Aging Hippies, Part III: December, 2005

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December 21

Charlie Brown Does Christmas

This goes to show that reading world history during the Christmas season may lead to some very odd mental permutations and combinations. We all know that blogs are virtual scratch-pads; as readers sometimes we get the wheel, sometimes the shaft. It's not my intention to "Grinch" Chrismas with this entry. I do what we all do, record daily thoughts whether dark or light. I am FOX News, I am fair and balanced. Ok, "fair" is a four letter word and "balanced" is open to debate.

December 21, 2005

Following the celebration of lights,

the coming of

The Light of the World,

the dawn of a new year,

a million Christmas trees

will line the curbs

of city

and suburban streets

from Monterey

to Newark.

Their needles will leave

brown and green shadows

on white snow.

For a few days

the streets of America

will look like a postcard

from a Nagasaki lumber yard

dated Christmas, 1945.

(cas, 2005)

December 19

Not On eBay

Real Estate

Richard Brautigan

I have emotions

that are like newspapers that

read themselves.

I go for days at a time

trapped in the want ads.

I feel as if I am an ad

for the sale of a haunted house:

18 rooms

$37,000

I'm yours

Ghosts and all.

______________________

from June 30th, June 30th

p. 43

c 1977 by Richard Brautigan

December 08

Yet Another Richard Brautigan Poem

The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again

I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.

Richard Brautigan

____________________________________________________

This has to be considered a strange poem, even for Richard Brautigan to write, even for me to post. But for a grey Thursday in December I think it is appropriate somehow. My snowblower is in the shop, the radio is predicting heavy lake-effect snow tonight, I am growing older by the hour, and I'm pissed. As Jesus said, "every day is not a holiday, and earth is not heaven." Thank you Jesus, but I'm still pissed. Shut up and fix my snowblower.

Don't freak out, gentle readers. Job yelled at God. I can yell at Jesus. We're connected, we're tight, he's my bro'. There IS a "special" place in Heaven for aging hippies. You know, Heaven, with a capital "H," "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average." It's the same place where all the $2000 snowblowers work and nobody gets pissed off, forever and ever.

Amen

December 06

A New Favorite

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins