9th & 10th 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
May your hand be full for always, if only with another hand.
FROM the¨BOOKS
TRANSITION
Can you guess what’s wrong?
I’ve tried and failed
to rise above the breakers
to swift sail out the storm.
Now chance is going
if not gone.
Will you be the one
to start the argument tonight
or is it my turn, I forget.
I wait here for a sign,
a motion wasted on me,
proof that it is possible
for each of us to care
for each of us.
I cannot say
how long I’ve waited.
Years pass by within
a single hour
to those who feel uncared for.
Had there been a signal,
I would have known.
What goes on unseen
untold to us
by one the other
is more real
than all the sentences
our senses spoke
and speak.
I see your face and know
a tilting of your shoulder
speaks whole paragraphs aloud
whole stories filled with proof
that what is happening
is if anything a willful lie
both of us indulge in.
This much is fact.
You do not amaze me
with your dark indifference.
You never once astound me
by being only what
you wish to be.
I await the crumbs just now
delighted that they come
from fresh bread
lifted out of ovens
by some hidden master baker.
No pride moves ahead
to pave my way.
I’ve fast become
the dark parts
of your shadow,
little more than your extension,
hardly more than your left arm.
It tires me to know
I’m just the casing
of a window
looking out beyond your world.
After I’ve packed up
and gone
fly a flag
should the intruder come.
Take care to give me
fresh reports of all the ships
and all the ducks and seagulls
that sail or waddle beachward.
Be sure to tell me
if the seals come back
this year
and how the house
gets through the winter.
Keep a diary of sorts
a notebook day to day
that I might thumb through
or
pore over
when I’m living inland
miles away.
- From the US Edition of "The Sea Around Me", 1977
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Monday
9 October
Columbus Day Observed (USA) / Thanksgiving Day (Canada)
Scott Bakula o
Jackson Browne o
Zachery Ty Bryan o
Steve Burns o
Bruce Caption o
Bruce Catton o
Fyvush Finkel o
Georgi Griffith o E.
Howard Hunt o
Brian Lamb o
John Lennon o
Sean Ono Lennon o
Walter O’Malley o
Aimee Semple McPherson o
Michael Pare o
Joe Pepitone o
Eddie Rickenbacker o
Howard St. John o
Camille Saint-Saens o
Savannah o
Tony Shalhoub o
Alastair Sim o
Randy Spelling o
Jacques Tati o
Peter Tosh
Tuesday
10 October
Yara Yell (Cuba)
Antonio Bandaras o
Bob Burnquist o
James Calvelle o
Charles Dance o
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. o
Harry "Sweets" Edison o
Brett Favre o
Johnny Green o
Helen Hayes o
Ivory Joe Hunter o
Richard Jaeckel o
Mike Malinin o
Thelonious Monk o
Mya o
Jodi Lyn O'Keefe o
Sharon Osbourne o
Harold Pinter o
John Prine o
David Lee Roth o
Bob San Souci o
Joanna Shimkus o
Dallas Smith o
Adlai E. Stevenson III o
Julia Sweeney o
Tanya Tucker o
Giuseppe Verdi o
Ben Vereen o o Ed
Wood, Jr. |
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Love cannot be said aloud too often or spoken in silence too many times.
Ideas have in common with the acorn the luxury of starting small and taking several lifetimes to become oaks.
Be careful with your confidences and thrifty with your secrets.
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JOHN LENNON, 1940-1980 |
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This man
came across the universe
when needed
crying 'nothing's gonna change
my world'
and was taken from it
long before the job
that he invented for himself
was finished.
The silt that settles in and saddens
erases endings and enrages starts
is not that maniacs continue
to still genius,
it is the knowledge knocked into us
yet again
that peace is not with the people
and love cannot, will not be legislated,
It does not spread among us
with the urgency of pestilence or plague.
Lunacy is the new epidemic.
Will there be statistics soon
that tell us madness now strikes
one in four?
The widow and the child
the nation and the citizen
cannot mourn
and by so doing be relieved.
With presidents and popes
and poet minstrels
in the crossfire,
who walks in safety?
Not the Georgia child,
not the city subway rider,
not some divided country
believed that it fights a holy war
by sacrificing its people
to famine and fast.
It is not enough to hope
that ashes
taken by the wind so quickly
will come to earth as seeds,
and new John Lennons will begin to sprout
by the thousands and the thousands.
We must continue to BELIEVE
that many are the men of peace
who from time to time will set out
to walk among us.
Even now
as we await, anticipate
the arrival of the newest architect
of sensibility
we are late in joining hands
to form a circle of protection for him.
But I have noticed, only recently
that the widows of slain giants
take on a certain afterglow,
or was this the shine
that illuminated those great men
before the slayings
seen only now
because the greatness we observed
has been removed.
Perhaps it is a partnership,
one we never understood.
If so
the half that stayed behind
shines brighter than most constellations,
their guiding light or residue
remains a beacon
a searchlight that still scans the heavens
in search of that bright beam
that went ahead.
- from
"The Beautiful Strangers", 1981 |
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