THIS ONE DOES IT FOR ME!

A Thought for Today

It doesn’t have to be a happy life, but it ought to be a full one.

Rod dropped me a line the other day to remind me that today is the 37th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

This prompts the question "where were you, and what were you doing, when you first got news of the assassination?" Might make an interesting topic for the Message Board and Message Center.

Rod tells me he was in Sears buying a toaster! I was fourteen years old and got the news when my Mother collected me from school following cricket practice one afternoon. I don't remember my reaction at the time but the event must have had a significant impact on me for I've been fascinated by the subject ever since. The assassination itself, together with the attendant conspiracy theories, makes for riveting reading and I've probably read more on this subject, together with that of the Watergate scandal, than's been good for me. Now I can't wait for the definitive book on the 2000 Presidential Election!

Let's see what pops up on the Boards!

Good Morning Ken,

I was just listening to the 'Speaking of Love' CD and I found this song... Rod saved it for last on the CD because it might be 'the best'. It has been used in a Flight Plan before but it is one, that like 'Goodbye', can't be repeated too often. It is great as a stand alone being read but to be read by ROD to music makes it one of 'the best'.

Waterfalls to a great poet,

Jay

We can always rely on Jay to come up with a real goodie and this one is certainly no exception.

Jay is quite correct when he says this particular piece has been featured here before. Ken Ball, our buddy down under, first brought it to our attention back in January when it appeared in print for the very first time.

Thanks for yet another interesting contribution, Jay.

ken@mckuen.com is the address if you have a favorite McKuen song or poem you'd like to share with us. Hope to hear from you soon.

                                - Ken, Johannesburg, November 22

THE POET CAUGHT MID SONG
Sunday, 20 November,1988

I should be writing reams
                              of velvet
and not so velvet verse.
But this is Sunday,
The Muse, the cats are fast asleep.

I should be staking claims
                                  on sentences
and stocking up on verbs
against the time of feeble mind
                      and end of energy to come.

I know you, Lack Of Inspiration,
by whatever guise or name
         you've chosen or will choose.
                              Age, Apathy,
or highfalutin' nom de plume like
No One To Motivate The Old Man Anymore.

When you were friendlier,
not given to disguise,
and I was younger than the moon was
and twice as quick to rise
I used to write about you all the time.
And rhyme you too.

Don't you remember
all the fond remembering
                         I did back then
            about some week old romance,
                                 day old kiss,
                handshake half an hour past,
as if the long ago was measured
by the second hand and not the hourglass.

All those look back songs,
                         reflective odes,
can't go home again refrains
when neon and nostalgia both were tame.
When love was such a lofty thing
and tangling in legs and arms and legs
was all the height one needed to attain.

Youth was ever naked in the night
                                 and ever innocent.
Delight had no restrictions and no pain.
The rain was heavy or not there.

Way back when,
God didn't damn the rain.

Love was always brief but longed for,
                                 always getting up
                          and going home.
But coming back
in brand new shifts and trousers.
Coming back and coming back again.
As love will do no matter
where it's been.

Long ago when We
was used by linguists to mean two,
                         and not the cosmos.
It was never me and you against the world
                                                 back then.
You were pretty. I was wise. We were comatose.

I remember
my remembering
and what the memories cost
before the table was upended
and the lot was lost.

Would I have written paragraphs like that
                                                 back then?
No matter. I know you, Time,
and you were always flirting, even then.

Excuse me if it seems as though
I'm out to fumigate our long romance.
I only seek the simple luxe
                         of Sunday rumination.

I should be busy now
with building blocks of songs and sonnets
                                  for the fortress.
Else I'll never get through
silly, chilly nights of second childhood
                 when the pen won't navigate
                                  the ruled legal pad.

2.

I scribble little bits,
enough to satisfy a thirsty journal
                                  on most nights,
but not enough to give Ned Rorem pause
                                for second Seconals.

The trunk has lots of started
                                  but unfinished songs.
Some wait in vain for lyrics promised
on some boozy nineteen-sixties night.
                Many are bare-boned
because the cannibal poet needed
one more line for one more
still unpublished song.

In the note books there are poems
                         and poems unresolved.
All that is too involved to speak about.

Billy tells me JA has finished
a single poem of one hundred pages.
Could he have heard MacArthur saying
                                         I Shall Return.
[Another grant & he'll take Richmond]
The news has sent Mc back to his MAC.

              Old soldiers never die, or shouldn't
without a few unpublished manuscripts
stuffed in books, mashed in mattresses
to pay off unexpected taxes,
to help defray the hangman's debt.

I am not cheered
by friends who quote the histories
                         of old composers
penning premier ouvrage
only after humping middle age.

Who knows what middle is
                     until he's seen both ends?

It would not make the music better
                                          if I knew
that I was working on
my own unfinished symphony.

These days
every whole note's hard to part with.
                Am I giving independence
                           to an undeserving air?
Some sonatas come
without legato and in measured time.
Others stall at pencil breaks
for want of rhythm, never rhyme.

I should be penning preludes
                 to ward the calm a-coming.
                 Instead I choose to drift back
                                          to that time
                         when I was happy drifting.

3.

Still, today,
this mid November Sunday
                        with its indecision,
rambling back and forward, wasn't bad.
Could be the middle gear is much abused
by word of mouth but not by seasoned drivers.

I always did like intervals the best.

I always used the space
             between the words
                 to say those things things
                      most needed to be said.

The hesitation
just before the strings come in
is still my favorite mid-song time.

And my, I've had some lovely, lofty
                         high string lines.

What I should be doing
             is doing it.
Instead of all this talk of past deference,
present difficulty, future disposition.

I should be singing
and I am,
inside.

It is a lovely life
and I am hanging on to it
                                       with both hands.

     - from the CD “Speaking of Love,” 1994 this printed version © 1/12/2000