my tribute to 9/11, a song I wrote, One Day in September.
Vocals and rhythm guitar by Ed Bremson. Lead guitar by Jim Owen.

Two Poems from Tuck Magazine

Dinner Table Talk

A young poet once said that there’s

no real difference between death

by spear and death by nuclear bomb.

Both weapons “are just technology,”

and a death is just a death.

But the “survivors” of Hiroshima

might disagree, and many of them

might have wished someone with a

spear would come along and put

them sooner out of their misery.

Twitter 7/3/2011

Elise Blackwell

tweets an article

that mentions, in lines

from Nikola Madzirov,

“. . . the Earth was spinning on

God’s finger”

and I just have to ask

when the world ends,

where will God be
then?

These two poems were first published online in the January 2012 issue of Tuckmagazine.com

http://tuckmagazine.com/2012/01/01/january-poets/2/

Pascal's Advice

All the misfortunes of Man come from his inability

to sit quietly in his room alone. – Blaise Pascal

I am an old man, and I am content to sit

alone in my room. As a young man I never

really believed I could feel this way, but I guess

I had to live this long in order to reach this point.

Oh, I spent time out in the world long ago,

and like Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man,

when I came back home I would beat the walls.

I had so little then and desired so much. Now I

desire nothing, consequently I am rich. And I can

sit here alone, no longer having to make

other people happy, only myself. Besides, they’re

all gone – two wives, my parents, all my friends –

and there's no one else to please. Alone in my room

the walls are my friends, the walls keep me safe, and I

no longer beat them. It has taken me a long time to arrive

at this place, but I’m glad that I’m finally able

to take Pascal’s advice. Of course you can't close out

all the problems of the world. Pascal was wrong about that.

But if you can be content to sit in your room, you can

be happy, and keep the sadness out, and that is everything.

published online November 2011 in the Longlist Anthology of the 2011 Montreal Prize 

http://montrealprize.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2011-Montreal-Prize-Longlist-Poetry-Anthology.pdf

Two Haiku

These two haiku were published in the online Japanese journal Asahi Shimbun:


Midnight pond--
a frog leaps into
the New Year


http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/111230.html December 30, 2011 


First sunrise
an old friend I haven't seen
in years


http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/120120.html January 20, 2012

The Sailor

Here is "The Sailor," a song I wrote and sang on my CD "One Day in September." Jim Owen is playing lead guitar. I play rhythm guitar and harmonica.

cul-de-sac

Two poems from my ebook Rothgeb Park

Rothgeb Park

I kissed a girl

one night 

many springs ago

down in Rothgeb Park 

unaware Crabtree Creek

flowed nearby.  

The girl’s long since gone

and now that I’m old 

I stand alone

here in Rothgeb Park 

while Crabtree Creek

flows on and on. 

Exile

I wonder what it’s like

in Rothgeb Park

in the summertime

when it’s too hot outside

for old men to breathe. 

What kinds of flowers bloom?

What creatures are living

in the grass, in the trees,

and dying?

Do young lovers go there

at night to hold hands

and kiss in the dark

like they used to do

when I was young

in Rothgeb Park?

XVII

In the City of My Old Age

In the city

of my old age,

I love the wood

not the steel,

the stones

not the bricks, 

the streets

littered with debris;

the bare limbs,

dead grass,

fallen leaves,

blue skies,

after the rain

has gone by,

when it’s chilly

and breezy outside,

that long, gray time

before spring arrives.

Down by the pond

the crabapple tree

did not green

this year,

did not purple,

did not red,

and now it stands,

bare futile fingers

upraised,

a winter tree

in the midst

of spring,

a station where

black birds

perch

and shit

and wait

with bloody

beaks.

On a cool day in the woods

I hear the woodpecker pecking,

my feet on dead leaves crunching,

breeze high in the trees blowing,

water over rocks flowing,

dogs in the distance barking,

birds on their branches singing,

squirrels all around me digging,

and myself as I’m gently breathing.

Then there’s countless crows a swarming,

with their loud, incessant screaming,

and that’s all I can hear for a long time –

so much for my tranquil outing.

Many things

have changed

in this old world

since the spring

when I was born,

but the redbud trees

still bloom magenta,

there are willows,

cherries and pears,

and I’m really glad

I learned to see them

before it’s my turn

to wither and die.

I am a happy old man

but it’s funny

how close

to the surface

the sadness is.

All it takes

is hearing

10cc’s

“I’m not in love,”

or E. L. O.’s

“Telephone Line”

to transport me

back to the 70s,

which were not

the best of times;

but then

at least no one

had died yet,

everything was

still possible,

nothing was

fucked up too bad,

and youth

was on

my side.