Didn’t know about this till my wife told me. She suggested I post one of mine.
Not because I think it’s great but because she asked, I’m posting this triviality from 2005, when my TBB character Harry turned 60. As it happens, I turned 60 this year. I posted it at The Boomer Bible website (boomerbible.com), which lives still in the Wayback Machine. When you’re 60, practically everything you know lives in the Wayback Machine. This one’s maybe not as good as Psong 59, but the symbolism is so much more, well, symbolic.
Herewith, Psong 60 from the Psongs of Harry:
I could give up sleeping,
2 But for the alarm of morning,
3 Which wants to surprise us awake,
4 With a brand new ancient lesson.
5 Every morning is everywhere,
6 The center of being undraped and unafraid,
7 On display for its satellites.
8 When I was in Rio, I flung open the broad smiling horizon built upon my balcony,
9 And I squinted the darkness away.
10 Today I roll out under the roof of morning,
11 Trusting a sun I can’t see,
12 Imagining the boastful light above the trusses and timbers and shingles of our conceits,
13 But I do not dare to look at the blush of retreating night,
14 That pink behind we all must show,
15 In impotent flight.
16 Darkness always loses courage in the end,
17 And dawn wins every day.
18 So must I,
19 But more slowly now than then,
20 When I was young.
Will this do, my dear?
So beautiful. It keeps getting better.
I’m reading this with your voice in my mind and am moved, as ever. Thank you, Alfa, for prompting this post, and thank you, our Poet Host, for writing it.
Of course, my favorite piece of poetry from you (or anyone, for that matter), is the entire Punk Testament. A crescendo and a call to arms like none other.
Doggerel. Or so I’ve been told.
I woke up this morning and I drank a couple cups of fluoride.
Then I got on my bike and I went for a ride,
there were too many cars and the air smelled like carbon monoxide,
so I went into the bank and I looked inside.
I decided right there and then to trade the far out for the wide,
who needs pimps and hoes when you’ve got the wild horse mesa ride?