'The Poets, They're Drinking', 'Gunga Din', and 'This Week's Brad'
Some humor and some Lyrical Content, we hope.
For this Birthday (my 73rd) Weekend. Maryse and I offer two poem, read by her, ‘Gunga Din’ and ‘This Week’s Brad’, and video and audio of another poem, ‘The Poets, They’re Drinking’, performed by me last February with the accompaniment of our dogs Bartleby (the dark one with white-tipped tail) and always musical RotoTumba (she goes round and round and you can play her a drum).
These come from the book Animals Are Always Music.
Happy birthday! It’s been that way for me!
We begin with Maryse and ‘THE BOX-OFFICE BAROMETER FOR 1939!
‘Gunga Din’
Three against five hundred? Them 's fair odds If the five hundred be Little brown people And the three be Officers of Empire Who possess 'Superior Strategy', Such as Victor, Douglas and Cary (Archie) In the 1939 Hollywood movie.
27 years after Sam Jaffe in brownskin As water-bearer bearer Gunga Din Died bravely for the British Crown President Lyndon Johnson explained United States' foreign policy: "There's three billion little brown people Out there Who want what we've got," the tall Texan said. And we're not going to let them have it."
Maryse observes a visit to the Casey Jones Supermarket in Gretna, Louisiana —
This Week's Brad
'I Can't Stop Loving Brad' Jennifer is quoted On the cover of the Star Along this check-out lane Of Casey Jones Super Market In Gretna, Louisiana. One of two paired Black ladies Puzzles at the tabloid. "Who's Brad?" she asks.
In 2002 the sparkling Editor of the San Francisco Call, Betsey Culp, asked me to write something to celebrate the installation of much-deserved Plaque for Poets in Washington Square of North Beach, San Francisco, the neighborhood where I'd lived for 20+ years.
Maryse shot the video last February in front of endlessly stimulating Haitian metal-art by Rony Jacques (thank you, Marie-Jo!) and Bartlely and RotoTumba naturally took an interest.
The Poets, They're Drinking
The poets, they're drinking. They're talking to dogs. They're how leaves speak. They're swimming in thunderstorms-- "Strike me with lightning! I'm here to be filled!" They're avenging angels, Supreme legislators, Worth more than $1.37. They name vowels colors! They wish only to sleep.
No one loves them. No one listens to them! They're alien in boundaries Of America and they're crushed By clockwork grooves. They seek diamonds to hone. They're stumbling home. More vain than birds, mad for just fame, They evolve to abandoning gossip, Abandoning back-stabbing and double-dealing, For peace in the mind's theater. Still, they'll recite For wine or pretty ones-- Wind up passed-out on somebody's couch-- Wind up awake with scented flesh and silken skin In the most surprising of beds, Alert as rutting deer, Tender as a pig's ear.
Their art is neurotic. Their art is salvation They may not be useful. They may be most vital. They keep shrines to gentle prophets. They arch their throats at the Tower. They dance and sit zam-zun By a cast-iron Ben Franklin. Their music is danger. Bless them. Bless them (bless us!) for their Crooked walks, bugged and faraway eyes, Their wounds and gifts That try to reach so high.
First: September 2002 for a celebration in North Beach and for Betsy Culp's San Francisco Call
The audio-track below of ‘The Poets, …’ is enhanced through creators’ freeware AUDACITY and sounds better than the video. I’d tried to synch audio into video over more ‘n hour’s efforts, through Quicktime Player, and iMovie, and Final Cut Pro, and each one’s counter-intuitive clunkiness exasperated and failed me. What’s called ‘A. I.’ will enable more further advances in stupidity best-ignored.
‘The Poets, …’ with Bartleby and RotoTumba and audio only.