Monday, December 28, 2009

VPOTUS CHENEY's (untitled)

VPOTUS CHENEY’s (untitled)
memoirs (due out in 2011)
of his fed.gov years under
POTUSes Ford & Bush2
contain “a lot of interesting
stories that ought to be told;

I want my grandkids,
20 or 30 years from now
to be able to read it &
understand what I did,
& why I did it.”

A duplicitous grandad,
CHENEY just wants
to double-damn Dubya
& the Democrats. [QED]

(28 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v3; (quotes verbatim.)

Saturday, December 26, 2009

"Nine"

The day after Xmas, I went with Ginny Zeitman & Ivo Adam, an Italian friend of ours who was a teenager in Milano in 1965, to see the new film "Nine" based on a newish play based on Fellini's film "8 1/2" (1965): Daniel Day-Lewis plays an anguished, imaginatively burnt-out Fellini @ 50 wonderfully; semi-clown Fellini would have envied looking as craggily anguished as Day-Lewis does. Ivo noted there are none of the usual Fellini clowns in it (unless, of course, you insist on considering Day-Lewis as a tragic clown.)

Here's Ivo's Italo-historico take on the film:


Bill, I think the reason "pundits - experts" fail to appreciate NINE is that they are looking at it as a musical without considering its Italian character..
For a (non-Italian) critic, this movie is a musical which could be set in the South Pacific...or Chicago... (but) it's Italian Teatro Del'Arte. When one sees Fellini, one sees a modern Goldoni, Servitore di due Padroni...rather than a "West Side Story"...I am glad we went...

Ivo Adam
455E Charleston Road Apt A321 Palo Alto CA 94306 (408) 627-3333


Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Just Buckyballs

Clearing horny nails
of invisible microdots
with a nanodigital file,
our new cyberczar
claims it can be done
safely & securely. We’re
bemused when he says
it’s all just Buckyb@lls!

(22 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v6

Thursday, December 10, 2009

GO-slow Party

No longer obfuscating
things done under Dubya,
radical Republicans play
GO-slow Party, saying:

“Let’s do...Nothing!”
about global warming,
about health-care
costing anything.

The less they do now,
the more they block;
the more they block,
the worse things get.


(10 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v4

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Life Goes

If allowed to, Life goes on.
Where it goes depends on
much I haven't thot of
but also much I have.
While living my Life, I think
it lives inside & around me.
When I die, I'll find out
if & how my Life goes on...
if my Life goes...where I go...


(06 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v7

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Looking for No (now take a deep breath, exhaling) Trouble

A friend of mine has just come back home to S.F. after a stressful year+ of working in the federal appeals court system in Louisville KY, and is now doing zen meditation & Pilates/cardio. Over 70, she's been told by the instructor she already looks 65. Why? Stress-reduction. I think I, too, can finally see the virtuous stress-vanishing point of zen&yoga (as carolin used to say) - "Don't go looking for trouble" but rather instead: Go looking for No (now take a deep-breath, exhaling) Trouble. For the last few years I've written heart-stressing poetry (against the Bad Guys, esp. Cheney&Co.), so maybe it's finally time for me to also learn how to write some heart-healing poetry (for myself, as one of the Good Guys.) My heart & I deserve this life-saving break. "2 stents" (below, post of Thurs Nov. 26 ) is my 1st poem of this type. My therapist has just asked my permission to use it in his practice; I'm glad to hear that I've written a 'healing' poem! Perhaps I can use it to help heal myself!

Short-poem version of above:

Carolin often warned me
not to "go looking for trouble"
& I almost never listened to her;

now, after my heart-attack,
I'm finally looking for No More
(now take a deep breath, exhaling)

Trouble.

(05 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)

Friday, December 4, 2009

hunning

When my children Maya & Alex (both now 45) were in grammar-school (in the '70s) in Brookline MA, an upscale town next to Boston, they often used the slang word ‘hunning’ to mean overdoing anything physically: visualize Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the role of Conan the Barbarian, presumably a Dark Age Hunnic tribesman. I finally realize (at 67) that I’ve been mentally & physically 'hunning' since 17; my recent angioplasty & stents have brought me to a sober realization that I can't 'hun' anymore with impunity. I've been told by the cardiologist that did the angioplasty not to overexert myself, & not to lift over 10 lbs (which my Maine 'coon cat' Reggie probably weighs by now). That's a dynamic restriction I never expected to have to observe, so it finally makes me cautious about my long-ingrained habit of 'hunning' as truly dangerous to my heart & life. This may seem banal to some of you reading this, but this serious realization has come late in my life, at an age my father didn't live to see (he died at 64.5 in 1976, of a cerebral haemorrage caused by high BP he had never bothered to have diagosed & treated.) I, however, have been treated for high BP since the '70s (beginning at Harvard Vanguard HMO in Wellesley MA) & I'm still alive to say so. Now my 'hunning' must be confronted & eliminated...in all the usual ways, but this time, by me.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Thanksgiving biochemistry

Turkey’s L-tryptophan
travels in our bloodstream
from our digestive system
to our brain, changing
into serotonin,
calming us down,
helping us sleep.
It only makes us snooze
if eaten w/out amino acids;
but turkey-protein contains
amino acids, so why
do we snooze so?

(01 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v2