Rod McKuen - Flight Plan


THURSDAY		Rod & Sunny: Photo by Bob Gentry 8/5/1999 A Thought for Today I have had small moments I thought big enough to coast on down a lifetime of unrest and no more love. And there were epic times, or so I thought, that for some reason run no longer in my head no matter how much effort I put into their remembrance. - from "Moment to Moment", 1974 FROM the¨BOOKS Today’s poetry comes from “With Love,” Suspension Bridge” and “The Sea Around Me.” Boxing Lessons Wiser by half a year I enter into your brown body like a blind man sure of every step. So assured sometimes I feel embarrassed. So delighted that I wonder how I earned the privilege of your light limbs around my back. If indeed I've earned your body and your love then I'll return undefeated. A lover who by accident, or even by design stumbled into something so unusual yet real he comes back blushing from every new encounter with your touch. -from "With Love", 1970 Boxer I am so amazed at finding out my head still reels under even friendly blows that I'm determined not to let the boxer or the battler come in close again. I will not willingly go out into the evening any more and place myself within that enchanted circle, the moving staircase or the rain. I should stay at home behind the iron gates and rainbow glass. Sure places I've constructed. The disappointments yet to come can be lived by me in private. No one need know if the wounds are fatal or if I'm waiting out some healing time. There is am emptiness and it is deep. A wound so old that healing would not work. If I have not yet come back around to where I started then I am only inches from that now narrow corridor meant to bring me there. -from "The Sea Around Me", 1974, 1975 Join me tomorrow for Pass it Along. Sleep warm. RM 11/6/2002 12:24 AM Click on the heart logo to buy Rod McKuen books, CD's and lots more Click on the Stanyan House logo to subscribe to the McKuen Mailing List Catch Rod McKuen live! Click on the links below for new details (posted 09/28/2002). ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES ROD McKUEN CONCERTS



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		Love is the coming together of two ordinary people in order to become one very extraordinary human being. Better put your money in trust than your trust in money. The best reproach is always given with a kind word and a smile. Kindness confounds and confuses even the strongest enemy.

EITHER / OR		Since you have known me all my life I would that I could be aboard the final ship you sail to see you out of yours. Yet I could never think up life in form or substance, ill health or well, without you. What then to be preferred, me catching you before God in His heaven does or you behind to sort my papers out as I slip silently from sight. Death ought to take us both at once but who’d be left to sweep the worn-out flesh away, to put it in its proper mound. Who’d be around to tidy up ? Careless is the plan of nature, timetable of the lesser things like man. We are invented and thought up but have so little say in how we come or go and come again if we do come. In truth while immortality is each man’s goal I’d rather be the first to go - if all my needs could be administered by one who cares. Should lightning strike I know you’d run and sweep the ashes up to keep the litter from encroaching on the right of way of others. -from “Suspension Bridge,” 1984

Birthday research by Wade Alexander o Poetry from the collection of Jay Hagan o Coordinated by Melinda Smith o Sound & Fury Dr. Eric Yeager o Webmaster Ken Blackie

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