20th & 21st October, 2005
Rod in Concert
Holland, December 2005!
San Sebastian Strings
albums now available on CD! Order
now!
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Photo by Edward McKuen 9/24/2005
A Thought for Today
Somebody has to win the lottery but it
won’t be you or me. Get over it.
FROM the¨BOOKS
TWO POEMS FROM “Looking for a Friend”
Behavior at the Beach
I try to keep from pushing up
against you in public places.
Admittedly my effort
to put a hold on how I feel
is feeble. Love has taken hold
of any sensibilities I had or given me
so many senses of another kind
that even your embarrassment
fails to keep my hands
in well-worn pockets.
Just now
the beach is filled
with people making love
and building several hundred
unimportant
conversations.
We say nothing.
There is no necessity for speech
between us
but I roll over every twenty minutes
to rub you down with oil
supposedly against the sun,
‘til finally you are layered
like a channel swimmer
or a lacquer box in progress.
I doubt the sun will find its way
through so much petroleum.
The day done we’ll go home
and you’ll be paler than an egg.
Did I really once perceive you
as a friend?
Oh you are, but so much more.
I hope my trusted friends
of long standing and seniority
will understand why I’ve become
to them a missing person.
If they came upon me now
I’m sure they’d find me certifiable
for any institution they could name.
Come into the water. Uncross
your fingers, I promise to behave,
besides you’re slippery
as an overflowing lamp. I’ll scrub
your back with cool, wet sand.
You can float head up, face down,
at your pleasure, supported by
my forearm steady underneath
your breasts.
You see, I can be counted on
to be good natured as a friend
and as a lover to behave.
–from Looking For A Friend, 1980. Revised October, 2005
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Thursday 20 October
Herschel Bernardi o
Dr. Joyce Brothers o
Roosevelt Brown o
Art Buchwald o
Barrie Chase o
Robert Craft o
Snoop Doggy Dogg o
Margaret Dumont o
Michael Dunn o
Arlene Francis o
(Mother) Dolores Hart o
Charles Ives o
Wanda Jackson o
Grandpa Jones o
Bela Lugosi o
Mickey Mantle o
Brown Meggs o
Donnii Minogue o
Vigo Mortensen o
Anna Neagle o
Fayard Nicholas o
Jerry Orbach o
Tom Petty o
Arthur Rimbaud o
Will Rogers, Jr. o
Christopher Wren
Friday
21 October
Hawkes Bay Anniversary (New Zealand)
Elvin Bishop o
Georgia Brown o
Samuel Taylor Coleridge o
Carrie Fisher o
Whitey Ford o
Helen Reveles o
Valenzuela Fujita o
Dizzy Gillespie o
Peter Graves o
Katsushuba Hokusai o
Michael Landon o
Manfred Mann o
Jeremy Miller o
Benjamin Netanyahu o
Alfred Nobel o
Brian Piccolo o
Joyce Randolph o
Bill Russell (baseball) o
Ted Shawn o
Judge Judy Sheindlin o
Sir George Solti o
Georg Ernst Stahl o
Edmund Waller |
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No
peace is ever perfect, and no war is ever won.
Love unreturned is not necessarily
unrewarded.
Give in, but don’t give up.
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PORTRAIT |
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You run like
rivers not yet sure
of destinations or of roots. The
sweetness of you covering
everything it touches so that
a smell, a feeling lingers even
after you have long passed.
Having not yet bitten
or gouged your way
into the earth
you move directionless
and yet with such a sense
of sureness
that almost no one notices
the way that you take over
everything you touch. It is
It’s as if an angel arriving
in the night spread her cape
and as it then unfurled
each pass she made
made morning one shade better.
Standing still
You do so in a way
that calm pervades a room,
the garden, the hill, the street,
the beach, the world
where you choose to stand.
You are not so much a woman
as you are a wonder. You are
not so much a young girl standing
as you are a gift unopened. A flower
budding, yet to bulge and blossom.
Gone a moment, a day, a month,
you are not missed so much
as you are mourned for, needed,
absent as an afternoon that God
forgot to make.
–from "Looking for a Friend," 1980. Revised 10/2005 |
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