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30th & 31st October, 2004
Click here for new Rod
McKuen appearance details!
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Rod 4/16/04 Photo by Billy Iz
A Thought for Today
I don’t know about you, but for me four
years of being governed by fear is sufficient. Lets move on.
Dear Diary,
Ken generously offered to take care of today’s Flight Plan because he
knows I’m off to Austin for Saturday’s appearance. I didn’t take him up
on it because he carried the lion’s share of work in September; pinch
hitting for me more often than was comfortable for me– let alone him.
Guilt complex? You bet. I ought to wake up each morning and start the
Flight Plan so Ken won’t have to wait and wonder when and if my copy
will arrive in time for his posting. Or, the least I could do is write
and tell him early in my day that there will be no FP that day. Trouble
is I always have high hopes of being able to relax and take to my Mac at
the end of the day and write. So much for good intentions. Still having
nearly finished this FP I can bask in the fact that I was only missing
in action once during the month of October and I even got in an extra
edition of Ask Rod.
Life gets in the way of everything. I’m still learning the complex
medley of songs I’m singing on the 6th of November in The Best is Yet to
Come. Not too much time after that till I leave for New Orleans and the
opening of the second leg of The Gertrude Morgan Exhibition at their
fine museum.
Meanwhile I’ve got two more architects to meet with regarding the Dos
Vidas Complex and Jean arrives from San Francisco tomorrow. At least
we’ll be able to have a quiet dinner before I leave. I’m making a Salmon
Mousse as a starter followed by Salmon steaks for the Main Course.
Yep, he cooks too.
RM 10/26/04
FROM the¨BOOKS
Three
Poems from Alone
Living with Darkness
I can be happy
in the dark.
I can live with it.
I can turn once,
twice,
three times around
in the dark
before my eyes become
adjusted to the blackness
and not be frightened
anymore.
Frightened,
I can be elated
at being left alone
when the alternative
is being with just anyone.
Butterfly
Yesterday
a butterfly
flew through the eaves
of Villa Trenta
and came to land
upon the middle of my arm.
He crawled with sureness
down to my hand
then back along my shoulder.
He fluttered there
a moment only
then fell dead,
a victim of the heat
or something higher up.
If God
can strike down
birds and butterflies
and then change rain
to rainbows
and clouds to grays and whites
of every hue,
then the ugliness
I’ve shown of late
has surely marked me
for an early death.
What troubles me
is not
my disappearance
but my lack of being
troubled by it.
I am willful now
toward well-meaning friends
when I should have will instead
to fight off the oncoming end.
Monochrome
A black kite
flying in the distance
further down the beach
then gone.
Black birds too are here
scavenging fish heads,
chasing off the killdeer
and the gull.
The sea -
not blue but double grays,
goes on about its business.
It seems calmer now,
quieter today.
How long will it take,
another century perhaps
till every cloud above
the water
hangs there hidden, black.
The sand.
I give it fifty years.
The stars, already dimming,
fifty more.
Blackness in the end
will overtake them both.
How is it
people fear the dark ?
Not me, I’m reconciled.
As every day I see
the blackness grow,
I’ve come to terms with it,
it knows I know.
Yet I wonder
if the darkness
ever hungers
or grows lonely
for the light
it’s left behind.
The final blackness
after all is death.
That’s what the elements
are moving to,
I doubt they have regrets.
No cards are being played
no hands dealt out
determining exactly when.
A single game
of solitaire perhaps
and when it ends
it starts again.
-from “Alone,”1975
AND FINALLY
As I mentioned earlier I’m finishing up this Flight Plan as I make ready
to leave for my Austin Texas Book Fair reading and book signing. Looking
forward to getting back to The Lone Star State. Lots of friends there
and Eric reminded me to be sure and renew my acquaintance with my old
buddy Kinky Friedman (who bills himself as The Texas Jew Boy.) In
addition to recording and appearing with his band Kinky writes mystery
novels. We met during the seventies (somewhere) while we were both on
separate concert tours. By the way, Kinky celebrates another birthday
today (Friday.)
A friend writes: “PS I submitted a request for an absentee ballot, still
have not gotten it. I am a Pennsylvania resident voting for
Kerry/Edwards! I come from a family of blue collar union members who
always were Democrats.”
Take heart! Those of you, whatever your party affiliation, can still
vote even if your absentee ballot doesn’t arrive on time. This year all
fifty states have what is called “a provisional ballot.” That means that
if you arrive at your polling place and your name isn’t even included on
the voters register, you can still cast a ballet.
So, IF YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT DOES NOT ARRIVE ON TIME or IF YOU ARE A NEW
VOTER AND THE INFO STILL DOESN’T APPEAR ON THE REGISTER, PLEASE TURN UP
AT YOUR DESIGNATED VOTING PLACE. NO ONE WILL BE REFUSED THE CHANCE TO
VOTE THIS YEAR.
Now for some good news. After turning your clocks back an hour on Sunday
night you can take advantage of an extra hour of sleep Monday morning.
Sleep warm and keep your fingers crossed that I’ll have time to file an
Ask Rod FP for Monday . . . from Austin.
RM 10/26/2004 6:02PM PDST
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30
October
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
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
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.
There are choices and choices that go
wanting. We wouldn’t know of ghosts without the haunting.
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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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