9th
& 10th June, 2008
New concerts announced!
Click HERE for details.
July autograph signing
event.
Click HERE for details.
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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
Quips, like cameras, are seldom at the
ready.
FROM the¨BOOKS
THE SEA AROUND ME
I
Buck had dreams
of giving Jimmy Dean
his rightful place
in the book of days.
He felt I should help him
if I could.
I wanted only warmness
and a chance to be
nobody else but me,
to live my life and my life only.
I think Buck finally understood.
One day he left the safety
of the beach
and traveled home
to write his
book.
Long letters used to come
from Iowa and Indiana
after Buck had left.
Come here he’d say,
there are corn-fed boys
who bicycle
by the back porch
nearly every day,
interfering with my work
but adding to it.
Come here, come here
and help me make
some
apple-jack.
I still wanted warmness
not beneath the Indiana sun
but underneath the covers
anywhere.
I never went to Buck.
I answered
nearly every letter
with but a paragraph,
till the letters
stopped arriving.
II
Lenny seized the winter
between his friendly teeth
and bit a chunk or two off
just for me.
I was left to wonder
more than ten years later
if I stopped to thank him
for the use
of his own heartbeat
next to mine.
Lenny left for somewhere.
I'd get second-hand reports
He’s working in a restaurant
and now he’s into water sports.
No letter came from Lenny
in a dozen years.
I often thought of him
when I was wrapped
in woolly warmness
but more when I was not.
III
Aggie filled the beach bar
Sunday after Sunday
singing Grandma Plays the Numbers
her voice somewhere between a purr
and the steamboat's shout.
Aggie moved the men
who moved within the bar
then she moved herself
back into town.
I saw a postcard once
she sent to someone else
not me.
Honey, La.’s freaked
and frigid
Your mother should have
gone to Bakersfield or Fresno.
Not Aggie, no.
In Bakersfield the jukebox
kicks back shit
Grandma Plays the Numbers
Wouldn’t go.
I had Aggie’s number
but not her line to call.
If I did I might have said
it's warm out here again
it is, it is
you should see me
I'm as brown as you.
Warmer than I was
but not
enough.
IV
Travelers on a summer beach
in nineteen fifty-seven.
How could Santa Monica
have been so close to heaven?
One by one the houses
on the beachfront disappeared
the bay became a parking lot
Lenny's old apartment razed,
Buck's big house and loft
a new communal dwelling place.
I wish I had
the number and address
of all those friends
I knew and cared about
some twenty years ago
in Santa Monica.
I’d like to write each one
and say
I am warm, I am
for ever, always.
Someone has warmed me up
who means it
and I won't be cold again.
I might be lying
but I'd like to say it
anyway.
I have no clues
and no addresses,
no leads on where
my old friends
stop to play
and so I write to them
in books and journals
hoping they are reading
all the things
that I leave out.
Not just
between the lines
but more ahead
and further back
than that.
This book begins
as love leaves off
then goes with me
as I go on
from sea to sea
and back – alone.
Later
finally in the hills
love opens one more door.
As always
I expect this new experience
to be the lasting,
final one.
As always
I come away
not beaten
or beat down
but less alive
and more confused.
-from “The Sea Around Me” 1976, 1977
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Click on the links below for details of
concerts and appearances.
ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Monday
9 June
George Axelrod o
Ilene Cotrubas o
Robert Cummings o
Marcia Davenport o
Johnny Depp o
Donald Duck o
Mona Freeman o
Michael J. Fox o
Marvin Kalb o
Robert S. McNamara o
Jackie Mason o
Les Paul o
Peter the Great o
Cole Porter o
Natalie Portman o
Happy Rockefeller o
Dick Vitale o
Fred Waring o
Jackie Wilson
Tuesday 10 June
Edwin Arnold o
F. Lee Bailey o
Clyde Beatty o
Saul Bellow o
Michael Burger o
Judy Garland o
June Haver o
Sessue Hayakawa o
Nat Hentoff o
Hoku Ho o
Howlin Wolf o
Elizabeth Hurley o
Ralph Kirkpatrick o
Tara Lipinski o
Frederick Loewe o
Shona Mackenzie o
Hattie McDaniel o
Gardner McKay o
Barry Morse o
Prince Philip of Great Britain o
Terence Rattigan o
Maurice Sendak o
Elisabeth Shue o
Leelee Sobieski o
Jackie Starr o
Andrew Stevens o
Shane West |
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Each of us is special because of our differences, not despite them.
I do no expect loyalty from my friends, I
assume it.
Suffering has so many avenues we never trod
the same one twice.
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GIFTS FROM THE SEA |
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You see how easily we
fit together -
as if God's own hand
had cradled only us.
And this beach town's
population were but two,
and this wide bed was
but a child's cradle,
with room enough
left over for presents.
Tomorrow I'll buy you presents.
Pomegranates and
bread sticks,
tickets 'round
the room and back.
And red, red roses
like everybody buys everybody.
Everybody's got a
diamond ring,
and Sunday shoes,
neckties and
petticoats,
pistols and
tennis balls.
Everybody gets a
sandwich sometime,
and a piece
of cake
and ice cream, if they're nice.
We've got us.
I found a twenty
dollar bill once
when I was -
maybe ten.
I bought a cardboard circus,
and a fountain
pen,
and a jack
knife,
because I
never had one before.
My mother thought
I'd stolen the money.
But she checked around,
and -
she believed me
when I brought her
perfume from the dime store.
I was rich in
those days.
For a week I
had everything.
I wish I'd
known you then. - from Folio 21, 1979 |
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