To tell you the truth, there are times when I know why I do what I do, by which I mean, work as a barman, pour wine, chat a bit with those who might feel like a chat over a bar, basically keep an efficient system up and running, day in, day out, tonight, the organization of bottles for inventory. I come home, and walk around my magic street with my little cat. We lived at one address when she was a kitten, and then up the street, which is how we met Madam Korbonsky, who had love for both Tadzio and little Miss Kitty. There is lots to do on that first night, at the end of the week. I'll get in a bike ride, I'll have a glass of wine and later sing and play songs from a band from London with an Irish tradition brought up to present efforts of banging and shouting. I'll do some dishes, and begin the process of laundry maybe.

But I think I know sometimes why I do it, and it's this. One needs, as a man, to be able to feel that he can deal with people. This is the reassuring thing with bartending. They can throw at you what they want. They can show up in any number, and they can make you very busy. But ultimately, as you know, even as you are quite the peaceable side, that you will stand long, do what it takes, and that you will outlast them, or that, if worse comes to worse, that you have friends who are on your side.

Like Bono said, of a rock n roll band, basically, 'a street gang.' Politics at a gut level.

And when you've done that, then you go home, back to intellectual and cultural pursuit, and know, that you grew into something, that you expanded to be host to a larger band of people than you previously had, and maybe, in that sense, you wish to live forever, to keep growing.

Mon Santo TV

The ads they show late at night,
when you are watching a favorite television show,
or one you'll watch, and can,
supposedly,
identify with,
if that's what it is,
about a restaurant, let's say,
or what you, exhausted at end of day,
can stomach anyway,
peg who, what, they take you to be.
Damaged, by anti-depressant pills,
birth defects. Or any other lawsuit,
the specious firms that cover life's
bitter things, taxation, injury,
cancer, bad credit, car accidents.
Mesothelioma.
And all the other things
the pharmaceutical company,
with its patents,
loves.

To say nothing of the infomercials,
get rich in real estate,
perfect skin, weight loss,
home gym of
Charles Atlas.

They look through the television out at you,
count how many times you turn the station.
One day they'll add up all this information.
marketing research. ratings for a bank.

Turn the tube on, they peg you for a sucker.
And that's the mindless business world,
its uninspired obtrusive magnifying eye,
taking us back to the world of the insect.
And so you avoid them sucking your blood
whenever you can.

Back in my dad's day,
a long time ago,
they had land grant colleges,
to do studies,
common knowledge, information,
farmer's seeds,
intelligent property for all.
Before the company owned it,
all, with all their lawyers,
and grim cynicism.

It's the same thing, as TV.
Mindless hokester profiteers
want you to belong,
and they'll pay you
to acquiesce,
willingly mess with your chemistry,
numbing your mind
with glittery doll.

The heart, I suppose, is like a muscle. When there is an ache in the shoulder, the neck, behind the shoulder blade, running downward, a headstand does the trick, even if it might seem that rest would be the best thing. And so the heart, to align itself and work properly, requires of us to be the city of light, the candle, to turn the other cheek and all the things the Sermon, or Buddha, lays out for us. "Oh, shit, really?" Yes, the pain is only the point halfway.

I stand there at the door, at the top of the stairs really,
and greet them. I stand on one leg, a foot upon a knee, a hand upon a spear.
I am not the tribal chief, but a capable ambassador of tribal hospitality.
And because they know and love me, it's as if I am the maitre d'.

But as people go, this tribe of mine is under stress,
being encroached upon my modern things and rented space.
Jolly as I am with these White Diners, my lands open to them,
alone one feels a bit of trouble, and not so happy, actually.

Writers are creatures of defeat. Chekhov was marked for death,
but that didn't stop him.
They tried to get something right, but, like Moby Dick,
they didn't quite get it, or rather it got more of them,
then they got of it to bring back,
though they kept at it awhile.

In the floating wreckage,
the coffin of a friend,
an unlikely compatriot,
a book to hold on to
for salvation.

Wake up at two, go back to bed, wake up at four,
Beat off to German grandma taking it in the a,
the highlight of my day.
Who gives a f...,
I'm sorry to say,
It's exercise of a sort,
good for prostate,
eyesight, Mother Nature says,
good for health, for longevity.

Such are costs of jobs, the late nights and the wine.
The last customers leave, the staff is gone,
I'll walk home in silence and do the laundry,
shirts, for work,
up 'til it's light out.
What shall I do,
now that I've had my tea and breakfast?
Chicken curry heated in a microwave,
hits the spot.

Hurricane season.
Get it out of your system
and relax a bit.
Clean tee-shirts over a chair, as not to wrinkle.
Too lazy to fold right now,
or for the commitment of putting away
folded things
into a drawer.

There's nothing I want to do tonight
no one I want to see.
I'll lay off the wine, not provoked by anyone.
I'll get in a bike ride somehow,
maybe go down to the Lincoln Memorial
and read some words etched in granite,
The Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural.
The pinnacle of a man's achievement,
words.
Simple
plain old
words.

It's true: 'The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here.'
They should have made him a saint for that.
He got reality and suffering and the meaning
behind daily life and existence itself.

Rest proud in your stately chair, Mr. Lincoln,
Presidential, gently grave and dignified,
lit from above and behind,
on your pedestal,
alone as we all are.
You worked hard enough in life.
You read books.
You wrote your secret poetry.
You were in life
a man of flesh and blood,
like me.
You deserve the veneration, no matter
what lesser men might see.
For what you did.
No worthless lines there.

It's asked of us in life that we do something,
as a service for the rest, to continue on
with 'the unfinished work.'
The terrible struggle of the every day,
just so, dishes, boredom, listless lonesomeness,
the lack of sense of being any use at all to anyone,
the bayonets of memory, the guns of feeling off,
the enemy hill of pasts to march against,
never to climb to well-defended tops,
a soldier's stew of choices made
unawares, building one by one,
like the grocery list.

But sweet to remember, or think, in its midst,
that on certain better days you were once
an instrument in the hands of God
bringing forth peace and justice,
even though it cost. Dim memories though they be.
'The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here
have consecrated it for above our poor power to add or detract,'
one can say of places he has been.

Lincoln, man enough to not give a damn
about anything
but doing
that which is, was, right,
and, be decent at the same time.
He never seems to have raised his voice,
it seems,
at those who gave him shit.

Avoid the news, and all the clap-trap talk,
The Titanic on TV,
and get down to say,
what's on your honest mind.



One can see why epic poetry is written.

It doesn't surprise me that the world no longer cares about a book. Larkin anticipated it as he saw England disappearing, no more hedge rows, no more fields, no more countryside and old churches and churchyard to escape to when one grew weary of "cement and tyres," his summation of what we have left. We have too many other pressing concerns. The creature is left to sit at a desk all day, low level irritations he can never surmount. We've mistreated ourselves. Work is a stranger that deprives us of the earth and earthly things.

So no one rings you up and says, 'fine book you wrote.' Silence. These days its a review on Amazon one hopes for, but whole years go by. Who cares about the forest? Who cares about a book? My old father, who understood everything, in the way a Buddha might, he got it, and had praise for the effort, saw, in fact, deep meaning in the story of a college kid, 'a budding theosophist,' as he put it.

And so, my literary efforts given what they are, happy in obscurity, are the unknown, the unseen I carry about when I regard my true profession. I only fear that I have, essentially, become a traitor to my class, for not being a teacher of some sort, but just a barman. It would be self-glory to allude to Chekhov's Grasshopper, the woman who flits away and spends her time with worthless artist types, that boring man, her husband, actually a great man, a doctor deeply respected by his colleagues.

I am kind to people, who come in for wine and dinner. I guess it's in my blood. And it is late when I go home at night to a silent house, the hungry cat, the entertainments in a computer screen to masturbate.

That crazy liberal rag, The New York Times... my god. All the things it covers. It's not simple huntin' and fishin' and simple politicks that god feerin' constitution loving people can really benefit from... but

But here is "Born, and Evolved, to Run," a conversation with Daniel Lieberman, professor of Evolutionary Biology at some place called Harvard. Here are some really sound answers as to why, maybe, it's not so good to sit at a desk all the time for the rest of our adult lives. The foot likes to land a certain way. The head, the human skull, which does, so much, floats happily when we run this way, and the rest of our physical system is happy as a clam.

And another sweet article. Finally, someone reminding us, Maria Callas, her gravitas, her presence, her 'charisma.' And there she was at the Met back in the year 1965, a year I happen to like for reasons of being born (in January, that year) as...

Finally! Someone got it. It is the charisma that makes a performance. And that is why one should honor Shane MacGowan, because he is built completely of atoms that have charisma, God Love hIm. It's not some fake guy singing... it's him. And that is where real stuff comes from.

The charisma, which comes of having experienced life, often the life one writes about, one way or another, applies to writers too, of course.

Let's hear it for mankind, for the natural biological creature, that two legged being that is not as genetically sophisticated as a botanical specimen, but, somehow through being a rude and clever animal, gets stuff done. (Maybe too much stuff.)