ANYTIME YOU WISH, YOU CAN DANCE
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Clickable image-music
Part 1/3 | Part 2/3 | Part 3/3
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curve and click, the rest of you alive, all
© Al Young
GABRIELE THE NATURAL WAY
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nasa.gov
Remembering Gabriele | A Video Tribute
© Richard B. Ressman
GABRIELE THE NATURAL WAY
Gabriele Rico Ressman (1937-2013) in memoriam
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old,
we grow old because we stop playing.”
— Satchel Paige
You taught the world to write a natural way,
a playful way for sure. Don’t think. Just breathe.
Just undermine what’s on your mind and stay
aloof. Just hold your breath and die. Believe.
Let go and breathe back out. You’re on again.
Stories and poems we utter naturally;
text vexes us like learning the trombone.
Technique groans to get taught. You actually
danced from your left brain to your right with just
enough of the right kind of love left over
to share, to match all odds. Your lifelong lust
for learning and defiance lasts. Forever.
From Germany to California you,
light-giving Gabriele, you gave us you.
– Al Young
19 March 2013
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“I’m not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.”
— Sojourner Truth
On Living, Loving, and Dying
Suzanne Rico’s Walking Papers Blog |
A Long, Strange Family Trip
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HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013 from AlYoung.org
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ANNUAL RENEWAL
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Alberta Cifolelli: “The Sentinels IX”
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Rewind 1987 <<<
JANUARY
The VW needs serious transmission work,
the Datsun blows a radiator hose,
Blue Cross wants $425 right away,
the last checks of December come back
bouncing off the wall at $8.50 a crack,
the turntable quits spinning,
mildew overtakes the bathroom walls,
there’s $50 worth of developed pictures
at Fotomat you can’t afford to pick up,
the old typewriter’s gonna cost $30
to fix up so you can rent it out.
You bite into an apple & hurt your molar
on the stem the same molar with root canal
work done last January & it’s time
to go in for a checkup. They’re gonna kick
you outta the screenwriters guild if
you don’t pay up the 2 years’ back dues.
The City of Los Angeles owes all
the money you spent in travel costs
to do a gig way back in November,
the radio you bought your son for graduation
fell apart & it’s cheaper to buy a new one
than have his fixed, the Xmas briefcase
your wife gave you its handle’s slipped off
already, prospects keep growing colder
as the water you’re in grows hotter.
You know it’s January when you have to stop
& pay close attention to what you’re doing
wrong that seemed O so right last July.
—Al Young
— from Heaven: Collected Poems 1956-1990
© 1992 by Al Young
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WHAT DECEMBER REMEMBERS
Hear Al Young’s “What December Remembers,” his last poem of 2012 for KQED’s The California Report, plus some end-of-year reflections with show host Scott Shafer.
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Courtesy images
WHAT DECEMBER REMEMBERS
1/
St. Anthony’s Dining Hall | Glide Memorial Church, San Francisco
How good it feels always to feed and feed
not really the poor, but actual people, table
by table, more than just one mouth at a time;
next-generation descendents and ancestors,
one by one, one on one, one to one. What fun
to deify and defy, to feed yourself, to last.
2/
Body Shop El Águila, San Ysidro, with its big sign in English: “MAY WE HAVE THE NEXT DENTS?”
Yes, like in Stormy Monday Blues, the eagle flew
on Friday, and Saturday he went out to play
- except this year’s Christmas fell on a Tuesday.
He needed him a hard-work weekend long enough
to knock out a foundry full of fender-benders.
To make ends meet, to lavish, to water his wayward,
can’t-speak-Spanish daughters with digital gifts;
to rescue their brother, to win back their mother,
he needed back-busting blessings to lose those blues.
¿La vida loca? Yes, life was still whatever it was,
his sweet and cruel Christmases the craziest.
3/
The Poet at Three
The poet at three crunching on a candy cane,
sucking on an orange. Sandy Claws knocking
back a cold Co-Cola, all sly, all wise, all smiley
and winky, all White Christmas dreamy, messing
with the kid: a snowy red picture that sticks.
All the way from Mississippi’s Gulf Coast
the poet will clear Cal’s glossy golf courses
(Pebble Beach, Hidden Valley, Pelican Hill,
Old Brockway, Coyote Moon, Incline Village)
to land and hang with joy. To and from worlds
he’ll get to know, the poet will take heart and give.
© 2012 Al Young
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SILENCE REVISITED | Al Young
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Al Young
SILENCE REVISITED
“Your native zone is silence.”
— Kenneth Patchen
To have to silence the phone
tells you what you deeply need:
surcease, time-out to feed
on soul, some quiet nights alone.
You’re good as long as breathing
lasts, as long as you can still
make out the taste and smell
of truth around you, seething
like the midday sun, a common
force of nature. “Please don’t call.
None of you.” You review all
the rules of order you can summon.
“Turn off your ringers,” you conclude.
An un-safe-cracker, you tumbler-dial
until you fail. Locked out, you smile.
Silence backs your every mood.
© 2012 Al Young
