Poetic thoughts while waiting for Joan Baez (extended play)

I wrote the following poem while waiting to meet a friend of mine who had tickets for Joan Baez’s Dallas concert Feb.24. This is an “extended play” of an earlier version.

Halfway sellout
Real liberals of another era
Trying to recapture
Cash-on-demand nostalgia
For the price of admission.
I don’t sign every petition
And I don’t avoid Wal-Mart every day of the year.
But, if I asked you,
Mr. ’60s – and Mr. ’90s corner office – were good to me,
What all is in your IRA?
Or your company’s 401,
Or if you ever tried to get it to divest
Some of the stocks you suspect it might have,
What would you say?
I don’t have a corner office.
Or a 401(k).
Or an IRA.
But, as much as possible,
I still own my own brand.

Old man, take a look at my life,
You could be like I am.
When did you trade your life identity
For your job identity?
You and your fellow yuppies,
The not-yet-digested piglet
Stuck in the gullet of the American python.
Oh, yes, you played with greed
After you quit playing with grass,
And greed swallowed you,
Far more than the grass ever did.

No, old man, on second thought,
DON’T take a look at my life.
Indirectly, you’re already screwing it up enough,
Trying to turn the Me Generation
Into the Me Millennium.

Old man, get away from me.
I don’t want to be like you are.

Poetic thoughts while waiting for Joan Baez

I wrote the following poem while waiting to meet a friend of mine who had tickets for Joan Baez’s Dallas concert.

Halfway sellout
Real liberals of another era
Trying to recapture
Cash-on-demand nostalgia
For the price of admission.
I don’t sign every petition
And I don’t avoid Wal-Mart every day of the year.
But, if I asked you,
Mr. ’60s – and Mr. ’90s corner office – were good to me,
What all is in your IRA?
Or your company’s 401,
Or if you ever tried to get it to divest
Some of the stocks you suspect it might have,
What would you say?
I don’t have a corner office.
Or a 401(k).
Or an IRA.
But, as much as possible,
I still own my own brand.

Seeking entry to Middle-Earth

My senior year in high school, I was surely battling some unrecognized depression. My dad was in graduate school; his divinity school had those “mushroom lights” around most of the sidewalks on campus.

Anyway, I had already read “Lord of the Rings” once, and was re-reading it. It prompted me to try to call out to Earendil one night while walking by the mushroom lights, as described by this extended-haiku poem.

A ELBERETH GITHONIEL

Earendil, hear;
A Elbereth Githoniel;
Elrond, set me free.

So said a young teen,
Depressed and seeking escape —
Frodo’s Middle Earth.

But nothing happened;
No transmogrification;
Mushroom lights stayed fixed.

Homeward back I trudged
Depressed and distressed yet more
With no one to hear.

Is this all Fourth Age?
Elbereth availed me not —
I still lack magic.

Lincoln-Darwin bicentennial musical selections

For Lincoln, the obvious selection is Aaron Copeland’s “Lincoln Portrait.”

For Darwin? Why, Saint-Saëns’ “Carnival of the Animals,” of course. Complete with the movement on fossils.

Rome brings back plenary indulgences

That sound you just heard was Martin Luther storming in his grave. The Roman Catholic Church, learning a bit from the father of the Reformation, forbade paying for indulgences after the Council of Trent, then, as this story on their revival notes, “decoupled” them from mainstream Catholic life as part of Vatican II.

As for the claim you can’t buy them?

Well… you can get them charitable contributions. And, the Catholic Church is a legal charity, is it not?

Say Joe the Catholic (whether a plumber in Ohio or not) worships, not just in a parish, but his bishopric’s cathedral seat. And, let’s say the bishop, perhaps to commemorate 20 years of holding the position, decides the cathedral needs a new — marble, let’s say — baptismal font.

Let’s say his membership includes a 74-year-old rogue, divorced and remarried outside the church, divorced again, and now “living in sin,” as the saying once was. He’s only a C&E Mass attender, and let’s say our bishop is actually conservative enough to bar him from the Eucharist to boot.

But… that marble baptismal font keeps calling in the back of his mind.

Well, who better to get plenary indulgence for his long life than our three-times loveable (at least) “rogue,” if his charitable contribution just happens to add up to the value of a marble baptismal font?

But, no, you can’t “pay” for them.

BOULDER PARK PICNIC TABLE

Some reflections from hiking in a Dallas park:
















Broken down and weather beaten,
Agéd, silent picnic table
Gladed inside multi-level
Understory, has seen it all.

Sit and think and ponder do I,
Bounded within parkland nature.
Would that picnic table would speak.
That, though, will not happen for me.

Answers? I must find them inside
Broken planking only watches
Ebbs and flows of live; it acts not.
So, then, knows not sorrow, anguish.

I, though, well know painful moments
Drift and doubt and struggle bitter.
Answers? Mine all must have actions.
Drift is the most painful of all.