What about Bob?

In early January,my dear friend of over 20 years,Bob Schmid, died of cancer. He was but 60, and had fought liver cancer and hepatitis C for years. I had the privilege of keeping him company many a night down the long road toward death. Our conversations ranged from our childhoods' to food[always a favorite subject] to gambling[he loved to gamble loved Vegas spent three night trying to teach me carribean poker,then gave up saying "I don't have THAT much time left"}to horses{he loved horses,not just horse racing,though he loved the ponies at the track]to movies[he loved westerns] and music[he loved do-wop and beautiful voices,though Glenn Gould's Goldberg was often playing while he slept}Bob was a big man, about 6' 3" , and a solid 210+.A big hombre with a deep voice and a loud laugh, he had a high pitched ,angelic singing voice.He told me one night that one of the really tragic things about cancer was that he could no longer sing.One night, I brought rolling Stone magazine with me, their issue about the 100 greatest singers, and we spent that evening talking about concerts[he saw James Brown and Sam Cooke in the 50's} and singers over hot bagels and tea and juice. One of Bob's truly great virtues, besides his incredible kindness, was his sense of humor,which he found in everything. I mean everything. A few times, he actually faked dying on me, then said either"boo" or "gotcha" when I went to check his pulse.While he was in the hospice, finally ,in the end, struggling for breath, i went closed to his face, held his hand and said"Bob ,you have been a good friend for so many years..."he opened his eyes,took off the oxygen mask, looked over at Annie sitting in the corner of the room, rolled his eyes and said"Oh no, here it comes!" He was perhaps the least sentimental person I have known. He was asked by numerous clergy if he wanted to speak to a priest or minister[he was raised Lutheran] and he would say"ah, no thanks,save it for someone else"One night I asked if he would trade his sobriety for a cancer free life. It seemed a legitimate question , at least at 3 AM[Bob was sober just about 28 years}"No," he said, quickly and quite emphatically," because I wouldn't have the friends that I have,I wouldn't have this." He was always the big brother I never had, talked to me when I needed it, read me the riot act when needed, too.He was big, good and kind, and the reason he didn't need a minister to anoint him was that God had done so long before .Even now I catch myself laughing at something he said or did. He loved deeply his Sister and Brother in law, his niece and nephew, and his companion of many years and her children and grandchildren,all of whom he spoke of,almost nightly, worrying about them,telling wonderful stories and anecdotes. I waited till now to write of him, because I wanted some clarity, which time affords.Sleep well my friend, as you dance among the stars.My life was improved the moment I met you.

Ferlinghetti Forever

The great Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the sanest men on the planet, turned 90 years old yesterday. Co-founder and still owner of the fabulous CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE in San Francisco, founder of CITY LIGHTS publishers, poet ,WW II vet,friend and publisher of the BEATS,artist activist[how is it that he has never won a Pulitzer?} NATIONAL TREASURE, Yep, Ferlinghetti is all of these. And Still at it. Read him. Enjoy his works, from Coney Island to Americus,he is worth his weight in gold leaf. Happy Birthday to a citizen of the world...

Montgomery C. Meigs

A beautiful,bright cool day.The air is clean and breathable by NYC standards, listening to Julia Fischer's rendering of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin,drinking a strong aromatic cup of hot chai,sun streaming in as I write. Not much more to ask for... Th war in Iraq seems to still be a far off afterthought to many people. The wounded vets who come home, almost all way past their rotation, are having, as you would expect severe adjustment problems, finding the economy near damn broken,and the political climate mildly more appreciative. I am poisoned with grief at the hypocricy of the right,.Where is the dirigible Limbaugh? Did he volunteer? Cheney?Powell? Fleisher?Bush?Rice?Rumsfeld? McConnell?any of the noxious lying weasel gasbags? Any of the criminals from Bush 43?Glen Beck, go volunteer boy. You too Hannity .O Reilly? Then stop you cowardly call for my children to go serve. or is it only the kids of poor and working class parents who should serve in this madness? If I had it in my powers I would build a veterans hospital and cemetery on the property of GW Bush and co, the way General

Montgomery C. Meigs did in the Civil war,on the steps of RE Lee's plantation, so that every moment of every day, the dead would be visible, and that Bush and his cronies would have to at least SEE what it is that they did for their beloved OIL and Petro -dollars.

Cheney

Well, Dick Cheney has roared his gruesome head once more, speaking for the masters who control his every word[Haliburton/Blackwater/et,al.}The USAis not safe under the current administration,Bush II and the republicans are not responsible for the current mess,blah blah blah. How the interviewers kept from vomiting ,or laughing out of sheer incredulity is miraculous. In a truly just world,Cheney would be in Leavenworth or Attica for crimes AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. When I listen to Rice,Cheney,Bush, Rumsfeld, Fleisher etc. I wonder one thing:WHY DO THE HATE AMERICA? Why do they hate freedom? Why do they hate free speech,free elections,the constitution[except when hiding behind its executive protections].Why do they hide the truth?WHY ? They are so repulsive it makes me gag...
Now onto Bach.No matter how dark things were under BUSH 43,there was Bach always there to show me beauty hope and wonder. I listen to Bach every day,as of late concentrating on St Matthews Passion,though also the Cello concertos performed by Rosotopovich and the Trumpet concertos By Balsom. Am Reading the tome Now the Drum of War,Walt Whitman and his brothers during the civil war. Whitman was no saint He was a bigot,probably a copperhead and certainly NOT a man of his time. His work in the hospitals during the war was truly holy,though,if that word has any resonance.And,of course,it gave rise to an extraordinary fecund period of his poetry.
Listening:Harancourt conducting St Matthews Passion
READING: Now the Drum of War, The Shadow of Sirius WS Merwin

A sense of place

I live in Brooklyn,NY, Greenpoint to be exact. I have lived here 36 of my 51 years ,have seen shifts from the area being red-lined by the banks[a process, when developers targeted an area,a red line would be drawn on a map , and no mortgages would be issued to locals within that circle or line,thereby creating a vacuum for a developer to fill.yeah, banks have evolved greatly,now they do this to entire states} The Polish immigrants kept this neighborhood from falling off the map,kept it safe if not beautiful. It was not too long, however, before the vultures began circling. An influx of young newly arrived artists discovered Greenpoint{they refer to themselves, without irony as pioneers} the locals,seeing visions of dollar signs, raised their rents, and what was a nice, quiet safe community filled with kids became a colony for trust funders and neer do wells, where you can have a dozen Thai eateries and only one shoemaker. What has been lost is not nostalgia,nor a conformity[though the influx did bring in some needed change in the makeup] but that sense of place, the low skyline which enabled great views of the Manhattan skyline is obscured by the growing infestation of high rise' luxury" apartments, for the bankers and other well to do types.[speaking of infestations, the new arrivals seem to come with their own brand of parasite,a bedbug epidemic.The irony is choking...}When a neighborhood goes through such a cathartic change,things rapidly , and needlessly, are discarded. Churches and schools close, because the demographics have shifted,small businesses, operating for years, are forced out by the rents,which are repulsively high,families can't afford to live in their rented apartments, and where do they go?Are these people, lifers in this place, simply chaff to be separated? All that is new is not necessarily bad or good, it is in it's application that you can judge. And somehow, the city of New York failed the long time residents of this neighborhood,by allowing speculators to control the market, buy up properties,without long term vision.{I know the NYC planning commission has some decent voices, however, money talks in this. as always}. The sense of place is now gone,replaced or displaced by an angular,neo-hipster sense of entitlement{see the asinine argument over whether to re-open McCarren Pool or keep it as an outdoor concert venue} which has no sense of roots. I know, everyone in their 20's thinks they have discovered the wheel,it is natural, and eventually ,one becomes aware that there are others in the world. The sense of solipsim that hangs in the air is noxious. Again,the world being replaced needed some palliative care, im just not certain that euthanasia was called for. So it goes.

Kitty Genovese

On this day in 1964,on a street in Queens ,New York, 38 law abiding, decent people watched as Katherine Kitty Genovese was repeatedly stabbed and beaten. Neighbors cowered behind curtains and blinds, saying "I didn't want to get involved." The crime shocked the country,the apathy,more.I wonder,though,how much has really changed. Our world is certainly smaller, we have access to information and news that was science fiction in 1964. Think of the Iraq War,current vintage. Where was the moral outrage?Where is it now? Are these poor men and women coming home mangled in mind body and soul being helped. The idiot Dauphin and his minions,who beat the war drums, have any of them spilled an ounce of blood, theirs or their families? The rush to war, founded on lies and greed and oil companies[yes, this all sounds familiar] and security companies[blackwater,anyone?},who has been held accountable? Are Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell-Rice-Fleisher and all of their weasel cronies ever going to be held accountable?Or maybe we are all like the neighbors of Kitty Genovese, cowering, afraid to say anything,indicted by our silence and cowardice, and years from now,when we pay the price of this folly time and again, will we shake out heads in collective sighs, and wonder, how did this happen? Again?
Reading"Leaves Of Grass
Listening:Bach St Matthews Passion
Neil Young Living with war

Things to do

Be grateful ,always. Breathe in, deeply.Drink plenty of Water. Be kind,dammit.{KV} Always look for beauty.Read poetry,often{as in Whitman,Blake,etc.} Listen to Bach, daily[it will improve everything,including your hearing] feed some birds, God's creatures all.be kind to small things, ants, dogs children older folks.wear something colorful, black is for french existentialists mourning the end of the cold war.tell someone that you love them,daily.help the next person you see who needs ,you will feel wonderful,this is how things change.pick up litter,especially if it's not yours.go outdoors, even if it's raining.if you learn to love the rain, you always be happy[who doesnt love sunny days?Vampires?}seek out flowers trees,kites,try to learn something that is new each day, even if its a word or a new kind of food or music.mistrust what business "leaders " say and what you see and hear on TV. try ones best to avoid the catastrophic violence that we bequeath to our children every day,whether on movies, music tv or speech[not to mention the governments].Eat a piece of chocolate...chocolate is grace filled. Love ,man, love.It's the answer

Rahman Baba and the theocratic fascists

So, the psychosis known as the Taliban has blown up the shrine of the greatest Pashtu poet of all time, a name revered throughout all Afghanistan ,Rahman Baba.Now, poetry in Afghanistam,Iran and Iraq is similar to,though trumped greatly, our knowledge of popular song lyrics{say, Bob Dylan,Cole Porter, Tupac Shakur and Billy Strayhorn] Homes that possess very little will have a copy of poems by Rahman Baba or in Iran a copy of the Diwan of Hafez. Now, the theocratic goosesteppers have bombed his shrine[the pernicious doctrine of Wahhabism, funded by Saudi petro dollars,which hates.literally hates, Sufism} because woman were found praying there? Now, in the beginning of Islam, the contemporaries of the Prophet ,woman, prayed with him in mosques.So, a religion of beauty,of peace, and poetry is being further distorted by thugs and gangster assholes. Somewhere the Prophet and Jesus must be holding each other ,weeping at the folly.
reading:poems of Hafiz
listening:Bach St Matthews passion,Phillipe Herreweghe conducting

Tibet

March the 10th is Tibet uprising day,50 years of occupation decimation and ,yes genocide by the Chinese government.The worlds response?Well, let the Dalai Lama take some photos, business is important, free trade leads to free societies. How's that working out? Besides businessmen wetting themselves to do business where the labor is cheap or free[read incarcerated} thereby taking jobs away and farming them out for bigger profit[and like anyone who has ever had enough, businesses want more}.So,China has contributed to the ecological destruction of Tibet?You cant make and omelette without breaking some eggs,eh{Stalin knew his omelettes.Or breaking things} Hey I SAW KUNDUN, I almost cried,man. Isn't that enough?...Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama tries, with the faith of a man attempting to hold back the ocean with a broom, to keep Tibetan culture alive and keep his people hopeful.In the long term,who knows?I have faith ,though, not in power of fascist thugs but in love and service. In the end, the universe is just.Sometimes,the train is a little slow arriving in the station...
Listening:Ornette Coleman Beauty is a rare thing,Philip Glass Music in Twelve parts
Reading:A biography of Maimonides ,poems of the late lamented Sohrab Sepheri

back once more,but not so fast...

a wild, tough few months.my beloved brides brother went to the other side in December,and I don't mean Republicans. I pray that the peace which was absent from his life is now found, and that he is dancing somewhere among the cosmos..My dear friend Bob passes in January,after battling cancer to a standstill. His courage and grace was of a Hemingway character, and he was,insistently, the least sentimental person I have ever known. Brave,kind,balls out hilarious, avuncular with my kids,a good great friend whom I miss each and every day...I see the mean spirited flatulent party has , after wrecking the economy and perhaps permanently destroying this countries credibility, after fleecing everyone for 28 years and calling it "patriotic',somehow, these cretins have not woken up to the simple fact that they have been exposed. The President is doing an extraordinary job, especially in light of inheriting the worst financial and diplomatic crisis since 1932...sigh...

100 years more
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The sky was green

Neon

Flashes illuminating

Smoke

Fog

Gas dust

As he fell

He turned his head

Slightly

To the left

Thought

How

The fog looked

Bathed in green

like the lights

of the high school

football field

He didn’t feel the ha rd

Cold ground

Didn’t feel the

Hole

The viscous

liquid

Oozing out

Mixing with sand

Dirt

Dew

He smelled

Something

Familiar

And thought

Is this what I smelled

When I was born

The blood

Earth

Sweat

Fear

Shit

and longed

For his mother

Her smell

Her warmth

any warmth

He was cold

the desert night

seemed eternal

It was borne

Within

A cold that was a vast

without darkness
light

or end

He saw faces

Lips moving

He couldn’t hear them

They became

Enshrouded

In the gauze of fog

As he sighed
one final time