MENDELSSOHN ~

READ YOUR BOOK ~

LONNIE JOHNSON ~

Welcome! one and all to two solid days of music.
The only problem is, we are dealing with copyright laws
and copyright laws can be important and should be respected
and with the right player (you & me) played with ~
so some of the links will be there for us
and it turns out for copyright reasons
some links won't be there, but often something is there.
I want you to see what I intended for our holiday fare
even if the tune may be absent ~
be playful and try out another tune
that is offered.
Carry on.

YOKEL ( 11 ) ~

Wreck

One of Native’s boys, the best looking one,

Smacked his car and hiked home with a

Bloody lip to get help from his father as

What to do. Native and I were working

At his farm together but stopped right off

And rode the tractor up the Jelly Mill woods

Road until we came out on the back road

Where the Ford was nose busted into the

Side of a concrete bridge. The boy had lost

Control on the steep hill gravel, spun

Around and was stopped fast by the bridge.

We had to get it out of there before anyone

Reported and the state cops showed —

Besides, Native’s boy didn’t have a license.

So with two log chains Native hitched it

Right and rolled it the two miles home

With all the other kids who showed up

Piling into the front and back seats

Having the time of their lives.

Fire

I knew Native for five years before Lily

Had his fire but when the trash pail flames

Let go in the Spring wind and spread in a

Dance over his dry fields it was his only

Neighbors he rushed to first because the

Fire department was ten miles off and Lily

Was a hippie without a phone. We didn’t

Have a phone either but used the one in

The Minister’s place and then called Native

Who brought his young boys and together

With rakes and shovels we slapped the fire

Back and made it perfect for the firemen to

Hose water, use walkie-talkies and take

All the credit. But before the big-shots got

There Native looked up from the smoking

Fields and nodded over to me that he well

Remembered doing this 30 years ago with

His uncle when the hill behind our place

Nearly burned over.

Neighbor

Was quite a guy —

A ladies man with four sons.

A college professor who took one

Of his students for his second wife.

A twinkle to his eyes helped swing things

Since he only had one arm, lost as a boy,

But he insisted on manning a chain saw

Where he could, drive stick-shift like a demon,

Play the piano. Now that he has been dead

Ten years I wonder if he ever told me the truth,

Since he was too good to be true. A man whose

House site I cleared and then there were twenty piles

Of brush he wanted burned. I still have my denim

Winter coat that caught on fire by a hot spark.

The book he wrote on Thoreau.

The books I wrote because of Thoreau.

And somewhere in my hands that last time I was

Called over to help him out of his bed, body

Burned away from cancer, and bracing him up

In the bathroom so he could take a leak

We both got a look at one another in that

Awful private mirror.

                                          for John

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

THE JAZZ LOFT ~

W. Eugene Smith

Jazz

THE BEST JOHNNY CASH ~

WAITING FOR THE MAN ~

DAVID BOWIE'S BOOKSHELF ~

R E A D      M E

a gem of a little book ~

Bowie's choices but it's

O'Connell's spirited

and well-researched

package

BARBARA TAKENAGA ~

R E A D      M E

CHARLES BOWDEN / EDWARD ABBEY ~

R E A D       M E

REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS ~

When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving

in the backseat of my car are my own sons,

still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heard

me warn them against playing with toy pistols,

though my rhetoric is always about what I don’t

like, not what I fear, because sometimes

I think of  Tamir Rice & shed tears, the weeping

all another insignificance, all another way to avoid

saying what should be said: the Second Amendment

is a ruthless one, the pomp & constitutional circumstance

that says my arms should be heavy with the weight

of a pistol when forced to confront death like

this: a child, a hidden toy gun, an officer that fires

before his heart beats twice. My two young sons play

in the backseat while the video of  Tamir dying

plays in my head, & for everything I do know, the thing

I don’t say is that this should not be the brick and mortar

of poetry, the moment when a black father drives

his black sons to school & the thing in the air is the death

of a black boy that the father cannot mention,

because to mention the death is to invite discussion

of  taboo: if you touch my sons the crimson

that touches the concrete must belong, at some point,

to you, the police officer who justifies the echo

of the fired pistol; taboo: the thing that says that justice

is a killer’s body mangled and disrupted by bullets

because his mind would not accept the narrative

of  your child’s dignity, of  his right to life, of  his humanity,

and the crystalline brilliance you saw when your boys first breathed;

the narrative must invite more than the children bleeding

on crisp fall days; & this is why I hate it all, the people around me,

the black people who march, the white people who cheer,

the other brown people, Latinos & Asians & all the colors of   humanity

that we erase in this American dance around death, as we

are not permitted to articulate the reasons we might yearn

to see a man die; there is so much that has to disappear

for my mind not to abandon sanity: Tamir for instance, everything

about him, even as his face, really and truly reminds me

of my own, in the last photo I took before heading off

to a cell, disappears, and all I have stomach for is blood,

and there is a part of me that wishes that it would go away,

the memories, & that I could abandon all talk of making it right

& justice. But my mind is no sieve & sanity is no elixir & I am bound

to be haunted by the strength that lets Tamir’s father,

mother, kinfolk resist the temptation to turn everything

they see into a grave & make home the series of cells

that so many of my brothers already call their tomb.

______________________

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Felon

Norton, 2019

U.S. HIGHBALL ~

YOKEL ( 10 ) ~

S O N   O F

Y O K E L

It was the opportunity to be ignorant

that I improved

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Hot Work Day

My young son

points over the

pasture gate high

off into the woods

edge shade and says,

Let’s walk up to

there — can we?

Of course we can

                                   for Carson

Staring At the Engine

Hood up

Greased hands of both natives

Wool caps pulled over the ears

Splashes of oil on snow and scrap metal

Grimy tools in a shiny toolbox

Baby cries from the trailer

Driving

Once upon a time all of us drove

Pieces of junk — VWs, old trucks, 

Screwed back together wagons —

And then there was the day the

Newcomers came and better vehicles

Were always around, driven the fastest —

But the newcomers had a funny 

Way of breaking themselves in —

First they were courteous and only

After awhile did their speed pick up

And about the same time the natives

Began to show forth with new sports

Vehicles all sponsored by a bank

Loan that almost always went broke

And soon enough they were back in

Pieces of junk so that we can always

Tell the difference between who

Is who

In Valley

One day my son

and I went to watch

a helicopter lift out

hardwood logs from

a steep shady woodlot

no skidder dared to reach

the helicopter made its

hitch and drop every

three minutes, it was

something to see, as

the long cable swept

the tree tops with an

oak log a few of us

stood far below on

an old farm bridge

greatly diminished

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

ANNA KARINA ~

A n n a      K a r i n a

1940 Denmark ~ 2019 Paris

THE HOBO 1869-1956 ~

R E A D      M E