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30th & 31st 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
Praise your God, pay your bills, and tell your friends often that you love them. Life can't get any simpler than that.
FROM the¨BOOKS
MIND SHIFTS
If I could wrap the rain
around me
I would not
Nor would I willingly go beyond
the reach of the clouds.
There is comfort in the drizzle
of an afternoon
and something sure and constant
in the roar of gutter rivers
when I awaken at night
Why is it
thunder's first announcement
of impending black
can calm me easier than daylight?
It may be that the rain outside
drop by drop and drip by drip
builds up a wall of safety.
I lie about security.
I want the safety of familiar arms
while holding freedom to the light
as blueprints and the prize.
There is no freedom without familiars,
no safety without the speed
to drive away from safety.
Moderation is but one more
yo-yo snare.
I should have been a seaman
or a miner,
learning flag code signals-
lamp wick warnings,
ready for each mind shift
and each mine shaft down a life.
Instead I am a yeoman
and of no convincing guard.
- from "The Sound of
Solitude", 1983
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Monday
30 October
Chung Yeung Festival (China) / Bank Holiday (Ireland) / Marlborough
Anniversary (New Zealand)
John Adams o
Charles Atlas o Winifred Bailey o Ernest Flatt o Kinky Friedman o Dick
Gautier o Ruth Gordon o Harry Hamlin o Ruth Hussey o Claude Lelouch o
Taney Mahmoudi o Louis Malle o Diego Armando Maradona o Amey Palm o Ezra
Pound o Gavin Rossdale o Grace Slick o Henry Winkler
Tuesday
31 October
All Saints Eve
Barbara Bel Geddes o John Candy o Michael
Collins o Dale Evans o Lee Grant o Diedre Hall o Adam Horovitz o Chiang
Kai-shek o John Keats o Michael Landon o Juliette Low o Larry Mullen,
Jr. o Dermot Mulroney o Jane Pauley o Dan Rather o David Ogden Stiers o
Vanilla Ice o Jan Vermeer o Ken Wahl o Ethel Waters |
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The business of autumn is letting it lie where it falls. The business of man is picking up himself and every member of his family who stumbles in the yellow leaves.
The ghosts that each of us keep hidden in our hearts
are the ones we fear the most.
False faces are the crutch and crotch of sustenance and substance.
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A JACK-O'LANTERN OF ONE'S OWN
An October Memory
for Wayne Green |
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It wasn't the hills or sledding there.
or chasing the girls down ice-clean streets -
stealing their mittens and paperbagged lunches
and sharing them with each other.
Not even the snowballs aimed at strangers,
then running 'round corners to staked safe place.
Part of it maybe, not all. What it was mostly
was not knowing what it was. Not even thinking
about it till now.
Some other yesterday back in the distance,
a long-ago twilight, a long time ago. Six
of us boys lined up and boasting, seeing just
which one could piss furthest, longest.
running the risk of bursting our kidneys
till enough was stored up
to write names in the snow.
Having a short name, I won some and lost
some, I carried the day. I stumbled, I fell.
Now's not so much different from
long time ago.
Many's the snowman - neighborhood effort.
you bring the carrot, I'll bring the coal. Hard
Guardian Angel not melting till now.
Spare tires that hung from limbs over water.
A dive when the creek had more water
than mud., A place to go off to where every
injustice, real or imagined, could be
ridden out.
Books, like jeans, were tossed in a corner,
left there dirty, dog-eared to grow.
Homework was building a hut in the cellar
to hide in and ride out fantasy, fiction, mind
fodder and stuffing. Planning a weekend
never a life, breaking the skin on my dick
in the darkness alone and forsaken, bleeding
to death. Hearing those footsteps above in
the kitchen, knowing that SHE must have
heard me cry out.
It wasn't the floorboards, only the foreskin
under the kitchen cracking from friction.
One-legged jumpers hopping chalked boxes
on cleaned-up sidewalks between heavy snows.
The taw a marble, a half-eaten jaw-breaker,
a rock from a pocket that fell through a hole.
Winter game, summer game, names no longer
known. Red Rover, Red Rover, won't you
come over . . .
was that Kick-the-can or Sheep-in-my pen?
Whatever, whatever, It comes back whenever
I think of myself as a fully-grown man.
The lines 'round my forehead and 'round
my eye corners bunch up like creased
leather on the back of the backseat of old
Buick Sedans.
Me growing older, imagine the irony.
I couldn't wait, thought it might never happen.
Was sure I'd be cut down before the next season,
let alone grow up, grow older, grow old. A
fatalist then always seeing the dark side. Why,
looking back, is there now only light?
A child builds life around birthdays and
Holidays, what other calendar works for
the young?
Money enough every October
for only one fat golden pumpkin. An eye
for my brother to hollow, the other for me
to carve. The mouth one more problem,
always, an argument.
Shouldn't Jacks smile?/ No Jack ought to frown.
When did a smile in front of a candle bully
a trick into a treat? No matter how careful
the paring and carving, always one tooth
usually upper, snapped onto the table
dropped into a lap, bounced on the floor
and got trod underfoot.
Oh brother, my brother beginning to bawl
over spoiled jack-o'-lantern,
just part of the plan.
My baby brother cried quicker, easier
than movie star ladies in mush matinees.
Tears would well up at the smell of a
quarter. Hush money, of course, to quiet
the kid. It always did. Then off to the grocery
for jellybeans, Jujubes. Poor old Jack left on
the table. Mama would always redo his
bridgework and always inevitable smile,
not a frown. Still what is a holiday without
family ritual. Thanksgiving, Halloween -
each has its rules. And, anyway, Mama
was some kind of sculptor. God may
have made Adam but ever year Mama
tooled up and turned out a remake of Jack.
Rooms aren't important to kids growing up
as long as there's nails and boards to build
boxes.
A box of your own is a must. It gives the head
running room the heart its own hollow,
the body a place to bed down and bed.
It well might be worth forgoing the ransom
for pumpkins messed up, carved crooked
on purpose
if every kid's Bill of Rights included a jackknife,
a taw of importance and his own scowling Jack.
- from "Folio No. 56", fall 1986 |
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