baghdad or Dong Kingman's splashy thrust
are pastel backdrops for the Ferlinghetti muse,
mad or merry.
Every Delaplane postcard home
is not greeted with
surprise
and Pike went mad at sunrise.
O'Flaherty will talk convincingly
of how the old town's gone,
Keene eyes no longer look from every gallery,
(ample argument for plus and minus still).
Sparky's strip's been quartered,
cut apart,
analyzed more often than Miss Doda's.
He survives, we all do.
It is the city and surrounding squares
that give us give and take.
Being in and out of one another's favor
and embrace
cause each of us to try the longer stride
next time.
Jose, that Sunday diva with soprano reach
should set it all to music.
Butterfly in one act only.
Can you imagine Ginsberg
not yet declared a monument by government ?
It's a tantamount to winking off Niagara
and Grand Rapids in a single blink or wank.
So he comes home to San Francisco,
now and then.
Lots of give and take here, not just take.
When I was younger, way back when,
Willie Kapell slam-dashed into
a San Francisco mountain top.
No one's made a painting
or a poem of it yet.
(Not even one of eighteen variations.)
Most San Francisco tragedies stay unadorned.
This lack of advertisement
is what makes The City great.
True, the Chronicle chronicles
each leap from bridge, keeps count.
But names of divers are not etched on pilings.
Death is not always dignified by chisel
as life is not propelled by good words only.
Oh, but we love the adjectives
and we should do so
while we can.
They are the perfect lovers every time.
And when they change
to fast friends or to worse
they needn't cause an early death
or banishment.
It's only time to go away again.
This is the city that remembers to forget.
Wasserman tests have gone the way of rabbits,
truth has a good name bay to bay.
Have I been too gentle with the neighborhood,
perhaps.
But there'll be letters, sub-headlines -
that will tell me if I went too far
or did not venture far enough.
Never gossip, through. (Perhaps a whisper in Marin).
It's too fragmented up here for all that
and it's the fragments come together
that have made the rock
on which to build the home
for visitation.
Beretta's gone, but she'll be back.
Meanwhile the lovers each make private plans
for bed and breakfast and attack.
And those of us who travel
from the city
know the best credential
we can trot out in fast company
is news of where we came from.
- from "from "Suspension Bridge," 1984 |
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