VW Bus Life

We lived in that psychedelic painted VW bus,
slept, ate, had sex in it.
Heading to California playing The Beach Boys,
Grand Funk, and The Mama’s & Papa’s
'California Dreaming' over and over again,
cross country on that last trip, tripping our way
three weeks to San Francisco, and that
goodbye scene before boarding my military flight
to Vietnam.

- fanniesson, "VW Bus" (cir 1966)

Mayfly Living

Open my eyes
For the first and last time
Spreading my wings
I already knew how to fly
For today is the beginning of my end

Seeing the sunrise first
Seeing the sunset to my last
Born to the end of time
This is the story of the mayfly
For today is the beginning of my end

Rising to the fresh air
Following the rays of the sun
Yet for tomorrow will never be my day
For today is my first and last
For today is the beginning of my end

Why do I have to die?
For I already knew my time
To produce children with the same wife
There is no time to cry
For today is the beginning of my end

This curse lives on
Time does not take too long
To follow me? I am already gone
My life as the mayfly story full of sorrow
For today is the beginning of my end

I can't depend on the moon
My time is too soon
The day is falling to a stop
My wings are beginning to drop
For today is the beginning of my end

I am drowsy
My time is near
I can't no longer fear
For I ran out of tears
For today is the beginning of my end

My children will have the same fate
I need to complain
Still to weak to fly
I am ready to die
I finally reached my end
For this is the story of the mayfly
I need to be reborn again
For my life was not well spent

- Elisha De La Rosa, "The Mayfly" (11-7-09)

Becoming....

It happens again
As soon as I take down her book and open it.

I turn the page.
My skies rise higher and hang younger stars.

The ship's rail freezes.
Mare Hibernicum leads to Anne Bradstreet's coast.

A blackbird leaves her pine trees
And lands in my spruce trees.

I open my door on a Dublin street.
Her child/her words are staring up at me:

In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.

We say home truths
Because her words can be at home anywhere—

At the source, at the end and whenever
The book lies open and I am again

An Irish poet watching an English woman
Become an American poet.

- Eavan Boland, "Becoming Anne Bradstreet"

Backwoods Living

Barbecued
chicken wing
sticky and sweet
corn bread
black eyed
peas and pig feet
water melon
on the table
country fried
neighbors
and their
country music playing
rainfall
wakes the sleeping heads
and toes
just a few
moments of pleasure
that comes and goes

Dorsey Baker, "Backwoods"

Imagining Bond Girls

Back in my extra days, someone once swore
she’d seen me in the latest James Bond film.

I tried to tell her that they only hired
the really glamorous leggy types for that.
(My usual casting was ‘a passer-by’.)

I’ve passed the lot in Pinewood Studios.
It’s factory-like, grey aluminium, vast
and always closed. Presumably that’s where
they smash up all the speedboats, cars and bikes
we jealous viewers never could afford.

I quite enjoyed the books. Ian Fleming wrote well.
I could identify a touch with Bond,
liking to have adventure in my life.
The girls were something else. All that they earned
for being perfect samples of their kind –
Black, Asian, White – blonde, redhead or brunette,
groomed, beauty-parlourised, pleasing in bed,
mixing Martinis that were shaken not stirred,
using pearl varnish on their nails not red –
was death. A night (or 2) with 007,
then they were gilded till they could not breathe,
chucked to the sharks, shot, tortured, carried off
or found, floating face downward in a pool.

- Fiona Pitt-Kethley, "Bond Girl"

Chant Time

Possession is 9/10th the Law