Where I Became a Playwright

Watching the Houston Astros in the World Series for the first time ever reminds of the place where I became a playwright, just like my hero. Not the easiest spot to choose, mind you, but I saw a future in entertainment there. Now it's coming true they tell me; a real-live "entertainment district" to put Dallas to shame.

"The Ugly Tattoo Blues"

Nothin' nobody says can stop one from getting a new tattoo, even though so many regret it later.

Apparently the removal is ten times as painful as the application, and the phrase most often heard by those who execute the procedure is "it was the stupidest thing I ever did".

It's enough to give you "The Ugly Tattoo Blues".

"Observable Data"

Nothin' I hate more than a closed mind, so when "Janine", a barista at my favorite cafe (whose name isn't too far off), actually made fun of me for even mentioning the legend of Bigfoot I got even by penning a song lyric about her. Being a scientist, she demands "Observable Data" so now she's got 'em.

Getting Better

A great benefit I get from posting material to the internet is the chance to make it better. Switching from the creative to the editing mode accounts for much of this, of course, as does time away from the project. The brain continues to work on it even when I'm consciously focussing on other things.

Sometimes a poem's up there many months before I print it out to read at some event. That usually involves a pointing up; two really. One before I read, and one after.

Sometimes I even get feedback. Like how bad a poem is. That's a cue to go in and spiff it up.

The biggest contributions to the improvement process are growth and experience. Writing poetry--and lyrics and plays, too--contibutes greatly to my emotional, psychological, and intellectual development. My "head moves" in between readings. I'm a different person--perhaps a touch more aware--the next time I pick something up. Now it looks juvenile; then it looked ready.

I'm also growing as a poet: pursuing different genres, delving into diverse topics, reading other people's stuff. All this makes me a slightly better eye for editing, proofing, and polishing.

Of course there are always those "pieces" (hate that term) that just tumble out exactly as they should be and for all time. To get to those few I must slog through the rest.

Thanks to all for putting up with the chaff.

Cold Exterminator

According to Nancy Einhart, Senior Editor of Business 2.0, Source Naturals Wellness Formula is the answer to fighting off a cold once the symptoms have set in.

I'll know soon enough as I just started taking it. Three horse pills every three hours. Hope it works as I've had this bug now for weeks.

I may have to try a few more tricks before all is said and done.

http://www.sourcenaturals.com

What I'd Do With New Orleans

I'd make the low-lying drowned section into the new Naples--Florida, that is. Carve canals in place of the streets, raise the homesites a few dozen feet above sea level (no building below sea level!!). Let the rich people live there. That solves the class and race issues. If the rich people can't get away from hurricanes on their sail boats nobody can.

Lower- and middle-income housing I'd rebuild on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, just below Route 10. That looks to be well above sea level, and it would give them some buffer against future storms.

Polish up the French Quarter, sell it as a tourist destination once again, and voila! You're back in business.

"My Prayer Goes Out to the Red Sox Fan"

Having figured out the "Bambino Curse", my prayer still goes out to the Red Sox fan this time each year. Babe Ruth best exemplifies the answer to the curse, and, I suppose, the cause. He was both a great pitcher and a great left-handed hitter. He took both those qualities with him when he left to join the Yankees in 1918. Those traits would be seen rarely after that as great pitchers didn't want to squander their careers where home runs are so easy in Fenway Park due to the "Green Monster" in left. Left-handed hitters, meanwhile, are at a distinct disadvantage to their right-handed teammates as the distance to the fence in right is considerable. Without a good mix of both righties and lefties on the mound and at the plate the team can't do the proper "platooning", or compete well on the road. What happened when the Red Sox convinced a sufficient number of pitching aces and great left-handed hitters to join the team? They won the World Series. On the off chance that it really was some sort of paranormal curse, my prayers still go out to the Red Sox fan at exactly this time each year.

"Heaven and Hell"

What's the difference between heaven and hell? In heaven all the policemen are British, the chefs are French, the car mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and everything's run by the Swiss.

In hell, however, the policemen are German, the cooks are British, the car mechanics are French, the lovers Swiss, and everything's run by the Italians.

I liked this joke so much I wrote a whole play about it.

Marxists Everywhere

I was shocked at first, but less and less surprised with each encounter, how many Marxists I find casually lounging about our American coffee shops. Didn't those ideas murder one hundred million people? (Not to mention completely impoverish them first and destroy their environment).

LIBRA: September 23 - October 22

Wild horses wouldn't drag the truth out of you. They couldn't. You've been defending yourself from knowledge of wrong-doing through a mixture of forgetting and re-creating plausible back stories for the current moment. Yet one skeleton still isn't in the closet. Repent.

From MetroWeekly.com, September 29, 2005 issue.

Memorize the Classics

" . . if you wanted to draw a lesson from Anonymous, it might be this: read and memorize as many classics as you can, in as many languages as you can. They may keep you going better than canned kohlrabi." Gabriele Annan's conclusion to her take in The New York Review of A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, an anonymous account of life in the post-war rubble, fending off drunken Russian soldiers.

"Politics in Art"

"Politics in Art" always bothered me, at least since I've been old enough to care about Nazism and Communism and such. So did so-called "slam" poetry" when I first encountered it on the L.A. open-mic circuit. Just seemed like a lot of guys aping other guys with made-up urban angst and all-to simulated rhymes and rhythms. Seemed angry, too. And distant from their true feelings. I, on the other hand, had made my rather surprising detour into poetry largely because I had so much in me that had to get out, and I couldn't see any other way of doing it. Then, in Charlottesville, Virginia, I wound up "hanging" with some true slammers. What they were doing didn't make any sense at first through my prejudicial haze, but then I read one guy's poetry from a book he was published in. That's when I decided to try some. My first "free verse" (or what I call "Beat") poem--"An End to War"--I consider today one of my all-time best. What it opened up, though, was "politics in art", political rants and such, just what I'd hoped to avoid doing with my poetry. But, I've always been somewhat politically-minded--government was my major in school, after all--and quick with an opinion on what's going on in the world. So there you have it. May the Muse forgive (and forget).

Liberal Arts of Yore

Trivium
LANGUAGE:
--grammar
--rhetoric
--dialectic ("logic")

Quadrivium
MATHEMATICS:
--arithmetic
--geometry
--music
--astronomy(cosmology)

Scholastics
SCIENCE:
--philosophy
--theology

See The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had.

The Muse

"Muse" means the one who remembers. The nine Muses are the daughters of the titan Mnemosyne, who is the personification of remembrance. All nine have a science or an art to protect:

1. Cleo protects the stories of heroes
2. Urania astronomy
3. Calliope elegies
4. Melpomene the tragedies
5. Euterpe flute playing
6. Erato love poems
7. Tepsicore choir lyrics
8. Thalia the comedies
9. Polyhymnia dance and music.

See Bullfinch's The Age of Fable

Telling Stories

Among my narrative poems, the one that's perhaps been best received is "The Man Who Gave All the Dreamers in Baseball Land Bigger Dreams to Dream".

The germ of the idea came from an article in USA Today chronicling the greatest home runs of all time. Third on the list was the one Kirk Gibson hit to win the first game of the 1988 World Series. In the article Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia was quoted as saying . .

". . it was like 'Casey at Bat,' but this time 'Casey' hit it out."

"Casey at the Bat" has long been America's most popular poem, best when read aloud, and Kirk Gibson's home run that day was far-and-away the greatest single athletic achievement I've ever witnessed, even if it was on national television. Hurt in the locker room, not even in the line-up, he swaggers out, unable even to run the base path to first. He could barely stand there without looking hurt. How could this man hit it out?

To find out you have to read my poem, modelled on Thayer's classic. It's been published in the Baseball Almanac, and anyone who also watched that hit on TV, and has heard me recite the poem, makes sure to tell me how much he appreciates it.