a glass of wine with you sir and the ladies i'll enjoy

When one of them gets a piece in, they shake hands and say "bzzt." This exchange symbolizes the sharing of magical energy / luck.


Not getting a piece in for a while leads to increasingly existential questions and then violence.


I wish all of you, gentle readers, the thrill of victory this year and every year.




How to Like It


These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept—
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.



Stephen Dobyns

I ain't got no Shoes on

Time marches peacefully on for the Feinstein clan and its hangers-on.

We, excepting Gloria who needed some rest, made our way down Alligator Alley to visit some paternal cousins, who fed us and beat us at euchre and seemingly never stopped laughing. In a good way.


As my sixth grade teacher was fond of reminding us, "time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." This time of year calls such nuggets to mind.

We're excited to party like rock stars (or maybe folksingers) tomorrow night and hope you are too.


I think everyone who reads this has already seen This, but it's important that I make sure (wait for the forty-fourth second or so):





Exquisite Dead Guy



exquisite dead guy
rotating in his display case
exquisite dead guy
swear i saw his mouth move

exquisite dead guy
outside my highrise apartment
exquisite dead guy
hanging from a skyhook

how am i supposed to let you know the way i feel about you?



John Flansburg / John Linnell

Inlawful Combatants

Actually, it's been pretty peaceful around here.


The above picture proves that no alcohol has been consumed.


And the in-laws are peaceful now that Max is feeling better.


And a jolly good war poem to help us all love our peace.



The Deserter



"What sound awakened me, I wonder,
For now 'tis dumb."
"Wheels on the road most like, or thunder:
Lie down; 'twas not the drum.

"Toil at sea and two in haven
And trouble far:
Fly, crow, away, and follow, raven,
And all that croaks for war."

"Hark, I heard the bugle crying,
And where am I?
My friends are up and dressed and dying,
And I will dress and die."

"Oh love is rare and trouble plenty
And carrion cheap,
And daylight dear at four-and-twenty:
Lie down again and sleep."

"Reach me my belt and leave your prattle:
Your hour is gone;
But my day is the day of battle,
And that comes dawning on.

"They mow the field of man in season:
Farewell, my fair,
And, call it truth or call it treason,
Farewell the vows that were."

"Ay, false heart, forsake me lightly:
'Tis like the brave.
They find no bed to joy in rightly
Before they find the grave.

"Their love is for their own undoing.
And east and west
They scour about the world a-wooing
The bullet in their breast.

"Sail away the ocean over,
Oh sail away,
And lie there with your leaden lover
For ever and a day."


A. E. Housman

Little Projects

Okay - so at first glance maybe this doesn't do much for you. It's a little hard to make out. But what you're seeing is an amazing, albeit half-finished, project. On the right, you can see at least four of Rocky's treasures, including two bones, a favorite stick, and a frog toy (just to the left of the rightmost bone) that he found in the park.

Dead center in the photo is a hole. For the record, holes are really hard to shoot. I promise it's there.

Rocky had big plans here, and he was very careful as he proceeded, as shown by the delicate (for someone with no thumbs) arrangement of the artifacts around the hole. I'll bet that he's discussing his plans for this hole with his buddies at Southern Animal Foundation as I write this.


And here we have an Abbie project, more or less complete. Abbie works in mysterious ways. I'm pretty sure she arranged these dropped petals while she was talking on the phone, probably unconsciously. It's nice to live with someone who beautifies things as she goes along.

Florida is lovely so far. Hot.

And here's a poem for my brother. And for you.



At the Gym



This salt-stain spot
marks the place where men
lay down their heads,
back to the bench,

and hoist nothing
that need be lifted
but some burden they've chosen
this time: more reps,

more weight, the upward shove
of it leaving, collectively,
this sign of where we've been:
shroud-stain, negative

flashed onto the vinyl
where we push something
unyielding skyward,
gaining some power

at least over flesh,
which goads with desire,
and terrifies with frailty.
Who could say who's

added his heat to the nimbus
of our intent, here where
we make ourselves:
something difficult

lifted, pressed or curled,
Power over beauty,
power over power!
Though there's something more

tender, beneath our vanity,
our will to become objects
of desire: we sweat the mark
of our presence onto the cloth.

Here is some halo
the living made together.


Mark Doty

Roadpost

Abbie and I are headed to Florida to sell some of the gifts we got, like a monkey butler (not housetrained), a Johnny Cookin' Home Meth Lab (already have one), and a fondue set (so nineties). Abbie's folks will be staying nearby so we'll visit with them for a few days, too.

We miss Rocky, but are happy that he's with his Real Mom and friends at Southern Animal Foundation. While I was there dropping him off, a lady came in off the street because she had seen me walk in with him and he was just so darn cute. She pulled her car over. I was proud of him (isn't that funny? ...after a week) but also a little sad at the continuing realization that he will undoubtedly be adopted for good very soon.

There hasn't been much of photographic interest today, or maybe just not enough free attention span to notice it, what with all the packing and interstating. Here are a few from Yesterday.

Dad opens something as the Elf goes for her next item:


Jack gets/ignores plenty of help with his new Trash Truck:


And here's a being-away-from-home poem, one which I feel a happy distance* from.



Where are Men When they're Not at Home?



Different places.

Some are out at the barn checking on the mare that's about to foal.
I know, not many now.
A few.

Some are running down to the corner store to pick up something they forgot.
Be right back.

Some are in offices practicing pitches. Spiels.

Some are phoning from offices—saying they'll be late.

Of course, many are dead.
You suddenly think about them because you're back where you haven't been in 20 years and go to look them up.
But they're not there.
Just some widows.

But most are way off somewhere searching for fathers who were never home enough.



Reid Bush



From What You Know. © Larkspur Press.

__________________________________________
* "Happy distance" thanks to Festive Dad:

Mewwy Titmit, as Jack says

This is what it's all about folks. Cinnamon rolls. I think they call these "the reason for the season." And we owe it all to this lady:


She is a queen among women, and not just because she's my mother. I feel kind of bad sharing these photos since some of you have probably never had these cinnamon rolls. But then I just think about the cinnamon rolls and I stop feeling bad. Here's a picture of my niece Georgia, also not feeling bad:


I can't really explain the wild glint in my eye, but I guess I don't have to.


And here's the picture of Georgia after I asked her whether she needed any help finishing hers.


I hope that all of you had wonderful days, no matter how you chose to observe (or not) any of the various solstice-related shindigs.

Preludes

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
as the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

T. S. Eliot

My singing Makes her sad

Just another day, except that Abbie is free, and we're concerned about her mother, and the smell of wet dog is justly famous.


A Poem: My Agent Says


My agent says Los Angeles will call.
My broker says to sell without delay.
My doctor says the spot is very small.
My lover says get tested right away.

My congressman says yes, he truly cares.
My bottle says he'll see me after five.
My mirror says to pluck a few stray hairs.
My mother says that she is still alive.

My leader says we may have seen the worst.
My mistress says her eyes are like the sun.
My bride says that it's true I'm not the first.
My landlord says he'd think about a gun.

My boss says that I'd better take a chair.
My enemy says turn the other cheek.
My rival says that all in love is fair.
My brother says he's coming for a week.

My teacher says my work is very neat.
My ex-wife says I haven't heard the last.
My usher says the big guy's in my seat.
My captain says to bind him to the mast.

My master says I must be taught my place.
My conscience says my schemes will never fly.
My father says he doesn't like my face.
My lawyer says I shouldn't testify.

My buddy says this time I've got it bad.
My first love says she can't recall my name.
My baby says my singing makes her sad.
My dog says that she loves me all the same.

My pastor says to walk the narrow path.
My coach says someone else will get the ball.
My God says I shall bend beneath his wrath.
My agent says Los Angeles may call.


R. S. Gwynn

From No Word of Farewell: Poems 1970-2000, Story Line Press, (c) 2001.

With a jingling Beat

I imagine she's thinking: grown ups have strange ways of entertaining themselves.


A grand time was had by all as my niece's preschool got jiggy with some holiday tunes. Her fans were adoring:

Her brother more or less well-behaved:

And her self was proud:


The puppy is increasingly calm. His front paws are twitching as he sleeps - almost but not quite enough to wake him up. It's getting harder to remember what life was like without him. I dimly remember getting more sleep.

We are excited for the show on Saturday and hope to see you there.

Abbie loves Rocky, and Rocky loves his Kong. (And Abbie.)

What is the one and only thing that Abbie loves more than a puppy? A hobbit.

As Rocky snores next to me after another day full of successes (including scoring a new, super-cool frog toy some other dog left at the park), I find my head is peacefully empty. How can this be, when I have a big ol' honkin' to-do list? And when my day included so many bizarre events, like getting my picture taken with the drunk family of strangers? I think Rocky's snores are magic.

Instead of making our own album (vanity!), we should do the world an actual favor and produce "Puppy Snoring." After it goes platinum, our edgy sophomore effort ("More Snores") will confuse the critics but electrify the fans. Then we'll follow up with "Acoustic Snores," "Snoring through the Holidays" and eventually a "Greatest Snores" retrospective.

Peaceful empty-headedness to all y'all.



Insomnia


The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.


Elizabeth Bishop

Water flowing Underground

Our boy contemplates the tiles. Who knows what he's really thinking about - but the grid, however normal (I almost wrote "natural") it seems to us, is not likely to have confronted the curious eyes of many of his puppy ancestors. I imagine him searching his files of genetic wisdom for what to do when you see a grid... and coming up empty.

I can relate. I think we all can. I've thought a lot about eating disorders in recent years - and I imagined trying to explain to my grandmother, who lived through the Depression: "Well, Grandmother, sometimes some people just can't feel good about eating, even if... or especially if... they have plenty of food." I don't think her grandmother (or her grandmother) would have understood, either.

It doesn't make much sense on its face that hungry people would feel bad about eating - certainly sounds like a genetic absurdity. But do we really expect our responses to make sense? We're a bunch of puppies staring at grid after grid. Every day we encounter (invent!) stimuli and stresses we have absolutely not evolved to process or respond to. Why shouldn't we act a little... unnatural?

I'll probably spend tomorrow entertaining the puppy and, if I'm lucky, I'll spend some time singing and playing into my machines so that I can post a new tune for your listening pleasure. (Speaking of absurdities: a working musician who sings into a computer and, often, doesn't leave the house. As terrifying as the live shows are, they at least feel real.)

Thanks as always for coming by, and apologies for the missed day. It's been busy around here. Don't forget the Project - I would love to hear your wacky suggestion of a place or situation in which to write a song.

Here's a poem from my favorite guy.



A Study of Reading Habits


When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don’t read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.


Philip Larkin

Another Dog Day

It's been a big day in foster dog parent land. My feet are hot as I type because a dreaming Rocky is lying on them, making very amusing noises. Abbie and I are sitting at our laptops while the wind howls outside. Another wild Saturday night at the Brandaos.


You'd never know it from these pictures of course, but the day had a rather rough start. Those of you who know Abbie from other contexts will be shocked to learn that she is a real softy when it comes to dogs. She seems almost entirely unable to use the Voice of Command nor the Finger of Doom when Rocky gets rambunctious, despite the years she has spent savagely abusing her art students. Maybe if I dressed him in a pair of plaid bloomers? (Rocky registers his disagreement by tapping his paws against the baseboard and snoring.)


After he got some exercise and five or six hours of love and play, Rocky was ready to help me cook supper (pictured above).

Sometimes we wonder what we have gotten ourselves into. He is so smart and so loving, but we feel like we have to watch his every move. Abbie is definitely not having the restful weekend she might have hoped for as we near the end of a long semester. I'm certainly not getting a lot of songwriting done. It's impossible not to love him though.

The band plays on Saturday at the Neutral Ground. There will be new tunes and lots of new harmonies. I hope those of you who can't make it will still celebrate the solstice with reckless abandon.

I'll leave you with my second-favorite dog poem.



The Revenant

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair and eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.


Billy Collins

The family Grows

This is Abbie's face when she saw the newest member of our household.

We are foster dog parents!


Here they are in the back seat when I picked Abbie up from school today.

Rocky is nine months old. He was hit by a car and needed several major surgeries to repair a shattered back leg. His owners could not afford the surgeries and eventually decided to give him up to the Southern Animal Foundation, where we found him.

He needs exercise to build back the tiny muscles in his hurt leg. He needs love. He needs some housetraining. And he needs a family who can take him in for good. Unfortunately for us, we can only provide the first three. Our lives are pretty uncertain, especially starting in June. But we will love having him for as long as we get to keep him, and we know we're helping make him more adoptable, too.



If you know someone who might be able to take in one of the sweetest, smartest dogs I have ever met, please let me know. (Feel free to take your time, because we love having him... but please do.)

Garden Variety

There's nothing quite like worry, is there? I spent today doing laundry in the company of two fine dogs, who, like their fellows, have a wonderful and often-noted way of reminding you not to worry. They can fear; they can even panic; but the future does not cause them to do so.

I remember teaching Burns's "To a Mouse," from which we get the lines about the best laid plans of mice and men going often agley. As I recall, the last lines involve the farmer telling the mouse (whose home he's just destroyed, which means the mouse is going to freeze to death because it's almost winter) that, actually, the mouse has it pretty good after all, because he only has to deal with the present. I guess he thinks the mouse won't or can't realize that it's doomed. The poor farmer, by contrast, says he casts his eye backward on a past full of "prospects drear / And forward, though I canna see / I guess an' fear." (I'm using quotes even though I'm not sure the quote is quite right.)

How about that? Are we at our most human when we worry?


While we're talking poets, I think Eliot had a neat idea about this character Tiresias. According to the myths (I think mostly Ovid?), Tiresias had been turned into a woman, and then back into a man. If memory serves, the process involved hitting a magic snake with a stick (obviously). As a result, he was an authority, I guess the only absolute authority, on gender-war-type issues. I imagine if he were around today he would have a syndicated advice column. Things turn ugly one day when the gods are having a disagreement about who enjoys sex more, men or women. They call Tiresias up, naturally, and he says that women enjoy it more, thereby ending the debate for eternity and really pissing off Hera, who blinds him. Zeus feels bad and gives him the "gift" of prophecy as a sort of consolation prize.

Okay so that's the back story. Eliot uses this phrase "foresuffer all" that has stuck with me. Tiresias can see everything in the future, but nothing in the present. And he can feel everything he sees, especially men and women trying to understand each other, from both feminine and masculine perspectives. So, Tiresias has already experienced every fight you have ever had (or will ever have) with your significant other... and from both sides. Predictably, he's not a very happy guy in the poem.

Tiresias isn't a worrier - he is suffering because of what he knows is going to happen, which I guess is worse than worrying, but on the other hand doesn't involve this horrifying uncertainty. They have this common element of foresuffering... which seems so totally unnecessary. You're going to have to suffer for real when the future becomes the present. Why suffer in advance, too? And then, you remember that unlike Tiresias you're not even sure that the thing you're worrying about is going to happen at all. In fact, in your more lucid moments, you know most of your worries won't ever happen. So you're really foresuffering for no reason at all, which makes you mad at yourself. And your dog is staring at you this whole time with utter incomprehension.


Abbie's birthday is tomorrow. I've mentioned my issues with time, and so anniversaries and things make me feel a little lost. And I reject the idea that this day ought to be more special than the others, because why shouldn't the others be just as good? But of course that doesn't really work. So, I spend many days and weeks preparing, which is mostly great, but inevitably involves worrying that the whole happy-memory-manufacturing-process will fail in any number of ways, including just because I want it not to.

Worry is very human but also lame. Worrying about how much you worry? Clearly uber-lame. Birthdays rule the school and Abbie's greatness and patience will conquer all, but I'll still have to remind myself to take a deep breath every once in a while. Reading poetry makes blog posts longer but not necessarily better. Stuffing all of your conclusions into a single final paragraph is strangely satisfying.

Love and peace, and please suggest some songwriting locations for the Project, which starts Saturday.


The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
-Prospero

Born and born and born again.

It's laptop time!

Abbie and I spend quite a bit of time "working" on our laptops.


Abbie maintains a certain grace. I grimace and stoop (not pictured).

One of the "results" of my laptopian endeavors is the, um, thing in the top right corner. On my computer, it loads funny until you scroll up and down. I apologize if you find it obnoxious, but it's there because it contains (some of) our tunes and a place to join our mailing list. Please feel free to give us a listen and let us know what you think, either of the tunes themselves or the "widget" that delivered them.

More or less exhausted after a day of scrolling and uploading, I will leave it here. Thanks for coming by and spending a little of your quality computer time with us. Remember to suggest interesting songwriting locations and situations.

P. S. This is a big secret but Abbie has started a blog which is better than this one.